he and the Continuity staff had managed a global pandemic that lasted eighty-one days and claimed the lives of almost two billion people. Eighty-one days of sleeping on the couch in his office, drinking coffee endlessly, shouting matches, breakdowns, and one final breakthrough.
The faces walking the halls were different now: soldiers, DOD staff, and others Paul couldn’t identify.
Secretary of Defense North was waiting for him in the main Continuity situation room. The glass doors parted and closed behind Paul, and the two men were alone. The screens that covered the far wall showed the same display they had when Paul had walked out fourteen days ago: casualty statistics from Orchid Districts around the world. They ranged from twenty to forty percent. All except one: Malta. Dr. Warner and her team had found the last piece of the cure there. It glowed green, the text “0% Casualty Rate” floating beside it.
North took a seat at one of the rolling tables. “One of my teams just picked up Natalie and your nephew, Paul. They’ll be here soon.”
“Thank you. I’ve contacted the members of my staff—what’s left. Once they’re here, I’ll start making calls to my foreign counterparts.”
“Excellent. I know they’re having similar conversations right now. So, first thing’s first. We need to get your root-level access code to the Continuity control program.”
Paul squinted. “My access code?”
North took out a pen and nodded casually. “Uh huh.”
“Why?”
“I was told only your codes could push a new therapy out to the Orchid implants.”
“That’s true,” Paul said, alarm bells ringing in his mind.
“It’s for security, Paul. You’re a point of failure. If you die, those codes are lost with you—and for all intents and purposes, Continuity with it. The whole system is worthless if we can’t administer a new therapy. We need redundancy.”
“We have redundancy. Two people have the access codes: someone on the team—someone I select—and me. No one knows that person’s identity. For security purposes. Imagine if the Immari were to learn the Continuity access codes. They could wipe us out in hours.”
“And who is that other person?”
Paul rose and paced away from North, whose expression had now changed. The other code keeper was dead. He had died with many of the other staff in the final hours of the plague. Paul had intended to select a new code keeper when the remaining staff arrived, but now he wasn’t so sure. “That’s all I can say regarding the code. But you have my word that we won’t lose access to Continuity.”
North stood as well. “We never finished our conversation at the Orchid District. We’re officially at war. We’re working on ways to communicate with our naval fleets, but they have standing orders to launch an attack if they lose contact with the Pentagon for an extended period of time. The bombs should begin falling on the Immari central headquarters in Antarctica soon. They’ve evacuated their facilities in Cape Town, Buenos Aires, and others, but they will be hunted. Fighting the Immari head-on isn’t what we’re worried about. It’s the coming war here at home. We estimate Immari strength here in the US at forty thousand, maybe a little more, possibly less. It was enough to take our food chain and cripple the power grid, but they can’t do much else.”
“Exactly.”
“I read your file, Paul. You’re a smart guy. A good scientist. I was a good soldier. It took me years to get up to speed on politics. It’s a different game. But you know that. You were upper management here at CDC. You’ve played the game. You can see where this is going.”
“Obviously I’m not as smart as you think.”
“They cut the power and food to the Orchid Districts to make us empty them. When we do, the Immari will start converting the tired, hungry masses that flow out. Their message will appeal to the millions of people we release. We’ll be fighting a propaganda war. Their ideology against ours. We aren’t fighting the Immari Army. We’re fighting their message. It boils down to the elimination of the welfare state. The Immari want a global state built with people who can fend for themselves, people who don’t rely on the government to live. A lot of people like that idea. They don’t want to go back to the way things were. And there’s the simple reality from our end: we can’t fend off the militia and care for those too weak to fight anyway. The US has about a ten-day supply of insulin left. Antibiotics are practically gone; we only use them in extreme cases now. We’ve been burning the dead outside the Orchid Districts, but we can’t keep up. With the close quarters, a new antibiotic-resistant superbug is likely already loose in an Orchid District somewhere.”
“We can handle superbugs. That’s why Continuity exists.”
“It’s only a fraction of what we face. Even without the Immari threat, we’re looking at a humanitarian crisis on a global scale. We have to rebuild the world, and we’ve got too many mouths to feed. We have an opportunity. We can eliminate some of our own who we can’t care for and at the same time, convince the Immari sympathizers not to go over. It’s our only play. Continuity and the Orchid implants are the key. We’ve got to build an army of our own—from the strong within our ranks.”
Paul swallowed. “I… need some time to think—”
“Time is one thing we don’t have, Paul. I need those codes. I’ll remind you that I have Natalie and your nephew.”
Paul felt himself involuntarily step back. “I… I want to know the plan.”
“The codes.” North glanced at the soldiers outside the glass doors.
Paul took it as a threat. He took a seat at the table and spoke softly. “I assume you’ve been trying to crack the codes?”
“For over a week now. NSA says they could be in within a few days, but when the satellites went down, we decided to call you. We’d really like to get those codes the easy way.”
Paul nodded. He knew what the hard way would be. He tried to push the idea of being tortured out of his mind and focus on what would happen if he turned over the codes. He saw two possibilities. One: North was an Immari agent and he would use the codes to kill countless people. Two: America and the Orchid allies were about to make the greatest mistake in human history. And they were possibly going to frame Paul for it. He needed to know more. He needed time to form a plan. “Okay. Look, I’ve been at home for two weeks. I didn’t know any of this was going on. I agree that our back is against the wall. I will turn over the codes, but you should know that the Continuity program has multiple levels of security, including trap doors and protocols that ensure Continuity staff are the only ones who can send new therapies to the implants each Orchid District resident has. You need me. I now understand the threat we’re facing. All I ask is that you make me part of the solution.”
North took a seat and pulled a keyboard close to him. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” The screen changed to show a series of statistics. Paul recognized some of them.
“You’ve done a physical—”
“A short one, yes. We’ve done a large-scale inventory of the entire human race—everyone under the Orchid flag.”
“To what end?”
“There are two lists here. Those we can save—the ones fit to fight or contribute. And those who aren’t.”
“I see.”
“We need to use the Euthanasia Protocol on the unfit list, and we need to do it now.”
“People won’t stand for this. You’ll have riots—”
“We intend to blame the Immari. They’ve taken the food and power. This isn’t a stretch. If they could take Continuity, this is exactly what they would do: euthanize the weak. The death of millions will energize the survivors to stand against the Immari threat. And it would take away the Immari selling point: eliminating the welfare state. With the weak gone, we can offer everything they can. The world the Immari sympathizers want would already be here.” North moved closer to Paul. “With a few keystrokes, we can win this war before it begins, before the cataclysm. Now I need your answer.”
Paul glanced out the glass doors. His staff was arriving, but the guards were directing them away. There was no way out of this room.
“I understand,” Paul said.
“Good.” North motioned to the guard, and a skinny young man carrying a laptop entered. “This young man has been working on the Continuity database. He’s going to follow along with you, Paul. He’ll be watching and taking notes, including your access code. For redundancy, of course.”
“Of course.”
Paul began typing on the keyboard while his new “assistant” got set up.
A few minutes later, Paul opened the main Continuity control program and began walking him through it. “The Euthanasia Protocol is actually a pre-programmed therapy…”