The infection happened so fast. What had Carmack been thinking? How much of the experiment had UAC known about? Had they been working on a bioweapon — in the form of a transformed human being?
Reaper’s country was in many ways effectively indistinguishable from the multinationals headed by the United Aerospace Corporation — and the UAC had a great many enemies. Religious fanatics formed into well-armed, secretly trained militias — some of them big enough to be called armies — and factions in hostile nations furious over the UAC’s exploitation of their resources; over its willingness to prop up brutal hegemonies just to keep the goods flowing from the oil fields, the uranium mines, the methane fields — like the one where Jumper had died…
But how could the UAC use these genetic demons as part of an armed force? The damned things were completely out of control. Could UAC’s military branch have been planning to drop an infected creature in amongst an enemy force — to get them all changed and killing one another? They must’ve had some means to control them…or they’d intended to develop controls. But then things had gotten out of hand.
Another possibility was that the whole project had gone sour almost from the start: the imps and the Hell Knight had been an unintended side effect of another effort entirely, hinted at by some of the computer files Samantha had unearthed, to create a kind of superman who remained in control of himself, who retained his former loyalties.
Maybe a repeat of the exact same mistake the scientists of Olduvai had made. Some vast, quickmoving catastrophe had destroyed that civilization.
Pretty obvious now what that cataclysm had been — it was replaying itself, growling and snarling, right now, beyond the door. It had killed Destroyer and Mac and Duke and dozens of others. Instinctively, the genetic demons wanted to spread their fury out into the world, wanted all humanity to share in it.
Whatever had happened on Olduvai was about to happen right here on their own world, culminating with some gigantic act of self-destruction, rendering the surface of the world a desert, the air poisonous.
Still…some people injected with C-24 didn’t sink to a bestial level — whatever dark thing there was in others that distorted their transformation was lacking in certain individuals. There were other possibilities, for someone like that. There was a chance for real power, simmering in the serum.
Reaper wondered…just suppose…
He shook his head. No — too risky. There was another way to stop these things…the only way to be sure of stopping them.
But he didn’t know if he had the strength to do anything more. He’d had longer missions than this, under worse physical conditions — firefights that lasted hours in temperatures ranging up to one hundred-and-ten, unspeakable humidity. But he was feeling so weak now…like the bottom was dropping out of the world.
Sam picked up on his distress, looked at him inquiringly — then stared at the blood running from under his body armor down his hip and leg. “You’ve been hit.” She unsnapped his armor, like pulling the shell from a tortoise, peeled it wetly away. More blood gushed, then, and they saw it was coming from a small hole in Reaper’s abdomen.
A bullet hole, from friendly fire? Or something else?
Still simmering with adrenaline, Reaper hardly felt the pain from it — just a kind of pinching throb. But he could feel the strength seeping out of him through that wound. He felt cold…colder by the second…
“You’re losing too much blood,” she murmured, bringing her medikit over. She examined the wound gravely, then glanced up at him. He saw it in her eyes — he was in bad shape. Not likely to get very far from here.
He nodded his understanding.
She sprayed the wound on his side and the raked places on his arm with skin sealant to stop the oozing.
What they’d gone through already would have pushed most people over the edge into helpless hysteria. His sister had been deeply shaken, had come close to losing it — and then pulled herself back. And now she was right back to taking charge.
My sister, he thought, smiling. Scientist, doctor, take-charge broad. She really is something.
He felt colder yet. Dizzy. A redoubled roaring echoed from the blocked doorway. The door shuddered as something big tried it. They heard the sound of claws on metal — a long, drawn-out screeching…then mindless chattering — and a squeal as one of the genetic demons attacked another; their competing roars as they fought. The tendency the things had to fight one another was one of the few advantages he and Sam had left.
The door started shaking again.
It would hold for a while. But not long. Those things would be in here, in minutes — ripping into them, or shooting those hideous tongue-spears into their throats…
Reaper had to act. There were just too many of them now — and he didn’t have the BFG to even the odds. He’d soon run out of ammo if he took them on, tried to kill them all one by one.
Somehow he had to stop them from getting up to the surface, spreading out into the world. There was just one way.
Blow the Ark. Blow the compound. Meaning he and Sam would probably have to die, too. But it was that or…
He made up his mind.
“You have to listen to me,” Reaper said. “This is important…”
“You’re cold,” she observed. “You’re shivering…”
He bent over the satchel of ammo, started taking out grenades, taping and strapping them together with anything he could find. “These are ST grenades,” he told her. He had to work hard to get his fingers to move; they were going numb, feeling rubbery from blood loss. “When they get through…Are you listening? You pop the top, hit this button, okay?”
He finished the improvised bomb…and sank back, swaying in place. Feeling like he might keel over. The room was spinning, ever so slowly.
“John,” she said, urgently, “stay awake, please. Stay with me!”
The room was getting dark. The wound in his side was deep, and patching it on the outside hadn’t been enough. Internal bleeding. He could feel it — like his insides were gradually disintegrating. He might be able to med himself up enough to stop another wave of the genetic demons. But he doubted he could take care of them all. And every one of them had to be stopped cold.
He put his hand on her arm. “Listen, Sam — if I can’t make it to the elevator to keep them from getting topside, you’re going to have to nuke the whole place from here.”
She didn’t get back to him on that one right away.
He looked at her. “Sam, are you listening?”
She chewed a fingernail. Went determinedly back to the computer, monitoring the upload. But she said, “Yes.”
“If the quarantine clock gets to one minute, and you haven’t heard from me, or if one of those things gets in here — pop the top, hit the button…”
She was just going to have to deal with it the best she could. But at the back of his mind he did wonder if he were becoming a little too much like Sarge. She looked at him. Waiting.
“…and throw it in the Ark,” he said.
She nodded numbly. They both knew what that would mean — the Ark was unspeakably volatile. The explosion would set off a chain reaction, a blast that would multiply itself exponentially. The compound and a great deal more would be destroyed and both of them with it.
With any luck, though — the planet would be saved.
He stood up — and nearly fell over. Did they have a vitamin shot of some kind? Drugs? He didn’t see anything like that in here.
Sam nodded to herself. Coming to her own hard decision. She took something out of her medical bag. A syringe.