Again, the nanotech had spread. The booster was now worldwide exactly like the vaccine, available for everyone to use and study. Ruth knew there was also a fourth fully functional nano, because it was hers.
The parasite had no benign features whatsoever. It was a violently simplified model of the booster combined with a new discrimination key, a rough, bare bones machine designed to attack the vaccine instead of the machine plague. This was the doomsday weapon she’d created in Grand Lake. It would have left everyone vulnerable to the machine plague again, laying waste to the armies on all sides as they scrambled for elevation.
Ruth couldn’t say what avenues were being pursued by other allied researchers. As for herself, she just didn’t have the stomach for more killing. She’d set aside her own efforts at weaponized nanotech to develop new spin-offs of the booster, pursuing medical technology that would not only prevent disease — it should also heal wounds such as Cam’s old, body-wide injuries. There were hundreds of thousands of people with plague scarring, and thousands more still struggling with radiation sickness or burns. Ruth wanted to help. Now that decision seemed like a criminal error. The other side had pulled far ahead when she might have been the one to destroy them first.
“The nanotech is Chinese,” Ruth said, calling to the walkie-talkie. She’d set it on the desktop to free her hands as she worked a UV lamp over her equipment. “The style is too similar to everything else of theirs I’ve seen. That wasn’t much, but Leadville was studying enemy programs as closely as possible.”
“You’re sure, Ruth?” Greg said.
“Yes. The nanotech is Chinese.” She tried to irradiate every nook and seam, which was especially difficult among her paperwork, her laptop, the two microscopes, picoamme ter, and power cords. She had to ruffle through her gear with one hand as she held the lamp with the other.
The light seared her eyes even though she kept her face half turned, using her helmet as a shield. The purple-white heat felt like a small sun. It was no accident that she targeted her gear and the desk first, because the lamp might compromise the material of her suit. In fact, it could melt through the plastic sheeting if she wasn’t careful.
Ruth heard another thump and lifted her head. Had that noise come from outside? She turned back to her desk. Every drawer was suspect. She opened the first one and shone the light inside, pushing her other hand through a few pencils, file clips, and a voice recorder. The next drawer held her working notes, and the third was empty. She had so little to show for her time in this place.
“I don’t know how it’s replicating,” she said, “but it’s closely based on the booster tech. The heat engine is similar, even the general structure, except they’ve added a lot of bulk. It’s bigger. More sophisticated. At a guess, I’d say this thing is made of nearly two billion AMU.”
No one questioned the acronym. Atomic mass units. Most of them had soaked up as much technical knowledge as possible, and Bobbi said, “If it’s using the same heat engine, can’t you reprogram the vaccine to attack it, too?”
What had Cam told them?
“We can try,” Ruth said. “It’s a very different machine. I also subjected it to low air pressure and I don’t think it has the hypobaric fuse, so it won’t self-destruct above ten thousand feet.” She paused over her desk, then aimed the UV lamp at the walkie-talkie, too, uncertain if it would fry the radio.
There was another clunking sound in front of her and this time she was sure it was from outside. Good.
“Cam?” she said.
“What is the nanotech doing to us?” he asked, and Ruth smiled with relief that the walkie-talkie was fine. But her smile evaporated in the harsh light. “I don’t know,” she said. “It goes for the brain, obviously. Maybe the nervous system, too. It’s some kind of biological warfare.”
“I’ll get a work crew together,” he said.
“Thank you.” Oh, God, thank you, she thought. Then she turned the radio over and irradiated its other side.
The UV bath wasn’t guaranteed to pulverize the nanotech. At most, it should damage the invisible machines. It would be more effective in combination with X-rays, but they hadn’t been able to find what they needed in the small hospital in Steamboat Springs. Like electrical generators, the most common medical equipment had been scavenged long ago. They hadn’t even been able to buy one on the local market.
Trying to scour the light over every millimeter of her suit was infuriating. The tanks on her back nearly threw her on her head when she tried to reach her boots. Once she pressed her knuckles against the plastic on the floor, yanking the lamp away just in time. She knelt against the desk just to keep her balance, working the lamp over every crease in her legs, neck, and sleeves with cold-blooded precision.
Ruth pointed the lamp sideways across her faceplate, too, with her eyes scrunched tight against the purple heat. She twisted to aim the light up and down her air tanks, contorting her upper body. Finally she turned to the tent itself. She was patient, sweeping the light back and forth like a paintbrush.
In the other room, Patrick continued to worm against the floor. Bam. Scraaatch. Bam. Bam.
“Huuh,” Linda groaned. “Huuh.”
“I’m going to turn on the fans,” Ruth said. “You guys should back off in case something goes wrong.”
“Ruth, wait,” Bobbi said, just as Greg said, “No! You have to tell us more.”
“That’s all I know. Where is Cam?”
“This isn’t a good idea!”
“Greg, it would take me days to pull the nano apart with this AFM. What I have is a surface scan. It’s in my laptop. I can keep trying to make sense of it, but I’m coming out.”
She hoped Cam would say something, too. Anything. She ached for reassurance and a friendly voice. She just wanted to make contact again. Didn’t he realize it might be for the last time? But he must have been busy redistributing their guards and finding tools.
“I’ll call you when I’m ready,” she told Greg. Then she punched the emergency switch bolted to her desktop.
The room jumped. Ruth almost fell. Loose pages ripped up past her face as the plastic snapped tight on all sides. Behind her, it ballooned outward like a sail. The tent was secured to the ceiling, floor, and three of the four walls, where hundreds of carpenter’s staples had been shot through reinforced patches, but the airlock and the decon tent were only tied to the floor. That end of the tent wanted to pull free. Her suit leapt in the same way. The chest piece hiked up against her collar and her sleeves trembled in the cyclone.
There were two square metal frames set in the tent, a small one in the ceiling and a larger one beneath her. They’d bolted a heavy-duty exhaust fan into the floor and an air compressor overhead. The fan was nearly four feet wide. Eric and Cam had taken it from a press shop, where it was used to vent bad air away from the shop’s employees. Here, it fed clean air into the room through two openings hidden in the cabin’s foundation. They hadn’t wanted to seat it in the wall where it might raise questions if the military ever came through town.
Ruth rubbed her hands over as much surface area as she could reach in quick, arcing motions, hoping to scrape free any nanotech clinging to the tent.
Suddenly the plastic on her right tore loose from its staples, bumping her shoulder and hip. Ruth screamed. “Aaaah!” The plastic itself was intact — only the stapled patches on the outside had torn — but if any more of the plastic came free, the tent might collapse around her like a net — or it might rip.