Xibalba

CHAPTER 21

For a long time after giving Alex his answer, Simpson sat alone in the lab office, wondering what to do.

He didn’t know if his employer believed the lie. His voice had quavered a little when giving his desultory reply, “I’m with you,” but surely that was to be expected when the topic under discussion was engineering life and death on a global scale.

What other answer could he have given? The subtext had been anything but subtle; play along or else a lot more than just his job would be in jeopardy. If Alex was willing to turn an unstoppable pathogenic fungal agent with the potential to destroy all life on earth over to the highest bidder, it was unlikely that he would hesitate to end the life of one reluctant researcher.

Which was why his actual answer probably didn’t matter. Alex would be monitoring him closely now, watching for any hint of disloyalty. A failure to produce results might be misconstrued as uncooperative foot-dragging, or even sabotage.

I can’t let him do this, he thought. Yet, what could he do to oppose Alex’s scheme? There was no one he could confide in. The facility operated with a skeleton crew, and there was no way of knowing if any of those who remained could be trusted.

But he needed to tell somebody.

The answer finally came to him when a notification alert popped on his computer screen, letting him know that it was time to check on the patients.

Maria!

He hastened through the corridors to the BSL IV wing where the infected patients were kept and quickly donned an environment suit. He felt such a sense of urgency that he had to fight the impulse to rush through the safety protocols. After a seeming eternity, the light in the airlock flashed red, indicating that he was now in a “hot” environment.

Instead of methodically visiting each of the infected subjects in turn, as he had done on previous visits, he went straight to Maria’s room. He found her almost exactly as he had left her, facing the wall of her isolation room, as if trying to figure out how to get through it, but now there were red streaks on the walls. Maria had been finger-painting with her own blood.

She turned her head to him as he stepped through the doorway, revealing that the fungal infection had advanced to the next stage. Her face and arms were covered with tiny pinpoint-sized spots of blood — petechial hemorrhaging. As the fever intensified, her blood was thinning, losing its clotting factor, and leaking through her capillaries, and literally oozing from her pores. Even the whites of her eyes were now bright red, and tears of blood were creeping down her cheeks.

She opened her mouth and began speaking, but the words that came out were in the same dialect several of the other patients had been using. It wasn’t just fever-induced gibberish. Alex recognized the strange words. All of the patients had used them, just as they had all drawn the same pictures using their own blood and bodily fluids. Both behaviors were unique symptoms of the infection that Simpson did not yet understand. There had to be some significance to it all, but right now, that was the last thing he was worried about.

Maria frowned as if sensing his inability to understand, and took a deep breath before trying again. “Mind… My mind is losing… Mental.”

Her effort was heartbreaking. “I understand,” he said, trying to spare her from what was clearly an exhausting effort. What he had to say to her would be just as difficult, albeit for very different reasons. “I’m not having any success finding a treatment, and… I’m starting to wonder if I should even keep looking.”

The words poured from him, a repetitive and confused rant that felt more like an apology than an explanation. Maria just stared back at him impassively for a while, but then turned back to the wall to resume painting the strange symbol with her blood, as if he wasn’t even there anymore. He kept talking anyway, hoping that, by putting his jumbled thoughts into words, he might somehow find clarity of purpose.

And in a strange way, he did.

“I wish I had met you sooner, Maria,” he said. “I wish I was more like you. That’s why I got into this. I mean, it was part of the reason, you know? The money, too, but mostly I just wanted to help people. Find some new miracle drug to cure cancer or… ” He sighed and shook his head. “It’s all gone sideways. Even if I do find a treatment, it’s only going to make it worse. Alex will have no reason not to make his weapon… Shadow and Light. Millions will die. Billions maybe. And if I don’t do it, someone else will. Alex will just… ”

He trailed off as the answer came to him. He had looked at the situation every way conceivable, worked out every permutation of the problem, gamed out every possible course of action, and had kept coming back to that same realization. Alex would get his way, whether Simpson helped him or not.

Alex was the problem.

And just like that, he knew what he had to do.

He reached out to Maria, touching her face, caressing her. His gloved fingertips left a smear of fresh blood.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “This is the only way.”

He turned away, unhooked his air hose from the room supply, and headed for the airlock. Before he went in however, he called Alex on the intercom. “I’ve made a breakthrough,” he said, aware that the quaver was back in his voice and hoping that his employer would chalk it up to distortion caused by the environment suit.

Alex’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Excellent. I knew you just needed the right motivation. Is it a treatment? If so, I want you to move ahead with human trials.”

“It’s something else. I can’t really explain it. I’ll have to show you. Can you meet me outside the isolation ward?”

“I’ll be right down.”

Simpson let go of the intercom button, severing the two-way connection. His heart was pounding. He was terrified, not because of what he was about to do, but because he knew he would only get one chance to do it right.

He waited two full minutes before venturing into the airlock and shutting the inner door behind him. The light was still red, indicating that the environment was unsafe. The exterior of his suit was probably covered in invisible fungal spores.

The safety protocol dictated that he should begin the disinfectant shower immediately after entering the airlock, but instead he went to the outer door and peered through the viewport, watching for his employer’s arrival.

He did not have to wait long. Alex burst into the staging area a few seconds later, an eager question already on his lips. He hesitated when he saw Simpson staring back at him from inside the airlock.

Alex shouted something, probably an exhortation to hurry up, but the thick walls of the airlock prevented Simpson from hearing him.

“I’ll be right out,” he said, and then threw his shoulder against the outer door.

The airlock doors were controlled by the same computerized system that operated the disinfectant shower, but the system had been built to keep microscopic life forms from accidentally escaping. The individual isolation rooms were equipped with heavy duty locks to ensure that none of the subjects escaped, but the airlock doors utilized a simple electronic lock, just sturdy enough to withstand slight pressure changes. The lock would not disengage until the sanitization cycle ran its course, but it was by no means an impregnable system. The lab’s designers had rightly assumed that, knowing the consequences of such an attempt, no sane researcher would ever even think of breaking protocol.

Alex’s eyes went wide in disbelief as the door shook from the impact of Simpson’s full weight against it.

The lock held but it hardly mattered. The blow had been sufficient to break the seal, if only for a millisecond, and that was enough to initiate the emergency fail-safe system. Outside the airlock, the lights went red and a harsh klaxon alarm began sounding. Simpson knew that, all over the facility, electronic locks just like the one on the airlock door would be activated, sealing off every room and corridor.

That was only the first stage. Simpson knew that he now had slightly less than five minutes to live.

Following a suspected biohazard safety breach, a countdown would be immediately initiated, just enough time for the facility’s safety officers — if there had actually been anyone serving in that capacity — to determine if the danger of a BSL–IV agent getting out of the lab was real, and for an evacuation of all personnel in non-affected areas to begin. If the fail-safe was not countermanded by the safety officer, at the end of the countdown, a thermobaric explosive device, located directly beneath the isolation ward, would be detonated. The resulting blast would immediately incinerate the lab, igniting all available oxygen in the process.

No trace of the fungal agent would remain. Maria and the rest of the infected patients, who were already facing a cruel death sentence, would be spared days of dehumanizing misery — at least, that was what Simpson told himself. He too would perish, but his death would save countless lives from Alex’s mad scheme.

But ensuring the destruction of the Shadow fungus wasn’t enough. He had to be sure that his employer would never get a second chance to destroy the world.

Simpson threw himself at the door again, harder this time.

The lock bolt snapped with a sound like a gunshot, and the door to the airlock flew open, spilling Simpson onto the floor of the changing area. As he fell, his suit snagged on the door handle, tearing a gaping hole that allowed cool and potentially microbe-infested air to rush in. Simpson didn’t care. He knew he wouldn’t live long enough to begin showing even the first signs of infection. He scrambled to his feet, located Alex, who was now backpedaling toward the locked door out of the room, and sprang at his employer.

But as he crossed the distance, Alex turned to meet him. There was an unexpectedly fierce gleam in the other man’s eyes. As Simpson reached for Alex’s throat, he glimpsed movement, and then something slammed into the side of his head and he saw nothing at all.

Alex leaped back, putting as much distance between himself and Simpson as the enclosed room would allow. His fist smarted where he’d struck the researcher and he absently rubbed his hand against his pant leg, knowing that doing so would have absolutely no effect on any microbial agents that might have been transferred.

No, he thought. There’s no way that happened. I’m clean.

But he knew that was the least of his worries right now. Simpson had initiated the fail-safe, and the clock was ticking.

He fought back the urge to stomp the spineless researcher’s skull to a bloody pulp. Alex knew he had only himself to blame for not recognizing Simpson’s weak-mindedness. Simpson had already sealed his own fate, but there was still time for Alex to save himself.

He turned back to the door, trying the handle to no effect.

Get a grip, he told himself. Think.

The door was equipped with a seldom-used numerical keypad — it was rarely locked during normal operations — but the fail-safe automatically blocked employee access codes. Alex however was no mere employee. His executive code trumped even the immutable fail-safe. He punched in the four-digit code and heard a click as the latch disengaged.

The minor victory brought little satisfaction. There were several more locked doors in his way, and even if he got through them all, escaping the immolation of the lab would be a close thing.

How much time was left?

As he ran down the corridor, he dug out his phone and placed a call. He could barely hear the ringtone over the claxon, but after only a second or two, his pilot’s voice came over the line.

“Get the bird fired up,” Alex shouted.

“Already started,” came the frantic reply. “It’s gonna be close though.”

Alex didn’t reply. The pilot knew his job, and nothing Alex could say would change the fact that the minimum amount of time for an emergency helicopter start-up was about three minutes.

It took him nearly that long to clear all the doors to reach the landing pad. Along the way, he encountered a few of the small skeleton crew of researchers and technicians, all of whom greeted him like a savior. He brushed them off, urging them to remain at their stations while he headed to the operations center to override the fail-safe. It was a lie, of course. There was no saving the lab, and not nearly enough room in the helicopter for him to save everyone.

By the time he cleared the last stairwell up to the helipad, the Bell 407 was idling steadily, its rotor blades spinning in a flat disk overhead. The pilot waved to him, urging him onward.

Alex clambered aboard, shouting, “Go!” even before the door was closed.

The helicopter lurched a few feet into the air, then began moving forward, racing away from the helipad without gaining much in the way of altitude. Distance, in any direction, was the only thing that could save them now, and fighting gravity was a lot harder than simply cruising at low altitude above the dark waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Alex craned his head around, holding his breath as the lights of the floating mobile research laboratory — a converted derelict oil-drilling platform he’d picked up for a song — receded behind them.

And then, the tiny star-like pinpoints of light were consumed in a supernova of brilliance.

“Hang on!” shouted the pilot.

The overpressure wave hit a few seconds later, buffeting the helicopter like a stiff wind, but they had already put enough distance between themselves and the facility to escape certain destruction.

Alex sagged in his chair, but his relief was tempered by the enormity of the setback. Simpson, the idealistic worm, had just erased what little progress they had made toward isolating the pathogen.

Thank goodness I didn’t put all my eggs in one basket, Alex thought, unconsciously flexing his fingers, working out the stiffness in his bruised knuckles. He turned to the pilot. “Take me to Palacios. I have to join Carina. Everything depends on her, now.”