Chapter 48

“Stop!” Gamay shouted.

It was a cry of pure desperation. The kind of plea she was not used to uttering. And while neither Vaughn nor the rat bastard lifted a finger, the surgical robot stopped and raised the spinning drill.

“It will listen to you,” Vaughn explained. “If you give us what we want, the drill will remain paused. But if you remain silent…”

Seconds ticked by. Gamay felt sick. No longer was she fearless. In fact, she was terrified. She found she couldn’t think, couldn’t act. The silence must have lasted too long because the drill began to move again. Tipping back into position and spinning up to full speed once more.

Gamay found her breath coming in spurts, as if she’d jumped into icy water. Her diaphragm would not move correctly. Her lungs would not fill with air.

Think , she told herself. Act.

The drill proceeded downward. This time it dug into Paul’s scalp, curling off a piece of skin like an orange peel. Blood began to fly outward in splatters.

“Wait,” she shouted again. “Please. This is insanity.”

The drill stopped and pulled back once more. Blood oozed from Paul’s skull. It ran down the side of his face.

“Tell us about the mosquitoes.”

Gamay waited as long as she could. But when the drill started up again, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “We were attempting to use a virus to change the mosquitoes so they wouldn’t be able to absorb malaria or dengue fever, which kills millions of people around the world every year.”

“And?”

“We accidentally discovered a method that would allow the mosquitoes to carry any type of virus, from Ebola to syphilis. Anything that could be carried in the blood.”

“Yes,” Vaughn said. “A doomsday revelation. This we already know. But how was it done? What genes of the mosquito did you alter?”

“No,” Gamay said, shaking and shrinking back. “Why do you want to know this? No one should want to know this.”

The drill hung over Paul, continuing to spin. A fourth arm moved into place. This one held a bone cutter saw, which wound up as hideously as the drill.

“We can give him back to you as he is,” Vaughn said. “Or he can join the others.”

With that statement, an array of lights came on inside the floor beneath them. Gamay looked down. The flooring had seemed opaque, but now lit from within, it revealed itself to be a scuffed but otherwise translucent acrylic. Beneath it she saw ghostly white bodies floating in an amber liquid. Their eyes were closed, their noses and mouths covered by masks that held air and feeding tubes, which had been inserted into their throats and windpipes. Wires were attached to them by the hundreds. They wafted and lolled in the fluid like seagrass.

“My God,” she gasped.

“Yes,” Vaughn replied. “The machine will soon be just that.”

Gamay found she couldn’t look away. The people were arranged like the hours of a clock, with their heads toward the middle. She counted nine of them, with three slots open and waiting.

She understood instantly. Either these men would get what they wanted, or Paul would join these people. If he didn’t die in the process first.

She knew at that moment there was no way she could resist. And yet, if she gave them what they wanted, she and Paul and every member of the Isabella ’s crew would probably die or become a part of the machine anyway.

The only win they could hope for—the only pyrrhic victory she could imagine—was to deny these men the information they sought. And that meant she had to die before they forced it from her.

Tears streamed down her face. She looked up at the screen. “I’m sorry, Paul.”

With that she lunged toward Vaughn, diving under a baton swung by his bald protector and launching herself into his legs. She brought him to the ground, climbed on top of him, and raised her arm to throat punch him with all her strength.

The bald man caught her arm in the backswing and kept her from carrying out the assault. With a violent pull, he threw her off and tossed her to the floor. She lunged for him this time, reaching for the pistol he carried on his belt, but he knocked her aside with a backhand that left her face stinging and bruised.

She hoped he would pull the gun and shoot her, but he merely stepped back and gave her a better view of the screen as the drill surged toward Paul’s skull once more.

She turned and took off running, racing for the stairs. Charging up them so rapidly, she lost her balance near the top and tumbled forward, smashing her shin again and sprawling out across the landing.

Flooded with adrenaline and feeling no pain, she jumped to her feet and sprinted into the darkness of the corridor.

It wasn’t the cowardly act that it seemed. She knew they wouldn’t waste their leverage by drilling into Paul’s head without her there to coerce information from. They would stop the process and save it for later, starting the entire gruesome show all over again. Her only hope to avoid that was some form of escape.

She ran with abandon, racing down the corridors, which alternated between the black anodized steel and the plexiglass protecting the cooled computer rooms. There was nothing to suggest a direction. Nothing she could use as a landmark. It was all the same.

Stopping in front of one glass panel, she tried to smash it with her fists, and then used her head, the hardest surface on the human body. It did nothing but knock her backward.

The sound of footsteps coming after her put fear into her heart. She gave up trying to smash the glass and took off running again.

Coming to an intersection, she barely slowed. Left, right, or straight? It didn’t really matter.

She burst to the left, rushed across a series of grates that allowed air up from below, the way they did for the subway systems in big cities. Hot air rising. Perhaps it led to an escape hatch somewhere up above.

She looked for a ladder but found nothing that led up. She ran to the next intersection, turned right, and slammed into another plexiglass wall. With no way around it she doubled back, only to crash into another wall made of the clear but impenetrable plastic.

The sudden appearance of the second wall surprised her. It must have dropped into place behind her after she passed by. She was trapped like an insect under a drinking glass. She threw her entire weight against the panel, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the computer voice asked.

“Away from you!” Gamay shouted defiantly.

“As I told you, there is no path that leads away from me.”

She wanted to swear at the computer, to call it all kinds of names. The act of the powerless.

She looked through the glass panel. The men were coming for her. They had dogs with them, snarling animals that looked like a cross between wolves and German shepherds. In the dim light their eyes seemed to glow red like hounds from some hellscape.

Gamay backed away in fear. Only then did she notice the reflection in the clear plastic. She spun around to see a waif-like woman standing in the space behind her. The tiny woman had smooth black hair and wore tattered gray robes. She held a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture. To Gamay’s surprise she could see mist, tree vines, and dark, earthy soil behind the woman. The outside.

“You don’t belong here,” the figure said. “You’ll get lost if you stay.”

Gamay ignored her and lunged for the freedom beyond this hidden door, banging into a glass panel once again like a bird in mid-flight.

“Open it!” she demanded. “Let me out!”

The fairy woman did not reply. Instead she reached through the glass and touched Gamay’s forehead with her fingers.

A spark exploded in Gamay’s mind, brighter than fireworks in the dark. She fell backward into the darkness, stunned and disoriented. She dropped for what seemed like seconds and then slammed against the metal grating of the floor.

Aching from the impact, she reached out and brushed the wall with her hand. She felt the smooth, anodized steel and then the cold protrusion of the pipe that had gouged her leg. She opened her eyes and saw the single penlight up above, pointing down in solitude and illuminating her cell.

How am I here? She’d run in the opposite direction. Zigzagged through a maze. Even if she’d fallen through a trapdoor, it would have been almost impossible for her to end up back in her cell.

She wondered if she’d never left the room, if she’d imagined or hallucinated the entire experience. That would explain the sudden transparent walls, the strange layout of the tunnels, and the appearance of the diminutive woman.

She tried to raise her head, but could not lift it. She tried to bring her legs up to her chest, but found they were anchored to the floor as if held in place by magnets. Her left arm was pinned as well. Only her right arm remained free.

She reached for the wall and found the pipe she’d tripped on earlier. It was cold and roughly welded and covered with a hint of condensation. She gripped it intensely, as if holding on to reality itself.

And then, without any warning, the pipe dissolved in her grasp, vanishing like sand in the undertow of a retreating wave. Her hand fell to the floor, smacking the surface and refusing to move again.

The truth hit all at once. Everything she’d just seen and done was a dream, a construct of her mind. Part fabrication, part hallucination, part reality. Everything else was gone, but she was still there, bathed in the illumination of the tiny light.

It could mean only one thing: she was already inside the machine.

—

Vaughn stood in the control room with the Overseer beside him. Gamay Trout lay unmoving on a hospital gurney in front of them. Her head was shaved and strapped into place. Scars from three surgeries performed on her skull appeared raw and freshly sutured. They were discolored from the antiseptic gel that had been rubbed over the incisions and appeared inflamed and painful. An array of wires hooked to the leads in her skull sprouted from her scalp and fell to the side like a clump of switchgrass. Her left arm and both legs were strapped down. Her right arm had worked itself free and grasped the rail of the bed, until Vaughn had slid it out from under her hand.

She was under their complete control, but something had gone wrong.

“What happened?” Vaughn asked. They’d been perhaps moments from accessing what she knew about altering the mosquito DNA.

“Her brain wave pattern collapsed,” TAU said. “We lost her signal.”

“How?”

“Unknown,” TAU replied. “Some subjects do not meld well with the totality of connection. She’s stable now. But in a deeper unconscious state.”

“Wake her,” Vaughn demanded.

“You would risk losing her completely,” TAU said. “A better choice is to allow her brain time to accept the new inputs. You heard her thoughts. The reality she’s constructed for herself is a prison. Her husband and friends are in danger. Let that weigh on her until we wake her up again. She will reveal what she knows. Even if she just thinks about it. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Vaughn snapped. “We need to know what she knows. For now, we should place her in the tank.”

At Vaughn’s command, TAU activated the lights in the floor, the same ones that Gamay had seen in her nightmare. The circular platform began to glow. The yellow liquid swirled in the pool beneath the clear panels. The floating bodies were there, wired up and otherwise unmoving.

These were the servants who’d helped Vaughn in all his efforts before being recycled into a new use. Some were surgeons, others biologists. Still others had been computer and coding experts. They’d manipulated the DNA of the humans, and the fish, and the insects. They’d helped him to create the virus. They’d helped him program TAU.

Long before they’d finished their tasks, Vaughn had decided they couldn’t be allowed to leave. Those he didn’t need had been killed; the rest became part of the world they’d built. Some took the first steps willingly. Others were processed against their will, realizing too late just where they were headed and what they were to become.

Now they were silent, their human capacity for chaos and disorder subdued by TAU, their ability to think and experience emotion giving TAU sentience, consciousness, and true intelligence.

As Vaughn looked at them he considered how far things had come. Once, he’d wanted to be the first to link with TAU, becoming immortal and beyond the reach of the chaotic world around him. But TAU had shown him a better way and they had pursued it together. Instead of escaping the world inside TAU, TAU would consume the world and Vaughn would rule it through his all-powerful machine.

The floor sections opened, sliding apart like the aperture of a camera lens. The robotic surgical units attached Gamay’s mask and inserted the feeding and breathing tubes.

They lowered the gurney and lifted her off the rolling bed, placing her into the fluid at the edge of the tank. The yellowish liquid was a viscous fluid designed to mimic the density of a human body, allowing the person to sink into the liquid and become one with it, rather than floating on top. But the new additions to the tank had more body fat than those who’d been in there for some time. They were more buoyant and had to be forcibly submerged.

To remedy this, another machine took over. A large arm rose up from the edge of the pool and lowered itself like the swing arm holding the needle for a turntable. It pivoted toward her, wrapped its claws around her, and moved her to an open spot in the arrangement. When it had her in place, it pushed her beneath the liquid, holding her there as another set of mechanical hands connected the wires from her scalp directly to TAU’s contacts.

Restraints looped around her wrists, ankles, and scalp were tightened just enough to keep her from floating back to the surface.

The arm pulled back. Vaughn looked on approvingly. The woman could rest there, deprived of all sensory input except for what TAU provided. She would grow used to the connections and her autonomic nervous system would quickly begin to crave the input TAU offered. And then she would tell them everything.