At various points, Avery attached a small camera to the end of a row of servers. The cameras had magnetic bases and snapped right onto the metal frames.
Carl stopped at a rack and punched in some numbers on a keypad next to a small door. The door opened with a click, and Carl pulled out a laptop. He attached an Ethernet cord to a port on a switch above the servers.
“This terminal has administrative privileges on the network.”
He stepped aside, and Avery took his place. She set a tablet next to the laptop and brought up a view of all the security cameras she had placed. Thus far, no one was following them.
She typed furiously on the laptop. A second later, the logo for Rook Quantum Sciences appeared.
“I’m in.”
Chapter 116
Peyton tried the comm again.
“Desmond. Dad. Avery.”
She waited.
“Please respond.”
To Gretchen she said, “Why are the radios down?”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s not really my department.”
“Meaning?”
Gretchen sighed. “Industrial espionage was one of the biggest risks we faced.”
“What does that mean?”
A humorless smile formed on the woman’s lips.
Peyton thought a moment. Yes, they would have done anything to prevent anyone from taking information off-site—including blocking electronic transmissions. “The building’s shielded, isn’t it? Comms won’t work inside.”
Gretchen’s silence confirmed her theory. If the administrative building was shielded as well, Avery wouldn’t be able to upload the location list via the satellite internet link. She needed to know that—quickly.
Even more concerning was what Peyton saw below—the massive machines manufacturing the cure. They were all wrong. Peyton had toured dozens of facilities that manufactured vaccines, antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies that fought infectious diseases. And they all had one thing in common: they were based on biological material.
Most vaccines were simply a form of the actual virus they provided immunity for. The vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, oral polio, chicken pox, and shingles were weakened forms of the target viruses. The weakened forms reproduced poorly inside the body, allowing the immune system time to study and attack them. The body eventually manufactured antibodies, then committed the formula for those effective antibodies to memory—so that when the real virus appeared, the immune system could neutralize it quickly.
Another set of vaccines worked via a chemical process that inactivated the virus so it couldn’t replicate inside the body. The vaccines for polio, hepatitis A, influenza, and rabies worked that way. Inactivated vaccines had no chance of causing even a mild form of the disease they were inoculating against, making them ideal for anyone with a weakened immune system.
Vaccines, however, were mostly ineffective in treating patients already infected with a virus, especially if the pathogen was prone to mutation—as was the case with influenza and HIV. For patients already infected, antivirals were the key.
Like vaccines, many antivirals were grown from living matter. Monoclonal antibodies, for example, were predominantly grown in cell cultures that fused myeloma cells with mouse spleen cells that had been immunized with an antigen. Other antivirals were chemical in nature and targeted a virus’s protein layer or enzymes.
But whether vaccine or antiviral, the bottom line was that all known solutions to fighting a viral outbreak required a manufacturing process with a biological or chemical component. And here, Peyton saw no evidence of that. Was the cure a fake? Were the videos of Paris and Athens staged? Or was the Citium cure something else entirely? And if so, what would distributing it do?
Peyton pulled Charlotte close and whispered, “We need to get out of here and warn the others.”
A shot rang out, then three more. The Navy SEALs who had accompanied Charlotte and Peyton spun. Blood spilled onto the white floor. They never even had a chance to draw their weapons.
The three men who advanced through the doorway wore security uniforms similar to the one worn by the man at the front desk. They swept the office, then walked over to Peyton and Charlotte and began patting them down.
The tall man reached under Peyton’s armpits and ran his hands down and over, across her chest. She pushed him back, but he grabbed her arms.
“Don’t touch her!”
The voice was like a lightning strike.
When Peyton saw the face of the person who had spoken, her jaw dropped. It was impossible.
Chapter 117
Desmond stared at the tablet that showed the cameras they had placed throughout the data center. Thus far, there had been no movement except the technicians who walked between the rows and occasionally opened an enclosure to service the equipment inside. Lights blinked throughout the room, flashing green as data packets were exchanged on the network and hard drives served up data. There were blinks of yellow and red when packets collided or hardware failed.
Desmond leaned close to Avery. “How much longer?”
“Almost there.”
From his peripheral vision, Desmond saw movement on the screen, someone running fast. He stopped, studied the tablet. No—it was just another technician, rushing to a cabinet to work on a server.
Over the next sixty seconds, the server room filled with more technicians. Two or three entered at a time and broke off from each other, veering to different server enclosures and opening them. The scene bothered Desmond, but he didn’t know why. It was off somehow.
“Got it!”
Avery pulled a flash drive from the laptop and inserted it into her cell phone, which had a satellite sleeve attached.
Desmond continued to study the camera feeds.
What’s wrong here?
Were the men moving too quickly? No—that wasn’t it. It was their shoes. Boots—all the same. Soldiers’ boots.
“Hey, we’ve got a problem here.”
Avery squinted at the phone. “I know. It’s not connecting.”
William took Carl by the arm. “Why?”
The man shrugged. “Phones are banned in the entire building. I—”