A/N: Sorry for possible confusion as to the rather sudden turn of settings I've chosen here – it'll be explained throughout, but I'll really be getting into the backstory's meat in this chapter. Suffice to say, the Hunger Games trilogy never made any serious ties with the world that came before the cataclysm that gave rise to Panem – that is to say, our modern world. I intend to do so. Of course, I also intend to tie in Nihlus, since he's just…so much fun…and the central piece to this entire series' plot, so yeah. Important chapter alert!
"Help her up on that gurney. Maybe there's something in here we can use to figure this out."
Firth and Sam helped lift Jetty onto a bland gray surgical gurney inside the first ward the group could find. It had taken Scion's bumbling directions to make any real progress inside the Medical Hall, although it was clear to Sam that no one had thought this through. None of them were doctors – who could figure out what the crazy man had stabbed Jetty with?
Or, for that matter, why it had made her vomit all over Firth's front as he had helped her along.
"I need to barf again," Jetty moaned. In just minutes, she'd gone from perfectly healthy to clutching her stomach in waves of nausea – it baffled Sam.
"Just lean over the side," Firth said, obviously still smarting from having the young woman leave the contents of her stomach down his shirt.
"Firth, we have to do something!" Persephone wrung her hands over Jetty. "We can't just let her sit here!"
What else are we supposed to do? Sam thought. This place was entirely alien. The processing ward lay empty and silent, with a dozen beds around them waiting for patients who would never come. Dim sterile lighting shone down on a dirty, grimy floor, with white tile stained in brown splotches. Maybe this hospital had once been something glamorous, but it wasn't even suited for treating the animals in District 10 now.
"I'm not a doctor, Persephone!" Firth replied, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "I have no idea where to even begin. What am I supposed to do, diagnose her with 'getting stabbed by some crazy bum with a needle next to a train?' What the heck am I supposed to prescribe for that, a shotgun?"
"That is not funny!" Persephone yelled back, her face scrunching up into an ugly scowl. "I don't know, look in those drawers or something!"
The short, stubby medical drawers alongside the dirty walls that she pointed to certainly didn't seem to Sam as if they'd have much in the way of treatment options. They'd be lucky to find rotting food in there, if not something horrific like a disembodied hand. This place gave her the creeps.
Jetty took advantage of a lull in the row to vomit all over the floor.
"Look," Firth ran a hand through his hair after she'd finished. "You can bitch all day at me –"
"Bitching? Don't you –"
"Or you can freaking help me to find something so she stops puking everywhere," Firth had clearly lost his sense of tact by this point. "You, me – River, come help us – we'll go search around this place; see if we can find anything that looks useful. I have no idea what will be left in this run-down hole, but I'll figure that out later. Sam…stick here with Jetty. Keep Lily and the drone with you."
Sam kept her mouth closed. The friction between Persephone and Firth had flamed up out of nowhere. Granted, Jetty was Persephone's close friend – particularly among two victors who had won in back-to-back Hunger Games – but wasn't cooperation worth something in a time like this?
Still, the time here – with quiet little Lily and a sick Jetty who didn't look in the mood to talk much – would give her time to figure out how to put these pieces together.
"Okay," Sam confronted Scion as soon as Firth, Persephone, and River had left on their search. "I need to know about all this."
"More questions? Splendid!" Scion remarked overenthusiastically.
"No, not splendid," Sam raised her palm to the spherical drone. "Tell me – did a person named Nihlus ever come through this whole…this city? This thing?"
Scion's cheer fled in a hurry. The drone pulled back a few inches, hovering back and forth as it appraised Sam with blinking lights. "I have record of a 'Nihlus.' It did not refer to itself that way during its most recent visit."
"Wait," Sam eagerly hurried on. "What do you mean? What did he do down here?"
The drone seemed to bristle at the words, shuddering visibly while hovering in the air: "Why, it released the Pathogen."
"You mentioned that. What is that? What did he do?"
"Oh dear," Scion replied. "Edification is necessary. After all, the fragile female on that table is infected with it."
"What?!" Sam nearly screamed, her eyes almost exploding from shock. "Why didn't you tell Firth and Persephone that before they left? Why…"
Of course, she thought, her hands digging around her pockets. They took the radio. I have no way to tell them…because they could have gone anywhere. I'll have to wait until they come back.
"It did not seem prudent," Scion mused. "Containing the pathogen is of utmost importance. Your companions were far more interested in finding a 'cure.'"
"Why's that bad?"
"It does not exist, naturally."
Sam took a hard gulp, hoping Jetty hadn't heard that. She looked over to the gurney, where Lily had pushed the young woman from District 4 away from the fresh vomit all over the floor. Hopefully she was too sick to have been listening…
"You're telling me…we can't cure that?" Sam pointed vaguely in Jetty's direction, her words softer and slower. "What can we do to help her?"
"But you do not comprehend!" Scion's chirping, electronic voice made up for Sam's in volume. "Curious. Allow me to elucidate."
The drone floated over to a wall, extending a small probe from its carapace and plugging it into a small hole just above a ratty bed. Its equatorial band of lights glowed brightly, projecting a flickering square of illumination a meter square on the dirt-streaked wall. Images began to form – pictures, times, places, things Sam couldn't comprehend.
"I was constructed four hundred forty-nine years ago as a cyberwarfare matrix," Scion began brightly, showing an image of a strange symbol – concentric white circles with strange shapes within them, flanked below by two leaves on a light blue background. Sam had seen the leaves in District 11 – olive leaves. "The Assembly of Nations governed the world after the Intercontinental War of the year 2,053. My makers within the Assembly developed my construct to safeguard against electronic warfare as a conglomeration of business entities formed the Corporate Alliance, to operate outside the single world government's grasp. The two entities naturally began to war during the same year I came online."
"Wait," Sam paused Scion. "You're…four hundred years old?"
"Four hundred forty-nine years, five months, and 23 days," Scion corrected her. "As I was proceeding before your interruption: During the final months of global war, the Corporate Alliance formed a biological weapon to counter its dwindling stockpile of nuclear munitions."
Scion's projection changed, from the former flag-like symbol into two pictures side-by-side: one showing a nuclear mushroom cloud, the other a vial of frothing olive liquid. "The weapon was not a virus or bacterial entity, as your companions believe while they seek a non-existent 'cure.' It is a fungal mutagen."
"A what?" The complex word choice had thrown Sam completely off base.
"A fungus designed to rebuild an infected host's structure, organs, and genetics," Scion spoke as he tried to simplify his language. "It is parasitic – it destroys the patient's nervous system as it takes over and replaces it with its own. Like an ant colony, the Pathogen's own nervous system evolves with a greater mass."
"Slow down," Sam said. "Big words."
"I dearly apologize," Scion rebuked himself. "The larger the Pathogen is, the smarter it is. It eventually begins to act less as a creature and more as an intelligent being. The Alliance did not foresee this; their scientists were inferior. Ultimately, the Pathogen, once released onto battlefields, began wiping out all traces of life in infection zones. The Alliance was forced to destroy its own territory with nuclear weapons to contain it, contributing to its hastening defeat in the war."
"So," Sam tried to piece all the information together. "This…thing…that Jetty's infected with. It…ended the world?"
"Indirectly, yes," Scion acknowledged. "On the defensive, the Alliance ignored the laws of war and began to unilaterally eradicate my creators without regard for consequences. The faction unleashed nuclear, orbital, and chemical attacks – poisoning and leveling territory in great swaths. My makers responded in kind. 90% of humanity was extinguished in the first thirty days of unrestricted warfare."
"Jeez," Sam breathed. "How…how many people was that?"
"Approximately 11 billion," Scion answered, changing screens to a picture of the Lazarus facility during its construction – with giant underwater vessels moving great slabs of metal and stone. "My creators in the Assembly understood that their civilization had ended. Led by a figure known as Prometheus, they built this facility as a last resort – to repopulate the Earth after the war's effects had subsided upon the surface. Prometheus, the visionary, soon died, however – and the Lazarus facility existed under proper order for a mere fifty years."
"Why?" Sam asked.
"My creators designed the facility on ideals of reason and logical adherence," Scion replied. "It was assumed that such traits would eradicate the tendencies of hedonism and self-interest reflected by the Alliance's business interests. Such a policy left little room for the many humans brought to this station – many who held far different ideals, such as those of faith, greed, and other opposing interests. One of the facility's greatest biologists saw the rift and took the chance to attain power. He, Urban Alexander, organized the dissidents into a massive, zealous majority calling itself 'The Brotherhood.'"
"The same…" Sam began.
"Indeed," Scion cut her off. "The Brotherhood quickly eradicated the former leaders and established hegemony. They have ruled since, although I have spread what automated systems I have to contain their abuses over the past four centuries. Pockets of unaligned humans also exist, although they are few in number. Only the outlying docks and the innermost control center of the facility remain free of Brotherhood incursions."
"So, let me get this straight," Sam said. "We have to get to the center of the city, but to do that, we have to go through all these crazy…zealots, I guess, who run the place."
"Correct."
"So what does all that have to do with Nihlus?"
"The human, whom the white-clothed companions referred to as Nihlus, verbally expressed a disdain for natural life aloud to himself as he explored the facility thirty years ago," Scion explained. "He savored particular disdain for the Brotherhood's idealism, wielding a brand of nihilism himself. However, he came into contact with the Pathogen at the center of this facility – and, realizing that its destructive power of assimilation of all life could further his goals, he released it into the facility at large as an experiment."
"What?" Sam gasped. "You still had this…this thing?"
"Of course," Scion sounded pained by Sam's disbelief, his lights flashing red momentarily. "My creators believed it had life-giving potential as well. The Pathogen was studied, explored. Urban Alexander himself was a leading researcher on the project – he in fact proved its potential, as he created advanced biological weapons for his Brotherhood minions that grafted directly onto their skeletons. This 'Nihlus' announced to himself out loud that he saw its ability to tackle his own means on the surface. He did have a habit of talking to himself."
Oh jeez, Sam thought. The picture of why Nihlus had wanted her down here became clearer and clearer with each of Scion's words. "Did he take this…disease…up with him when he left?"
"Certainly," Scion remarked. "But he was quite clear when he spoke to himself. He wanted to infect a human of his choice. It was his 'project' – to seed the species on the surface with a single figure's infection. He referred to it as 'messianic.'"
Sam had no doubts about who Nihlus had picked. Who had he followed? Who had he constantly tortured with his words, his presence – pursuing like a relentless hound? And if he had been around thirty years, there was no telling if she was the first person he'd ever taken an attraction to…
She'd forgotten all about Jetty – not to mention Finnick and the others on the surface, or even escaping from this place. Something larger was at work. Nihlus had gotten his hand on a weapon – one with such lethal killing force that even the Capitol wouldn't be able to stop it. It had threatened the world once, according to Scion. It could do it again – especially under Nihlus's conniving hands. She wouldn't be his pawn. She had to stop him instead.
"Listen," Sam addressed Scion. "At that…control center, wherever it is we're supposed to go. You said research had been done on this…disease. Did you ever find something to stop it?"
"Quite naturally," Scion affirmed brightly. "Although I have since been locked out of the control center since the 'Nihlus' character departed in his first visit thirty years ago. I would require access to obtain the plans."
"That's what I need," Sam said. "Whatever I have to do to get there, I'll do it. Just tell me what I have to do."
"That will be quite difficult," Scion answered. "You are a delicate human. The Pathogen –"
"If it's just a disease, I'll be careful," Sam said. "Besides…maybe I can help Jetty in the process when we find that."
"You misunderstand," Scion replied quickly, rocking back and forth while hovering about. "The Pathogen has reached critical levels."
"What does that mean?"
"It has formed a central intelligence – the proverbial hive mind 'ant colony' to refer to the earlier metaphor. It no longer acts as a mere fungus – it performs the same roles as any human being, with the additional advantage of controlling all parts of itself during a single time."
Sam gulped – and once again, things sounded far too familiar. Who else had she known who could be in more than one place at a time? Who else seemed to know everything all at once – at the same time?
He'd done more than walk these halls. This was where Nihlus had learned everything – where he'd become more than just another foe, but something entirely diabolical. If Sam didn't get the answers she needed to stop him here, she never would. The game had changed. It was no longer about escape and survival – she had a goal, one that extended far beyond her own priorities. Nihlus's idle rants about hating humanity suddenly seemed far more dangerous – and he had the tools to back up his words.
The only question was – if he'd managed to take this "Pathogen" with him, why hadn't he used it yet? Why bother with stalking her about forever?
"Okay," Sam exhaled slowly. "First –"
She didn't get a chance to finish her sentence. From across the ward, the door that Firth had closed as he left shook violently. Something impacted it hard – nearly breaking the hinges off with the force of the blow. Sam heard Lily utter a tiny shriek at the noise, as even Jetty managed to lift her sick head up in shock.
"Oh my," Scion remarked calmly.
"What?"
"It appears the Brotherhood has located this position," Scion said. "And I do believe they seek to initiate violence."