21.
Morning Bell – Missed the Bus – Dig It – Not Covered By Your HMO – Plug In
The Island
The warning bell began to ring just before nine am the morning after the gathering. The huge cargo ship was not yet visible on the distant horizon, but their systems knew it was closing in fast. Rose, Bernard, and Hurley's voices carried over milling groups and forced a sense of calm instead of panic. They divided up easily and began to march out of the little barracks village and into the jungle to their designated places of safety. Roll call was carried out on arrival as slower members of the community joined the groups midway or even close to their destinations. It was as orderly as possible, with certain kinks.
"Oh shit, where's Doc Ellis?" It was Kyra who blurted it out. Tsuchi, standing next to her, clambered up onto a set of bending branches next to the gleaming stream of water that marked what Rose called The Heart. He looked from person to person, eyes narrowing, then looked down at both her and Krish. Renee Kircher had taken her pack the second Rose gave her the nod and dropped into the strange cavern to take another archaeological survey. Tsuchi shook his head.
"Oh shit." It was redundant but understandable. Krish flailed a hand in the air to get Rose's attention. She came over and listened to Kyra's brief explanation.
"Oh, dear." Rose shook her head. "There's still time. We can hope he's simply late and he'll catch up. I'll be stepping away here and there to look for stragglers." She patted Kyra. "I'm sure it's fine."
Kyra didn't look convinced. "Can you holler down to Renee at least? I think she came from the Orchid, too. Maybe he said something to her."
Rose nodded. "I'll do that."
. . .
Renee was torn out of her thoughts by the shout from above. She was fiddling with an old-fashioned oil lantern – electrical ones had a tendency to quit in the cavern – and nearly dropped it. She swore under her breath and raised her face up to the shadowy profile of Rose above. "I missed that, what?"
"Did you see Dr. Ellis this morning?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he was deep in some sort of sequencing thing. Working on some stuff the kid gave him. Said he'd follow when he was done." She paused. "He make it?"
"Not yet."
Fuck. "I'm an asshole, I should have said something to him. He looked pretty out of it. Guarantee you he's still there. Want me to come up and go get him?"
"No, dear. You're fine, do your thing. Just remember the rules."
"No touchee, no movee, and most especially, no unplugging."
"Yes ma'am. Have fun."
Renee copped a jaunty salute as Rose's profile vanished.
. . .
"He won't get here before they arrive." Kyra shook her head. "Have you seen him when he gets on one of his workaholic tears? He's gone. He's going to snap out of it to find a bunch of, what the fuck ever, Nazi stormtroopers surrounding him."
"They're Korean hires," Tsuchi corrected her. "Jopok."
"Is that like yakuza?"
Tsuchi winced. "Jopok. Very different. They used to fight yakuza."
"Okay, but they're merc thugs." Kyra looked for his nod. "Same thing, then. He's going to snap out of it and a bunch of jackboots are going to beat the shit out of him. Not cool."
Krish remained crosslegged on the ground, as comfortable as he could be on a thin picnic towel. He sipped from a water bottle and coughed now and again. "Rose will send someone for him eventually if he doesn't show up."
"Why wait? I'm going." She got up from her seat on the long jungle grass.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Krish raised his hand. "This is how bad things start happening. Stay here, stay safe, that way Hurley doesn't have a coronary panicking about everything."
"I'm not worried about Hurley, I'm worried about the doc. There's time. I go to my house, I grab a couple things, I go to the Orchid, I come back with him in tow. No problem." She shrugged. "More problem if I sit here and talk about it. Going."
"Fu- Kyra!" Krish tried to rise up and flopped back down, coughing.
She paused and turned back to him. "You all right? You sound like hell this morning."
He coughed into his hand for a long minute, nodding his response and flapping his other hand at her. Fine, I'm fine. She didn't look convinced. Tsuchi looked between the two, worried. Kyra caught his look. "You keep an eye on him. I'll be back in a little bit."
"Wait-" Tsuchi tried to blurt, but she was gone.
. . .
Among the files Kyra recovered and Tsuchi sorted out were stacks of data output regarding viral and bacterial reproduction rates, mortality statistics, and incident test reports. Those troubled Albert Ellis the most. There was a frightening theme to them, and he could see the goal. A stable, weaponized bacterium that gave consistent results, could be controllable, and vaccinated against. Pneumatic plagues had come into vogue after the second World War and were ultimately difficult; this was septicemic, a rare strain of plague, attacking the blood. Mittelwerk had named it Chiral – the uneven hand.
He'd succeeded in a delivery system. Vapor release, canister based. A good wind, and thousands could die within a day. Organ failure. Bleeding out. Rotting flesh on the living body. It would effectively nullify any populace it was used on.
What Mittelwerk didn't have yet was a serious full-release test in a controlled environment.
"Oh shit," whispered Ellis to himself. He began to sort through the on-hand antibiotics to see what could even put up a fight against a bug like that. He did not have high hopes.
. . .
Renee had been in the cavern of the island's heart once before, with Ben virtually hovering over her to ensure nothing went wrong. It made the survey difficult, although she understood his concern. Both he and Hurley had stressed the unusual nature of the cavern, and while she couldn't quite wrap her head around the concept of 'unplugging' a damned island, she believed that they believed and let it be. She respected his concern now, though she had no clue where the island assistant was.
Of the main room, the pool itself was certainly the oldest thing. Assessing the pool and its djed-style stele could be done at a careful distance, although she missed a great deal of the cuneiform markings on the pillar as it went under the water. The cuneiform on the stele were worn with great age but still slightly identifiable. In the dim light, she crept close to its edge and squinted at the stele then down at her notebook, copying marks from around its edge and trying to pin a guess as to its age.
It didn't take long for her to give up. It was old, by any marker, and she could identify solidly that some of the less-worn marks were in fact Akkadian. Contemporary of the Sumerians, the ancestors of Babylon; reigns grand while the better-known Egyptians were just gaining their foothold. She managed to puzzle out one word – egubbu – a basin of holy water. Well, that seemed apt.
Without access to a full team, a university library, and a computer, it would take years for her just to puzzle out the pool. So, fine. She swept her gaze around the cavern and attempted to take it in more generally. She had seen the later Latin scrawls before, but this time took a little extra effort to examine the old and new kingdom Egyptian glyphics as well. They told her stories; this watcher and that watcher, guardians of the pool. All hail Ra and Seteh and Sobek and Tawaret... the list went on, supplications to the eyes over the sacred island, a backwards line through history as different gods took prominence among the people.
At the far end of the room, opposite of the entry, the space dimmed into an eerie black. Unconcerned with superstitious shadows, Renee crept closer anyway, fighting it all back with the struggling light of her lamp. The darkness seemed to have weight to it, fought back against her intrusion, and she paused a little, feeling the strain of it far more than she ever did in any pharaoh's tomb.
Back here were the bodies; dry and pale and mummified. There was nothing to fear from them; they crackled faintly as the air moved and she was careful to not disturb them. Little glimmers marked their eras; one had a still-shining aureus coin between its lips, another wore a lapis lazuli collar, another clutched his intaglio seal-stone. Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Side by side, like geography meant nothing. It hurt her head and she shook it as if to clear it and moved carefully on.
There weren't many bodies, but there were still some left down in the dark. She stood there for a long time, looking at the little forms and then at the walls above each of them, mute for a long time.
"Ffffuuuuuuck," she finally managed. "No one will ever believe this."
She drew back and sat quietly next to the gleaming pool for a long time, lost in her own swirling thoughts.