The Killing Jar (17 page)

CPI-RW2-05, NEW YORK

AUGUST 10, 2232

For the second time in two days, Theo got a new tablet. This one showed a black screen with his name in plain white letters, though a few adjustments in the settings area let him personalize every aspect.

He changed the background to a picture of a guitar. No use in hiding his love of music now, though it was too late either way. He didn’t imagine CPI would fund his hobbies.

Once in place, the home screen populated with icons and links to all sorts of applications, netsites, and programs. He was perusing them when a knock sounded at the door to his room.

“Hi, I’m Jane,” she said in a flash, her smile charming and warm.

“I remember. I’m Theo,” he said, not sure what she was doing there. Then again, she was quite attractive, her face heart-shaped with emerald-green eyes. He could think of worse friends to make.

“I hope you don’t mind me stopping by. I just wanted to make sure you were settling in okay.” Her hands were clasped behind her back as she sweetly twirled side to side.

“Yeah, I think so. Just getting the tablet set up like Nick wanted.”

“Oh sure, let me help you. Did you see the shopping apps yet?” She darted into his room as she plucked the tablet from his hands. Her eyes were on the screen as she sank to the foot of the bed, crossed her long legs, and started moving things around on the screen.

“I’m not sure how it works, but basically this app, the Closet, it has a huge database with all kinds of clothes, shoes, whatever you want. This black tee would look really great on your shoulders.”

Theo sat beside her as she maneuvered the shirt onto the holographic display. She smelled like flowers and vanilla.

“What do you think?” She looked up him with her doe eyes.

“Yeah, sure. Pick out whatever you think.” In fact, Theo had concrete ideas about what items constituted his personal style, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. At least not right now.

She smiled and returned her attention to the screen, her eyes narrow as she skimmed thousands of items to find him a new wardrobe. “You were a Scholar?” she asked without taking her eyes off the display. “What was your area of interest?”

“Nanotechnology,” he admitted. He didn’t really want to talk about it, terrified it would lead to questions about what brought him to CPI. Instead, he turned the conversation to her. “You’re a Gallagher?”

“Uh, yeah. Jane Gallagher. That’s me.”

Only an idiot would miss the significance. As a Kaufman, there were only a handful of families with pedigrees as impressive as his, and the Philadelphia Gallaghers were one of them.

“You’re one of the Lancaster Kaufmans?” She batted her eyes.

“Yeah. My mom, Cheryl, she’s an extragalactic astronomer. My dad’s the Lead of his Solar Astronomy department at the Lancaster Institute of Cosmic Research.”

Jane’s eyes went wide. “Oh, really? So amazing to have someone around here who understands, you know? Try talking about relays or sentient animatronics with Osip and he goes all blank and stares at my tits.”

At the mention, Theo couldn’t help but look. Like a dog to a bone, he was drawn in. The cut of her royal-blue dress accentuated her chest in exactly the right way.

Theo quite enjoyed the sight.

He couldn’t understand it. Two days ago, he had killed a boy, completely and utterly by accident, but he had done it. And now this little fox was dropped in his lap? He didn’t deserve it.

Jane looked up and noticed his line of sight.

Theo grappled for something to say.

A mild
meep-meep-meep
saved him. He let out a silent sigh and hurried for the door.

“Yes! Finally!” Jane’s lips curled with anticipation. Apparently she and some of the others had been waiting for this for weeks.

For Theo, it was all moving so fast.

Nick had instructed them to arrive at the seventh floor, though none had ever been there before, even Jane. As they walked to the elevator, they found the new girl Dasia. “Hey, there you are. I was looking for you,” she said to Jane.

“Sorry, I was helping Theo set up his tablet.”

Dasia looked at him for a brief moment. “Nice to meet you,” she said quietly as the three stepped into the elevator.

“You too.”

“Have you seen that girl Mable? She left her tablet in the auditorium. I was going to give it to her.” Sure enough, she held two tablets under her arm.

Jane’s eyebrows shot up as she gaped at Dasia. “Ew, you were going to talk to her?”

“Yeah, she seems okay.” Dasia’s gaze lowered in embarrassment.

“You know she’s an Untouchable? Nick said Dr. Arrenstein recruited her personally. Clearly he’s losing touch.” Jane flipped a bit of hair over her shoulder. They waited in silence for the elevator to arrive.

When the doors opened, the other two guys were waiting with Nick. He didn’t look surprised to see there were only three of them.

“Thank you all for being on time,” Nick started, his hands in his pockets.

“Aren’t we missing one?” Osip asked.

“Dr. Arrenstein will update Mable at a later time.” Theo was pleased to hear it. Mable was difficult, despite what Dasia thought. And Arrenstein gave him a bad feeling. Silent and brooding, Theo knew Arrenstein wasn’t someone to mess with.

“So this is it? You’re finally going to tell us?” Osip asked, chomping at the bit.

“Yes, this is your briefing on the program. Any and all information learned here is protected by the highest global security measures. Any attempt to reveal, share, expose, or in other way violate that security will result in your immediate termination. Are we clear?”

Some of the others looked nervous, but all these speeches about the high stakes made Theo’s heart beat with excitement. He might have a chance to do something important with his life after all.

“This building is the central offices and personnel housing facility for CPI, the Center for Parasitological Inquiry. All this information is available in the files on your tablet. You’ll be expected to know every detail, but for now, we’ll just give you an introduction. There’s a lot to take in.”

“Para whata?” Osip interrupted, his face scrunched at the sound of the foreign word.

“Parasitological, as in pertaining to parasites,” Jane explained, her tone short.

Nick pushed open the door at his back and walked them into a large laboratory space not all that different from some he’d seen at the Scholar Academy. They moved past rows of exam tables, testing equipment, and various odds and ends.

When at last they stopped, Theo’s stomach plummeted. On a table before them sat a single jar filled with a golden fluid and the strangest creature he’d ever seen.

Theo guessed it was some kind of arthropod, but it had two long antennae, each five or six inches. It appeared scaled, the whole body covered in tiny plates. There was no doubt in his mind: this thing was alien, foreign.

The sight of it made the hairs of his arms stand on end.

“What in the bloody hell is that?” Osip bent over and put his hands on his knees so he could lean in, his face all but pressed against the glass canister.

“This is the first one. It was found in the throat of a propulsion engineer twenty years ago.”

“Gross!” Georgie bellowed. “That was in someone’s mouth?”

“Not just someone. Dr. Grant Lilliwood, one of the premier propulsion engineers of his time. He was on the verge of a major breakthrough when he started saying odd things, asking his mentee to destroy his research.”

Nick looked around to make sure he had their attention and found all eyes glued on the strange specimen in the jar.

“When he died suddenly, his body was sent for digital autopsy and this was discovered in his throat. The antennas were positioned in the nasal cavity in such a way as to reach the cerebrum. It’s theorized that the specimen was altering his speech patterns by contacting the Broca’s Area of his brain.”

“English doc,” Osip complained.

“The bug-thing was controlling him,” Jane translated, her arms crossed as she stared.

“We don’t know the extent of its effect on him, but it was profound enough to destroy his research and set back the field another twenty years.”

“And kill him,” Osip added.

“That, too,” Nick admitted.

Theo absorbed the information as fast as he could, taking it all in, listening without interrupting. He didn’t have a background in biology, but from what he had learned in some of his early classes, parasites were quite common, using often disturbing means of gaining and keeping their hosts.

Sure, this one was particularly disturbing, the circumstances with the engineer unfortunate, but he couldn’t imagine why it would be a matter of global security. It wasn’t as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

Then he realized something Nick had said. “This was the first.”

Nick looked at him and smiled, pleased someone had figured it out. “Yes, since then there have been over a hundred.”

Osip stood up straight and Jane gasped. Georgie remained silent at the back of the group. Dasia clutched the two tablets tight to her chest.

“When this first specimen was isolated, it was sent to a lab for study. They thought maybe it was just a new species to be identified, something produced by the radiation after the war.”

That sounded a totally reasonable explanation to Theo. Radiation did all sorts of strange things to creatures, especially after prolonged exposure.

But then Nick kept talking. “The specimen’s genetic code is completely different from any other species.”

“In what way?” Jane asked.

“The molecules are a triple helix with six nucleotide pairs. The backbone is composed of arsenic with a dimolecular sugar. Biochemically speaking, they are by far the most advanced organisms in existence.”

“That’s not possible. Every organism has the same genetic structure. Even viruses that aren’t living have nucleic acids,” she continued, as if Nick hadn’t considered the possibility before.

“After that discovery, CPI was organized to determine exactly what it was and why it had attacked the engineer. They never imagined what it was they had. After a time, they came to call this one
Sonora novella
, or The Echo.”

“So this is like a real thing, a real animal?” Osip turned and stared at Nick.

“Well, not an animal. We call them bugs, but they aren’t really. We don’t know what they are for certain.”

“And you’ve had them here all this time? We’ve been in a building with these brain-eating bugs for weeks and you didn’t tell us!” He shouted up at Nick who stood a good foot above him. Osip broke into an angry spew of Russian. Theo assumed there were some not so nice things being said, but none of them could translate.

All they could do was wait for his anger to die down.

“These specimens are all dead. That’s part of our problem,” Nick replied calmly once Osip had run out of breath. “We’ve identified four species including the Echo.”

Nick walked down the aisle to another section of the lab. In canisters large and small stood a dozen bugs identical to the one in the first jar. They each had long wisping antennas that had been inserted into someone’s brain.

Theo gagged.

Jane was there in an instant, her hand around his waist as they stared at the collection, the strange morbid collection of parasitic bugs that weren’t really bugs.

“That’ll be all for now,” Nick began. “Tomorrow morning, meet here at 0800. We’ll get you acquainted with the rest.”

No one hesitated. They turned and headed for the door, a slow lifeless trudge of seven young adults who had just seen a nightmare. And there were three more to come.