Closing the door quickly behind her, she made a beeline for Morrison’s office. The inner door was locked, but that presented little problem to her servo, which also served as a high-tech skeleton key. Another zap and she quietly entered the general’s private sanctum. The droning hum of a working air cleaner sounded like a swarm of bees thanks to the sonic amplifiers in her headphones, but she kept the bogus Walkman on in order to keep an augmented ear out for the sound of Morrison’s return.
Thankfully, Morrison had a fast modem—and a sufficiently hackable operating system. Plopping herself down behind the much too orderly desk, Roberta searched the Web for news of the notorious Geneva operation, whatever that might be.
She didn’t have to search very hard. Although the official news outlets were playing it cautious, acknowledging only unconfirmed “rumors” of some sort of disaster and/or terrorist attack at the United Nations offices in Geneva, Switzerland, the rest of the Internet was abuzz with horrific first- and secondhand reports of people dropping like flies during a special assembly at the Palais des Nations. A few survivors even mentioned a peculiar smell in the air right before the catastrophe—and speculated ominously about nerve gas.
Ohmigod, she thought, feeling sick to her stomach. She suddenly understood, with chilling certitude, that Morrison’s paranoia regarding poison gas was simply a psychological projection of his own monstrous agenda. Looking around the tidy office, trying in vain to understand how anyone could conceive of such an inhuman crime, let alone implement it, her gaze fell upon Morrison’s desk calendar, on which today’s date been circled in red with a thick magic marker. A date, she recalled, which had apparently been specified by Khan.
But why? she thought, racing to make sense of it all. Morrison’s motives, although insane, were pretty obvious; in the general’s warped worldview, the United Nations was synonymous with the many-tentacled Beast he blamed for Waco and other purported assaults on individual liberty. But where did Khan fit into this picture? Khan was ruthless, but he wasn’t crazy; why would he help Morrison carry out this unprovoked attack on the United Nations?
Roberta was baffled at first, but the blurry picture came crystal-clear when she noticed just who the U.N. was hosting at the time of the massacre: Vasily Hunyadi, now believed to be one of the many fatalities claimed by the deadly incident. Of course, she comprehended at last. That’s why Khan persuaded Morrison to stage the attack today. He was using one superman to take out another.
Just like Seven was trying to do, but with a lot more innocent casualties. Even now that she had figured out Khan’s part in today’s atrocity, she was still shocked to realize that Khan had willingly sacrificed hundreds of blameless bystanders just to eliminate a single enemy. He’s getting more and more dangerous, she thought sadly, finding it hard to reconcile Morrison’s cold-blooded co-conspirator with the charismatic child she had rescued from Chrysalis twenty years ago.
A glance at her watch reminded Roberta that time was running short. Even with a small fire to distract him, Morrison was bound to be returning to his office soon. Forget Phase One for a second, she urged herself, as horrible as the disaster in Geneva sounded. That was over and done with, leaving an even more important question still to be answered: What the heck is Phase Two?
Flipping through the upright desk calendar revealed another date circled in red: November 14. A handwritten notation on the page listed a specific time as well: 8:23 GMT. “Okay, that gives me when,” she muttered, although the significance of the time and date escaped her. The “GMT,” short for Greenwich Mean Time, gave her a clue as to where. Now she just had to uncover the what.
Morrison’s anal-retentive tendencies came to her rescue once she used the servo to open the locked file drawer beneath the desktop, where she discovered, neatly and meticulously labeled, a hanging folder tagged OPERATION: APPLEJACK, PHASE TWO. Thank the Aegis for genetically engineered neat freaks! she thought in relief. I might just get to the bottom of this, after all.
Inside the folder she found, much to her surprise, a newspaper clipping concerning the beginning of passenger service, on November 14, of the recently opened undersea tunnel linking England and France. A yellow Post-it note, affixed to the article, contained Morrison’s own scribbled annotations:
Step One: Unite U.K. + Continent
Step Two: Complete European Union
Step Three: One-World Gov’t.
Uh-oh, Roberta thought, her heart sinking. It seemed all too clear that Morrison saw the opening of the Chunnel (as the brand-new tunnel was popularly known) as a vital first step in the establishment of the New World Order he so feared. She tried to imagine the consequences of releasing poison gas into the Chunnel once it was in full operation, then shuddered as the nightmarish scenario played out in her mind. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent commuters and tourists might be killed, even as a triumph of international cooperation was turned into a disaster site.
In an instant, all the time she’d spent worming her way into the AEV seemed more than worthwhile. Reacting quickly, she fired off an emergency e-mail to Gary Seven, telling him everything she knew about Phase Two, including concise physical descriptions of both Porter and Butch Connors, whom she assumed would be carrying out the attack on the Chunnel. She then efficiently erased the note from Morrison’s hard drive and software, along with any evidence of her prior Web surfing.
And none too soon. Just as she was finishing up, the sonic amplifiers in her headphones picked up the sound of Morrison’s irate voice booming right outside the adobe walls of the former post office. “A fire!” he bellowed in angry disbelief. “How does a load of soggy laundry catch fire?”
Time to get out of here, she thought, but how? From the sound of it, she definitely wasn’t leaving the way she came in, and, thanks to Morrison’s handy-dandy new force field generator, she wouldn’t be catching the Blue Smoke Express either. There’s got to be another way out, she thought fervently, her blue-green eyes searching every nook and cranny of the sturdy and windowless office. Morrison is too paranoid not to have some kind of emergency escape route!
Her servo scanned the sun-dried brick walls around her, trying and failing to locate a secret passage. Roberta heard footsteps in the hall outside, along with the sound of Morrison and Porter heatedly discussing the mystery of the flaming laundry. She didn’t need the headphones to know that they were heading straight for the office.
Buying time, she used the servo to fuse the doorknob, locking the two men out. The door was a substantial one, constructed of dense oak, but she knew that it wouldn’t keep out the superstrong general for long. On a hunch, she scanned beneath the genuine Navajo rug covering the floor.
Eureka! The servo detected a hollow passageway beneath the carpet. Yes! Roberta thought. The fused doorknob rattled in its socket and she heard an incensed voice on the other side of the oak timbers. “What in thunder—?” Morrison pounded on the door with his fist. “Is anyone in there? Open up, dammit!”
Yanking the colorful Native American rug aside, Roberta discovered an old-fashioned trapdoor with a flat metal ring for a handle. She wondered briefly if it dated back to the town’s mining days, then pulled open the trapdoor with both hands. Well-oiled hinges made nary a squeak.
“Let me in, you trespassing spy!” The oaken door shook in its frame as Morrison vented his volcanic displeasure. “You can’t get away!”
I beg to differ, Roberta thought. Beneath the trapdoor, a rusted metal ladder led straight down into a beckoning black pit. Shining a bright beam of light from her servo into the abyss, she glimpsed the rocky floor of a shadowy tunnel about twenty yards below. The old mines, she guessed at once, now providing refuge rather than riches.
A gun went off outside as either Morrison or Porter fired blindly into the office. High-caliber ammunition slammed into the wall behind Morrison’s desk, shattering the glass sheet protecting the Waco photo and ripping the antique Revolutionary War banner to shreds. “Don’t Tread on Me” abruptly beca
me “Fire at Will” and a ricocheting shot struck the monitor of the general’s computer, which exploded in a shower of sparks and plastic shards.
Her head ducked low for fear of shrapnel, Roberta decided that she had definitely outworn her welcome. She hurriedly clambered down the ladder, tugging the door of the trapdoor shut above her. There was no way to put the rug back into place, so it was going to be pretty obvious how she’d escaped, but hopefully she’d be able to find a way out of the mines, and maybe even back up into the camp, before anyone noticed that “Bobbie Landers” had gone missing. Knowing Morrison, he was probably going to blame the CIA or the ATF anyway.
The important thing was that she had gotten the word out to Seven. Now it was up to him to see that the Chunnel didn’t suffer the same ghastly fate as the Palais des Nations. She had plenty of faith in Seven’s ability to save the day, but there was still one more thing that worried her more than anything else.
What else was Khan up to these days?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHRYSALIS ISLAND
OCTOBER 2, 1994
“YOU MAY BRING IN THE SUBJECT NOW.” Dr. Phoolan Dhasal waited patiently as her assistants wheeled the test subject into the hermetically sealed experimental chamber. Fluorescent lights shined down on the scientists and their subject. Strapped onto a gurney, the specimen squirmed against its restraints, appearing highly agitated.
“Stop! You can’t do this!” Brother Arcturus cried out. Electronic sensors, affixed to his skull, limbs, and torso, monitored his vital signs, which, at the moment, included a significantly elevated heart rate. “I demand you release me!”
Dhasal briefly wondered if she should have had the specimen sedated, but, no, that would cloud the results of today’s experiment. Better to observe the subject in a natural, undrugged state, even if his hysterical vocalizations bordered on the distracting.
“Please!” the specimen begged. Stripped of his customary chartreuse robes, his epidermis completely shaved of body hair, the captured cult leader was recognizable only by the astrological tattoo upon his forehead. “Do not do this, my sister! The stars forbid it!”
Standing next to Dhasal, wearing an identical yellow hazmat suit, Donald Williams flinched visibly. “Can’t we put a gag on him or something?” he asked squeamishly.
“No,” Dhasal stated flatly. “It may be necessary to interrogate him regarding his symptoms, if any.” She inspected a tray of medical instruments resting on a wheeled metal cart; among the apparatus was a compact electronic excruciator, to be used if the subject refused to cooperate. “A verbal description of his subjective experience could be extremely illuminating.”
At her instruction, the assistants elevated the gurney until the subject was at an eighty-degree angle to the floor. Dhasal checked the restraints to make sure they were secure; given the subject’s genetically enhanced strength, she did not wish to take any unnecessary chances.
“Please, for the love of our celestial starfathers, release me!” Arcturus’s arms were strapped to his sides, and his shaved head held in place by a reinforced leather band across his throat. His brilliant sapphire eyes glowed with an unattractive mixture of fright and religious fervor. “I must prepare the way.”
Dhasal ignored the specimen’s superstitious rantings. Satisfied that Arcturus was adequately restrained, she gave the assistants permission to leave the test chamber via the attached airlock, leaving her and Williams alone with the subject. Sterile white walls cut them off from the rest of Chrysalis’s advanced biomedical research facility. She sealed the hood of her Neoprene hazmat suit and activated its self-contained breathing apparatus, while directing Williams to do the same.
Of course, she could have observed the experiment from behind the transparent glass window of the observation gallery overlooking the test chamber, but she preferred a more hands-on approach. She wanted to examine at close range the effects of the flesh-eating bacteria on a specimen of genetically engineered humanity.
Following the mass suicide of his followers, Brother Arcturus had conveniently fallen into the hands of Khan’s agents, who arranged to have the disgraced cult leader secretly transported to Muroroa. Dhasal was grateful for the opportunity to study a genuine product of the first Chrysalis Project without having to sacrifice one of her own people.
“Are you ready, Doctor?” she asked Williams. A microphone in her hood allowed her to address the other scientist, despite the multiple layers of rubber and plastic separating them.
Williams nodded hesitantly. Seen through the clear plastic faceplate of his hood, the Englishman’s ruddy face was nervous and slick with perspiration. His bloodshot eyes gazed uncertainly at the subject on the gurney. “All right,” he muttered finally. “Let’s get this over with.”
Dhasal chose to overlook his lack of scientific enthusiasm and objectivity; the man was merely human, after all. She was slightly more embarrassed by the subject’s undignified behavior; a biologically superior being should have met his fate with more equanimity.
Raising her hand, she signaled the technicians on the other side of the glass window to release the bacteria into the closed environment of the test chamber. A low hissing sound, coming from vents in the ceiling, confirmed that the experiment had commenced.
She and Williams had labored strenuously over the last several months, to the regrettable neglect of Dhasal’s other projects, to improve and refine the genetically engineered strain of strep-A developed by Sarina Kaur many years ago. Producing an airborne version of the bacteria had been particularly challenging, but preliminary tests on a wide variety of nonhuman test animals had been extremely encouraging, yielding an over eighty-five percent mortality rate.
The sudden hissing alarmed the test subject, who struggled fruitlessly against his bonds with renewed fervor. “What is that?” he demanded anxiously. “What’s happening?”
“Quiet,” she instructed, using the excruciator to discipline the specimen. The ingenious device, invented by Khan himself, punished the nervous system without inflicting any lasting damage. “Don’t force me to have your larynx removed.”
The excruciator caught the subject’s attention. He shrieked once, his agonized cry echoing off the stark white wall, before falling silent as requested. Dhasal glanced at the gauges monitoring his vital signs; his heart rate and respiration were still faster than normal, but perhaps that wasn’t entirely a bad thing if it meant that the specimen would absorb the bacteria into his system even more quickly.
Her eyes narrowing, so that only the opaque band across her cornea was visible, she examined Arcturus for any sign of the carnivorous microorganism taking effect. According to Williams, all of the children conceived at the original Chrysalis had been expressly endowed with a genetic immunity to all forms of streptococcus, including this particularly virulent strain, but Dhasal did not intend to accept that premise as a given until tested. With luck, Arcturus would settle the matter—one way or another.
Half an hour passed, then a full hour. Ninety minutes after the bacteria was introduced into the chamber, the specimen continued to display no obvious signs of infection. “Shouldn’t he have reacted by now?” Williams asked hopefully, refilling his oxygen tank from a nozzle built into the wall. His face showed the strain of their unbroken vigil over the specimen.
“Perhaps,” she admitted. All of their earlier test subjects had succumbed to the bacteria’s ravages within minutes of inhalation. “Are you experiencing any discomfort?” she asked Arcturus, who rested pale-faced and trembling upon the angled gurney. “Nausea? Fever? Muscular aches?”
“Of course,” the specimen whimpered. “I’m cold and hungry.” His hairless body shivered pitifully. “My mortal receptacle requires rest.”
Despite the subject’s childish complaints, Dhasal did not believe that Arcturus was exhibiting any of the early symptoms of necrotizing fasciitis. A glance at the vital signs monitors confirmed that he was neither feverish nor in shock. His blood pressure, although elevated, w
as well within normal parameters for a genetically engineered superman. Fascinating, she thought. In theory, an ordinary human would already be dead.
“Watch him,” she instructed Williams curtly, as she walked across the floor and keyed a top-secret security code into the touchpad of an inset videophone. A secure satellite link instantly connected her with Chandigarh, half a world away, where she knew Khan was eagerly awaiting the results of the test.
His noble visage appeared on the miniature video screen. “Well, Doctor,” he inquired courteously. “How fares your experiment?”
She plugged her microphone into the console so that she could communicate with Khan in private. “The results exceed my expectations,” she reported. “Although I still wish to perform a few more tests, all evidence suggests that those of our elite genetic makeup are indeed immune to the carnivorous form of strep-A, along with all other strains of the bacteria.”
“Excellent!” Khan declared. “It seems the unsavory Dr. Williams did not mislead us after all; my mother’s brilliant creation truly provides a means of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.”
“As you say, Lord Khan.” Dhasal did not concern herself with the practical implications of her discovery; she was happy simply to have pleased her leader. “The late Dr. Kaur was clearly an exceptional woman.”
A calculating look came over Khan’s face. “Speaking of Dr. Williams, would you say that his usefulness is at an end?”
Her gaze shifted from the video screen to the imperfect human in his protective plastic suit. Williams paced nervously from one end of the chamber to another, while keeping an absurdly safe distance from the helpless superman strapped to the gurney. “Is that Khan?” he asked her fretfully, peering over her shoulder. His florid features and portly contours exemplified all that was weak and fallible in ordinary humanity. “What are you telling him?”