“No fever.”
“Again, not yet,” Cody clarified as Jeff slathered antibiotic on the wound and wrapped it in medstrips. “Don’t let me turn into one of those things out there. Promise me.”
Jeff paused in what he was doing to look Cody in the eyes. “I give you my word, brother, but we’re a long way from that. We know the incubation period is different for every individual and you being a cyborg, maybe it won’t affect you at all. Let’s get you to Doc at the ranch and see what she can do.”
Nothing, Cody thought bitterly. No disrespect to Dr. Jericho but all the data he’d gathered so far on this damn planet demonstrated plainly once a person was bitten they were doomed. He’d seen records in the files where immediate amputation of the bitten limb had occurred and still the victim turned in a matter of a few hours to a day or two. This virus was lethal. He sensed a new discordant buzz in his mind and body already but then again maybe it was his overactive imagination. As Jeff finished the medical dressing, Cody sat up straighter. “You’d better put me in restraints now.”
With a deep sign Jeff nodded. “Let me pack all this up and then we’ll figure it out. Are you feeling sick?”
“I want to be prepared and I don’t want to hurt either of you.”
When the captain brought the restraints Cody moved to the rearmost seat and sat patiently while Jeff made him secure. Privately he worried with his cyborg strength he might be able to fight his way out of the shackles, especially if he lost his mind to the virus but there was nothing else to be done. “I should debrief you on what I found,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”
“Give me a minute.” The captain went to confer with Ryan and Cody felt the APC accelerate.
When Jeff came back, he asked for some water, his throat suddenly dry and sore. After sipping the ration the captain held to his lips, he launched into the intel he’d gathered on the Glastine refugee camp and the man commanding it. “The government commandeered an old fairground near a town named Millersville and sent a force up there to begin fortifying it fairly early in the epidemic. About 1500 people in the city were chosen to be the first residents?—”
“Chosen? On what basis?”
“Here’s where it gets odd already. Based on blood type as far as I could tell, plus a couple of other biological factors. Teams were sent out into the city to find these specific individuals and take them up to Glastine whether they wanted to go or not. The local authorities were kept in the dark until a few complaints about kidnapping came in but the situation was so chaotic nothing was done. A lot of the designated people were never found and the military took heavy losses trying to track down the men, women and children the military wanted.”
“Children?” Jeff interrupted, disbelief and disgust plain on his face.
“From the files they took the entire family together when the search teams could find them. Not that it makes the situation better. Weird though. I need more water.” He coughed.
After the captain gave him the requested drink, Cody swallowed hard and continued. “When things got really bad in the city, the people working for the general grabbed a few truckloads of random citizens and headed off to Glastine, which was up and running by then. The general—General Paul Quantike—is also loosely in command of the secret research facility further north.” Concentrating against a headache building in his head, Cody recited the co-ordinates of the lab. “I had to dig for those, buried deep behind a lot of walls and passwords.”
“Any more details on the place itself?” Jeff asked.
“A few. Fortified, occupies about fifteen acres but only the main compound is protected. The authorities grabbed doctors, college professors, research folks—whoever might know anything about studying a virus and building a cure. A lot of the people on the list of candidates couldn’t be found.” He coughed again. “The government waited pretty late into the outbreak before staffing this place up and by then the infrastructure was gone to shit. Anyway, Quantike is listed as the commandant, with a Dr. Rivia Mercattor as the civilian boss onsite. I found a couple of preliminary reports on the research which didn’t mean a thing to me, but maybe Doc can make sense of them.” He closed his eyes to visualize the data better and recited what he’d seen verbatim as Jeff recorded it all on his handheld.
“Hey, you doing okay?” the captain asked when he’d finished the data dump but kept his eyes closed, head lolling against the cushion.
Taking a deep breath, Cody sat as straight as he could in the restraints. “A little more intel. This general is an odd duck. He didn’t grow up here. He’s retired military like us, from out in the Sectors, some Hinterlands planet I never heard of but when he arrived, he didn’t take up veterans’ acres. He got himself into the Randal Four military hierarchy some damn way—the details were obscure but it appeared like a local politician forced the military to take him on and keep his rank. Eventually he rose to his current position, or rather where he was prior to the outbreak.”
“You think he’s dirty?”
“He could be. He could have been compromised for years. We know the enemy does recruitment for sleeper agents in the Hinterlands and colonies. I didn’t find any proof but there are a lot of oddities in his background, even though much of it was redacted. I got into all the files I could find. There was a hint of gossip about him and Dr. Mercattor too but I didn’t have time to chase the lead to the source before you ordered me to fall back to the APC. Need anything else?”
“No, you gave me a pretty complete debrief for now. You rest. Let me know if you need more water. We’re heading home as fast as the APC will roll.”
After that there was no more conversation. Cody closed his eyes and tried not to think too much about the bite on his arm, which throbbed. Occasional pains shot up his arm to his shoulder and he shifted as much as he could within the restraints to be more comfortable. Jeff had done his best but the important factor was keeping Cody immobilized if he suddenly turned.
Was he going to turn? He took stock of himself as best he could. There was a definite buzzing throughout his entire body now and his throat was parched again. He was growing warmer and figured grimly it was the fever coming on. This damn virus didn’t waste any time claiming its victims.
The fleet of drones wasn’t the only thing he commanded with his cyborg enhancements. Thinking of them, he checked the feed, which had slipped from his attention while debriefing Jeff, which was unlike him. The area was clear for miles around the highway, no swarms. He spoke aloud to give the update to Jeff and then gave his tiny flying servants an order to return to the ranch if the flock didn’t have contact with him for half an hour. No one else could use them but he hated the idea of them falling from the sky in the absence of his supervision.
The other set of robotic entities he had limited purview over were the nanobots roaming his bloodstream, which is why his blood ran bluish. They’d come with the cyborg upgrades to his bones and nerves and they were a constant of his existence now. Cody was always peripherally aware of them, which had taken some getting used to while he was adapting to his new capabilities. He had no communication with them but he’d found he could urge them to focus on specific injuries with more intensity than they’d normally exercise anyway. He could tell the nanites were concentrated on his arm and on the blood going into and out of the appendage, battling the virus at the molecular level. The fierce combat was a deep ache in his bone marrow and tissues.
As sweat beaded his forehead, Cody risked a glance at his arm. The telltale black lines were emerging from under the bandage but even as he watched there was a blue glow as the nanites congregated and the marks faded and withdrew. The bite hurt like a motherfucker though and he was sure the virus hadn’t given up.
“More water?” Jeff stood in front of him, water bottle in hand. “Would you rather have a nutrient drink?”
“I’m not hungry,” he said, voice rasping. The mere idea of food made his stomach cramp and threaten to empty itself. Although it did seem like a nearly raw steak, juices running might…He had a metallic taste in his mouth and he was suddenly afraid of what would come next. “Listen, man, you gotta end me before I turn, before I can hurt either of you or anyone else.”
Jeff hunkered down in front of him, his gaze holding Cody’s. “I give you my word but until there are no other options I’m going to do everything possible to help you. You’ve got something none of the rest of us have with those nanobots and their self-repairing abilities. You gotta fight, make them fight.”
“I am,” Cody assured his friend. He drank as much of the water as he could and wasn’t surprised when Jeff got out the sensor from the medic kit and informed him his fever was 104 degrees.
