STAR FALL PEOPLE Chapter 38

Sley: San Francisco

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Sley wondered if he had been wrong about Nadia. Watching Mang march through the Phanes atrium brought back nothing but terrible memories. She’d been slaving away for him for centuries. That would wear anybody out. She seemed oddly quiet, too. She was dressed aggressively in black leather, like Catwoman, but she seemed to have run out of snide remarks or anything else to say. Her body had lost its strut. She looked resigned.

There was still time to make amends, get her to switch sides. He had been wrong to dismiss her, to humiliate her in front of these other people. Another Sley screw-up, but now the stakes were too great for self-forgiveness.

He counted five cike plus the two Anointers. More than he could handle by himself. That wasn’t counting Mang.

But he’d have to try.

He might stop Mang if Nadia was on his side.

Carlos brought in Pavel Gorodsky, the last of the lead scientists. The Russian calmly walked to the others sitting together. Carlos was out of breath. “Went as fast as I could.”

Handlebar said to Fat Beard, “What do you think?”

“Think he’s ten minutes too late.”

Handlebar raised the Desert Eagle and pointed it at Carlos.

“Stop!” Becker demanded.

Mang approached them. “You are Gorodsky. Show me what you have developed from Kong’s blood.”

Becker nodded his assent. Pavel said, “You have to come with me to the lab.”

Mang pointed his scabbard at Sley. “Bring him. And Becker. And the girl.”

“What about the spic?” Handlebar asked, still aiming his firearm.

“A deliberate inaction is more valuable than a blind action,” Mang said.

Handlebar, puzzled, looked to Fat Beard for help but got a shrug in return. “Okay, sure.” He lowered the gun.

“And me?” Nadia asked.

Mang said, “Go to the helijet. Bring me Gideon Frankel.”

Sley watched her go. Mang had brought Gideon? This explained why Becker had lost touch with him yesterday, but what did Mang want with him? It must be something to do with the AI.

Mang set out with Red Visor. Pavel, Sley, Sofia and Becker followed, with two White Visors forming a rear. They walked swiftly, Red Visor taking the lead. The commando seemed to know the way. Sley wondered at the communications embedded in the cike. They seemed hardwired to their own intranet. A seamless command-and-control loop connected all these cyborgs.

They reached Complex One. Pavel used his thumb to unlock the door. Inside stretched an enormous open-plan space connecting a variety of labs. Some were marked by signs: electro-physiology, neuronal circuits, nervous-system genetics. Doors led to more sensitive parts of the complex: vivarium, MRI, quantum computing. Other stations were for shared equipment, such as microscopes, gas lines, centrifuges. The lights were still on, but if Pavel had been working with other people, they had fled.

Sley followed Mang as he walked with purpose, missing nothing. Red Visor hoisted his scanner-console and pointed. They approached an island counter overrun with cables and computer workstations. Behind it stood a process line of stainless-steel vats and boxy machines that looked like appliances, intertwined by a confusing mélange of pipes. They had a retro look to them, but all their data fed into the digital screens on the counter. Bioreactors. Filtration. Ultracentrifuge. Separators. Transfer. Freeze-dryers. Sley recognized the workflow for vaccine development.

“Ever think of yourself as a disease?” he asked Mang.

Mang ignored him and typed on a keyboard, focused on what he could download. He stood back in awe. “This is not an mRNA vaccine.”

Pavel said, “It’s an immunological trigger of what we call a cytokine storm. Unleashing a rapid wave of molecules that are designed to induce inflammation.”

Mang nodded, his finger scrolling down a screen. “Designed to release an army of macrophages that overwhelm the nervous system in seconds.”

Sley asked, “Immortality isn’t viral?”

Pavel said, “I don’t know. I don’t even know how our computers designed this.”

“What do you mean?” Mang demanded.

Pavel said, “Our computers have been moving at a speed we can’t explain.”

“Genie,” Mang hissed. He turned to Red Visor. “Where’s Frankel?”

Red Visor said in Chinese, “Two minutes seventeen seconds.”

“Open that,” Mang said, pointing to the freeze-dryer.

Sley couldn’t help but feel a tingle as Red Visor pulled the latch and opened the door.

Inside were trays full of vials.

“Remove one sample,” Mang said. “If this is fast and strong enough to kill me, then it will certainly kill any of you.”

“No,” Sofia said.

“You don’t have to do this,” Becker said as the two White Visors seized him. “Don’t do this!”