Chrysalis

52

When Roz returned ten minutes later, heavily laden, she found the entire group had retreated to the control room: a long, narrow space, covered in uniform dark crimson felt and full of digital equipment — including a 128-track video mixing console — that wrapped around the back wall of the theater. As Dafna came over and began selecting various medical items, Roz noticed most of the others — except Snow, who seemed to be spending a lot of time on a portable radio — were grouped in a half circle around Mossby, seated at the supervisory workstation.

Everyone was fixated on the large central monitor above the workstation. It showed what looked like the feed from a security camera, monitoring the kind of clean room where the Voyagers were assembled — except that the objects moving along the two belts were not VR units but tiny containers. Robots, with cylindrical heads like the revolving nosepieces of compound microscopes, were bending over each container and — with long, thin hypodermic needles — filling them with precise motion. At one point, the belts stopped briefly while the robots backed away from the line and rotated their headpieces, bringing different hypodermics into place. Then the belts started back up again — carrying vessels of a different shape this time — and the robots went back to filling their chambers.

“Seen enough?” Mossby asked.

Nobody said anything, which Mossby took for assent. “This is the doctored loop. Peyton, that’s what your goons would have seen, if they’d been monitoring the security feeds.”

He tapped a few keys. “Now: here’s what was really going on.”

The video started up again. Everything looked precisely as before — except this time a short, slightly overweight man in a lab coat was standing between the two belts. He had stationed himself in a staggered position relative to the robots. Like the robots, he too was holding hypodermics — one in each hand, in fact. They were of unusual design: while the needles were the same narrow gauge as the robots’, the barrels were large and long, such as an equine veterinarian might use. He was injecting a small amount of the contents into each container, except that in order to keep up with both robots — one working the left line, the other working the right — he had to move very rapidly. There was no audio, but she could tell by his expression that he was nervous.

The line stopped, as it had in the first video; the robots backed away and swapped hypodermic chargers, changing meds again. Interestingly, the man did nothing but catch his breath. Then, when the lines started up once more — with different containers this time — he kept right on as before, injecting both lines with the oversize syringes.

After a few minutes, Mossby stopped the video. “Any ques-tions?”

Logan’s eyes were locked on the screen. “You’re positive that’s the same time, same location? No question?”

“No question. Security would have observed the first sequence, but the second sequence was what happened in real life.”

“So Prawn was in there,” Peyton said, gasping with pain as Dafna attended to his wound. “The bastard. I should have guessed, the way he was sweating during questioning.”

“But what was he doing?” Snow asked. “Adding more medication? He didn’t change meds when the second type of dosage chambers came down the line.”

“It’s far worse than that,” Logan spoke up, silencing the room. He noticed Dr. Purchase at the end of the desk, lit by the glow of the wide monitor in the dim control room. Purchase’s face had gone ghastly white, with the look of a man who’d just solved a puzzle — only to find it fatal.

“There’s no time to explain the details,” Logan continued. “We’ve got to find a technician named Wing Kaupei… now.”

“So what’s the problem?” Mossby said with a cocky grin. “Those were medical implants. And Prawn — that’s his name, right? — was obviously dosing them with something he shouldn’t have. Clearly, they’ve snuck some malware into a bunch of those implants, and unless you pay up by tomorrow, they’ll release the payloads remotely. But look: they’ve messed up. Because now we know. This was all programmed to happen — so you just need to get the person who messed with the firmware of the devices to back out his changes.”

“That person is dead.” Logan looked at Dafna. “Just find Wing.”

Dafna activated her Sentinel. “Get the search party on the line for me,” she told her device. And then: “Forward Nine to Cortez. Do you have an update for me?”

The woman must have put the comm in broadcast mode, because suddenly the control room filled with a gruff voice.

“Cortez here,” it said. “I was just going to check in.” In the background, Roz could hear voices raised in alarm. “We located Wing Kaupei.”

“You took long enough,” Dafna snapped.

“Well, ma’am, she wasn’t exactly in what you’d call a predictable place,” said Cortez, sounding defensive.

“Where did you find her?”

“The lobby.”

“What is so unpredictable about that, please?” Dafna asked.

“I didn’t say in the lobby. On its roof.”

A chill, like a breeze stirring dead October leaves, rippled through the group.

“Can you bring her here?”

“Forward Nine, that depends. Which piece would you like me to bring?”

Dead silence; then Dafna ended the transmission.

Sitting at the workstation, Mossby now had a more somber countenance. “That person you just mentioned — Wing? Was she the brains behind all this?”

Logan looked at him, nodded.

“And you said the person who could reverse the program is dead, too?”

Another nod.

“Oh,” said Mossby. “Well, then I guess we could be fucked.”