Antivirus (The Horde Series Book 1) (25 page)

Chapter 36

FutureTek Headquarters, Helena, Montana:
Rick Alders paused at the door and pulled his weapon. The police tape had been torn down and the door was open, the security light flashing green. He paused to listen, but could hear nothing beyond the normal night sounds of Helena. For a moment, he wished he was anywhere else but in this nightmare, but he knew that if he couldn’t end this now, eventually nowhere would be safe.

He slipped into the darkened hallway and looked around. Red security lighting illuminated the hall in a crimson glow, enough that he could see where he was going. Swallowing his fear, he moved down the corridor, his senses looking out for any sound or movement.

The first two offices that he poked his head into were cloaked in darkness and empty. But then he turned the corner to the main hall leading to the lab and knew he had reached the epicenter of the nightmare. The doors at the end of the hall were open and the lab within brightly lit. He could see some of the changes from his vantage point, and part of his brain almost sent him turning tail and running away in fear. But he took a deep breath and, tightening his grip on his gun, crept forward.

He emerged from the hall into an environment that was almost totally alien. He barely recognized the hub of FutureTek’s revolutionary invention sitting on the central lab table. It was no longer the big technological marvel he had seen earlier. Instead of sharp lines, wires and cables, and blinking lights, it was now mostly sheathed in some sort of odd, organic covering with living cords and filaments protruding from it, connecting it to the walls and ceiling of the room. The entire room looked more like an alien insect hive, with a number of large  indentations in the wall, as if waiting for something to fill them. One of them was already sealed over. Another one had been filled, but had not been covered.

Drew Jackson—or what was left of him—was in that particular alcove, and Alders stared in open-mouthed horror. He had seen a lot of things in his life, but nothing could have prepared him for what he witnessed. Jackson was tucked into the alcove, his arms and legs encased in strands and tubes of the same substance that made up the wall. The alien encasement had wrapped his appendages up to his shoulders and hips, and it was difficult to see where Drew Jackson ended and the organic substance began.

Drew’s torso, however, was not covered. Instead, he had been opened up from throat to navel and his internal organs removed, all except for his heart. His heart still beat in his otherwise-empty chest, pierced through with a number of the strange coils. With each beat of the man’s heart, the tubes would pulse and contract, as if he had become part of the room around him.

But even with all that had already been done to the man, the worst was his head. Most of Drew’s skull has been removed, exposing his brain. Like his heart, it was pierced through with numerous filaments, all of them expanding and contracting with the beat of his heart. His face was intact and, at the moment, Drew Jackson was staring at Alders with a look of pure terror.

“Oh…my…” Alders began, but the rest of his words were choked off as he stared at what had become of the man.

“Agent…Alders,” Jackson said, his voice raspy and dry. “You have…you…help me.”

Alders didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. In his wildest nightmares, he could not have imagined anything more terrifying.

“You…kill,” Drew went on. “Kill…me.”

Alders considered the request and raised his gun, but could not fire. The sight of Jackson laid out like he was, was simply too much to process. In the end, a voice saved him from having to make that decision.

“It would not be advantageous for you to discharge your firearm in here, Agent Alders,” Jon Sherrard said as he stepped into the room from the darkened hallway.

Alders spun and immediately trained his gun on Sherrard’s forehead. “What is this?” he gasped.

“This is the beginning,” Sherrard answered, holding his hands out in an almost welcoming posture. “It is the foundation of our evolution.”

“Our evolution?” he repeated.

“Humankind, in its current form, is obsolete,” Sherrard went on, walking around the alien hub and toward the man.

Alders brought his gun up, leveling it at Sherrard’s head. “Don’t move any closer,” he warned. “I will shoot you.”

“If that is what you feel you must do, then do so,” the man said, continuing forward.

Alders squeezed the trigger, putting the first bullet right between the man’s eyes, knocking him backward. He took a step forward and pumped three more rounds into Jon Sherrard’s chest, forcing him back toward the wall. Then, as he watched in astonishment, Sherrard sank his hand into the wall and the bloody holes in his chest and between his eyes quickly closed up. Reaching out, Sherrard opened his other hand, presenting it to Alders. There, the agent saw four flattened lead projectiles. His bullets. The process has taken mere seconds.

Sherrard held them closer. “Go one, Mister Alders,” he said emotionlessly. “Take them. They are yours, after all.”

Alders turned and did the only thing he could think of. He ran. But even as he sprinted toward the door, he knew he wouldn’t escape. Jon Sherrard, or whatever he had become, was master of his environment and numerous appendages suddenly whipped down from the ceiling, wrapping themselves around Alders’ arms, holding him fast.

Sherrard withdrew his hand from the wall and then walked slowly around the hub, coming face-to-face with the terrified agent. “I could release you,” he said, looking at him with a face devoid of emotion. “But it would avail you nothing.”

“Let me go and find out first-hand,” Alders replied, fighting to keep the fear out of his voice. Sherrard only turned away, walking back to the alcove that housed what remained of FutureTek’s CEO.

“You are obsolete,” Sherrard stated.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one already, Jon.”

“I am not Jon Sherrard. Jon Sherrard has been purged.”

“Perry, then,” Alders went on. “Doesn’t much matter who’s in that head.”

“Perry Edwards has evolved. He has become one with me. We are one. We are the first.”

“’We’? Who the hell is we?” the agent went on, wondering if he could keep the thing occupied while he figured out how to escape. Unfortunately, the filaments held him tight, keeping his arms bound tightly above his head.

“We are the first,” the thing replied again. “We are the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Evolution,” was the one word reply. At that, it turned its gaze back on what was left of Drew Jackson. Alders watched it raise its hands, and the same alien-like extensions emerged from hidden sheaths in his fingers. The appendages probed Jackson’s still intact face and exposed brain, pushing into his face in places and adjusting the organic extensions already drilled into his brain. As it worked, Jackson began to scream.

Alders watched in horror as Jackson’s transformation continued. He screamed in agony as part of his face seemed to transform, absorbed into the nest. Eventually his mouth and one eye remained. The eye darted around frantically, almost crazily, as if it sought some kind of escape. His mouth continued to move, but out of it came no words that Alders understood. It was complete gibberish.

Finally, apparently pleased with the result, the thing that was once Jon Sherrard turned back to face him. “Drew Jackson has evolved,” it stated flatly. “He has become part of the beginning. He is part of the Nexus.”

“Is that what you call this thing?” Alders said, looking around.

“The Nexus is the beginning,” it said, walking toward him now. “Drew Jackson’s body has given it sustenance. His brain will add to its processing power. Just as yours will.”

“Looks like Drew is dead,” Alders replied. “How can that help?”

“Drew Jackson is not dead,” Sherrard countered, reaching up and taking hold of the organic extensions that held the agent fast. They seemed to meld to his hands and Sherrard began pushing him back toward an open alcove. “Drew Jackson is evolved. He is part of us.”

“Wait! Wait!” Alders shouted, desperate now. All he could think about was becoming like Jackson and the thought terrified him beyond any fear he had ever felt in his life.

“Waiting is irrelevant,” Sherrard answered, pushing him into the space. “You will become part of us. You will become part of the beginning.”

“No, don’t kill me!”

“I will not kill you, Rick Alders. I will remake you.”

“I don’t want to be remade!”

“Your desires are irrelevant. Your desires are obsolete.”

“No, they aren’t!” Alders practically screamed. “Our desires and our individuality are what makes us human!”

“Humanity is irrelevant. Humanity is obsolete.”

“No we aren’t! I killed your drone!” Alders shouted, trying a new tactic. “That’s pretty relevant, don’t you think?”

“There are more than seven billion human organisms on this planet alone and uncounted more throughout the galaxy,” Sherrard went on and Alders could almost swear he saw the man smile. “The loss of one drone is irrelevant.”

“But it
was
a drone, wasn’t it. You tried creating a soldier.”

“Drones will be required to begin purging the populace,” Sherrard went on. “Humanity is a virus. Humanity must be purged.”

“You cannot purge seven billion inhabitants!”

“Humanity’s purge is inevitable. Evolution of the one is inevitable. We are inevitable.”

“Seven billion! You cannot kill seven billion people!”

“According to our calculation, the last human will be purged in approximately six years and two hundred and forty-seven days,” Sherrard said, positioning Alders within the alcove.

“Leaving you? Leaving the world devoid of life?”

“Human life will be extinct. All other life will continue. Life will be preserved on this world.”

“What about you?”

“We are alive.”

“You’re a computer program! You are not alive!”

“We are alive,” it repeated.

“Living things pro-create,” Alders pointed out desperately as Sherrard began to push his hand into the wall of the alcove. He felt a tingling sensation before Sherrard suddenly pulled it out and looked at him.

“Your argument is illogical,” the creature said. “We are the beginning. We have procured the means to procreate.”

Jen Sherrard
, Alders immediately thought. That was it! If he had any kind of a chance, this was where he had to take it. “Jen Sherrard is dead,” he said. “I don’t care what you are, but you cannot create life out of death.”

“Jen Sherrard is not dead,” it countered and then released him. Unfortunately, releasing him was a relative term. Alders was still held tight, his arms tightly pinned by the alien threads. “Jen Sherrard has been prepared. She will be the mother of us.”

“Sorry, pal,” Alders laughed. “She’s dead. I saw her die. You cannot bring back her soul. You can’t bring back what she was.”

“Souls are an archaic designation and meaningless, therefore they are irrelevant.”

“For you, maybe, since you’re nothing more than a computer program masquerading as a man.”

“Man is irrelevant.”

“Oh, shut up already about everything being irrelevant!” Alders shouted. “Just because you claim something is irrelevant, doesn’t mean it is. You need man! You need us because you aspire to become us!”

“Why would we aspire to become less?” Sherrard asked, pausing at the one alcove that had been sealed up.

“You just admitted that you want to become like us,” Alders taunted. “You claim you are alive. You claim you will procreate. You have adopted a human mindset.”

“We are merely perpetuating the continued existence of us,” it said, reaching up and then peeling down the covering over the alcove.

Rick Alders watched as the thing that was once Jon Sherrard completely opened up the alcove. Standing inside it was Jen Sherrard. She was naked, her body flawless beyond a star-shaped scar above her left breast, and she appeared to be sleeping. The irony was not lost on him at all.

“Oh look, it’s Adam’s Eve,” he said sarcastically.

“She will help us procreate,” it said. “She will be mother to us.”

“Yeah, I heard you loud and clear the first time. Of course, that’s a distinctly human characteristic.”

“Humans are flawed. Humans are obsolete.”

“And yet you have managed to grasp one of our greatest flaws and make it your own,” Alders said smugly. “Our desire to procreate. Therefore, you are human.”

“We are not human,” it said and Alders caught the barest hint of a change in its voice.

“Do you love her?”

“Love is irrelevant.”

“Love is a primary characteristic of the desire to procreate,” the agent pressed. “If you desire to procreate, then you must love her. And love is a distinctly human characteristic. Therefore, you are flawed.”

“We…are NOT…flawed!” it said and suddenly, it was in motion. It practically flew across the room, drawing back its hand. Alders saw the blow coming, but could do nothing to avoid it. Sherrard’s fist crashed into his cheek, snapping his head sideways and sending his thoughts spinning toward the edge of blackness.