43
Dr. Donald Stephenson moved along the rows of cages, pausing to examine each rat in turn. Anyone else would have been completely outfitted in Level 4 Biohazard protective gear. But, here by himself in the infectious disease section of Rho Division, the time just past 2:00 a.m., Dr. Stephenson merely wore a set of hospital scrubs.
As he moved, he scanned the labels that identified the different cage groupings. Order Mononegavirales, Family Filoviridae, genus Ebolavirus. Stopping before a cage labeled “species Zaire ebolavirus,” he bent down to examine the occupant, a healthy brown rat with a white splotch on its head. Stephenson reached inside and grabbed the little fellow by the back of its neck. Ignoring the frightened animal’s attempts to bite him, he held it up to the light.
Completely healthy. It was also perfectly predictable, but amazing nonetheless. Just two days ago, the rat had been in the final stages of death from hemorrhagic fever, suffering from extensive bleeding from the nose, eyes, and anus. Dr. Stephenson placed the animal back in its cage, nodding with satisfaction. The latest strain of nanites worked every bit as well as the original, but these were much hardier outside of the bloodstream, requiring no special suspension fluid to keep them functional until they were injected. The microscopic machines could survive in almost any environment short of a two-hundred-degree-Celsius oven. Even boiling water wouldn’t harm them. With so many nations demanding them, this would solve their shipping problems.
To think that just across the huge open bay to the west, deep within the inner recesses of the Rho Ship, Raul had been his first human test subject for the new nanites. That had been a bit of a risk since Raul had already been infected with the original nanite strain. It had been entirely possible that the two strains would be incompatible, and if that had been the case, he might have lost a most valuable asset. Still, his reasons for subjecting Raul to the nanite upgrade were sufficient to make it a risk worth taking.
Other than some intense initial pain, Raul’s system had accepted the new nanites very well. Judging by the pace at which Raul scurried about the equipment within the inner reaches of the ship, the young man had experienced no long-term adverse reaction.
And from what Dr. Stephenson had observed over the highly encrypted video link from the ship’s interior, Raul had been very busy indeed. In a ship full of fascinating oddities, Raul now appeared the oddest, climbing up the equipment racks hand over hand or scurrying across the floor, dragging his umbilical bundle of cables behind him. Sometimes Raul would pause, the three-inch long snakelike appendage that had replaced his right eyeball swiveling around in front of his face as it fed signals directly into his optic nerve.
While the deputy director had hoped that Raul would begin to understand something of the inner workings of the shipboard systems, the results of Raul’s efforts had surpassed his best-case scenario. New activity in alien equipment that had been completely inoperative only a few weeks ago periodically sent power fluctuations through the ship’s core, spiking the instruments Dr. Stephenson had positioned to detect such changes. Each time once the transient effects had died out, the ship had returned to a quiescent state. Nevertheless, the progress was nothing short of remarkable.
But it was also quite clear that Raul was being less than completely honest about what he was learning. That didn’t matter to Stephenson. He needed Raul to continue his repairs of the damaged shipboard systems. So far, he had barely scratched the surface.
The thought of the extent of the damage that had been inflicted on the Rho Ship made Dr. Stephenson shake his head. He would dearly love to know what kind of weapons technology could have done that, especially since no earth technology could put the slightest scratch in the ship’s hull. It was the type of question he wasn’t going to get an answer to unless Raul succeeded.
Of course, it was possible that Raul would try something really stupid. After all, Dr. Stephenson had known the boy was completely insane from the instant he first met him. The Messianic complex that afflicted Raul had only been temporarily suppressed by his current imprisonment. His God complex was bound to reassert itself at some point, and when it did, Raul was likely to act out.
Turning his attention back to the healthy rat in the cage, Dr Stephenson pulled a small device like a penlight from his pocket. Machines were funny things. You could have the finest and fastest car on the planet, but loosen a few lug nuts and watch out. It was something all machines had in common, even nanites.
Dr. Stephenson pressed a button on the device.
The rat let out a squeal that devolved into a damp gurgle. Within seconds, all that was left in the cage were bits of hide, hair, and bone, floating in a gooey mess. It was the second time he had attempted dynamically reprogramming the new nanites inside a living thing.
The first had been a most unfortunate necessity and had not been the complete meltdown the rat had just endured. Dr. Nancy Anatole. So young. So brilliant. Such wasted promise. But recent events had clearly shown the existence of a mole within the Rho Project. The only ones with that kind of deep access to the data were Dr. Rodriguez and Dr. Anatole. Given his own research priorities, it could not have been Dr. Rodriguez, even if he wasn’t dead. So that left Nancy.
The deputy director shook his head. Incredible to think that she could have resisted the special conditioning to which he had subjected her, that she could have continued to deceive him. She had been a strong woman. But not strong enough to survive the massive brain hemorrhage that had struck her down as she shopped amongst the Native American jewelry vendors in Santa Fe.
For several seconds Stephenson stared down at his latest handiwork before turning toward the chemical bath chambers that awaited him at the exit. No doubt about it, he knew how to loosen the lug nuts on the upgraded nanites.
As he stepped into the first of three decontamination chambers, stripped off his scrubs, and tossed them into the Bio Hazard Disposal Unit, Dr. Stephenson grinned. When the time came, Raul would find out which of them was God.