Chapter 22

It took four more trips up maintenance ladders before they reached the floor Wilson said the lab was on. Unlike the others this floor sported full power, though how that power had been rerouted proved that Dr. Ward had very little working knowledge of the electrical systems on the station. Lucas was having a harder and harder time focusing on what he was looking at, his dizzy spells were getting worse and it was taking more and more of his strength to fight them. Refusing to let it show he shook his head trying to make it stop.

"Well this explains how he jammed our communications," he said dropping a handful of burnt out electrical filaments that hung haphazard from an operations console in the hallway. Wilson kept himself busy hopping back and forth across the hall like a scared rabbit, sure that Dr. Ward would turn up any second.

"It's crude but it works. He used a back feed of noise to send the data transmission conduits into overdrive. This probably has communications blocked for anyone in a two thousand mile radius. We're lucky I could cut through it to reestablish ours."

"Can you disable it? If it's blocking communications that far away there are a lot of people who are going to be cut off from the outside world." Jonathan asked as he kept a look out. Lucas shook his head and pulled his minicomputer out of the console's access ports.

"Not without more time than we have. It's such a mess in there it would take hours to sort it all out."

With a reluctant sigh Ford motioned for him to leave it. They didn't have the time it would take to repair it. Quietly they moved on stopping before every bend in the passage to be sure Dr. Ward didn't lurk around it waiting for them. If the surviving personnel knew they were here Dr. Ward probably did too. Finally, Wilson stopped in front of a door and pointed shakily.

"This is it."

Ford went in first sweeping the room for anyone before he waved the others in. Wilson followed them slowly, nearly jumping out of his skin at every tiny sound.

Alex immediately started looking through everything in sight. The lab was state of the art but most of the equipment had been forgone in favor of older technology, probably because most of the newer appliances had been smashed to bits. Bunsen burners blazed under beakers instead of the more accurate electric variety, an electron microscope that had gone out of use fifteen years ago in favor of the newer fluorescence ones stood on a table, a slide still clipped to its pedestal. Nothing was organized on the counter tops; everything had been strewn about as if someone no longer cared if they kept accurate records or a sterile environment for experiments. But it was obvious the lab was very much still in use, Dr. Ward had to be close by.

"Looks like somebody had a temper tantrum." Brody joked flipping over the broken casing of a spectrum analysis machine.

"Dr. Ward has rages." Wilson explained hovering near the door for a quick getaway. He was obviously terrified of the doctor and from what Lucas had seen so far, he had every right to be. He hoped they found Dr. Ward before he found them.

"Is that something he usually does?" Commander Ford asked watching Lucas help Alex heave the remains of a filing cabinet off what looked like a still operational storage refrigerator. He would have lent a hand but he and Brody were watching their backs. Alex ignored them in favor of rummaging through the cold storage for anything useful, pocketing a number of vials from inside.

"Damn, I found more vials of the stem cells and some of the catalyst. We can use them for research if we have to. We won't have to worry about running out of material for tests but nothing that looks like a cure," she called back to them, still searching through the contents of the cold storage determined there had to be one in there somewhere.

"You're supposed to be dead."

They all started at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, Ford and Brody swinging their guns up in the general direction it had come from. Slowly a man strode from behind a row of still standing storage lockers beside the refrigerator that had concealed the door to an office until now, a gun of his own pointed squarely at Alex's head.

"I've been dead. It wasn't much fun, I think I'll pass this time," she snapped as she backed away. Her temper flaring again with no thought to what she said. Lucas wanted to hiss at her to be quiet; antagonizing the man wasn't really the best course of action at the moment. Granted it was something he would have said in the same position but somehow his bent for sarcasm didn't sound all that grand an idea when someone else did it.

"No one was supposed to know until it was done," the man hissed. He wasn't any taller than Lucas, with hair the same golden shade as Alex's and eyes just as green but they were shadowed and crazed, the tiny vessels standing out from the whites of his eyes and dilated so far that if he and Alex hadn't been so close to him, he wouldn't have been able to tell their color. He recognized him from an archive photo in the files he had found earlier. Dr. Ward had found them after all and now he firmly believed that the man was as insane as Wilson said he was. Wilson had disappeared as soon as he saw his captor, leaving them to handle things on their own. Lucas didn't know whether he considered it an act of cowardice or self-preservation.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Alex shot again steadily backing away as he advanced on her. Lucas backed with her waiting for an opportunity to snatch her away, better him than her if the doctor decided to shoot rather than talk. Dr. Ward flicked the gun gesturing at her making all of them flinch out of instinct certain he was about to pull the trigger.

"It's better for all of us," he assured her speaking as if he completely believed what he was saying.

"Better? Millions of people are going to die and that's better? Better than what? A billion?" Brody asked sighting along the muzzle of his rifle. If he could just get a clear shot! But Ward was careful to keep Alex between him and any chance Jim had of taking a shot. Jonathan had his own gun up looking for the same chance he was but was having no better luck.

"Haven't you killed enough? You tried to have Alex and her assistant killed. All but eight of your employees are dead; every human on the planet has your stem cells in their blood stream. You've contaminated our water supply with the catalyst for this horror you've created and millions may die because of it," Lucas said trying to reason with the man. Dr. Ward shook his head and Lucas thought he saw genuine regret flit across his features.

"Millions aren't going to die! They are going to live! The others…it was necessary. I couldn't let her and her assistant stop my work. It couldn't be helped," Ward insisted as if they didn't understand.

"We've already lost seven people on our ship. Thousands up world are showing signs of being affected by it already; more may have died since we left. People are dying Dr. Ward. Just put down the gun and help us. No one is going to hurt you we just want to stop this," Commander Ford beseeched him.

"No! No! That's not possible. It doesn't kill it prevents death. No one ever has to lose another child, watch another loved one wither and die from disease. No one ever has to be like me. I've discovered the Holy Grail of science. We will be perfect!" Ward railed his face twisting in fury as he waved the gun around manically, all of them ducking in case it went off accidently. Lucas tried to edge closer to Alex but Dr. Ward swung the gun around on him and back again and Lucas didn't dare. The doctor was getting steadily more agitated and Lucas knew sooner or later he was going to snap. He prayed Commander Ford and Brody could get him under control before that happened.

"Half your employees are dead from it. How can you say it doesn't kill? If the stem cells didn't kill them what did?" Jonathan asked confused by the man's rambling. He spoke as if they were talking about two completely different things.

"There's been some mistake; you have me confused with someone else. I'd never make something that would kill. It's not meant to kill, there's been a mistake!" Ward wailed again, blatantly refusing to accept what they were telling him. Somewhere along the way Michael Ward hadn't just taken a side road into lunacy, he'd jumped the track all together. Something about how he said what he said tickled a notion in Lucas's mind and he followed it.

"You did this because of your son didn't you? You never intended to find a treatment for the P-Core-A Virus; it was all a ruse to hide what you were really working on. The stem cells you hid in the Sahelian Virus Vaccine. That's why you haven't made any progress with the P-Core-A research in a decade. You were working on this. But why?" he asked daring to step forward a pace to try and insert himself between Alex and Dr. Ward. The doctor shook his head in denial, stricken. Jim was attempting to work his way around the clutter of lab tables and debris, to circle around until he could get a clear shot while the man was busy rationalizing what he had done.

"At first I did! But nothing worked so I tried to find a way that we would never have to worry about it ever again, I thought of a way to change us, make us so we would never be susceptible to disease again and I found it! The stem cells, they replace bad genes, repair them, make us perfect," he told them not pausing for breath.

"I knew genetic engineering was illegal, I knew the UEO would never allow it so I did what I had to do. I used the vaccine as a carrier agent; it was the perfect chance to get to everyone, the entire human race. Then when I had the catalyst perfected I sent it to water treatment plants disguised in water purification formulas, no one would notice by the time anyone found out it would be already be done and we would be free. Free of losing anyone like I did ever again. I took it just like all the rest!" he continued to babble, his eyes pleading with one of them to understand. Alex looked horrified.

"Those stems cells don't replace bad genes, they rupture cell membranes preventing them from repairing themselves, they turn on and copy dormant genes that never would have affected the people who carried them. You created a biological weapon not a gene therapy," Alex growled in disgust that anyone would believe they had the ability, the right to play god.

"Something must have gone wrong. Using the vaccine as the carrying agent must have mutated it somehow and we didn't see it because we didn't know that wasn't what it was meant to be," Lucas realized. Ward taking the vaccine and catalyst himself at least explained the wild change in personality, he was dying by his own hand and didn't even realize it.

"There has to be a cure, an antigen, anything. You created this you had to have created something to stop it in case something went wrong. Give it to us Dr. Ward. Please. Before it's too late to save those people," Alex pleaded realizing the man really meant what he said and tempering the volatile outburst that burned to erupt instead. To scream at him for all she was worth that he was killing her friends to rave at him until she either collapsed or lost her voice for the audacity it took to be so presumptuous. The fact he still had the gun trained on them didn't make her any more forgiving.

"There is no cure. It was the cure," Ward breathed finally beginning to accept that some part of what they were saying must be true. All of them went a few shades paler. Alex took a deep breath and got her emotions under control. She had to remain calm, think logically.

"Oh God, Okay, what about the catalyst. You put it in the water supply. How many treatment plants?" she asked hoping the number he gave would lend them some hope of finding a cure in time. She'd come here hoping he would have what they so desperately needed and found nothing except a man who had arrogantly tried to perfect what nature had made only for it to go horribly wrong. She couldn't feel sorry for him not even if she had tried. It didn't matter that his son had died so horribly, he had no right to decide the fate of others without their knowledge and consent, to toy with the balance of nature at the risk of millions of lives. Dr. Ward paled further and swallowed roughly.

"All of them."

"All of them where? The entire southeast coast? The continent?" Alex prodded. He shook his head again eyes white rimmed they were so wide.

"All of them. The whole world," he stammered and Alex felt like her heart fell to her feet. Behind her Lucas, Ford and Brody shared the same horrified expression.

"All of them? You haven't freed mankind! You've killed it!"