The Japanese duo looked blankly at Brandon.
“I can go along with Eugene on this. I never really knew Julien Delacroix when I was with VB Aerospace, but he gained my trust when he persuaded me to speak to Eugene, and thus the means to bring this team together. We’re scientists, someone else has to deal with the rest.”
It was agreed that they would wait until Zlatan was on his feet and functioning normally before outlining the situation to Julien.
Five Days Later
Zlatan showed remarkable improvement and was fit enough to travel. Eugene called his father and was redirected to another number. Eventually someone answered.
“Sophie? What’s going on? I’ve been on the line for over a minute.”
“Eugene, thank goodness you called. We had no time to let you know we were getting out of Lyon. We flew to Corsica yesterday. It was the only flight available at short notice for all five of us.”
“Just a minute, sis, I’m not following you. Corsica?”
“Yes, the French mainland is completely out of control. These deviants are everywhere. You don’t have to watch it on TV, just looking out of the window we could see people being attacked every few minutes.”
“Bloody hell, news of this kind of stuff hasn’t reached Japan, or it could be deliberately suppressed. Is everyone ok?”
“Yes, but we aren’t staying here too long. It’s quiet, but it won’t stay like that. We’re going back to Guiana as soon as we can make the safest travel arrangements.”
“Right. Is Dad there?”
“Yeah, I’ll put him on.”
He could hear lots of intermingled voices, then Julien’s voice prevailed over the background noise.
“Hello, Eugene. I was beginning to think I’d never hear your voice again. Are you still working on your project in Japan?”
“In a way, but we’re facing a dilemma. I can’t say too much on the phone but I think we need your help.”
“My help? I’m an old man now, Eugene, and I know nothing about microbiology. How can I help?”
“Through your contacts. We’re at a crossroads. Listen, I told Sophie that we were a little isolated here in terms of world news, but it is quiet and pretty safe. Unless you’ve all made up your minds to head for Guiana right now, how about we meet up in Japan. We won’t be here too long, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Think of it as a holiday. I promise it won’t be a waste of your time. I’ll hold while you ask the others. I’m sorry to be so vague but we don’t have much time to spare.”
Julien knew his son well enough to refrain from asking more questions, and guessed that there was something big to consider in Japan. He simply said he’d talk the others into a new vacation in the Orient and would call back with the flight times.
“Just meet us at the airport and we’ll take it from there, ok?”
“No shit? I don’t envy your task in herding the others into line. Thanks, Dad.”
*
The reunion of the family at the airport was laced with joy and huge relief. Eugene took his father to one side and said they should drop the others off at the five star hotel before the two of them could proceed to the lab. When Zlatan’s situation was explained to him, he challenged Eugene’s sanity.
“You’re joking aren’t you? So, what’s the real reason you asked us to fly halfway around the world?”
“This is as serious as it gets, Dad. I know you have to take a leap of faith here, but we don’t have time to piss about. We either squander this breakthrough by trusting the wrong people or you help us to find the right people. That’s it, yes or no, there’s no way we’d make up such a preposterous tale. We don’t have a choice as to whether we do this, only how we do it.”
“You haven’t said so, but you are leaning heavily on my conscience about bringing this scourge here with the cometary pebbles aren’t you? I’ve continually agonised over the advice I gave at the time. I truly thought we had no reason to be concerned about them, especially as we’d just averted Armageddon. Ok, I get it, but do you seriously think I can bring people we can trust to Australia and weed out these ‘stable Alphas’ without revealing our motive?”
“Like I said, unless you have a better idea.”
“I need to digest all this. I’m going to have a few beers at the hotel tonight. But first, can I see this man you’ve ‘disinfected’?”
Julien was introduced to Zlatan.
“Tell me more about your time before you were infected. How you began to suspect the hierarchy, and the names of any contacts inside the exclusion zone you can trust.”
Zlatan’s account was reassuring in its utter simplicity and gratitude that he was actually able to be here and recount it.
“It’s a real honour to meet with someone like you, sir, but I can only give you names of people I don’t trust in Australia. It doesn’t work the other way. When you’ve had this ‘inhabitation’ of your body, and are helpless to resist doing what it urges you to do, there seems to be no point in living. Yet you don’t even get near to ending your life. Something keeps you going. It would be a real shame if your work in preventing the asteroid from wiping out our species, was to become only a prelude to caving in to some bloody pest which can’t actually survive without us, or other Earth inhabitants. It doesn’t belong here. I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but when these guys who cleansed me are ready to go back there, I’m in it with them – all the way. They’ve risked everything for me, I owe them bigtime. You need to see what’s going on down there for yourself, sir.”
Chapter 56
As Julien made his way back to the hotel in a taxi, a wistful smile rippled over his face. He knew that it was going to be a hell of a problem to explain his decision without really telling the full story. He called the family from reception and asked them to meet him in the cocktail lounge. There could have been quite a rumpus if he dropped this on them in their suite, but decorum would be his ally in a public place.
They stared at him, waiting for him to say something which would explain his insistence that they should all follow him to the down elevator.
“Please, just do as I ask, there is something to celebrate and something which has to be done.”
They gathered around an oval table in the cocktail bar and Julien ordered soft drinks for everyone. He announced the good news, that Eugene and his colleagues were the first to cure a man infected by the virus. He let this sink in for a few seconds and then delivered the not-so-good news. Their celebrations turned to utter astonishment. Sophie broke the deafening silence.
“You seriously want us to go to that hell-hole? If I remember correctly, Eugene had to fight tooth and nail to get out of Australia. It’s where the plague started. I’m not going.”
Elise and Geraldine simply nodded in agreement, and Reuben said nothing. Sophie addressed her father again.
“Well, come on, Dad. You talked us into ditching Guiana to come here – because Eugene said it was safe. There’s something you aren’t telling us.”
“You misunderstood. My apologies, I wouldn’t expect any of you to go with me, but I can’t turn my back on my son when he has to continue his work on developing a vaccine for sufferers of this virus. Sooner or later it will reach everywhere on Earth, there will be no hiding place. His work is at an advanced but critical stage, and you’re right, Sophie, it all started in Australia, where it has now mutated. So, Eugene has to tackle it right where it is, right now. He needs help in altering the current strategy of merely trying to contain it.”
Elise spoke calmly.
“So, you want us to stay here while you and Eugene risk your lives down there?”
“Well, yes. Would any of you truly want me to decline Eugene’s plea for help. Listen, he doesn’t need me to get involved with his actual lab work. He wants my experience in putting together an organisation which can properly administrate the distribution of any promising vaccine he develops. It isn’t an ongoing situation for me, as soon as the structure i
s in place, I become redundant. I’ll return here as soon as I can. This is the safest place for the rest of you at present, so please just try to keep a low profile and learn something about the Japanese culture. I promise to keep in touch regularly. Look, I have no choice; I have to go.”
There was no further resistance.
Australia - Three Months Later
With the help of Zlatan’s boss, and Julien’s contacts around the world, a meticulous plan had been implemented. A comprehensive list of suspected stable Alphas in the hierarchy had been under continual observation by trained operatives under the nominal command of Alexei Bondarenko, who’d been given leave by his new employer. They were mainly Russian Special Surveillance Units. A separate group of trusted scientists had been ensconced in Sydney, with the agreement of a failing Australian government, once they had been persuaded that they’d been continually fed false information from the exclusion zone hierarchy. Parading Eugene’s miracle man, Zlatan, was the clincher.
The planned coup to take over the exclusion zone had to be triggered and executed with the precision of an atomic clock. Above all, they wanted the top man alive. They needed to interrogate him in the presence of Eugene’s group. It had been decided to threaten this man by making him the first stable Alpha to be subjected to their cure. But not before he’d witnessed phase one and two deviants being purged of the virus. Brandon and Eugene insisted that this should be the order of things. There was resistance to the proposal, the Australian government simply wanted all deviants eliminated unless there could be a guarantee of no further mutation. Brandon reminded them that the dimension of time ruled out such guarantees, repeating the folly of mass treatment at this juncture. There had to be absolute proof of the cure’s effectiveness with individual cases of all three deviant phases before any conventional treatment wards could be set up. He also made the point that isolating the head of the snake had psychological leverage. Confrontation with cured subordinates during interrogation, and the pledge that he was next, might just elicit some valuable disclosure from him. Brandon then bizarrely placated the Australian government concern. He implied that regardless of how the individual cure attempts of all three phases of viral transition turned out, they were merely ‘contained experiments’. He agreed that all other deviants currently within the exclusion zone should be terminated and burned under the strictest supervision.
“We have to use every small advantage we can muster. There is no room for sympathy here. The benefit, if there ever was one, of the exclusion zone is the security aspect. It has to stay like that so that we can spread the cure outwards in a highly controlled way, and crucially extending the security as we go. Eventually, thousands may die, but thousands will survive if we accept this ring-fencing approach. If we can produce a successful model, it can be applied elsewhere, but we also have to try to get as much information as we can from the top man before he is subjected to our cure. If he is truly cured, he can become our biggest asset. I hope you’re beginning to comprehend what we’re dealing with here.”
After fielding a few more ‘what if’ questions, Eugene and Brandon were given consensual go-ahead for the plan. And, with help in the form of detailed exclusion zone drawings from Zlatan’s boss, the special operations units hatched the actual coup.
One of the engineering employees in the complex was instructed by Zlatan’s ex-boss to cause a fault in the inner sanctum air conditioning system during his nightshift. It would be reported the next morning, rendering scheduled meetings difficult, due to the utterly oppressive heat. The ploy was extremely successful, all of the inner sanctum files were stored in that suite, and it could never be left empty during dayshift hours. The top stable deviant personally demanded that the air conditioning unit had to be repaired without delay, while he struggled to keep the meeting agenda on course. The special ops unit delegated only two men, dressed in the uniforms of the repair company. They fitted gas canisters to the inlet supply and then corrected the cooling hardware ‘fault’. The system was now reported as fully operational and the special ops men left. It only took a few minutes for the asphyxiation gas to render the entire chamber attendees unconscious. The remaining personnel in the special ops unit were fitted with high grade gas-proof suits and were lowered by helicopter on to the glass roof. They’d already been familiarised with the faces of the inner sanctum members and swiftly pulled the top man to one side. He was administered a precautionary heavy sedative before the others were injected with nerve gas.
The senior special ops man called Zlatan’s boss and gave the signal that the chamber was secure, and the asphyxiation gas had been turned off. He, in turn scrambled all the employees he knew he could trust; certain ones were required in the ante-chamber while the remaining gas dispersed, and then to enter, securing the inner sanctum files. Others were detailed to get to the cache of automatic rifles which had been planted overnight. Anyone who resisted being assembled in the main courtyard were to be shot on refusal, no questions asked. Eugene and his team arrived to pick up their top man and take him to the state-of-the-art laboratory section.
Stage one was over, a bridgehead had been established. Now the security aspect had to be addressed. Once again ruthless adherence to plan was paramount. The supervised burning of the bodies from the inner sanctum conveyed this better than any words. Everyone was forced to attend.
A state of news blackout was already in place, courtesy of the simultaneous elimination of all inner sanctum members but one. The news output had probably been employed as an indoctrination facility, but now it had to become a containment operation.
Eugene and Brandon were immediately tasked with selecting and curing a phase one and a phase two individual prior to re-awakening the head of the snake. They needed no reminding that time was still of the essence. They didn’t have the luxury of asking for volunteers, they took the first one they could verify in each category.
The equipment in this lab was vastly superior to that which they’d had to make do with in Japan, and it was estimated that they would have a prediction in forty-eight hours. The deviants responsible for setting this equipment up had clearly been very inventive. This was quite a relief, when compared to Zlatan’s painfully long all-clear vigil. With this array of monitoring they would know before the forty-eight hour predictive data came to hand, if there was a serious problem which would suggest aborting and finding another more suitable specimen.
Chapter 57
World War Three
Pre-existing pockets of conflict would not be helpful in expanding outward with the programme. Protestant and Catholic. Sunni and Shia. Anarchist and Establishment. Cult and Sectarian. Capitalist and Communist. Somehow, the world had to be confronted with the need to shelve these divisive habits and focus on Homo Sapiens and Homo Diversitus. Making it known there was a cure would derail the chances of the former prevailing beyond the antipodes. A classic example of being dishonest to serve the greater good.
The phase one deviant had been cured. The phase two specimen was predicted to be cured. A debate ensued as to whether it was prudent to take this as reliable and get on with the head of the snake. It was a tough call, simply because like Zlatan, the phase one specimen couldn’t enlighten them about deviant plans, she could only repeat that she had been driven to rely upon instinct rather than evaluation, and yet had no desire to commit suicide.
An old axiom which suggested all wars are won and lost before they are fought weighed heavily on the minds of the strategists whom Julien Delacroix had managed to persuade to join the cause. It was therefore considered good fortune that Australia was a ‘discrete continent’ in a way. One predominant language, one recognised government, one set of laws and immigration control force. This might just assist in bringing in new edicts such as submission to medical tests before being cleared to travel outside the shoreline. People were asked to support such draconian action if they truly wanted to help in defeating the virus. The underlying strategy was to flush out resistance to checks, and
detain possible deviants for enforced tests. The practical difficulty was always going to be vetting the sheer number of officials responsible for actually conducting those checks. If they were to stand any chance of progress they would have to consider dismantling social media by bulldozing internet capability into at least temporary ruin. The monumental knock-on effects of such decisions began to undermine the morale of the strategists. Even if they could prosecute the foundations for such lockdown, it would take years or decades to extend cleansing tentacles into a world which could already be lost to Homo Diversitus.
Meeting after meeting failed to shape a viable alternative. There appeared to be no alternative.
*
The selected phase two specimen had begun to react positively, and then the prediction indicated failure. Another would be selected, and the original specimen would be terminated then burned. Just as well that Brandon had bullied Eugene into starting the treatment for the top deviant already. In fact the prediction took considerably less time than the previous recipients of the treatment. He would be clean within days according to the data.