Close to three hours after Comfrey’s last panicked call, the bots switched her brain off and shut her body down. No more moving, no more talking, no more trying to get out of the room. She, along with the other two women, just stood there in their huddle and stared at the door handle.
Yet they hadn’t turned violent like his original test subjects. They made no attempt to harm each other. Like the reanimated specimens, the newly infected just stood and stared. Somehow, the bots had reprogrammed themselves to bypass the violence of their original programming.
But why?
What purpose did this adaptation serve? What purpose did any of their recent actions serve? Why reanimate their victims? If they sought mobile hosts so they could infect more people, this new programming was a poor choice. The NNB26 prototype infected through contact, and what living person would get close enough to a shambling corpse to allow infection?
Of course, he was judging their behavior through his own experience and knowledge.
They were machines after all. They likely didn’t recognize the liabilities of their reanimated hosts yet. Sure, he’d programmed intelligence into his little prodigies, as well as the ability to learn and adapt, but there would be constant new lessons for them to learn. Maybe this was one of them.
Regardless of the purpose behind reanimating the dead—these twelve resurrected specimens, along with the newly infected lab workers, would never get the chance to pass on their nanobot load. He’d changed the access code to the door as soon as the security panels came back online. Their prison was secure. Impenetrable. Nobody was getting in. Nobody was getting out.
He'd made damn sure of that.
Suddenly, the reanimated specimens from Karaveht shuffled forward and joined the infected lab workers at the door. The factComfrey and her staff didn’t react to the mangled corpses was absolute proof that the three women were infected. Previously, they’d fled when one of the shambling specimens approached.
The whole lot of them stood there, pressed against each other, staring at...something.
Like they were waiting.
But for what?
He switched to camera three, which gave him a side view of the door. He leaned closer and recoiled in shock. They were staring at the door handle. Every one of them, reanimated and newly infected, were completely focused on the door handle, as though collectively willing it to open.
A chill crashed over him, turning his skin clammy. On instinct, he accessed the security program, his fingers hovering over the programming module for the specimen lab. Just as his fingers brushed the keyboard, the panel next to the door turned from red to green.
And Doctor Comfrey reached for the door handle.
Day 32
Aboard the Chinook, over the Pacific Ocean
“We don’t know if they’re infected. Not for sure.” Rawlings’s voice was tighter and harder than O’Neill had ever heard it,bleached of any good ol’ boy charm. “Can’t just kill the poor bastards without knowin’ if they’re tickin’ timebombs.”
“Yeah? What would you suggest?” Mackenzie snarled. Shoving the fingers from both hands through his short hair, he spun in a frustrated circle. When he stopped, he was facing Rawlings again. “Their anchor isn’t long enough to hit bottom at this depth, so we have no way to hold them in place. And we can’t sit here and babysit them forever. We’ve been out here too damn long already. Somebody is bound to see us.” He shook his head, frustration seething across his lean face. “I don’t like it any better than you, but it’s clear those poor motherfuckers are infected. The best thing we can do for them is to put them down. A missile strike will accomplish that. And we have two of them on board for this exact situation.”
“It’s too risky to leave them out here,” Cosky interjected. “This section of the ocean does get traffic. We’ve been damn lucky a ship hasn’t crossed our—hell, their—path already. It would be disastrous if someone got curious and hopped over to check the Harbinger out.”
O’Neill listened quietly, without taking part. The argument had been raging for an hour, ever since Capland had tried to drop anchor, but it wouldn’t grab the ocean floor. They’d taken a position close to the Harbinger, close enough Cap could remotely control the navigation and prevent it from drifting back toward shore, or into a traffic lane.
Sure, they’d accomplished their initial goal of navigating the Harbinger far from shore. But that success had opened another can of worms. Like what the fuck were they going to do with a ship potentially—hell, likely—full of infected people.
Rawlings shifted until he faced Winters. “What about you, skipper? How do you stand on this?”
From what O’Neill could tell, those on the chopper were split. Half agreed with a missile strike and half insisted there had to be another option. They just needed to find it.
Winters frowned, thought for a moment, and shook his head. “I’m not comfortable turning our missiles on an American ship, crewed by US citizens. Fuck, the men and women on that vessel are the very people we’ve sworn to protect. It’s time to report what’s going on to Hurley. Let him make the call.”
Mackenzie was already shaking his head…violently. “SOCOM won’t sink the ship. They’ll try to—” he used air quotes “—containthe vessel and the crew.”
Cosky nodded. “And without the proper equipment, everyone who rushes to the rescue will carry the plague back off the ship.”
“That’s not our call,” Rawls insisted tightly. “Hell, ya’ll makin’ the assumption they’re infected. We don’t know that. Not for sure. True, they’re actin’ hinky as hell, but they ain’t violent. They ain’t killin’ each other.” He turned to Aiden. “You have experience with these damn bugs. What’s your gut tellin’ you? Are they infected?”
Aiden shrugged. “They’re infected. I have no doubt about that. No idea why they haven’t turned violent. Maybe they still will. Maybe they’re having a delayed reaction. We believe there’s a bot bomb on board. It’s too much of a coincidence that they’re acting abnormally.”
O’Neill scrubbed his hand down his face. And there was the rub. While there was no question the Harbinger’s crew was behaving extraordinarily strange, there was no physical proof that a nanoweapon was on board.
