Invasive (17 page)

H
annah breaks the surface. Gasping for air. Blinking salt water out of her eyes.

From here, for this moment, everything is calm. She can hear only the water lapping at her neck and cheek. The sound of wind. Her panic starts to recede, swallowed back down into her belly like a mouthful of stomach acid.

But then another sound: birds squawking.

And something beyond that: someone screaming.

Anxiety rises up in her, a red dragon with burning breath. It threatens to sink her like a stone.
Get control of yourself,
Hannah thinks.

She dives again, and swims hard—arms out, joints burning with the exertion. Pushing herself through the space. She tries to discern just how bad this is. How many ants could there be? Who did this? This is an attack. On Arca Labs. Or Einar.

Above her: a shadow. Hannah halts her momentum and corkscrews her body so she's looking up—

A human shape. Floating there, cruciform. Nearby bobs a round shape like a basketball. No. Not a basketball. A helmet. The pilot's helmet. The helicopter.

She realizes she hasn't seen the pilot since he landed. He's been here, at the helicopter, all along. It's big enough to sleep in. And now here he is, dead in the water. Blood drifts off him like plumes of purple ink. And little shapes—struggling, paddling black insects.

Hannah tries not to scream. Bubbles release from her nose and between her teeth as she squeezes her eyes shut and swims on.

Soon the ground is beneath her. Her palms flat on reef and pebble. With both arms she drags herself out of the water, her knees and legs under her as she gasps for air. Ahead of her, the beach. Beyond that, the first ridge and Arca Labs. She looks for ants. None here. Not now. Good.

A plan starts to form. Get to Arca. Bring everyone into a single place. What's the most protected area? The lab, maybe. Big enough to work.

Then wait. A boat will come this afternoon.

They just have to survive long enough.

The reception area is eerily serene. The lights are on. It's quiet. Hannah's almost afraid to make any noise.

The moment doesn't last.

Somewhere deep in Arca, someone yells. A panicked sound.

Hannah pushes on out of the reception area, down the tunnel to the second bubble, the bubble with two doors: one leading to the living quarters, one leading to the labs. She tries to go to the labs but—

She has no wristband. No RFID to open the door.

“Shit,” she says under her breath.

To the living area, then. Good. Fine. Her laptop is there. Maybe she can get it and send an e-mail—

She steps through the door. Through the next tunnel. Into the rec room.

Three people in this room. One woman is facedown on the floor. Hannah doesn't recognize her. One of the younger workers, maybe. The girl's long chestnut hair shifts by her scalp as
things
crawl underneath.

Not far away, curled up on the couch, is the man from the cook line: pale, bleach-blond, thin, too thin. His back rises and falls. His breath is wheezing. She watches a line of ants crawl up from under
his shirt, up the highway of his spine along his neck, and under his hair.

Leaning up against the bookshelf—books tumbled around him, the Settlers of Catan box overturned, its bits scattered about like pieces of a broken puzzle—is David Hamasaki. His face is a mask of ants. They tug at pieces of flesh peeling off his face. They have not yet stripped much of him away; their work has only just begun.

David's eyes rotate in their sockets. He's still alive. “David . . .” Hannah says, her voice cracking.

His gaze falls upon her. His lips work soundlessly. All that comes out is a squeaking wheeze. Hannah is paralyzed. She wants to run over and sweep the creatures off him, but if Ez is right and all it takes is one sting—one sting to paralyze, and one sting to summon the others—then she is exposed. Vulnerable. Already the ants are in this room with her . . .

A new sound interrupts her thoughts—banging from the other bubble, from the dorms. Thumping. Mumbled yelling. Not one person. Several. Hannah envisions the scenario: survivors running to the dorms, closing the doors, locking themselves in. The doors are pressurized, maybe the ants can't get in there. Which leads to the question: How did they get in here at all?
HVAC,
she thinks. Air-conditioning.

Air-conditioning.

The ants in the cabin died because of a late snap frost.

There, on the wall—a fire extinguisher. One in every bubble. More, probably, in the labs proper. Hannah creeps around the edge of the room. Above her in the vents she hears a sound: a
tick-tick
. More ants. She turns, sees the black shapes pushing their way out of the vents. Squirming, wriggling. Some creep along the curved wall and ceiling. Others just drop, pitter-pattering against the carpet.

She moves fast, grabs the fire extinguisher off the wall. She hopes it's the right kind—a CO
₂
extinguisher, because the CO
₂
liquid
expands very rapidly to become a gas. And as a result, it gets incredibly cold. If it's just a chemical powder, it won't work.

She wheels, backs herself against the curvature of the wall. Her finger tugs the ring and then she squeezes the trigger. A cold blast of CO
₂
hoses down the space in front of her. Wisps of cloud dance in the air.

The ants ahead are covered in a rime of white. They turn in dizzy circles. Some list like drunken sailors and topple over onto their backs. The others just stop moving. They freeze in place, mandibles wrenched open. Only their antennae twitch in what she hopes are their death throes.

A brief, if difficult, choice pings Hannah's radar: Save David now? Hit him with the extinguisher? Or save the others? The decision is easy and quick: the others can help her. She opens the dorm door—

Ants crawl the floor, the ceiling. Not a swarm—there are several inches between each of the insects. They walk with little urgency. Meandering. Searching. Content to roam and rove.

Two more corpses toward the end of the hall, near the door. Nobody Hannah immediately recognizes. But closer is the nurse, against the wall, lying on her side. Snot running out of her nose. Blood from where the ants are peeling the skin off her hands and face.

Hannah feels ants on her feet, crawling up her legs, and she spins around—but there's nothing there. Formication again. A sensation driven by fear.

Calm down, Hannah.
She holds up the extinguisher as someone pounds on one of the dormitory room doors. Someone else hammers on another door on the same side. Nearby on the wall is another fire extinguisher. Good.

She plucks the second extinguisher from its bracket, tucks it under her armpit. Then Hannah wades into the hallway, using the first extinguisher to blast the ants ahead of her and above her. Gouts of CO
₂
in white dragon's breath.
Whoosh.
Ants fall from the
ceiling, writhe on the ground. Others start to head toward her. She sweeps the geysering trail of carbon dioxide across the floor, freezing the demon ants where they move. They twist and curl in on themselves.

Hannah backs up against one door. She hammers an elbow into it and yells, “Open the door. It's Hannah.”

Fumbling on the other side, and it suddenly hisses open.

“Oh, holy hell, thank God,” she hears Kit say, and the woman throws her arms around Hannah's shoulders.

“No time for that,” she says, handing Kit the other extinguisher.

Behind Kit, Ray steps out. “Jesus tits,” he says. His face is ashen. He sees the ants on the ground and staggers back. He looks like he might puke.

More ants stream toward them, but Hannah hits them with the CO
₂
.
Pssh, pssh, pssh.

Hannah extends an arm and bangs on the neighboring door with the side of her fist. “C'mon, we have to go.”

The door judders and slides. Ajay and Nancy Mercado emerge. Nancy sees Hannah and her face scrunches up like a squeezed fist. “
You.
This is your fault, somehow.
Tanga
.
Kainin mo tae ko!
You brought this on us—”

Ajay steadies her. “We have to go, Nancy. We have to—”

“Shut up.” The little woman pushes past Ajay, and her face is a rictus of inchoate rage. “You brought this to our door. You—”

A black shape lands atop the tightly bound hair on Nancy's head. One of the ants crawls out across the Rubicon of the woman's hairline.

“Nancy,” Hannah says in alarm. “You have—”

“I said to shut up! Listen to me—”

The ant opens its mandibles and bites down. Hannah backhands the woman. Nancy cries out.

Hannah shows the woman the back of her hand. A smashed ant—wet and black, a droplet of mucus flecked with ground pepper—hangs there.

“Oh” is all Nancy says.

“We need to go,” Hannah says. “Stick close. You see the ants, say something. Kit or I will hit them with the fire extinguishers. Ready?”

They move.

In the next room, they see David. The attack on his face and hands continues. For a moment, in the stunned silence, they can
hear
the ants working on him: the faintest sound of chewing. Moist clicks. Some have managed to pull off bits of skin no bigger than a child's fingernail. They carry them back up toward one of the HVAC vents.

“We need to save him,” Nancy says.

“He's dead,” Ray answers. “We gotta move.”

Hannah shifts from foot to foot. “He's not dead.” She thinks to add but doesn't:
Not yet
. What happens if they pull him back? Just because he's still breathing doesn't mean he'll make it. What does the ant venom do? On the exposed parts of his skin she can see little red blisters. The marks of their stings, she suspects. With that much of their toxin pumping through him, is his death inevitable? Or can they forestall it? She asks, “What about EpiPens? Could they work?”

Ajay says, “Maybe. If this is anaphylaxis, it couldn't hurt.”

No time for further discussion. Hannah turns the extinguisher toward David. It hisses as it exhales its icy breath. The ants shake and shudder, falling from him like climbers off a mountain. She turns it away from his face—now red and chapped from the CO
₂
—and blasts his hands. The ants there fall away.

“Let's grab him,” she says to Ray.

Ray gives her a look. “You sure about this?”

“No. But we have to try.” To Kit: “Be ready.”

Kit nods.

Hannah and Ray step toward him. Hannah tucks her own extinguisher under her arm and the two of them reach for David, hands tucked under his armpits. They start to lift him up. Hannah feels something moving under his shirt and she knows it's just an illusion, a delusion, another fear sensation—

But then Ray cries out. David's body drops, hits hard. Ants begin to stream out from his sleeves and pant legs. Ray curses and throws himself backward. “They're on me, shit, they're on me.” He raises his hand to smack at the ants that Hannah sees are now crawling up his fingers, toward his wrist.

Ajay catches his hand. “No! Kit, quick.”

Kit blasts Ray with the extinguisher, and the ants drop. Hannah uses her own on the ants pouring out of David's clothing, stopping them in their tracks.

But then the streams of CO
₂
gutter and sputter. It's running out of juice.

Ray is standing there, stock still, growling through gritted teeth: “Are there any more? Any on me?
Are there any more on me
.”

“No. No. I got them,” says Kit.

“We have to go,” Nancy says suddenly. Her voice is small and afraid. “We have to leave him.”

They all know it's true.

The choice is made. They leave David Hamasaki to die.

Still no contact with Arca Labs or the Kolohe Atoll. And Archer Stevens is still missing, too. His son, dead. Hollis chews on that for a while. Maybe Archer did it. Maybe he killed his own kid. Why? Does that even make sense? Hollis sits at his desk, his knee jumping like kernels of popping corn in a hot pot.

The phone rings. He hauls it to his ear. “Go.”

“Got something,” Wade growls. “Two of those scientists ought to earn a second look from the likes of the Federal Bureau of Assholes, I think.”

“Who? And why?”

“William Galassi and—shit, I don't know how to pronounce this name, but Ajay B . . . Buh-hat-nuh . . .”

“Bhatnagar. He's Indian.”

“Fry bread Indian or naan Indian?”

“Jesus, Wade.”

“C'mon, Copper, I'm just fucking around. I did the research, remember? Guy's from Chennai. Rich family. You want to hear about him or about Galassi?”

“Go with Galassi. What's his deal?”

Wade snorts hard, like he's sucking a booger back up into his sinuses. “Galassi's got an ‘incident' from way back. Private school days. High school. He, ahh, tried to poison a classmate.”

“What?”

“Looks like he had a bully—boy was a senior while Galassi was a—let's see here—a junior I guess it was. Wasn't your normal
everyday bully, but one of those who gets on you like a bad smell. Boy named Charlie Irvin. Charlie hurt Galassi at one point, enough to send him to the hospital with a broken thumb. But you know how it is: they treat bullies like they're just as much the victims, so the boy got suspended. Then, when he came back, Galassi used a poison—oleander, the report says—on Irvin. But the bully survived. Whether because Galassi used a low-potency dose on purpose or just fucked up killing him, I can't tell.”

Hollis asks the obvious question: “How'd we miss that?”

“It was buried. Wasn't in a place you'd look. An old archived external hard drive from the Columbus, Ohio, police department.”

Columbus. That's where Galassi grew up. This is a juvenile record, and Hollis knows that with a lawyer and some paperwork, you can get those expunged. But
expunged
doesn't mean
erased
. Paper trails exist. Data trails do, too, clearly. Either Will had lawyers handle this, or this is Einar's hand trying to sweep it all under the rug. Whatever the case, someone thought it was gone.

And Wade the hacker just proved that it wasn't.

Instead he asks, “Galassi ever do time for it?”

“Nope. Parents are old money and got a good lawyer, by the look of it. And it never got into the news. Galassi did a year's worth of community service. Was treated as a youthful fuckup.”

“Shit.” Hollis's nostrils flare. “Bhatnagar?”

“That one's even more fun. Not a crime, but a censure. A scientific censure driven by some civil rights watchdog group. He did kind of a caste-based eugenics research paper. Seemed to feel that the only people allowed to work in genetics should be the genetically pure. It got circulated, dumped him in hot water.”

“What kind of hot water?”

“Censure is formal, but no formal effects, I guess. Mostly just made it hard for him to get a job.”

Bhatnagar's only been working for Einar for five years now. This explains why his career record before that was spotty and inconsistent. Copper's best guess is that Einar saw past the censure straight
through to Bhatnagar's skill set. The controversy, like Galassi's crime, could be buried.

Hollis thinks both men are problems.
Ajay is a racist. Galassi tried to kill a classmate.
Are either of those things enough to indict?

No. But enough to make Hollis wonder. And worry.

“Thanks, Wade.”

“So, I can chalk this up as an official favor?”

“You can.”

“You're a peach, Hollis Copper.”

“The peachiest.” He hangs up the phone, then picks it back up and books a flight to Kauai, ASAFP: as soon as fucking possible.