The Fall Page 10

  “NOW, DON!” Justin yelled into the comm. “Activate your sleep aid!”

  Don pulled back a small plastic latch on the right side of his helmet and pushed a round blue button for five seconds, then released it. His helmet began to fill with smoke. “See you in the morning,” he said drowsily. He continued to stare down the tunnel, the lovely tunnel of colors that drew him in. The marble of hopefulness. The uncertainty and sadness that lay within. The optimism and happiness that could be his. That one purple marble with the light-pink swirl that all the girls wanted. The one he kept, and the one he gave away, the one he held right now.

  The shuttle rocked back and forth like heavy turbulence on a plane. The journey through the portal was a dangerous one. Powered by Element 122, the portal was a creation by the NASA Collaboration to speed up space missions. It was also unpredictable, since the Collaboration still hadn’t figured out how to make it stable. There was always the possibility of a collapse. Survival was not guaranteed for those who traveled it and historically was less likely for those who traveled it often.

  Sleeping through the portal was a mandatory safety measure. The anxiety and stress of the travel was too much for one to bear. Even with the slumber, it was a long path to the other side, and the journey caused heart palpitations and eventually heart disease for many travelers. Many fell to cerebral aneurysms. The portal was the reason the Pitch and its sister ships had been forced into early decommission. These ships did not protect the travelers. In his heyday, Don Wolf had been the first traveler through this portal.

  Don fell into a deep slumber, his head drooped forward, and then his arms lifted in the weightlessness of space. As he lay in his seat, he dreamt this wouldn’t be his last journey through the stars.

  – 9 –

  L8

  Centers for Disease Control

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Amy Boughan placed the specimen slide of Patient 649 into her microscope and adjusted the lens. “Look at you…” she whispered, looking through the lens. “Multiplying like bunny rabbits.” Without moving her eyes, she clicked the red button on her handheld recorder. “The micro-animals in 649 have doubled since the last check at 0800 hours. That is four hours of growth. Reports have the patient, nine years old, alive with a high fever.” As she released the button, she continued staring into the microscope, her brows furrowed, lips pursed.

  In all her years as the chief researcher at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, she had never seen anything so intriguing. The micro-animals on her slide swam back and forth, round balls of spikes resembling a sweet gumball, devoid of seeds. They grabbed onto each other with thin translucent tentacles, their mouths containing several rows of pointed teeth like a shark, opening and closing sporadically. Their tails whipped back and forth, sometimes momentarily entangling with others and then releasing and zooming off as if in search of something. It was disturbing but fascinating at the same time—a beautiful disaster that sucked Amy in, like a witness to a horrific accident.

  Amy pushed her chair back from the table and pulled her long silky red hair into a tight bun, holding it firmly in place with a pencil. She tried to stretch her back and shoulders, which were sore from the excessive research hours, but it offered little relief. She had been trapped in the lab for the past five days, along with her coworkers, desperately trying to learn more about the micro-animals that were sickening the children of Houston, Texas. Seven other locations around the world: Belo Horizonte, Canberra, Bayingol, Bloemfontein, Takasaki, Calgary, and Omdurman also suffered from the same sickness, but her focus was on fixing the situation at home first.

  Through her contact with the other locations, Amy hadn’t learned more than she already knew, which was not much to begin with. The World Health Organization was doing its best to consolidate data, but they, too, were turning up empty-handed. It was still too early to understand the illness.

  Over the past week, her team had tried to kill the mysterious creatures, but no matter what they did—heat, cold, bleach, water, and a variety of other methods—they stayed strong. She needed data and time, both of which were in limited supply. Everything she received was either sent via email or flown in from Houston. Texas was under quarantine, and only a select set of people was given the authority to cross the border. Not even Dr. Amy Boughan was allowed in.

  The CDC had set up a network of relief centers in Houston in an effort to house patients and gather their medical information to aid their research. Military units gathered the information and passed it along to the Transporters, a group of five brave individuals well versed in chemical and biological warfare who followed a set of procedures to ensure they did not bring the illness across the border. Nearly a day after transport began, Amy received her samples. A day lost in finding a cure was an eternity in her world. There were a lot of moving parts, and Amy wanted to cut the middleman out and visit a relief station to gather better data onsite. She needed fresh data from the host if she were ever to find a cure.

  Amy changed the slides on the microscope to Patient 645, a healthy forty-year-old male, a doctor on staff at one of the relief stations. His blood was still clear of the micro-animals at day five. She couldn’t piece together why only a certain range of ages were suitable hosts. She was running out of time, and people were expecting answers. Amy hesitated and then placed another slide on the microscope, this one of Patient 542, from a hospital in Houston. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she saw nearly a dozen of the micro-animals tied together in a tight ball, their tails entwined, resembling a sewer rat king, their translucent appendages holding the ball tightly together. “Okay…now we’re getting somewhere,” she whispered, eyes still fixed on the slide.

  Amy pushed her rolling chair to her desk, anxious to see if there were any updates from the hospital that sent the specimen. Quickly browsing through the emails, she found it—from Dr. Katz at Kinsley Hospital, one of the first centers to send data. Opening the patient reports, she found the line entry, Miguel Gonzales, seven, deceased.

  “So this is your final form,” she whispered. “You entangle yourself and kill your host? What kind of suicidal aberration are you?”

  Amy typed her findings into the patient chart on her computer. Studying the list of relief stations, she noticed that she hadn’t received data from nearly half of them. Earlier, she’d been informed that due to the added security at the relief stations, there was limited manpower to do the pick-ups, but she didn’t think it would be this devastating to her work. This was a major setback for her and her team. She needed to advertise the information that she had now; maybe it would spawn more help to bring her data.

  “Hey, Allie?” Amy called to one of the research assistants in the lab. “Check the slide from 542—the five-day progression. Then check the other five-day slides from the same center. I want to see if there’s a trend.”

  “On it!” Allie yelled from across the room while Amy continued sorting through her emails and making notes on her patient charts. There wasn’t much information to work from, but the illness was progressing, and the death toll was increasing drastically. Time was running out for the children of Houston. Amy wanted to save them all, but her confidence was low after seeing 542 expire.

  “What the fuck?” Allie yelled from across the room as she stared at the slide in disbelief.

  “You’re telling me,” Amy replied, the rest of the researchers gathering around Allie to view the slide. Amy queried the data in her patient charts, searching for information on the children’s health before the illness took them. She stopped at a chart from Greenwood Elementary and reviewed the notes from the surgeon on duty.

  Brain swelling, she thought. So it slowly kills its own, but for what?

  “Dr. Boughan!” Allie yelled from across the room. “Seventy percent of the micro-animals are entwined from the five days. What does that mean?”

  Amy picked up the handset to her desk phone and dialed for her director. “It means the hosts are de
ad,” she replied, waiting for an answer on the other line. “It’s time to announce the final stage.”

  *

  Dr. Amy Boughan entered the main boardroom of the CDC unprepared, her hair disheveled, the pencil holding it together long ago fallen out, and her blouse and skirt wrinkled from the less-than-subpar overnight accommodations in the lab. The bags under her eyes were a painful contrast to her pale white skin and freckles. She looked exactly how she felt, tired and worn out. Unpresentable. “Please forgive my appearance,” she began after noticing the frown from one of the women in the room. “Some of us have been up all night.” A few of the men at the table laughed and complimented her appearance, which made the unnamed woman at the end of the table frown even more.

  Amy tried not to take it personally; she did not know the woman, but it still made her antsy. Everyone in the room was depending on her, and she knew she had fallen short of their expectations. “Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Amy continued, addressing the room. “I’ve called this meeting to show you the final form of the illness—an entwining of the micro-animals that ultimately eliminates its host. The timeframe is approximately five days from contact, although methods that some of the relief stations have been utilizing to reduce the side effects may stall death. Richard, can you present Exhibit D?”

  Richard, the director of Amy’s sector, projected a photograph of the entwined micro-animals on the large screen in the conference room. “As you can see,” Amy continued, pointing her red laser at the center of the entwinement. “The micro-animals wrap their tails into a tight sphere and die, along with their host.” Amy looked around the room for responses but only found blank faces. Reading people was never one of her strong suits, and she couldn’t tell if they were interested or horrified. “Exhibit A, please, Richard,” she requested.

  Immediately after Richard changed the photograph to a side-by-side still of a deceased boy alongside a blown-up photo of the entwined micro-animals, the frowning woman turned to the side and vomited on the carpeted floor. “Shit!” she yelled, embarrassed, trying to hold her hair back. “Sorry, this whole thing…this, everything. It’s sickening. I’ll get the cleaning lady when we’re done.”

  Upon realizing that none of the men in the boardroom were willing to assist the woman, Amy pulled a water bottle from the mini fridge and handed it to her. The woman greedily accepted the offering and rinsed her mouth out in the waste bin while the team returned their eyes to the screen to grant her privacy, although Amy could tell they were quietly cursing her for the foul stench.

  “So, what you are saying is that these are micro-animals,” Richard said, “making this an infestation of the host that leads to death. They are like endoparasites.”

  Amy nodded, pleased that Richard had read her reports before the meeting. “That is correct. We have tried to get rid of the micro-animals using a variety of different methods, even herbalistic, but none of them have proven successful. We simply do not have enough data, and we would suggest trying some herbalistic and traditional methods on live patients. The samples we get are twenty-four hours old—we need to be closer to the source.”

  The room continued to sit in quiet contemplation, a majority of the attendees flipping through Amy’s premeeting reports until Dr. Peery, the director of infectious diseases, broke the silence, his voice low and harsh, a sign of his old age and decades of smoking. “A few questions…for you, Doctor. You align the micro-animals dying in your lab with the death of your patient. But…how could that be? How could your samples die within twenty-four hours of the host, or less, when it resides outside of its host?”

  Amy cleared a lump in her throat. Her team was far behind on this discovery, and it was beginning to show. She felt so insignificant compared to everyone else in the room, the essence of a failure. The woman who took on too much, who didn’t push hard enough. Minuscule data and wasted opportunities lay in her hands. Nine days of research had passed, and she had no cure, no origin, not even a purpose of the new find that was mercilessly taking lives by the minute. And although it wasn’t uncommon to go without a cure for some time, the CDC had received tremendous amounts of funding to accelerate their research, but still, they were not ahead of the curve.

  Amy stared off into the distance, careful to control her inherent nature of anger and withdrawal. “I cannot answer that entirely. It is almost hive-like, I can say. The micro-animals that enter a host seem to have a bond of some sort. We need more research to determine the extent of the relationship.”

  Dr. Peery scribbled a few notes on his notepad, then continued. “If they kill their host, how are they spreading? That doesn’t seem useful to their evolution. I read in some of your notes that they multiply. Any comments on that?”

  Amy took a seat at one of the empty chairs at the table and scratched her head, carefully pulling out a knot in a lock of her long strands. She was mentally and physically exhausted and couldn’t bear to be a part of the current meeting any longer. She was standing before a guillotine, ready to be executed. If she had known the extent of the restrictions on information from Texas, she never would have accepted this assignment, but in all the commotion, she had seen recognition and praise in her future, none of which were warranted with her current lack of information.

  Hesitantly, she replied, “We did try to move some of the micro-animals to clean blood samples, but they did not multiply or entwine. We are still unsure of what it values in its host and how it is spread. Sorry, I know that I’m not answering any of your questions… I…I just don’t have the answers. We do not have the answers, even after nine days. But what I can say is that we are ninety-nine percent confident that adults are not suitable hosts. And I am certain that if my team and I can be sent on site, we will be able to deliver faster.”

  Amy watched as the director scribbled more notes onto his pad. When he was done, he tossed the pen on top of his notepad and looked up at Amy, expressionless and distant. “Your team has researched a lot in a little over a week. Of course, we could always have more, but in lieu of your current restrictions, this is progress. We understand that small disruptions at some of the sites have halted the Transporters. I suggest we consolidate some of the centers, increase their security, and send you to one of the sites. I can get you clearance… How about the site where your entwinement data came from? I cannot send your team, but you can report directly back to them.”

  Richard nodded. “That would be the best solution. Then Amy can track the methods the doctors have been putting into action to slow the side effects of the infestation. As I understand it, the children who seem to recover remain infested with these micro-animals. We need all hands on deck in the lab. I know everyone’s been working around the clock, but let’s set up some proper sleeping quarters, increase the overtime bonuses and whatnot. Let’s not allow this to slip through our fingers—too much is at stake.”

  There were a few emotionless agreements around the room, many half-hearted at the thought of sending their best researcher into the danger zone. Amy Boughan finally smiled, a flurry of excitement growing inside of her. She was hopeful now, confident that her team would soon start showing real progress.

  The frowning woman in the meeting held up her hand. “Hi, I’m Susan, the director of global communications, for those that don’t know me. Just a side note, the site of the first entwinement found was Kinsley, and they’ve had a minor disruption to this assignment. I suggest Greenwood Elementary. It’s nearby, and I’ve received word that Kinsley should be cleared by tomorrow, so Dr. Boughan could move there when it’s ready. Perhaps a day of waiting.”

  “Greenwood it is, then,” Richard said, ready to move on to the next topic. “Now that that’s settled, we need to discuss what we will tell the public. We certainly can’t show them the exhibits Amy presented today; the uncivilized will come out of the woodwork and could wreak havoc on our centers without even understanding their primary objective—to collect data easily. Our communications were poor with the
centers. I know we didn’t want to scare people away by saying that they were research facilities, but when we enforced limits on the locations, people retaliated. I’ve been told it’s getting even more chaotic out there with the limitations on Insidia. We need to be careful.”

  Sean, the director of public preparedness, glanced around the room. “Average citizens who have been standing by, listening to the news broadcasts of staying inside, will not take this news lightly. Richard’s right—we can’t show Dr. Boughan’s data to anyone. Things are already out of hand. Let’s keep this confidential until we can get more data. Instead, we can say that we are making progress, which we are, but we believe it is a new type of bacteria. People understand what that means.”

  There were a series of murmurs around the room, followed by sighs of dissatisfaction. Amy knew such a lie could be professional suicide. It had the potential to become the conspiracy theory of the decade at the CDC. She understood the repercussions of sending out false information, although she did agree it was the best alternative to sending out facts that could cause panic and disruption in their system. Amy rested her chin in her palm and stared at the exhibit of the micro-animals still projected on the screen. If panic ensued, the military would have a difficult time keeping the people of Texas confined, and they could eventually spread the micro-animals to other parts of the U.S., causing even greater disruption and deaths.

  Richard learned back in his chair and rested his hands behind his head, his arms stretched back. “I agree with Sean. We could tell those outside of Texas that we are trying to keep it from spreading, and we are working on a cure, which is all true. The National Guard has been broadcasting that the phones, internet, and radios are down due to the increased traffic, so if that continues to hold up, we can buy some time.”

  “We are almost out of time,” Susan said, shaking her head. “There’s already propaganda circulating that we are withholding crucial information regarding Texas. People aren’t buying the communications dilemma. Yes, the phones are down for nonessentials, but the internet, although slower than old-school dial-up, still works in Texas. If you try long enough, you can get something through.