“In Virginia?”
“Oh, no. Not remotely. We are still on the West Coast. But that’s hardly the most interesting line of questioning. You’re no doubt feeling something now?”
Johnson tried to look down, but found himself unable. “I can’t move my head.”
“You’re restrained.”
“Why?”
“It’s better for you.”
“Why? What’s happening to me!” Johnson’s voice cracked with desperation, his heart beating faster, adrenaline surging and returning some small sense of feeling to his brain. And in that fraction of a second, his body sent a faint signal, detected by a few sentinel neurons, which received and repeated the message—I am dying. “Oh God. You’re killing me!”
“Me? No. But yes, you are dying.” A blurred-out form slipped into view. A man. Dressed in white. But concealed, like he stood behind a wall of frosted glass. “Do you really want to know how?”
“Tell me,” Johnson said. If he was going to die, he wanted to know why.
“You don’t remember?”
Johnson searched his memory. He was on a mission with the BlackGuard. His first mission. To the Darwin. They searched the ship. There were bodies. So many bodies. With holes from where something had come out. But then...what happened? “There was a room. It was dark. And—and the dark, it moved. It was alive. It was—”
All at once, he remembered. “It attacked me. Put something inside me! The Dark Matter. And the others...oh my God, I was never on the team. I was just—”
“A vessel,” the man said. “Not as dumb as everyone thought. But dumb enough.”
Johnson’s vision began to fade. A strange taste filled his mouth.
“Take comfort in the fact that you have done this organization, and perhaps your country, a great service. It is a more honorable death than you would have managed on your own. Now then, would you like to see your gift to us?”
The man didn’t wait for Johnson to respond, perhaps because he could see Johnson’s fading lucidity. He rubbed his arm against a hard, clear surface, scratching away a thin layer of frost and revealing his face, which wasn’t a face at all, but the reflective mask of a biohazard suit.
The man rapped his gloved knuckles on the glass, creating a hollow gong that echoed in the tight space. He spoke with a sing-song voice, like there was a dog nearby. “Here. Over here. Come say hello.”
The sharp tick tack of small, hard limbs striking the floor filled the air. With a shriek, a black blur launched at the cleared glass. Claws scrabbled for purchase, while a dagger-sized stinger at the end of a long, wiry tail struck the glass three times.
The man on the other side showed no reaction. No fear. No surprise. Johnson couldn’t see his face—couldn’t see much of anything as his vision narrowed—but he detected a hint of pride from the masked stranger.
“Goodbye, Mr. Johnson. I believe it is time for you to fulfill your secondary role.”
Johnson was too weak to ask what that meant, but he had his suspicions confirmed when he faintly felt a series of pin pricks travel up his body. The black shape crawled over his face, eight legs twitching with energy. As the monster’s mandibles turned toward his wide eyes, Johnson used the last of his life to scream.
No one heard him.
No one missed him.
And within the hour, when the feast came to an end, there was nothing left of him.
Dr. Alicio Brice turned away from the containment unit, which was a five-inch-thick glass dome, fifteen feet across and ten feet tall at the apex. Like many of the other units on this level, it held a biological threat. Not a virus or bacteria or anything else belonging to the realm of the micro. Those kinds of things were kept in the basement. Brice dealt exclusively with the macro, the killers that existed outside the human body, but would be happy to consume it just the same. Some came from nature—various big cats, snakes, spiders and crocodilians, all the most efficient killers mother nature had conjured up.