Wasteland Rules: Born to Fight (The World After Book 2) (15 page)

   Derek shook his head sadly. “Didn’t you realize
that there are always unintended consequences?”

   “We were working in secure facilities with total
containment. There was no way that the virus could have escaped. It was also
designed to go dormant after one use, meaning it couldn’t spread.” Dr. Banek
said defensively.

   “So you are saying someone modified it and spread
it deliberately?” Derek asked.

   “That is what we believe.” Augie interjected.

   “Why don’t you know what happened? They got it
out of your lab didn’t they?” Derek pressed.

   “When we realized that the military and the government
were going to misuse our work we resigned. There were enough scientists and we
were important enough that they couldn’t just disappear us. So they made us
sign ironclad non-disclosure agreements and continued to monitor us.” Dr. Banek
explained. “I still had a few contacts inside the group who managed to keep me
secretly informed on what happened in general, but I never knew all the
details.”

   “The military running amok with science is
nothing new. How did we get to this point?” Derek asked.

   “With most of the ethical scientists gone, they
had very little to keep them in check. They began working on more and more
fringe science projects and pushing the boundaries of ethics. In 2003 Doors was
diagnosed with terminal cancer. He shifted the focus from weapons to finding a
cure for cancer and then when they realized they couldn’t cure it to what is
known as life extension.” Dr. Banek said slowly. “Cancer is a mutation of human
genes and the longer you live the more likely they are to mutate because your
genes ‘age’. So Doors and Channing pushed the group to develop a way to slow or
even prevent the genes from ‘aging’. They figured this would keep the cancer
from occurring and slow the spread of cancer in someone who already had it.
They were successful in slowing the aging process. After a few human trials
both Doors and Channing tried it. That’s why Channing actually looks younger
now than 30 years ago.”

   “One of the things they did was the SuPERHUMAAN
project.” Rora chimed in.

   “I was one of the human guinea pigs?” Derek asked
in disbelief.

   “It saved your life though. We looked at your
records. They must have done the splicing during your surgery after you
returned from China. According to the after action report you were ground meat
when they got you. There is no way you should have survived.” Augie replied.

   “Still…” Derek murmured.

   “Unfortunately for Doors it slowed but didn’t
stop the cancer. So he started moving the research towards machine intelligence
and cybernetics. He became convinced that he could remove his failing body
parts and replace them with something more durable, something that would never
fail or need to be replaced. That was when they started creating the Humeks; to
see if that would work for him. The cybernetic parts were a success, but his
cancer had spread too far for them to be enough.” Dr. Banek related. “He
decided to take a more desperate step. Doors had already developed the LINC for
the Humeks to utilize and he realized it would grow as more were added into it.
So he transferred his mind electronically into the LINC.”

   “What?” Derek interrupted, confused.

   “Are you familiar with the movie Lawnmower Man?”
Augie asked.

   “The original or the remake?” Derek replied
cynically.

   “Same plot in both…” Augie growled.

   “I saw the remake.” Derek acknowledged.

   “He made that happen. He no longer has a physical
body and exists only in the machine. He might be crazy but the man was a
genius.” Augie told him.

   “He was already reclusive and when he removed
himself from public view, people just assumed he was being eccentric.” Dr.
Banek further explained. “I’m not sure whether he was already mentally unstable
or the loss of his humanity pushed him over the edge, but once he no longer had
a body he became obsessed with the fact that humanity was a blight on the
earth. He believed that we were an invasive species that needed to be removed. He
started focusing the Collective’s research in that direction.”

   “Didn’t the government have a problem with that?”
Derek asked.

   “They did, but in 2009 when Channing left office
the Collective was no longer funded by the new administration. They were
unaware of what it really did and saw it as a vestige of the old administration
that needed to be removed.” Augie explained. “So Channing and Doors secured
private funding and moved the work to more remote facilities. Using his
connections, Channing maintained some contracts with the military and the CIA
on black projects. That allowed them access to government data and resources.”

   “Like the project we found in Zinc, Arkansas that
created the Drinkers.” Derek muttered.

   Dr. Banek continued. “Without real oversight they
got even further into banned and fringe science. The drones for example were
developed from a CIA mind control experiment. Clones were created to replace
world leaders or enemy agents. None of these projects were immediate success,
but they kept working on them. As you know, they must have eventually been
successful because we can see their results in action.”

   “Are they still working together?” Derek asked.

   “We don’t believe so. Even though they were
working together, we believe they each had a separate agenda the other was
unaware of. It was a marriage of convenience, nothing more. Doors continued to
expand the LINC and his abilities within it, apparently creating the ability to
control the drones remotely. He also recruited like-minded people to become
what we call the Humeks. This was all done separate from what Channing was
connected to.” Dr. Banek said. “Channing on the other hand, was using the
knowledge to create a separate power base within the government and military in
preparation for a coup. They believed the government was weakening the country
and that it was moving towards socialism. He and his cronies didn’t want to
become poor and subservient to the government so they were preparing to take
action.”

   “That’s ironic.” Derek said caustically.

   Given how ninety percent of the population of the
U.S.T.G. lived, that statement was pure hypocrisy. Most citizens of the
U.S.T.G. were poor, lived very restricted lives, and worked incessantly to
support the regime. Only the elites, the party members, lived in fortified and
gated suburbs with green lawns and big houses. They shopped in well stocked
malls and had cars and designer clothes. The average citizen lived in a squalid
apartment building, ate processed crap, and wore one of three choices of gray
shaded work uniforms. But, Channing and his cronies lived the high life so they
were getting what they said they wanted. They just weren’t worried about the
rest of the country’s freedoms and economic well-being.

   “We aren’t sure if they worked together to
engineer the Collapse, one of them did it by themselves, or if they took
advantage of an already occurring event; but both executed their plans at that
moment.” Augie added. “I don’t think Channing was aware of Doors’ plan because
they seemed taken by surprise when the satellites went dead. Not to mention the
ill-fated invasion of the Pacific Northwest. I think he and his group had
expected to seize control of the entire U.S. not just the Midwest.”

  “Except for the Northeast I assume?” Derek asked.

  “Yes, intelligence indicates they disabled the
missile shield for the Blue states in the Northeast.” Augie agreed. “That
shield was an early Collective project so I’m sure they had back doors built
in.”

   “So who unleashed the virus?” Derek pressed.

   “We don’t know.” Dr. Banek conceded. “But we know
it was deliberately spread throughout the world. The original strain was only
designed to attack food crops and it was supposed to be disabled by a
counteragent. The strain that struck the U.S. was not the same as what was
released in China. It was completely different and did not react to the
counteragent.”

   “How do you know that?” Rora interjected.

   “Umm…we have a sample here we are working with.”
Dr. Banek reluctantly acknowledged.

   “What?” Derek exploded. “You are working with the
virus that almost wiped out the world?”

   “Relax, Major.” Augie insisted calmly. “We are
working to find the counteragent in case whoever released it the first time
does so again. We cannot start to plant crops on a large scale again until we
make sure we can defend against it.”

  Derek was only slightly mollified. It seemed to
him like they hadn’t learned their lesson from the first time. That man
shouldn’t be messing around so much with nature. Nature always had a way of
striking back. The Happening may have been a terrible movie, but it had gotten
one thing right. Nature was fighting back with what it had at its disposal.
Plant allergies had sent more people to the emergency room than anything else.
He wondered what else they were working on here in this supposed Utopia? What
lurked beneath its idyllic exterior?

   “We are not the enemy here Major.” Dr. Banek
cajoled him. “The enemy is out there trying to turn all of us into slaves or
zombies or eat us. Quite frankly I’m not sure which one is worse. We are the
good guys. We set this all up to create a bastion of freedom from which to work
towards rebuilding what we lost.”

   “And who are you guys exactly?” Derek asked very
directly.

   “We call ourselves The Society. We formed it
after we left the Collective and began recruiting members all over the world.
We kept it very secret and very informal at first. We never met in person and
operated through fake personas on message boards. We knew we were being watched
by the government and then the Collective. So we operated under a cell
structure even online. It was all purely talk and theory at that point anyway.”
The doctor explained. “Once the general here joined us, we were able to utilize
his connections to start to put some substance around our plans. The creation
of this safe haven was our main priority. The project as put to the members was
‘What would it take to survive an Extinction Level Event?’. Anything we felt
was real and doable that was suggested, we worked to make reality. This is a
result of that project.”

   “How does Rora’s father fit into this?” Derek
asked.

   “He was a member.” Augie informed them. “He
decided not to come here because he didn’t want to put even more of a target on
our back than we already had. His split from the Collective was not collegial,
and we were already considered an enemy by both the Collective and the U.S.T.G.
Neither one had attacked us yet, and he was afraid that if they knew he was
here they would do so.”

  “Why were they so interested in my father?” Rora
asked quietly.

   “The device.” Dr. Banek said flatly. “The device
is a very powerful tool, one that controls the fate of this country. Both sides
are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. However, neither side wants to
be in open conflict with each other so they won’t just come here to seize it.
If one side gains it, the other will be forced to attack the other to stop them
from using it or destroying it. While your father had it, they were forced to
remain neutral. Now that it is in play, all bets are off.”

  “In play?” Derek asked.

   “We know you have the device Major.” Augie answered.
“We allowed you to keep it in hopes that it would show good faith on our part
and we could convince you to join us.”

  “That and it allowed me to complete the rescue
mission without the Collective knowing where I was.” Derek replied
sarcastically.

  The general chuckled. “That too. But now we need
to get to the real mission. The real reason we need you.”

   “Let me guess. You want the device too, but you
are too nice to just take it from me?” Derek asked sarcastically.

   “Not exactly.” Dr. Banek said slowly. “What do
you know about the device?”

   “It makes the holder invisible to the
Collective.” Derek replied simply.

   “That is one of its functions, but it does so
much more.” The doctor said in a lecturing tone. “It is making you invisible,
as you put it, by interacting with the LINC at a core level. The device is
removing you from all data streams the LINC receives and stores. You aren’t
just invisible; you don’t exist according to the LINC.”

   Derek wasn’t super impressed by that, but Rora
seemed to be. She was leaning forward, totally focused on what Dr. Banek was
saying. Being the daughter of a scientist and obviously way smarter than he
was, it probably made more sense to her. But to him, all that mattered was they
couldn’t see him or track him.

   “The device is capable of accessing the LINC and
changing it at its base code.” Dr. Banek continued. “This means it has the
ability to override Doors’ control of the LINC and possibly even shut it down
altogether.”

   Rora gasped aloud at that statement. “So someone
could either seize control of the LINC from Doors or turn it off and disconnect
all the drones?” She asked.

   “That is correct young lady.” Dr. Banek replied.