Read Seen And Not Seen (The Veil Book 1) Online
Authors: William Bowden
Felton, Lucius, and Garr are in the containment facility lab standing around a circular platform. A large 3D projection floats above it.
“So what we are seeing here is a tissue sample from the child under an electron microscope,” says Felton. He adjusts the controls to zoom in. An object resolves into view, nestled in the tissue. A spheroid structure, uniform in its texture, complex.
“It looks artificial. What is it?” asks Garr.
“A mutagenic virus,” says Felton. He rotates the point of view to show the other side of the object. Etched into its side is a serial number. “Nano-genetics.” Felton observes the shock on Garr’s face. He lets it sink in.
“Her body has purged the bulk of the virus,” he says, “There are only a few of these left now, which is why we didn’t see any first time round. We’ve spliced one open.” The image changes to show a schematic of the dissected virus. Three coils of DNA and other unidentifiable structures. Garr looks to Felton for further explanation.
“An artificial virus able to operate on the body at a cellular and genetic level to a common blueprint—the human genome.” Lucius sees Garr tense and shift uneasily. Felton continues, “Someone is conducting illegal nano-tech research into mutagenic viruses, Justice Garr. That’s what The Veil are warning us about.”
“It could be the holy grail of medicine, capable of maintaining the body in a state of perpetual youth,” muses Lucius, “Fighting off disease and infection, repairing damage. A universal cure.”
“And the socioeconomic chaos to go with it,” says Garr.
“Or a terrible weapon,” says Felton.
Lucius looks to an overhead monitor—a live feed of the child in the containment chamber.
“She isn’t a weapon,” says Felton, “They’re using refugee children as guinea pigs. They wouldn’t be missed and they would be less susceptible to toxic shock.”
Garr and Lucius look at Felton with horror.
“Toxic shock?” asks Garr.
“A healthy immune system would slug it out with the virus,” explains Felton, “each trying to destroy the other, resulting in massive collateral damage at the cellular level. A weakened immune system allows the virus to prevail. For a while at least.”
“You’d need a major lab to develop something like this,” Lucius says.
Garr is exasperated, “I don’t understand—you’re saying this is not the work of The Veil—they’re just showing us?”
“The virus in Apio’s body seems to have been rendered inert. She has been, well, cured,” says Felton.
“By The Veil?”
“That’s my guess. But if a live form makes it into the general population there is no telling what it would do. There would be no immunity. It would spread rapidly and we would not have the resources to deal with it.”
“Then we need to find that lab,” says Garr. She finds Lucius’s gaze elsewhere, tracking it to a display of the mosaic hand. Next to it is Apio’s drawing of the ‘Emerald City.’ Her mouth falls open with astonishment.
She turns on Felton, “Do we have a match on the reference genome?”
“Yes, we do,” he says, “It is Robert Cantor’s.”
Robert and Senator Blake have been bickering back and forth for the best part of an hour.
“Well, you questioned her about it this morning, why didn’t you ask her then?” says Robert.
“Are you going to have Miss Bertram return or not?” demands Blake.
“You know what, I don’t think I am.”
“Well, what about tomorrow? Will you produce her then?”
“No. No, I don’t think I will.”
A rage boiling up inside Blake is interrupted by an aide who whispers into his ear. Blake’s expression flips to one of surprised shock. He shoots a glance at an exasperated Robert. Almost immediately there is disruption at the back of the committee room. A posse of F.B.I. agents makes its way forward, at its head is a burly bald headed man.
“Let it be noted that F.B.I. Director Griffin has entered the proceedings,” declares Blake.
Robert, Landelle, and Toor rise to confront Director Griffin.
“Horace,” says Robert.
“Bob.” Director Griffin is uneasy in his duty. The posse sidles up, ready for a difficult situation. Griffin’s demeanor switches to pure formality, “Robert Cantor, I have a warrant for your immediate arrest.”
Gasps from the room. Griffin hands Toor the warrant. She hastily scans the document, shocked by its contents as the agents gather around Robert. She raises her eyes to his.
“You must comply on all levels,” she says.
Blake is mesmerized by the turn of events, the committee flabbergasted.
* * *
F.B.I. Director Horace Griffin is keen to conclude the favor, not that he had much choice in the matter. Alka Garr is not someone he can say ‘no’ to lightly. That, and the need to make amends over Senator Blake’s use of his agents, finds an uncomfortable Griffin seated opposite Robert Cantor somewhere deep in the bowels of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. They are alone when Justice Garr joins them.
“Well, now, this is all very interesting,” quips Robert at Garr’s unexpected entrance. “Horace won’t tell me anything, Alka. I tried to beat it out of him, but—”
“That’s because he doesn’t know, Bobby.” Garr is in no mood for jocularity. “And what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Robert knows that look on Garr’s face all too well. It shuts him up immediately.
“And on that note,” says Griffin, “I was never here, Alka.”
Griffin leaves without another word. Robert tracks his exit, his gaze then swinging back to Garr.
“Just what is it that the Director of the F.B.I. doesn’t know?”
* * *
Robert ponders the child through the containment chamber observation window. She is with the nurse and playing with some toys.
The others, save for Felton, are ashen. Toor is particularly distressed and confronts Robert.
“Is this what you go to? What you do? All this running rings around Blake—is it just a smoke screen for… for this?”
The hand mosaic is still laid out on the chamber floor, a spot under the index finger. Robert rubs the brown spot of his own on his right hand, his face blank of all emotion.
Toor chokes back the horror conjured up in her mind, “You have the resources. Is this what I have been signing off on?”
Robert’s gaze into the chamber remains cold, “Does the virus work?”
“Essentially, yes, it does,” says Felton.
Toor cannot contain herself, slapping Robert harshly across the face, “Bastard!”
Robert is completely taken aback, but Toor’s rage is unabated—she moves to strike again. In the blink of an eye Robert grabs both her arms, shoving her violently against a wall, his face contorted in a rage of his own.
“It’s not me!! How could you even think it!”
Landelle and Lucius move in to separate them. Toor struggles against Robert as he pins her to the wall.
“Damn you to hell! It’s not me, I tell you!”
A final shove and he pulls back, Landelle pulling a shaken Toor away. Garr confronts Robert with an unspoken question.
“Somebody else was bound to try sooner or later,” Robert says to her.
“Try what?” asks Felton.
A grim-faced Garr hands Robert Apio’s drawing of the ‘Emerald City.’ He snatches it away from her with a look of shock.
“Trinity… it’s Messiah,” she says to him.
The suggestion horrifies Robert, “Can’t be…”
“One of the coalition member states must have hijacked Trinity and restarted the Messiah program,” Garr says. “Bobby, they’re using
children
.”
The others are puzzled as to what Justice Garr and Robert are talking about, except Felton who, for once, is unable to contain himself.
“Trinity? Messiah?”
But Garr and Robert ignore the others.
“If it is Trinity then they’re using the original sequencer. That means a sample of Messiah and an antidote that they are not aware of.”
“Will somebody explain to me what the hell they are talking about,” Felton says to the others.
“The Veil’s intervention will have put the cat among the pigeons,” Garr says to Robert. “We need to find out what’s going on inside Trinity, quickly and quietly, and without exposing it to the world. And we need that sample and antidote.”
“You knew this wasn’t my doing,” Robert says to Garr.
“I know you well enough to be certain you had your own back door into Trinity, but to do that you need to be off Blake’s radar.”
Robert ponders Apio’s drawing again, the bright sun shining over the green landscape. He raises a grave look to Garr.
“Yes…,” she says to him. “The Thin Man.”
The VTOL flies perilously close to the canyon walls. They are an hour out from the Nevada skunkworks in a Cantor Satori freight shuttle and so far Toor has been able to evade detection. In the cargo hold Landelle coldly observes a morose Robert lost in some thought.
“Don’t go there. We need you here,” she says.
Robert surfaces from the depths to face Landelle.
“M.I.5 and M.I.6 both worked up psych profiles on you,” she says. “Seen them?”
“Yep.”
“Bet that was expensive.”
Robert can’t help a little smile at that.
“Were they right? About where you go to in your head?”
* * *
The wheat fields had always been there for him, even if he hadn’t noticed. A bright summer’s day in England, a boy and girl race through the wheat, laughing and giggling all the while. An age of innocence that seemed to last forever. And then they were teenagers, lazily sat atop a haystack soaking up the sun. The boy whispers something to the girl—she laughs and playfully slaps him.
The age of innocence ends and it’s the back of an expensive car. Robert looks up from a dossier and glances out the window—a field of wheat passes by. An employee requests his attention—he gives it immediately.
Time
,
Forbes
,
Fortune
—all chronicled his rise, Monica Satori at his side, the wheat fields a fading memory. Now it is a brave new world, the construction of the linear accelerator and the Afrika. An unhappy Robert finds himself in the public eye and the descent begins.
Robert stands at the edge of a railway platform looking down at the rails, sad eyes full of deep despair. His eyes widen and he steps back from the edge in horror. A train rushes through.
Some business meeting somewhere. One of hundreds blurring into a nightmare. It takes almost nothing now—to push him over the edge. He dives into a side office, filled with angst, ready to throw himself from that very building. But there, on the wall, is a picture—a print of Van Gogh’s
Wheat Field With Cypresses
. Robert remembers and his leveler returns to him.
* * *
The farmer eyes Robert with suspicion. Given the state of his appearance he’d taken him as a vagrant looking for work.
“Where’d you say you was from again?” the farmer asks.
Robert’s focus is on the straw he is pitching. An honest day’s labor. A sense of perspective. He lets the question pass, as does the farmer.
“I tell you—you’s the spit of that crazy billionaire,” jokes the farmer.
Toor calls back from the flight deck, “Coming up on three miles.”
Robert clambers onto the flight deck, the view ahead rising out of the canyon. Before them is the neighboring desert and beyond that a vast perimeter fence—an arc of a circle some three kilometers in radius passing underneath them.
A biometric scanner lights up on the VTOL flight console. Palm print, retina scan, and voice recognition. Robert places his palm on the scanner.
“Cantor. Robert.”
He removes his hand leaving an image on the scanner, which pays special attention to the dot at the base of the index finger. After a moment the scanner displays ‘Executive Access Granted.’
Robert turns to a frosty Toor, “Whatever you do, do not deviate from this flight path.” He takes up the co-pilot seat next to her, Landelle edging into a jump seat behind them.
Ahead is a huge domed facility, camouflaged against the desert by means of cloaking panels that line its surface.
“The Emerald City?” asks Landelle.
“Trinity,” says Toor with more than a tinge of contempt.
* * *
The VTOL sits on a landing pad. A short distance away Robert, Landelle, and Toor stand before the main entrance to the Trinity dome—a huge rectangle of gunmetal slowly sliding open, five line drawings of the Earth etched into its surface. Beyond is a cavernous reception hall for anything that needs to be brought into the dome. And beyond that a series of airlocks big enough for the largest of vehicles.
The three remain on foot. It only takes fifteen minutes or so to pass through the airlocks before they emerge at the edge of a vast space half a kilometer across, spanned by the inner surface of dome. Landelle and Toor gasp at the spectacle, Robert nonchalantly observing their astonishment.
It is a biome—an artificial biosphere containing lush grasses, trees, and plants of all kinds, many of which are strange-looking. At the center an elegant spire reaches to the very apex of the dome where it is topped by a large ovoid tip. A few machines, Embies, toil among the growth—weeding, pruning, clearing.
Landelle rounds on Robert, “What the hell is all this?”
“Advanced genetic engineering. Way, way beyond GM.”
A look of deep dismay washes over Toor. Robert heads off into a dense patch of fauna, Landelle and Toor traipsing behind, pushing through the exotic growth.
“This is the garden, where we put the success stories,” says Robert. “Below us, three levels of automated labs.”
Toor finds herself confronted by a particularly strange-looking fruit. Robert feels the need to lobby a defense.
“New species of food crops, rapid re-forestation and much more besides,” he says. “It’s not illegal, just… just—”
“Just wrong,” says Toor.
They come to a small clearing. A low structure within houses a freight elevator controlled by a biometric panel. Robert’s identity is accepted and the three of them enter.
“How on Earth do you hide something like this?” says Landelle. “The cost alone…”
The elevator doors close.
* * *
The elevator descends.
“We worked out fairly early on that the Afrika wouldn’t be sufficient.” Says Robert. “We just simply wouldn’t be able to realize the potential soon enough. We needed a backup plan and the Trinity Program was it. But while a tour of the solar system to seek out new resources is an easy sell, bio-engineering the planet is not. So a coalition or world governments set up the Five Earths initiative, using the Afrika Project as a diversion and source of funding to keep Trinity secret long enough to make some real progress.”
The doors open.
“A circus, with you as ringmaster,” says Landelle.
“Not ringmaster… clown,” says Robert.
“But you didn’t even try to sell Trinity to the world,” says Landelle.
Leaving Robert and Landelle locked in their debate, a wide-eyed Toor steps out of the elevator, mouth agape.
“After the introduction of Trinity’s offspring to the ecosphere there will be, well…, no going back. Ever. If we had tried to sell that it would have never made it off the drawing board.”
“So you chose fait accompli,” says Landelle.
“Nobody ever saves for a rainy day when they should, Debs. When that day comes for the human race, they will find that we have saved for them.”
Landelle’s gaze searches out Toor—she exits the elevator to join her. They are on a walkway hugging the wall of a huge shaft one third of a kilometer across, extending above and below them. Openings exit onto the walkway at regular intervals around the inner wall. At four points gantries extend into the shaft’s center to a cylindrical platform from which a column ascends the full height of the void.
One third of the way around a colossal machine rises from the depths below—a giant space-frame arm reaching into one of the openings with an array of instruments and manipulators resembling some nightmarish metal claw.
“Who… who runs all of this?” says Landelle.
Landelle and Toor tear their eyes away from it all to find Robert heading off along the walkway. They scurry after him.
Robert comes to an opening opposite a gantry. Set back at the end of a short corridor is a vault door adorned with a large biohazard symbol, labeled ‘MESSIAH.’
“A false start. As soon as we understood the ramifications I personally shut the project down,” he says, placing both hands palm down on a biometric reader. A series of clunks and the vault door swings inward. Robert steps in trailed by Landelle and Toor.
A series of lights blink on in sequence to reveal a long, smooth-walled cavern occupied largely by a single device running its full length. The far end of the cavern is partitioned off by jet-black glass.
Robert attends to a nearby console, “The logs have been wiped. Someone has been here.”
Landelle and Toor wander down the lab, looking at the device—a series of boxy segments joined as a whole, with access points—presumably for the machine they saw in the shaft.
“A nano-genetic sequencer,” explains Robert. “It constructs the virus.”
They arrive at the black glass partition, a tall oblong shape etched into its surface. Robert’s face betrays the trepidation of what they might find.
“This is new,” he says.
Toor tentatively reaches out to touch the shape. It sucks inward and slides to one side to reveal a glow from within. She steps in.
A chamber. Running its length is a bank of twelve stainless steel surgical tables. At the end of each is a an empty glass ovoid container about a meter high, housed in a rack of medical machinery comprising pumps, tubes, monitors as well as many other unrecognizable elements.
Landelle and Toor cannot disguise their horror, “Good God.”
“Twelve tables,” Toor says, turning to Landelle. “Twelve children?”
Landelle can see the horror taking hold of Toor, “We don’t know that.”
With gritted teeth Toor rounds on a grim-faced Robert, “How could you let this happen?”
“Shaz…”
Toor shoves him away with contempt, “Don’t you dare Shaz me. Blake was right. You lied to us all. Lied to me. The world believed in you.”
“I never asked them to and I never lied. This wasn’t me—”
Toor comes close, “You had a duty of care.” But she can’t control the anger any longer, “You should have seen this!!” she screams at him, “But no! Not you and your fucked-up head!”
She grabs his face, squeezing his cheeks inward, twisting his head to face the line of surgical tables. He does not resist.
“Look at the horror you let come to pass here. Look at it! Lost in your own little Buck Rogers world and all the while… this!”
“I didn’t know. I couldn’t have seen—”
She pushes Robert away. He steps back awkwardly from her as she approaches one of the surgical tables. With a desperate look she turns to Landelle.
“Could The Veil have rescued them all?”
“They only needed one,” says Landelle.
“Then where are the others?”
Landelle can only answer with a look to Robert. He turns away to step back into the main chamber. Landelle follows leaving a red-eyed Toor.
Robert ponders the sequencer, running his hand over its paneling.
“So what are we looking for?” asks Landelle.
“There’s a hidden protocol. The sequencer saves a sample of Messiah and an antidote.”
His fingers find what they are look for. A slight application of pressure and a drawer slides out with a swish. Inside is a rack holding two syringe guns, each loaded with a vial—one red, one blue. Landelle gawps at the simplicity of the hidden drawer and the ease of access, “That’s it?”
Toor emerges from the chamber, expressionless, the anger burnt out. Robert picks up the red gun and looks it over, “Messiah.” Toor picks up the blue gun.
A loud, deep tone sounds three times, arresting all three of them.
“That’s not good,” says Robert.
“What is it?”
“The three-minute warning,” he says.
“Warning for what?”
“The bomb.”
Two pairs of wide eyes bore into Robert. A realization grips him.
“The Thin Man!”
“He tosses the red syringe gun to Toor. She deftly catches it.
“Stay here.”
He bolts out of the chamber, powering away from the vault and along the gantry. The strain on his face shows he is giving it everything, feet pounding, down a hundred meters of metal walkway. Below is the shaft, ahead is the central platform, a circular console wrapped around the column rising from it.
A deafening alarm kicks off. He doesn’t stop. A hop and a jump take him over a handrail barrier to land at the console, hands slapping down onto a biometric reader. It starts scanning.
“Access granted, Robert Cantor,” a natural-sounding, but machine-generated voice says in neutral tones.
“Status,” demands Robert.
“Detonation sequence is in progress.” The console displays a countdown clock.
“Executive override.”
“Denied.”
“Initiate maintenance program eighty-three hundred.” Robert looks up the length of the column. It disappears into the hollow interior of the dome’s spire where, far above, a faint glow appears.
“Maintenance program eighty-three hundred commencing. Attention. Conflict detected.”
“Continue with maintenance program eighty-three hundred,” says Robert.
A display shows him what is going on. A schematic of the spire and the column within it, the base labeled ‘cannon.’ The cannon leads to the spire tip and its target. The target separates into segments that arrange themselves around the outside of the cannon.
“Retrieving subcritical mass for disassembly,” says the console. The segments descend down the cannon.
“How long?” demands Robert.
“Twenty-five seconds to complete retrieval.” The console countdown clock is at twenty-one seconds. Robert looks up into the spire interior in horror, then down at his hands. A message reads ‘Remove palms to abort.’
Toor bounds along the gantry, both syringe guns in hand. Ahead, the segments appear high above Robert—large orange blocks arranged in a ring around the metal column of the cannon, slowly descending. The sight brings her to an abrupt halt.
Some distance behind Toor, Landelle also comes to a halt, “Sharanjit!”
Robert whirls around from the console, his palms still firmly planted.
“Go back! It’s not safe yet!”
Toor is frozen to the spot. The clock reaches zero. The cannon fires.
A brilliant flash of bright, blue-white light.
High above them in the biome the spire’s ovoid tip shatters, fragments ripping through foliage.
* * *
Toor sifts through Trinity’s log files at a console in the medical center. Robert attends to Landelle, giving her a shot from a medication gun.
“The Thin Man?” asks Landelle.
“The coalition required a means of assured destruction should any the Trinity experiments get out of hand,” Robert says.
He cups his hand, “Subcritical mass.” He points the medical gun at his palm, “Uranium pellet,” He squeezes the trigger, splattering his palm with medication. “The two combine. Criticality. Boom.” He explodes his fingers.
“From the Manhattan Project? Century-old technology?” says Landelle.
“Cheap as chips and easy to build without the UN getting wind.” He spreads his fingers apart, “Maintenance program unpacks the subcritical mass for inspection…” He fires the medication gun again, its liquid passing through his fingers, “Criticality not reached. Just a brief burst of radiation. No worse than a dose of chemo. A private loophole in the system.”
Landelle looks at him with disbelief. He smiles back weakly, “Expect flu-like symptoms in about twenty-four hours.”
“Something we did tripped the bomb?” she asks.
“There are no traps. The self-destruct sequence has to be initiated—”