I stumble upon a stack of documents from when Warehouse thirteen was commissioned and handed over. There is a list of high risk items and another list of out-of-the-ordinary security measures.
The Babel stones are on the first list, but not on the second. Other than the stones, the lists are pretty much identical. This is odd – a high risk item that doesn't have a special security measure? I bet Helena knows something about this.
I note this with a red sharpie on a yellow postit and stick it on my whiteboard, between where I track facts about the stones' origin and where I track their history at the Warehouse.
I continue trawling through the archives of the Warehouse for a bit longer, then spend twenty minutes reviewing evidence from another category in my mind map.
I switch categories every twenty minutes. This way I get a pretty well rounded picture about the Babel stones pretty quickly: fact and myth; accounts of incidents in the area where the stones were found; accounts of Warehouse incidents involving the stones; Warehouse inventory records. Then on to artefacts that cause large-scale chaos; artefacts from the same era; artefacts from the same area; artefacts that impact language. A common thread appears from all the documented incidents and artefacts in the cross section between the categories I've researched so far – it's unlikely that touch would activates the stones.
I go back to my chair, sit down and lean back, looking at the whole whiteboard, colourful postits and notes. "This is progress," I say quietly to no one.
I stand up and take a walk around my office, thinking about artefacts that aren't activated by touch, thinking about the lack of security. I stretch and take a look out the window – it's almost daylight. It's early morning. "Oh, shit," I rush to the computers and switch on the video feed from the infirmary and a link to the Warehouse.
The infirmary looks quiet, the team is asleep. I can't find Hel—wait a minute, there she is. Right at the back of the room, on a bench. I can't tell how she is because I can't see her face.
"Good morning," Steve answers sleepily on the other screen.
"Yeah," I answer. "Good something. Any progress?"
"No, not yet. But we barely went through one week's worth of readings," he says. "You?"
"Possibly something, get this." I share with Steve my theory about touch not being the activating event and the evidence that led to that conclusion. "Plus, there is the complete lack of security measures taken to store them, which is weird for such a high risk artefact."
He nods slowly. "So how are they activated?"
"I don't know," I say, frustrated. "Touch is... External, right?" I pace around the room. "It's a brief transference of heat, of energy. You know when it happens, you can brush it off."
"So what if it is a… long touch?" He asks.
I pick his thought and run with it. "What if it is really long touch?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if the touch is constant and long term and not the kind you'd feel? What if it's internal and not external? Like if you got a piece of stone inside you."
"You mean like being stabbed with it?"
"Possibly. Or… or ingesting. Or breathing. Getting tiny pieces of it inside you…" I rush to get my tablet, I remember reading something about it. "There were people who quarried stone in the same area centuries later," I'm looking for the scans I found this in, scrolls from the third and fourth centuries, and letters from the fifteenth century. "This is in our archives," I hold it up to the screen so Steve can see, "people who quarried the stones were affected, not people who carried them."
"How can we find out if the guys have Babel stone inside them?"
"I don't know," I say. "It's not like we can use static bags or goo." I'm thinking about other protocols. If this was a biological agent rather than an artefact, "I suppose we can collect samples."
"I'll get Dr. Calder."
We talk to Dr. Calder who brings her European colleagues at the ECDC on board. Their equipment is far superior to ours and they are more efficient at collecting and analysing biochemical traces.
The brief is to collect samples from anything ingestible the team may have come into contact with on a regular basis. There is also the matter of collecting samples from the team – saliva, blood, waste.
Vanessa is very clear about my role in this: I'm not allowed near the substation, that's an order, no discussion. Whatever I say is met with dismissal. This is protocol. I ring the commanding officer of the adjunct troop to tell him what is going on.
Within a space of thirty minutes two choppers land on the road between the cottage and the substation and the area looks like a scene from Outbreak. There are five HazMats in the cottage collecting samples from pretty much every surface and item. Even Dickens gets sampled.
A sixth HazMat asking me questions about where I had been and what I had touched since coming home.
I feel on edge and a little bit violated, not because strangers are trundling around in my house in protective gear, but because the substation is exposed and Helena is in there, alone, and the bodyguard I hadn't been in over three years is feeling anxious that she isn't protected.
And all of a sudden I'm tired. Really tired. Then a lightbulb goes in my mind and I call Dr. Calder.
"Sorry to call you so late again," I apologise but I'm not really sorry.
"I hope you're still at home, Myka," she scolds me.
"I am," I say, "I just wanted to run something by you."
"What is it?"
"If we're collecting samples based on the assumption that the artefact infection is internal, shouldn't we think about how an internal artefact infection could be neutralised?"
She is silent.
"Did that make sense? It made sense in my head before I called."
"Yes, it's a valid point," she agrees.
"Artie said that ingesting goo makes you see things," my first 48 hours at the Warehouse flash in my memory, "and I can only guess that if it reacts with an artefact internally, the exothermic reaction will be…" I can't find a word to complete the sentence with, other than "exothermic."
Dr. Calder says nothing.
"I did inject someone with the goo once," I recall and start pacing in my office, "but they were completely tripped on the artefact, and it was a tiny amount, and we knew exactly where the artefact was embedded, and there was no time to think about –"
"Thanks, Myka," she cuts into my nervous account.
"For what?"
"For speeding up our thinking process. I'll be in touch."
"Waitwaitwait—" I yell into the phone.
Damn it. I need to find something to do, or I will go insane.
I go back to the office and log in to the HG system. I bring up logs from the past twenty four hours. This should be enough time to see where people were when things started happening. I also bring up security footage from yesterday morning. While the data loads, I'm going through my phone and emails.
I start piecing together a timeline, what happened when. I start from my call to Helena, and forward – till I got to the substation. Then I start working from the call backwards, using the HG logs and the footage from the substation. I track every team members' movements in the hours before the call. If I place them on a blueprint of the substation, I'll have a map of who was where during the time leading up to the call, when it all started.
I look at the clock and it is nearly midday. The HazMats are still collecting samples from the barracks and the team. I bring the Warehouse back online.
"Yes!" Artie answers.
"The infection had to have happened yesterday," I say.
"Why?" he challenges.
"Because Helena was affected, but I wasn't. I was in London yesterday and she was at the substation."
"So?"
"So she was in London with me until yesterday," my days are bleeding into each other, "or... or the day before. But she didn't go to the substation until yesterday."
"So?"
"So if it happened before the day before, when she and I were still in London, she and I wouldn't be infected. But she was there and I was on the train. She is infected and I'm not."
"So?"
"So I don't think we need to process all that stuff they are collecting from the barracks or our house or the team's houses. If the artefact was where we live, then I will have either been infected before or should be infected now. I think that the Babel stones' proxy is inside the substation."
"Why are you telling me this? Tell it to the ECDC people in your back yard," he is fantastic about stating the obvious.
"Right," I acknowledge and lean over to close the call.
"Myka?"
"Yes?"
"Have you slept?" grumpiness vanishes from his voice.
"No."
"Don't you think you should try?"
"I can't, Artie."
"Go."
I hang up and print off my maps of where the team was in the hours before the infection. I'm positive it can help narrow down the search perimeter. It can definitely prioritise the order in which samples are tested. I rush to the door, zip myself up in my HazMat and drive over to the substation.
The leader of the ECDC team stops me at the gate and with the most polite French accent tells me he is under strict guidance to not let me anywhere near the substation. I explain to him why I'm there and he recalls his team. He and I work through a blueprint of the substation and I show them where my team's activity had been concentrated the morning of the infection.
They agree an outwards spiral canvassing pattern for sample collection – their standard protocol.
"Who's been to the team?" I ask the group.
Two HazMats of the female variety raise their hands.
"How are they?"
"They seem okay," one of them says with a Dutch accent. "They are playing cards."
I walk up to them, thinking whether or not I should say what I want to say. I decide there is no time to overthink something I may regret later. "And Helena?"
"The black haired one?"
I nod.
"She's very quiet."
"Can you tell her…" I'm trying to think what they could say that could register. "Can you just tell her 'Myka says hi'?"
I can just about see them nodding in their helmets and they head back into the substation.
The French guy pulls me through the gate and – again – very politely asks me to leave while actually placing me behind the wheel of the Rover. I know there is no point in arguing, so drive back to the cottage to continue investigating what caused all this.
By early afternoon I am out of coffee, have scanned more than half the Warehouse's archives and gone through thirty six hours' worth of surveillance footage from the substation. I can do with a break, so I walk to the village to pick up coffee and milk, and the fresh air and different setting do me a world of good.
When I get back, I'm greeted by the French guy who tells me they are finished with collecting samples. They are heading back to their labs in Cambridge and Rotterdam for analysis and he will be in touch in due course. He reminds me to not leave the cottage.
As night rolls in, I'm tired of reading history and tired of watching surveillance. I'm worried and alone and I miss the team in South Dakota and the team at the substation. I miss Helena. I bring up the feed from the infirmary and watch them. They are still playing cards. I'm not sure what game it is, the gameplay doesn't resemble anything I know. But they are engrossed. There isn't a hint of the boredom or nervousness I saw yesterday. Seeing them together makes me feel better knowing they have each other, that they are passing the time.
Without thinking, I look for Helena. She is flanked by Martin and Jade. They seem to be giving her tips on how to play her hand. They are all quite loud and emphatic with their own languages, except Helena and Karl. I want to say something, to join in. My hand hovers over the mouse to unmute my mic, but I can't think of anything I want to say. Anything that would make sense. So I say nothing.
I spend the rest of the evening reviewing the last references to the Babel stones and internally affecting artefacts, only to learn that there are no documented cures. The infection either passes on its own or it never passes. From what I've found so far, there is a shocking lack of evidence to indicate that the Babel stones' infection passes.
I slump against the bookcase I was sitting under feeling the weight of the books settle on top me. From this vantage point, at the far end of my office, opposite to the desk and door, I can see just how much information I went through over the past couple of days. So much information, and so little good news.
I breathe in deeply and exhale heavily. No good news unless Dr. Calder finds a way to make neutralising less… Sparky.
As if by magic, a call from the Warehouse flashes on the screen of my computer. Claudia is in the middle of the frame with Artie and Dr. Calder on either side of her. I start pushing books and papers off of me to get up and get to my desk.
"Myka?" Dr. Calder calls, looking for me on their screen.
"I'm coming," I hurry over, stubbing my toe on the way, cursing under my breath.
"We weren't sure you'd be up," Claudia says. "Isn't it like, 3am?"
"It is, but there's just too much to do," I say and lean over the desk. I can't sit anymore. "What's up?"
Dr. Calder explains the preliminary results from the ECDC: they believe the infection is through the respiratory system. They found a sandstone residue in saliva and mucus samples of the team. The particular sandstone they found appears to be native to our area in Wales, but has unique chemical markers. It also reacts with goo. The working theory is that this dust is the proxy to the artefact. Its bulk was also found in the perimeter I outlined as a primary search area.
"Dust?" I don't know if I'm surprised or shocked at the level of evil ingenuity. "But there is an air circulation system… There are filters." My brain is putting puzzle pieces together.
"The dust particles are small enough pass through the filters," Claudia says with a very serious face.
"Oh my god," I exclaim, "like the displacement energy was muted," I say.
"Yes," Artie verifies.
I straighten my back and run my hands through my hair. "Someone took an awful lot of time to come up with this," I start pacing the length of the room, "and they knew exactly how to get around every single system we have in place." I muse out loud.
"I don't think it's someone on this end," Artie says, softly, "given the level of detail being abused, we think it's someone at the substation."
Fuck. I'm not sure if I think it or say it, but I pace faster as I choke back tears, I feel my jaw and my fists clench, my heart is racing. I've never seen red in my life, and I think this is a close relative. "Who?" I whisper.
"It could be any of them," Claudia says quietly.
I well up because I shouldn't be thinking what I'm thinking. After all this time, all our time together I shouldn't even be considering "Helena?"
"There is nothing to suggest it's her," Claudia says and pauses. "But we are sort of at the same place with all of them."
Fuck. I bite my lips and I'm not sure what I feel anymore. "Now what?"
"Now we need to neutralise it," Dr. Calder speaks up, "that's the good news. We think we will have a compound ready for first tests in a few hours."
I go to my desk and lean down so I can see them and they can see me. "I can't sit in here anymore," I shake my head, "I'm going crazy."
"Well, once the compound is tested and we know the dust they inhaled can be neutralised, we will need to find a way to neutralise the dust that's still in the substation," Artie says.
"I know two people who are perfect to for coming up with a solution," I say, "but I don't know if we can trust them." I well up again, so I turn away from the screen.
"Let's see what they come up with. Let's see who comes up with it," he suggests.
"You know that could mean nothing," I spit angrily. "Whichever one of them did it…" I take a steadying breath, "…worked so hard to become one of us, that this…" I turn to face the screen, my fists clench and unclench at my sides with fury and frustration, "this could tell us absolutely nothing."
"True, but it's all we've got right now," Artie says.
I take a deep breath and place my hands on my hips to stop them from twitching. "Fine," I nod, "I'll get on that."
I start putting together an animated presentation annotated in six dead languages to explain what had happened over the past day.
I lean back in my chair and think about the ramifications of what Artie and Claud just told me, what we are suspecting, who we are suspecting. I'm so angry right now, but I'm not sure who I'm angry with or why. I'm angry with myself for trusting all these new people, the team at the substation. I'm angry with every single one of them for betraying my trust. I'm angry with myself for trusting Helena and even angrier with myself for not trusting her. I'm angry with her for – I don't know – her darkness. I'm angry with her because she is actually capable of hatching this plan. And I'm angry with myself for – apparently – not being as forgiving as I thought I was.
This loop of anger and betrayal is driving me mad. There is only one person who could snap me out of it. I reach for my Farnsworth and hail, but the person who appears on the screen is not who I was expecting.
"Jane," my surprise is evident.
"Hello Myka," she says, "Pete's at the hospital."
"Ah, of course," I answer. I remember how long I had to do physio for, and my leg and arm weren't partially severed. "How is he doing?"
"He's healing, getting better every day," she sounds so much better than when she was here with him.
"I saw he was walking the other day."
"Yes, he's not supposed to, but you know what he's like," she chuckles and I do too. "How about you?"
I chortle. "I've had better days," I say and nod expressively.
"You look it."
I laugh. Only Lattimers. "I don't expect I look like much after the 48 hours I've had." Only 48. It feels so much longer than that.
I smile wearily at her, and she smiles back.
"You're a good agent, Myka," she says to me. "A good agent and a good person. You'll find a way through this."
I look at her questioningly.
"You always do. Just trust yourself. If Pete were here, he would tell you the same thing."
She's right, Pete would have told me the same thing. And this is why I called him. He's the one who would give me confidence to do this. "Thanks, Jane." I smile at her, and this is the most relieved I felt throughout the whole thing.
"Anytime," She says.
"Jane?" I want to say this because I don't want to regret not saying it later, whatever later holds. "I miss him. Could you tell him, please?"
She nods slowly.
"I miss you too," I say.
She smiles.
"We miss you, Myka. I'll tell him you called."
I remain seated for another moment, staring at the silent Farnsworth. I need to go through all this again, slowly, one piece at a time, as if I were talking to Pete. I need to be honest about the evidence, honest about how I feel, honest about the possibilities, difficult as they may be. So I close my eyes and flick through all the images and all the facts my memory collected over the past two days.
Other than Helena there are five people in that room. All of them have the same level of access she does, some of them have the same level of technical know-how. And seeing as honesty is the name of the game here, I don't know any of them well enough to be absolutely sure whether they were ever tempted by the Dark Side.
It makes me think of Pete and his Darth Vader imitation, and I smile.
They are all suspects, and they are all victims. Helena is too. And when I consider all of them, her history is just as damning as how little I know of any of the others.
I say it again – out loud this time. "Helena's history is as damning as how little I know about the rest of them." This makes sense. It feels like a status quo I can live with for now.
Now I need to finish my presentation. I need them to come up with a way to neutralise the dust inside the substation. The elaborate Prisoner's Dilemma of who will do what to serve what agenda means nothing for now.
I take another steadying breath. Let's see what the day brings, shall we? – I convince myself to get going. It makes me think of Helena. "Once more into the breach," I mumble as I get up.
I check in with Dr. Calder – I need to let the team out of the infirmary so they can work in the Helm on a solution. I also ask her permission to go up there and work with them through the airlock. She consults her team and gives me a green light.
At 7am I wake the commanding officer of the troop to update him, get zipped in my HazMat and make my way to the substation.
I get comfortable in the airlock. I set up the terminal, infirmary feed and remote access to the Helm's screens, give my presentation a last once-over. At 8am they wake up because of an alarm on Martin's watch.
I open the door to the infirmary so they could get to the Helm. They look confused and ask each other questions and answer them – all in their own languages. They seem oddly at peace with the situation now. I tap the thick bullet proof glass of the airlock to grab their attention as they walk in. So is the first to notice and she waves. She pulls Helena out of the infirmary and points towards me. Helena looks up and her face lights up. She tries not to make it too obvious, but she chooses a seat where she can make direct eye contact with me.
As they all find a place I start with a 'hi' and a 'how are you'. They all nod, some of them mutter an answer. Cynicism transcends language. I take them through the presentation, explain about the internal infection; Dr. Calder's investigation; the dust.
I watch their faces closely as I go through the details. Watching their reactions, their expressions. Nothing jumps out. Well, that's not true. Helena steals glances in my direction. They are not her usual, cocky glances. She seems humble, shy even. More than anything, she seems tired. Tired and sad.
I'm trying to explain the task I'm handing them: the dust in the substation needs to be neutralised. It's their job to find a way to do it. The last slide I hold up to them are the spines of all the protocols they may find useful.
Jade and Helena are on their feet in seconds, moving the protocol folders from the shelves to the table at the center of the Helm. They open up the schematics and blue prints of every system in the substation. They both speak excitedly, pointing and drawing things on the blueprints and loose pieces of paper.
The language they're vocalising doesn't matter, because – really – they speak Engineering.
So and Martin are watching Jade and Helena, occasionally getting up or leaning in, saying something or pointing at something. Mac and Karl are hanging back. She is watching him, he is watching the group. Eventually, Mac gets up to help and drags Karl with her.
From what I can tell, they narrowed down the scope: the two systems they are focused on are air filtering and fire suppression. Helena stopped working with the protocols and is drawing something else entirely.
My phone rings.
"Bering," I answer, assuredly.
"Myka, it's Vanessa."
"Dr. Calder, how can I help?"
"We have a compound that we think can neutralise the internal infection."
"That's good news."
"There are risks, though."
I take a deep breath. That's her way of warning me that things could go sideways, that this is dangerous. "What are you asking me?"
"We took this up the channels and we have orders…" she pauses.
I sigh heavily and walk out of the airlock. I look up to a beautiful summer morning sky through my HazMat helmet. I know what she is saying without actually saying it. I was given orders so many times before, orders I always followed. I hate this aspect of this job. Hate it.
"Myka?" I hear her calling my name.
I haven't been given the order officially, but I can fill in the blanks: I'll have to administer this compound that may – or may not – work. It may even hurt or kill someone. I stifle another sigh. "I'm here."
"I know it's a lot to ask."
"It is."
"Are you okay with it?"
"Does it matter?"
We are both silent.
"We sent the equipment out an hour ago. It should be with you this evening."
"Thank you," I say and hang up.
I'm standing outside for a few more minutes, taking this in, processing. It all felt like too much earlier, when my team were named the prime suspects, when I named Helena. It feels like too much now, handing them something that could cure them, but could also do the very opposite.
I send Dr. Calder a text message: Please send me the CDC reports. I need to know. M.
I can hear a faint banging sound from the airlock so I shuffle back. An excited Jade and a more excited Helena are talking over each other, both holding up lists and schematics to the glass. They mention Claudia and Steve and Kevin by name – the only words I can understand amongst dozens of other words I don't.
I ask them to hold up their plans against the glass and I take pictures. I email them to Claudia and hail her on the Farnsworth. It takes her a while answer and when she does, she is engrossed in something, reading.
"Good morning," she says distractedly. "I'm looking this over as we speak."
"I'll wait," I say.
"This is clever stuff," she says, impressed. "Is this H?"
"The drawing is Helena. The system augmentation is Jade."
"Clever stuff," she drawls, squinting at the screen, taking in the details of the images. "Do I have time to run this by Kevin?"
"Funny you should say that," I answer. "I think they wanted you to."
She smiles at me. "Give me an hour. Can you hold on for an hour?"
"Sure," and the call ends.
I check my emails for a message from Dr. Clader and it's there, along with 80 pages of results and analysis from the CDC. I read her message first:
Myka, In the interest of time we couldn't adhere to the full CDC protocol when testing the compound. The tests we did manage to run are within what the CDC considers safe. We ran the results against the team's medical history, and we think it is safe enough to use. However, I cannot wholeheartedly promise you that using the compound is without risks. I – personally – believe that the benefits outweigh them.
Let me know if you have any questions. Vanessa.
My mind is racing at a hundred miles a second sorting out fact and logic and emotion. I can feel myself starting to tense up, so I take a few deep, cleansing breaths; because there is no time to get stuck. There is too much to do.
I look in on the team, they started scavenging for materials to build Helena's contraption. They all seem to be taking part. There's a water tank, some pressure valves and a pump from the heating system, pipes and cables, glue gun, vacuum cleaner. For a group of people who has no common language, they seem to be doing a darn good job.
Helena is back at the table, drawing. Something seems to be troubling her about the design. She calls Jade over who calls So. Helena asks Mac to join and they all move towards the whiteboards. They each start what looks like a set of calculations, each with their own numeric system, each with their own logic. When Karl and Martin return with lunch packs, they join the ancient mathletics showcase. I take some pictures and forward them to Claudia.
I'm mesmerised by them, and I realise that this is the most peaceful I had been over the past two days. So I continue watching them, because as long as I'm watching them, I'm not thinking about anger or betrayal or the fucking compound and the fucking orders from the fucking CDC. Then my Farnsworth blares.
I open it, "Hey."
It's Claudia, "can you get me linked up with a video feed to the Helm?"
"When? Now?"
"Yeah. I think I know what they're doing, and I want to help them reduce the variables."
"Sure, give me minute," I say and tap the override security codes in the terminal. Claudia appears on all the screens inside the Helm, it's a little bit freaky.
She shows them a single means of measuring and denoting time, and explains how modern Physics deals with time variables. That way, there will be only one way to extrapolate the time variable, instead of six.
With Claud joining the conversation, I can understand what's going on: they are calculating how much air they will need to pump through substation to effectively replace its air content, how long it will take given the instruments they have, how much goo is required.
When my phone rings, I find it even more difficult to stop watching them now that I really understand what's going on. I glance at the screen quickly – it's Kevin. Steve's Kevin.
"Hey, Kevin," I answer.
"You've got some clever cookies working for you, I'll tell you that," he says.
"You should be watching this, I'm sure you'd enjoy it even more than I do."
"I bet. It's a MacGyver and Apollo 13 crossover – how to build a high-powered air pump that neutralises artefact dust with things you will find in Substation One."
"That's Helena's drawing, right?"
"Yeah. I'll need to send you a technical drawing to make sure it's connected to the air system correctly and a checklist to make sure it does what it's meant to."
"So you think this will work?" the hopeful part of me, the part that trusts Helena implicitly, is far too excited to be casual about asking this.
"I think so. Claudia has already designed neutraliser canisters to fit with Helena's designs, and I'm printing them as we speak."
"What about Jade's plan?"
"Genius. He is making the fire suppression system into an artefact suppression system. We can make it work better if we replace the goo with the stuff in Claud's canisters."
I'm beyond impressed. "This is awesome." I can feel tentative relief creeping in again, and excitement, too.
"So I'll send you a checklist for all things you need to do in order to make sure all of this is wired the right way, so it works."
"Thanks so much, Kevin. I really appreciate it," I say and lean against the airlock hatch, my back to the Helm.
"Nothing to it, Myka," he says.
"Really. I don't think you realise just how…" I stop and sigh.
"Myka?"
"Hmmm?"
"Will you be able to get some sleep now?"
"I don't know."
"You should try. It'll be another hour before we are done over here and then we need to ship the canisters over. You have time till tonight."
"Thanks, Kevin. I'll try."
"You do that," he says and we hang up.
A tap on the hatch behind me startles me and I turn around. Helena is standing there, smiling. I smile back at her. Someone calls her name and she goes back to work on her pump.
I watch them for a bit longer, enjoying their energy, then turn sideways, lean against the wall so I can still watch them while reading the CDC and ECDC reports about the compound. The science makes perfect sense, but the statistics reads like a foreign language. I think any one of them will be able to make as much sense of it as I can.
I need to make a choice: follow the orders or disregard them. Following the orders is easy, disobeying orders needs thinking through. If I choose to not follow, I will want to share the risks with the team and let them make a choice about using the compound. This will mean the team might split: those who want to use the compound and those who don't. Now it's become tricky to manage.
I do have other options, though. I let them run through my mind as I watch them for a few more minutes, and then I make a decision.
I leave them to work and I head to the cottage. I get some more coffee and sit down with my glossaries for their six languages and begin to write, as best as I can, a short message in each. The message reads: medicine is coming. It is new. It may be dangerous. The healer believes it will work. I will try it too.
I have to use the word "healer" because "Doctor" doesn't exist, and I have no clue how to use the letters of these languages phonetically to write "Calder".
Then I text Dr. Calder:
Can I be a control subject for the compound?
She responds:
That's not necessary.
I write:
I believe it is.
There are a few moments of silence, and she writes:
Do you understand the risks?
I write:
I do. I read the report. I can't ask them to take a risk I won't be willing to take.
She responds:
Good luck.
An hour later two soldiers knock on the cottage's door with the equipment Dr. Calder sent. I open one of the boxes to check it: it looks like firemen's breathing apparatus, full facial mask with two compressors, rather than one: one is connected to a high grade carbon filter, the other is connected to a pressurised cylinder marked 'O2, Flammable'.
There is also a set of pictorial instructions of how to use the masks and compressors. Well done, CDC.
I head back to the substation and update the officer on duty with what's been going on and what's due to happen over the next few hours.
"When they told me 'need to know basis' I thought this was experimental weapons or torture, and I was curious." the officer says. "After the last two days, I'm not sure I want to know."
"You wouldn't believe it if you knew," I smile.
It's nearly 9pm by the time I get back to check on the team. Helena's design looks finished. It's as real as it could be, standing on the floor beside the table. Helena is the only one still tinkering with it. Karl and So are by the whiteboards, Mac, Martin and Jade are around the table, eating.
I tap on the glass to grab their attention, then switch on the two way comms between the airlock and the Helm. "We think we have a solution for neutralising the dust, but we don't know how safe it is." I hold up the note in Aramaic to the camera. I want Helena to be the first to know. She steps up to the screen to read it. She furrows her brow, shakes her head, reads it again, then says something quietly and walks away. I swap the notes and hold the one in Phoenician up. Jade leans in and nods. He looks into the camera and gives me a thumb up. Next is Sumerian for So, Assyrian for Martin, Hittite for Karl and Greek for Mac. They all give me thumbs up.
Except Helena. I hold the Aramaic back up. "Helena?" I ask.
She walks up to the airlock's door. She is looking at me, sultry, tired, hurt. I nod gently, pleading. I need her to agree. She seems to relent and nods back. She gives me somewhat reluctant thumbs up and goes back to her contraption.
I take them through what will happen when I'm back – the air pump, the fire suppression, the masks. I get five out of six thumbs up. Karl didn't quite get it.
I look into the camera and say "I'll be back at 3," I click to the last slide in my presentation, an image a clock – like the one in the infirmary – reading 3:00. "I'll be back". I look at them through the airlock door. Then back at the camera. "Go sleep," I say. "Hypnos". Mac nods and ushers them back into the infirmary.
I head back to the cottage where I have a set of instructions from Kevin waiting for me. I review them with him to make sure I get it. By the time we're finished it's past midnight.
"Are you still drinking coffee?" this isn't a question as much as it is him chiding me.
I stare back at him for a minute. "Do you want this to work?"
"Of course I do."
"Then let me have my coffee."
We go through it all one more time, I print a cheat sheet, and we sign off. I sit in my office, messier than it had ever been, books and papers and postits and tablets and drawings everywhere. I'm calling back the past two and a half days, from coming home early on a lunchtime train, to now, a few hours away from one of the most ambitious snags ever conducted.
I'm ready for this.
I fold the cheat sheet and tuck it in my back pocket, go to the door and get zipped into the HazMat. I need to go in and check the installation before the 3am start time. I grab the helmet and drive to the substation.
The patrolling soldiers approach me as I get out of the Rover.
"Did you find your mate?" one of them asks me.
"Excuse me?" I'm more confused than I sound.
"Your mate, the tall chap. Did you find him?" the other one says.
"There was a tall chap here?" confusion is replaced by an acute sense of danger.
"Were you not the one out here looking for him?" the second soldier volunteers.
I can feel every muscle in my body tensing. "Okay, stop." I command. "What did you see and when?"
"A girl, about your size, wearing this suit," he points at my HazMat, "came out of the station about 10 minutes ago, asked about a 6ft tall guy, possibly in a suit like this."
Six feet tall, that could be Karl. "And did you?"
"We saw a HazMat suit walking towards the ridge," they point up the mountain the substation is built into.
"Christ," I mutter. Something is not sitting right. "She asked you?"
"Yeah," the first one answer.
"She was using SAS code, hand gestures," the second one volunteers.
SAS signals is Mac. She's the only one with that background.
I remember sitting on the train two and a half days ago, hoping no one tried anything stupid. Well, stupid just happened. "You two – back to your barracks. Lock it down. Now. No one in or out until I tell you. Open for no one unless it's me."
"Yes, ma'am," they rush off.
"Hey!" I shout after them and they turn around. "Were they armed?"
"She had a gun with a glass tube on it," one of them says.
I run into the substation and lock it up using the shutdown codes only Artie and I have – no one can get out now. I rush back to the Rover and reach under the driver's seat for a small metal case. I try to unlock it but can't because the HazMat gloves are too clumsy. I zip myself out of the suit and dump it by the car. I get my gun out of the metal case, load it and head up the mountain.
There are acres of woods up here and I would be lost in the daytime, let alone in the middle of the night. After fifteen minutes of going uphill, the futility of chasing two people in the woods, in the dark, with no idea of the direction they were headed in takes hold. I know Claudia's locator was designed to track HGs inside the substation, but the suits are fitted with similar trackers. So I VPN my phone to the substation and hope it picks them up.
The screen lights up with the locator app and I cannot possibly love Claudia more. There is a black screen with two red arrows, pointing north-west, with numbers on them: 1.2 and 0.9. I'm guessing the direction of the arrows points to where the suits are in relation to me, and the numbers are distance. I don't even care if these are kilometres or miles.
I start up with a fast walk, but I can't seem to close the distance. So I start jogging. Ten minutes in and I'm closing in, but they are moving fast up the mountain. I keep up for another ten minutes, checking the app every once in a while.
I am closing in on them, much faster than before, which means they stopped. I slow my pace down and check the app again, they are now heading back down the mountain, towards me. I look up in their direction and see the shades and shapes two HazMats walking downhill alarmingly fast. I can't quite make out the detail.
Somewhere at the back of my mind, I'm calculating scenarios and risks. I have so little information to work with, though, so risks could be just about anything. Thinking about it is pointless, so I stop thinking and let instinct kick in.
I crouch down and wait for them to get closer. I can hear their voices. Definitely Mac and Karl. They're not speaking English, they're not even speaking the same language, and whatever they're discussing – it doesn't give the impression of calm. They are approaching where I'm crouched and I can see that Mac is in the lead, hands on her head. Karl is behind her holding a gun. I wonder where the Tesla is.
I let them walk past me, and I stand up behind Karl, loosening my safety with a loud click. "Hold it right there and drop the gun," I say slowly, calmly, my voice low.
Mac turns but he doesn't. He cocks his gun, aims it at her head. He says something and he sounds angry. Very angry. I let him finish.
"I'm really sorry, but I don't know what you are saying, Karl. Whatever it is, though, a gun won't help. Put it down."
He is angrier now, I can hear it in his voice even though I can't see his face. He is shaking the gun as he speaks. Mac tries to step sideways, but slips on the steep slope. He grabs her by the arm and pulls her up to him, pressing the gun to her temple. Mac hasn't quite got her footing, and he keeps pulling her up, while shouting at her, or me, or both of us.
I tighten the hold on my gun, dig my heels in, aligning my position. I do this on instinct, getting ready to fire. The only reason I haven't fired already is because I'm too close to him and any shot I take will hit Mac as well. She keeps moving and I can't see her well enough to know where my bullet will hit. "Don't, Karl." I speak slowly. "Drop the gun, and we all walk down together."
What happens next is over in a split second, before it even begins. Mac falters again, either because of the wet ground or because she is trying to get away. She pushes into Karl who fires twice. Then I fire. Twice.
In a split second, Mac is bleeding out and Karl is on his back next to her with two bullets in his right shoulder. I take slow steps towards him, looking for his gun to disarm him. He manages to take the gun in his left hand and he is holding it up. "Don't do it," I hiss and hold my gun up at him. His left arm is shaking and falls limp, the gun lands under his chin, and he pulls the trigger.
My heart is in my throat, thundering, echoing in my ears, throbbing in my temples. I am not entirely sure what just happened, I'm not at all sure why. What kicks in is protocol. They are still affected by an artefact, and they need to be quarantined.
I holster my gun and start running down the mountain faster than I knew I could. My boots are and pants catch on branches and ferns and I tear through them. I land on a loose piece of rock and twist my ankle, slip down a strip of rock sideways. I hit the bottom of it with a roll, get up, and continue running.
I run until I reach the soldiers' barracks. I knock on the officer's door. "I need you to get suited up and get a stretcher, I'll be back in five."
I don't wait for him to acknowledge before I head to the Rover. I pick up the suit I threw to the ground earlier – it's ruined. I reach for Helena's – still on the back seat – and put it on. I unlock the substation and get in, past the airlock, into the Helm. I walk into the infirmary – it's obvious there was a fight: furniture turned over, linen on the floor. Jade, So, Helena and Martin are huddled on the bench Helena was sleeping on at the back of the room, near the storage cabinets. Martin's arm is badly bruised. The rest of them seem okay.
I look at them. "I'm so sorry," is all I can say, before reaching above them, to pull out two large, thick black plastic bags, folded neatly into tight rectangles. I head to the door, grabbing a neutralising extinguisher (pressurised goo in a fire extinguisher) on my way out. I initiate a decontamination sequence from inside the airlock.
When it finishes, I get out and lock them in the substation again, because it's protocol. I can't think beyond protocol, because I don't think I can handle it.
I go up to the barracks to find the officer waiting for me in his HazMat suit with a stretcher. I signal him to follow me and we walk up the mountain, about two and a half miles, to where Karl and Mac are. He helps me put their bodies in the body bags I brought with me. We secure them to the stretcher and I use the extinguisher on the ground where they were. There are no sparks. I will need to decontaminate it thoroughly, but I can do that later.
Now I have two bodies to carry down the mountain and a substation to clean.
The officer and I carry both bodies as far as the airlock. I run another decontamination sequence with us in it. When it's finished, I open the external hatch and point him out.
"How will you manage?" he asks.
"Need to know basis, and you really don't need to know," I say coldly. "But thank you."
He nods and walks away. I take my helmet off and switch on the video feed to the team. "Karl and Mac are gone," I try to remain stoic. "I'll be back soon. I need to get the goo canisters for your solution."
I leave the video feed on and head out, locking the substation behind me. I get to the cottage and wait for Claud's canisters to arrive. I look at my watch for the whole of eleven minutes and fifty two seconds until I hear a car on the drive.
I leap out of the house and grab the box from the hands of the soldiers who brought it. When I am back at the airlock, before zipping my suit up, I run through the sequence of decontaminating the substation in my mind. I remember the cheat sheet in my back pocket, and move it to the pouch on the sleeve of the suit, next to where I strapped my watch.
I look at the two black bags in the airlock, purple neutraliser pooled on them, two agents inside. Two friends. I replay the half-a-second up on the mountain in my head once, twice, three times, four times.
Enough.
It was protocol.
I take my helmet off and put on a CDC mask. I switch on the filtered compressor - this should keep the air I breathe in dust-free. Working will be easier without the HazMat helmet. I open the inner airlock hatch to the Helm, kick the two crates with the masks in, and close the hatch behind me.
I take out my cheat sheet and walk to Helena's contraption. I don't even have it in me to be amazed by it and by her, but I know they are both worthy of amazement. I go through all the items on Kevin's list. It seems to be wired the right way.
I flick the switch on the contraption and the pumps start whirring. Helena put a little Perspex pane in the cylinder and I can see how much dust is being collected in the filters. My eyes flicker between her contraption and my watch, knowing that I have to follow the instructions I was given to a tee. Ten minutes in, I push in Claudia's canister. There is crackling now, the powder obviously doing its job, the small Perspex pane is glowing in purple and orange.
I watch the pane, then my watch, then the pane, then my watch. Time seems to be going at a snail's pace and my brain is breaking the land-speed record. The past three days keep playing and replaying in my mind, the past three hours in particular.
I'm sure it's because I'm pumped up on adrenalin and endorphins from the run up and down the mountain, from the shootout, from the gallons of caffeine I've had over the past three days, from the lack of sleep.
I am also dehydrated and tired and angry and anxious and on edge. My god, am I on edge. I feel everything. Every wisp of air. Every bead of sweat. Every twitch of a muscle. My hands feel like they are encased in newspaper. My eyes feel like they are made out of tree bark and my eyelids scrape across them like nails.
The act of standing here, waiting for dust to collect in a cylinder is worse than watching paint dry. It's actual, physical torture.
After an hour, I replace the canister with a new one. The crackling is not showing signs of stopping. As I watch the dust collect and neutralise, I can't help but think about the magnitude of evil genius this plan is. Not just an artefact that is remotely activated, but also one that cannot be located and neutralised. Not on mass anyway. This is Artefact warfare on WMD scale.
As the minutes tick by I am thinking about what this warfare means: what if it contaminates a civilian population? What if it contaminates air control towers? What if contaminates an army or security force? What might the agenda be of the person behind it: world domination? Profit? Anarchy?
I am thinking about whether I am ready for this warfare.
For war.
Whether war is what I signed up for.
I'm really not sure.
Two hours in, and the third canister is plugged. This is the critical hour. All the calculations suggest that this is the hour is when enough dust will be collected and neutralised to move on to phase two. All the calculations were, of course, conducted in separate languages and mathematical methods. I need to wait until the sparking subsides and then deal with the fire suppression system. It's also time pay a visit to the team in the infirmary, give them the breathing apparatus and go through what will happen next – again – for protocol's sake, if nothing else.
Cowboy up, Bering; I hear Jane Lattimer psyching me up. Let's neutralise the hell out of Dodge. With a laboured huff, I stretch and pick up the two CDC crates to the infirmary.
The team, what's left of it, is silent. If I learned anything over the past three days is that you don't need language to tell how people are. Jade is curled up on top of one of the beds, So is securing an ice pack to Martin's arm. Helena is standing by the door.
"The pump is working," their attention turns to me when I start speaking. I know they can't understand, but I hope they can get the gist of it. "So far so good," I try to pour positivity into my tone, but it's hard. I have so little left in me. "It's time for phase two," I hold two fingers up and then point at the crates.
Helena speaks as she takes one of the crates from me. She opens it and holds up a mask. She states something else to the room, and hands the mask to So. So, I assume, thanks her and inspects the mask. Helena and I pass the masks around, and I show them how to remove the safety caps and put the mask on. I then walk around the room, making sure everyone's masks are on securely, compressors, filters and gas cylinders all primed and running. They are breathing the compound now.
I switch on the second compressor on my mask. I'm breathing the compound too. A round of thumbs up from everyone confirms we are all in the same boat.
I turn to the wall clock at the back of the infirmary and set it to ten thirty. I turn back to the room and spend nearly two minutes making sure everyone gets that only when the clock hits twelve they are allowed to take their masks off.
Another round of thumbs up. Fantastic.
As I head out the door Helena reaches for my hand. I reach for hers instinctively. We touch for the brief second that I walk past, but I can't hold on for longer. If I do, it will make this touch significant. I can't let it become significant.
And I can't do "what if's" right now, because if I do I will fall apart. So I let her hand slip out of mine as I walk out of the infirmary.
This is the riskiest part of the plan. It means sealing them in that room, emptying it of air and replacing it with clean, filtered air, artefact-dust-free air. For the time it takes to replace the air in the room, they will rely on the masks they are wearing, masks decked with a new chemical compound that hasn't been properly tested, a compound designed to counteract the artefact without sparking up.
The infirmary's doors close behind me with a hiss and I engage the lock that will seal the room off hermetically. There are so many things that can go wrong over the next ninety minutes. Too many to contemplate. I could have, effectively, killed the five of us already.
Cowboy up, Myka. Dodge could do with a good scrubbing.
I'm back at the Helm, collecting the parts I need to add to the fire suppression system. As I tinker with the valves and pipes, I wish my pre-med and pre-law education were also supplemented with some mechanical engineering.
Augmenting the fire suppression system to Jade's specification takes me more than the ten minutes Kevin thought it would take. My guess is that the HazMat gloves are not making it easier. I also lost any and all agility in my hands and fingers.
Crammed into a small space, working with wrenches and pipes and pliers and wires, battling the suit and feeling stiff as two short planks is pushing me to my limits. But it forces me to focus on what I need to do and not think about anything else. And that's a really good thing.
I fumble for the crumpled cheat sheet in my pocket to check the reality I managed to unscrew and screw back together matches Jade's drawings and Kevin's instructions. It looks similar enough. I double check. Then triple check.
I look at my watch, we have been breathing the compound for nearly half an hour. It's time to trigger the fire suppression system. I walk back to the Helm and hold a very shaky hand over the fire alarm switch. I count five extra minutes on my watch that push us over the thirty minutes threshold, then firmly pull the stiff switch down, giving myself no time to contemplate the possible consequences of this action.
The substation goes completely dark. The only light source is my watch.
The emergency generators kick start – I can hear the distant buzz. No lights will go on, I remind myself. This is the fire protocol.
There is a strong gust of wind as the fine mix of fire suppressant, ash, sand, and purple neutraliser dust are pumped along walls, floors and ceilings. There is random crackling and fizzing from all over the substation. Standing at the Helm, with the substation completely dark, I can see it all going off: all around me in the Helm and in the farthest corners of the substation. It's beautiful to watch. It would have been spectacular if it weren't so sinister.
I look at my watch. Right now the air is being sucked out from the infirmary. The pressure will be dropping for four…three…two…one more second; now the filtered air is being pumped in. I watch the seconds tick by and count back, out loud, the two minutes it should take the infirmary to have its' entire air volume replaced.
I can't even go and wait outside the infirmary because I need to monitor the fire system's protocol, make sure it doesn't do anything it's not supposed to. After a while the crackling dies down and there is nothing to watch. I am just standing in the middle of the Helm, looking out into a vast expanse of darkness.
This is one of the longest hours I've lived through. It's not even an hour, it's forty eight minutes. But it ticks by at a pace that feels like a small forever.
With a harsh blow of an airhorn, the fire system stops pumping the dusty mix, and resets itself. The lights go back on, and it's all done.
I release the catches of my mask and pull it off of me. I rush over to the infirmary. I'm not wasting time looking in through the porthole, I just touch the code that unlocks the doors. They slide open and I storm in.
They are all there, exactly as I've left them. The clock still has 3 minutes on it, they are all watching it rather than the door. So notices me and takes her mask off. She taps Martin's shoulder who releases his mask and grunts loudly as he removes it.
Jade and Helena hear him and follow suit.
They sit there and look at me, I look back at them.
Right now, right this very second, I'm just relieved they are alive. They made it through the mad plan and they are alive. We are alive.
Then the reason for having this mad plan strikes me.
I try to speak but my throat is dry, so I swallow harshly and cough before asking, "Can somebody please say something?"