55 | INFECTION
There was a series of beeps, and a row of lights on a central console turned from red to green as the computers in the control room went online. No longer isolated from the rest of the world. Dodge removed his hands from the computer and just watched as the virus ate its way into the network.
The first computers to go were the ones around them. Screens turned blue with indecipherable error messages.
“How will we know if it’s working?” Sam asked.
“We’ll know,” Dodge said. “Whenever it infects a machine, it sends the IP address back here so we can monitor the spread.”
Sam watched the screen. The familiar four-part numbers of IP addresses appeared on a list at the top of the computer screen.
First just ten or twenty, then more and more, faster and faster until the screen seemed alive with the numbers, scrolling off the screen faster than the eye could read them.
Above Dodge’s head, security monitors showed the battle in the corridor outside the blast doors. As Sam watched, the resistance fighters fell back, and the soldiers of the neuro-forces filled the tunnel.
Jackson ran into the control room behind them.
“I need an update,” he yelled. “I got a wing of bombers inbound to Wichita, and they’re loaded for bear. What’s happening?”
“We injected the antidote,” Dodge said. “Just watching now to see it do its work.”
“It had better happen quick,” Jackson said. “Those bombers will be in Wichita in minutes, not hours. I don’t know if you heard, but there are hundreds of thousands of refugees in camps around the city and no time to move them.” He turned away from them and shouted outside, “Get those blast doors closed!”
“I hear you,” Dodge said, “but it’s out of our hands. It’ll spread as fast as it can.”
“Keep me posted,” Jackson said, and ran back onto the main concourse.
There was an explosion from outside, and the entire room shuddered. Sam ran to the door of the control room and looked down.
Smoke was billowing into the room through the blast door, which was almost closed but not moving.
Resistance soldiers were arrayed around the concourse, weapons trained on the narrow gap in the doorway.
Jackson was lying on the metal floor of the mezzanine walkway nearby, and he grabbed Sam’s arm, pulling him down as machine-gun fire sounded on the other side of the blast door and lightning flashes of tracer fire lit up the gray smoke.
“They’ve jammed the blast door,” he yelled over the sound of the firing. “We can’t close it. We’re trying to hold them out.”
Even as he spoke, a group of neuro-soldiers ran through the partially open doorway, firing from the hip as they came.
Gunfire sounded from around the concourse.
The men staggered and fell, but more men were right behind them.
“Get back in there!” Jackson yelled, pushing Sam back into the control room.
Sam slammed the door behind him. It seemed paper thin against what was coming.
Dodge was gazing at the computer screen. It was a blur. Numbers cascaded from the bottom to the top and out of sight. Column after column, row after row.
“You sure there’s nothing we can do?” Sam asked.
“Nothing but watch,” Dodge said. “See how Ursula likes a taste of her own brain-wiping medicine.”
Sam watched a little more, mesmerized by the numbers.
There was an explosion from outside and the control room shuddered again. Smoke curled underneath the door.
“This had better work,” Sam said. “And soon.”
“Sam,” Dodge said sharply.
Sam flicked his gaze back to the computer. The long rolls of numbers were slowing down. Slowing, slowing, and eventually stopping.
Then the list began to unravel. Numbers began to disappear faster and faster.
“What’s going on?” Sam cried out in horror, knowing what the answer would be.
“She’s beaten it,” Dodge said slowly. “I was afraid of that. She’s seen this virus before, remember, when we used it to escape from the mall. She’s recognized it despite my mods and found some way to defeat it.”
Faster still, the screen scrolled backward, the Plague reversing, the computers freed from Dodge’s disease.
There was long, sustained gunfire from down in the concourse; then, without warning, the computer screens around them all flickered back to life.