Ghost of the Gods - 02 (15 page)

The stairwell was unlit, yet he had eyes to see. The Messiah was aware of everything the Preacher knew and so much more. New Orleans was part of the Outlands. It was in some ways the unnamed capital of all that was not USAG. It attracted evil like honey attracted ants.

The Messiah stepped onto the cracked sidewalk and looked about. The streets were full of people seeking out sin of every imaginable variety. In a place like this it was easy to spot the innocent because there were so few. He began preaching the warning of the apocalypse that was upon them. He used the exact words God had taught him. People stared as he passed. He was God’s messenger as well as God’s sword; they could sense the power. He could feel the righteous energy growing inside him.

Though he was God’s sword, the Messiah did not have the heart to punish the wicked. He would leave that to the plagues, which would not pass over any doors. He hoped God would forgive him for this weakness. He knew in his past incarnations far too much vengeance had been taken by his soul. The taint on his essence was deep and unwashable.

A rolling power failure had blacked out most of New Orleans a short time ago. Without electricity, the damaged buildings looked medieval. The Messiah wandered for hours preaching in the unnaturally darkened world until his path crossed a church. He stared for only a moment then realized this was the place he had been searching for all night. Candlelight was glowing from within. He could hear the faint voices of a choir. He walked to the door and swung it wide. As he entered and came into the light, the minister stopped speaking and stared.

“I am God’s messenger and his sword,” announced the Messiah. “I have come to heal the innocent and punish the wicked. Armageddon is upon us all.”

“You are troubled,” said the minister. “Let us help you.”

The Messiah held up his palms so that all could see the miracle reappear. As he advanced deeper in this holy place he felt a warm trickle starting to crawl down his wrists. He felt the same warm trickle dripping down his forehead from what he knew were the marks of a crown of thorns. He heard gasps and murmured prayers. The minister grew pale. The Messiah reached the foot of the altar and turned to address the congregation.

“I am here as a healer and not as a sword,” said the Messiah. “All those who are ill of body or heart come take a drop of my blood. Take the blood of one of the true sons of God inside you and be healed.”

At first no one came forward. Finally one frail old man came up to the Messiah and asked for help for his wife, who had remained seated. The Messiah could tell this brave soul drew his courage from desperation. The Messiah walked over to the old man’s wife and prepared to mark her forehead with the blood of the son of God. She trembled but did not shy away from his touch. He could see the damage in her lungs as he drew the sign of the cross on her forehead. Within minutes she was breathing a little easier and exclaiming, “It’s a miracle!” to all who could hear. Soon many came forward, including the minister, who with tears in his eyes asked for help. The Messiah marked him too with a cross of blood.

“Who are you?” whispered the minister.

“I am one of the true messiahs.”

As the Messiah stepped from the church, electrical power returned. The lights came on in fits and starts like industrial flashes of lightning. The Messiah was stunned to see the sidewalk littered with amazingly large black and white butterflies. Some were six inches across. There had to be thousands of them, forming a velvet blanket on the ground. A few were still alive, though most were dead. They were as large as the biggest autumn leaves and scattered as indiscriminately. This was a sign from God. It could be nothing less than a warning that the seventh and final seal had been opened. The apocalypse was summoned forth.

Kathy Morrison – Dallas, Texas – February 5, 0002 A.P.

Kathy suspected weeks had passed while she was imprisoned in solitary confinement. Arriving by air to this place, she’d recognized the Dallas skyline in the distance. The Zero-G corporate logo was on the buildings in the complex where she was now held. She might be inside the Dallas Protectorate but was unsure. This was not the gulag she’d expected, which only set her mind to work, considering far worse possibilities.

She had been terrified during her transfer to this facility. She had spent a week at the prison work camp where McKafferty had first deposited her. That for profit work camp had been horrid enough. When the soldiers had come for her in her dormitory, she’d been certain she was going to her death. All the prisoners whispered about secret executions and far worse things than that.

Kathy hadn’t been offered a trial and didn’t expect one. She was now officially one of the disappeared. Her dreams were nightmares filled with bloody scenes of Pueblo Canyon viewed through a helicopter window. She was sitting on a cold floor, pressed into a corner of her cell. She had been given clothes that did not fit. Her world was this eight foot steel box. There were no windows, no bars, no bedding, nothing but a prison door, a hard metal floor, and an exposed toilet. The metal was aged and rusting around the rivets. The cell was not new, which meant Zero-G had needed a secret jail for a very long time. What kind of company had that kind of need? She felt like a hamster in a cage soon to be used for experimentation. The lights in her cell were always on, though her tormentors were unintentionally doing her a favor. She knew she could never again sleep in the dark where the nightmares were waiting. There were constant noises as if large machines were rolling back and forth across the ceiling. She had lost her grasp of the passage of time and had begun mumbling her thoughts to herself. She remembered she’d been given water and oatmeal several times since her arrival but was constantly hungry. She was certain her jailers had not been back to check on her in days. Had they forgotten her? Were they leaving her to die of neglect?

Kathy was stunned as the prison door closed behind the exiting guards. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a basin of water and a small bar of soap. She hesitantly dipped her fingers into the water. It was warm. She immediately began to scrub her face. The water dripped down onto her ill fitting shirt, soaking it. She didn’t care. She could not have been happier if she were a child playing in a pool on a hot summer day. She heard the loud metallic
clunk
of the door being unlocked again and stood up. Her hands and face were wet. She was breathing rapidly. Through the open door the light in the hallway was bright, causing her to squint. A man flanked by two armed guards stood in the doorway. The man took a step into her cell. The guards seem to be keeping a close eye on him. He extended his hand.

“Hello, Dr. Morrison. My name is Richard Theophilus. I must apologize for the poor treatment you have received. The treatment would be unacceptable for the worst criminals, let alone someone such as yourself, who worked so hard at the CDC to save us all.”

The man spoke with a refined Greek accent. Kathy didn’t know what to do or say. Inside she was trembling. The man may as well have been speaking Martian to her as he continued to address her. The full meaning of his words was lost to her. His build was athletic and tall. His face was expressive with a large forehead, gray eyes, and bushy eyebrows. His body looked young, late thirties to early forties, while his face looked much older, weathered and creased like a fisherman or sailor who had been exposed to too much sun. The medical doctor in her was confused by a face and body that did not match.

“In this new world I am an indentured scientist,” said Richard.

“What are you going to do to me?” asked Kathy.

“Do?” The man chuckled sadly. “I’m here to offer you a job as an indentured scientist like me. Of course, there really is no choice. The people who run this place would send you or me back to the camps if we were not of value to them. I am heading up a research team working on medical applications for the nanotech seeds. We’re trying to harness the seeds as a potential cure without turning the patient into a hybrid.”

“You know about seeds and hybrids!” said Kathy.

“We know a lot,” said Richard. “Come, let me take you from this cell and give you a tour. I hope you decide to work with us. It would trouble me to see anyone returned to the camps, let alone someone as heroic as you.”

Kathy hesitantly walked toward the door. She was fighting hard to curb her feelings of euphoria, but was unable to stop her heart from beating wildly. She feared disappointment. It felt as if Richard had been sent by some higher power to save her. Only moments ago she had thought she was wretched and deserved her fate. Now she was being offered hope. She knew as a doctor she could be experiencing some kind of Stockholm syndrome, but knowing did nothing to dampen the emotional chaos.

Stepping outside her cell, it was if she had been transported to a different world. Richard took her through two labs right across the hall. All the research going on just beyond her prison cell dumbfounded her. Richard gave her a crisp white lab coat to wear. As her tour continued, Kathy thought she recognized the face of Maria Lorenzo, a world famous researcher and Nobel laureate. Richard confirmed that it was in fact Maria Lorenzo and that there were four other Nobel laureates on staff. The research Zero-G was doing was miles ahead of what she had been working on at the BVMC lab. The labs and equipment were beyond state of the art. It was impossible to understand how so much progress could have been made in just two years. The possibilities were breathtaking. If seeds could be harnessed, all diseases could be cured. She thought about the tension between her and Mark because she refused to even try to become a hybrid. This research promised a type of immortality she was eager to take part in.

“Kathy…” said Richard. “Kathy…”

“Oh, sorry, I was gathering wool.”

“As I was saying, our research has progressed to the stage of human trials. I must confess that I have a personal stake in all of this. I’m not just leading a team. I’m a subject as well, which is breaking all the rules, but I had no choice. Not long ago I was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of lung cancer that had metastasized.”

“Oh, my god,” said Kathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. The cancer has been completely stopped and some of the damage reversed and all without surgery.”

Richard opened his shirt enough to show Kathy a flexible mesh that was worn around the base of his neck like a collar. The collar was attached by a thin wire to a small electronic device he had on his belt. She had mistaken the device for a cell phone.

“This collar is an antenna. The box is called a medical-jammer. Zero-G research led to the discovery that high concentrations of infected COBIC in the bloodstream caused seeds to spontaneously perform many of their biological repair functions. My cure requires daily infusions of large quantities of infected COBIC. Medical-jammers limit where they can migrate. When worn around the neck, it keeps them from nesting inside my brain and turning me into a hybrid. This technology completely eliminates the risks of mental sequestering and neuronal connection to the god-machine. The medical-jammer produces a complex signal that blocks seed communications and creates a repelling field, which drives COBIC away. The result is a microbial null zone.”

“This is incredible,” said Kathy. “I have a thousand questions.”

“And I have a thousand answers,” said Richard.

“Why daily infusions? Why do you need to replenish the seeds?”

“Infected COBIC does not like the jammer’s signal at all. As a result the microbes quickly exit my body. We’ve run tests. The bacterium is leaking from every inch of my skin at a very high rate. The seeds have arrested the progression of my cancer, but for some reason have not affected a cure. I need constant infusions of COBIC or my cancer will start progressing again. The current process is very expensive because of the costs of collection, storage, and administration of daily infusions of infected COBIC. The complexity and expense of that process is something we need to address.”

“This is the cancer treatment the world has been praying for!” said Kathy. “It makes chemo obsolete.”

“That is very true,” said Richard. “If I wasn’t fortunate enough to be an indentured scientist and guinea pig, I would be dead.”

Kathy’s thoughts were spinning from all the possibilities.

“Couldn’t you build the medical-jammer technology into a full body suit that blocks kill-zones or make something that shields an entire room or building?”

Richard smiled at her and slowly clapped his hands.

“Very well done!” he exclaimed. “We have developed just that. The equipment is experimental, obviously untested, and not ready for mass production, but we are close. This insight of yours is exactly why the demigods that run this place want you working for them. Few people have demonstrated as much brilliance in seed research as you and Mark Freedman.”

Kathy felt her heart beating. Her caution evaporated. She was proud that such an advanced team would want her and wildly excited about everything she was seeing.

Her orientation tour was over. Richard closed the door to his office. He was about to show her a highly secret project code named Prometheus. Since they were not allowed into that particular lab, he would give her an introduction using live video. The two guards that never left Richard’s side had taken up positions by the door. Richard brought up a video feed on a large wall mounted screen. Kathy saw workers in full body suits and odd helmets tending to a female subject inside a large glass chamber. The subject was strapped down and connected to an array of laboratory medical equipment. The upper part of her body was inserted partially inside a small MRI. On a split screen display the subject’s face was visible inside the MRI. There was a great deal of advanced equipment, some of which Kathy could not begin to identify. The subject was lying on an incline with the lower part of her torso and legs inside a shallow trough filled with clear liquid.

“We have six hybrids who are volunteer subjects,” said Richard. “This is subject number three.” 

Kathy was both impressed and astounded. They had hybrids, six hybrids! She had discussed with Mark the idea that more of his kind could exist, but to actually find more, to see them in the flesh, made her feel like she was dreaming. It was ironic that Mark was out there searching for more of his kind and here, by accident, she had found them.

“What are you doing with them?” asked Kathy. “This is fantastic.”

“There are many more than these six out there on the streets,” he informed her. “We need to study their nanotech brains and figure out how it controls the COBIC seeds in their blood. The subjects are hooked up to an fMRI to measure brain activity alongside RF signal analyzers to measure seed communications so we can correlate the two. We are always looking for new volunteers for the project. Each experiment runs for twenty-four hours, during which time the subject is unconscious. We need people with a high level of nanotech rooted in the brain.…”