The problem was, Corey had no idea what they were looking at.
“What the hell?” Apparently, neither did Blanton.
As Corey had sensed, the area just inside the big metal door was an open space-for the most part, anyway. There were two metal shipping containers stacked on top of each other against one wall. Their doors were open and both were empty. If Corey had come that way, he would have run right into them.
In the rest of the open area, there were marks painted on the ground that roughly corresponded to the size of the containers, applied in a way that four could sit side by side with space in between.
Beyond the open area was where the weird really began.
Corey couldn’t even guess what the nearest machine did. It was large and had a curling rail system that looked almost like a roller coaster, leading into the massive machine itself. There were several other machines past this that were unrecognizable. In fact, about the only things that were even halfway familiar were two rows of large, enclosed vats. They almost looked like something he’d seen on a brewery tour in St. Louis, but he was sure these weren’t being used for beer.
“Have you noticed?” Blanton asked. “Everything looks so clean. No paper. No personal items. No dusty footprints. Nothing.”
“They’re gone,” Jeannie said.
“Yeah,” Corey agreed.
“What was this place?”
“I don’t know.”
Blanton pulled open a small side hatch on one of the vats and looked in. “Empty.” He shut it again. “These Hidde-Kel people are supposed to be in agriculture, right?”
“Associated with agriculture, yeah.”
“Maybe they’re making some type of fertilizer?”
Jeannie grew instantly wary. “Or pesticide.”
Blanton immediately began wiping his hands on his pants. “You don’t think so, do you?”
“Relax,” Corey said. “As far as I know, they’re not into anything like that.”
“Then what were they doing here?”
“Let’s see if we can figure that out.”
They spent twenty more minutes checking the rest of the manufacturing area and going through the rooms near the front. One thing was clear. This had never been a corporate office. There just wasn’t enough office space, even for a small operation.
As they came back through, Corey opened one of the vats and looked in for himself.
What was he going to do about his paper now? As curious as he was about Hidde-Kel, writing what little he knew about them would not fulfill his assignment. He would have to do what Blanton had suggested at the pub-find another company to write about.
“I guess we should go home,” he said.
Before closing the vat door, his fingers brushed the inside of the container. He was concerned for a second, worried that maybe Jeannie had been right about the pesticides, but there didn’t feel like there was anything on the surface.
Unfortunately, there was.
20
The link to the online video remained active for exactly nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds before it was located and removed. In that time, of the 622 people who clicked on the link, only 51 clicked on it soon enough to watch the video in its entirety. For the others, the video stopped where their download had ceased, and when they tried to reload it, they were presented with a message about technical difficulties.
Of the 51 who did see it, only 24 actually watched the whole thing, and of these, all but three thought it was a viral marketing ploy for a new disaster movie. The three initially took it seriously, and were willing to believe at least part of it might be true. A killer virus, distributed by man. It sure sounded plausible to them. Unfortunately, when they realized the link had disappeared and they couldn’t share it with like-minded friends, they began to lose interest.
Within five days, the three potential believers would barely remember the video at all.
“Dammit,” Tamara Costello said. “Only nine minutes? They’re getting even faster.”
Bobby Lion frowned at the computer screen. “It lasted only three on Vimeo.”
“Do they have somebody just waiting for us to upload? Is that it?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s probably automated to a point. Someone gets alerted when a suspicious video gets uploaded and they take a look, then do whatever they do to pull it down.”
They’d tried everything-unassuming titles, benign descriptions and keywords. They even created a new account every time they posted. Without exception, their work got pulled down with no more than a handful of people seeing it. It was beyond frustrating.
Tamara and Bobby’s job was simple: create and distribute video reports aimed at exposing Project Eden to the general public. Their talents were particularly suited for this. Both had been in the employ of PCN-Prime Cable News-before being recruited by the Hamiltons to help stop the Project.
Recruited was a relative term. What happened was Tamara and Bobby had run afoul of the Project while they were reporting for PCN from the front lines of the Sage Flu outbreak in April. Some of the Hamiltons’ people had helped them escape before they became casualties, too.
They spent several months at the Ranch, learning about Project Eden. Bobby had believed right away, but it had taken Tamara some time to accept the horrifying reality. It was at that point they’d been asked to put their skills to use, and act as the public voice of the resistance.
They’d been set up in San Antonio, Texas, with false identities. Tamara was now Deirdre Murray, and ran a secondhand shop called Deirdre’s Treasures. Bobby was Ralph Barber, a freelance handyman who never seemed to be freelancing anywhere. Instead, he and Tamara spent much of their time in the small studio built in the basement of Deirdre’s Treasures, where he edited the pieces, and Tamara wrote the scripts and recorded the narrations, albeit with her voice altered to avoid identification.
They had tried to get their early video reports into the hands of the established media, hoping they would be aired on networks everywhere. They had met with zero success. They had tried blogs next, but quickly pulled the plug on that when one of the bloggers who posted their video turned up dead within twenty-four hours. They decided, in consultation with Matt and Rachel, that the only thing they could do was post the videos on public sites and hope for the best. Unfortunately, the best had yet to happen.
“How the hell are we supposed to get around this?” she said. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked this. Not by a long shot.
“We have to hope that at some point, they’re going to miss one long enough that people will copy it to their computers and repost so it goes viral. If it starts popping up all over the place, they won’t be able to pull it all down.”
She sighed. “Well, let’s re-upload-”
Her cell phone rang. She answered it. “…this one now. And see if it sticks this time.” The name on the phone’s display read: UNKNOWN.
“Hello?”
“Tamara, it’s Matt.”
She switched to speakerphone. “Hey, Matt. You calling about the latest video? A whole nine minutes this time.”
“Nine and a half,” Bobby said.
“Sorry,” Matt said. “I didn’t know you were putting something up.”
Tamara couldn’t help but frown. They had sent Matt and Rachel an email like they always did before they posted. Matt had even responded with a simple “Thanks.”
Bobby leaned toward the phone. “Fifty-one views before it got pulled down, though I don’t know how many were able to watch it all. Did you get a chance to look at the script for the one we’d like to start this afternoon?”
“Whatever you were planning, you need to table it,” Matt said.
Tamara and Bobby exchanged a concerned look.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I need you to finish WC.”
For several seconds, neither of them could speak. WC did not stand for water closet. It meant Worst Case, as in the video that would be placed if the worst-case scenario occurred. In other words, the video that would describe to humanity what was happening to them. They had started it months earlier, but had not finished it in hopes it would never be needed.