Chapter 39 - The Counter-Contagion
"Sarah? What do you see?!" Daniel demanded, slamming his last magazine into the 9mm.
"The platform isn't just an oil rig, Daniel," Sarah whispered, her voice sounding distant, almost mechanical, as her pupils dilated to full black. "It’s the master transmission relay. Arthur didn't come here to rescue us. He came here because this platform houses the high-frequency satellite array needed to broadcast the activation signal."
Through the haze of gunsmoke and rain, Daniel looked toward the central tower of the platform. Rising two hundred feet into the storm was a massive, dishes-laden communications mast, its aircraft warning lights blinking in steady, crimson intervals.
"The distribution has already begun," Sarah continued, tears streaming down her soot-stained cheeks. "The automated shipment orders cleared thirty minutes ago. Forty million doses are being loaded onto medical transport planes across six continents right now. If Arthur reaches that broadcast terminal, he doesn't just activate the disease... he locks the cure behind an automated encryption algorithm that only his biometric signature can unlock."
"Then we kill him," Daniel said, his jaw tightening into iron.
"You can't just kill him!" Sarah grabbed Daniel’s arm with desperate strength. "If Arthur’s heart stops before the global sequence is aborted, the system treats it as a hostile takeover. It executes a dead-man's switch! The pathogen will activate automatically everywhere!"
"Then how do we stop it?!"
"Noah," Sarah looked down at the glowing infant. "Noah is the root administrator. His DNA was written to be the overriding key. But to broadcast his genetic frequency across the satellite network, he has to be plugged directly into the central bio-interface."
"In the tower," Daniel realized, his heart sinking.
To reach the communications tower, they would have to cross sixty yards of open, rain-swept catwalk under the direct fire of Arthur's private military contractor team and the helicopter’s minigun. It was a suicide run.
Suddenly, a ragged, bloody figure dragged itself around the corner of the compressor tank.
It was Evelyn.
She was bleeding from three separate bullet wounds in her chest, her breathing a wet, bubbling rattle. Her right eye was gone, replaced by a jagged tear of flesh, but in her hand, she held a live fragmentation grenade she had stripped from the dead contractor Daniel had dropped.
Her pin was already pulled. Her thumb was the only thing holding down the safety spoon.
"Evelyn..." Daniel raised his weapon.
"Shut up... Daniel," Evelyn coughed, blood pouring over her lips. She looked at Sarah, her sister, her creator, her tormentor. For the first time, the psychotic madness had drained from Evelyn’s eyes, leaving only the hollow, terrible grief of a broken child.
"He lied to me, Sarah," Evelyn whispered, tears mixing with the blood on her chin. "He told me... if I brought him the boy... he would fix me."
Sarah knelt down in the water, her hand reaching out to touch Evelyn’s trembling, ruined face. "I know, Evie. I know what he did to you."
Evelyn let out a choked, ragged sob. "The spoon... my thumb is slipping, Sarah."
She looked toward the open hangar where Arthur stood beneath the helicopter’s rotors, directing his men toward their position.
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"Get the baby to the tower," Evelyn rasped, her bloody fingers closing tighter around the grenade. "Let me show our father... what his masterpiece can really do."
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