Chapter 7

The Overseer stood at the top of the beach, milling about in the crowd of protesters, which was growing by the minute. He wore an oversized black hoodie and olive-colored pants that looked as if they’d come from an army surplus store. He had a ball cap pulled down tight on his head, keeping it low enough to shield his face from any cameras that might be filming the scene. Easing through the group, he put his foot up on a short wall made of coral and mortar. From there he could see the carnage below.

The dead animals were spread out along the dry sand, stranded high on the beach like boats waiting for the tide. Scientists, volunteers from the university, and various do-gooders were scattered here and there, but the effort to save the animals had ceased. The retreating tide had made it impossible to get any more animals off the beach, while the heat, the sun, and the effect of gravity had caused those that remained to succumb.

A shame, the Overseer thought. If they’d all been dragged back out to sea, he wouldn’t have needed to do a thing . But with carcasses on the beach, a postmortem was getting underway. Left unchecked, it would reveal what had driven the animals to flee the ocean and strand themselves on dry land. Something that could not be allowed to happen.

Stopping it was a simple task in theory. The infestation —as Vaughn called it—only ran skin-deep. Surface-level fires that burned into the whale’s blubber would obliterate the evidence left inside the animals. This would be true even if the fires burned out and the rest of the bodies and the deeper tissues remained untouched. But with a dozen whales and several other possibly infested animals still on the beach, the Overseer could not accomplish this simple task alone.

Nor could he hire a small army of assistants to help him. But what he couldn’t do, Vaughn and TAU and the power of social media accomplished almost effortlessly.

Using deepfake videos and a thousand dummy accounts to flood the island with false information, Vaughn and TAU planted rumors suggesting that the American government had been performing experiments on the sea creatures, infecting them with some type of weaponized virus that forced them to come ashore, where the virus could jump to other mammals, including the citizens of Reunion.

The people of Reunion picked up these threads and the narrative grew like a living thing, quickly mutating into several different but related theories.

One poster claimed there were U.S. Navy ships just over the horizon, ready to quarantine the island while the admirals at the Pentagon watched from drones as the virus affected the population. Another insisted they would nuke the island when it was over to ensure they’d killed the virus and covered up the evidence. The more outlandish theories provided cover, making the less outlandish ideas sound reasonable.

A dominant belief soon emerged, supported by people in the know and fake documents drummed up by TAU. This theory concluded that the Americans were not nefarious, just negligent, and were now trying to cover up their part in causing the whales to get sick. But all agreed that the people of Reunion were being used as lab rats, that the virus was a danger, and that the only way to prevent its spread was to burn the dead creatures before they began to decompose.

To that end, angry locals had gathered in the area above the beach. Too many for the Overseer to count, but he guessed at least a thousand had arrived already, with more showing up every minute.

Mixing with them, he’d heard pointed discussions, spied bottles of lighter fluid being passed around, and noticed people testing cigarette lighters and unlit flares. At least one man briefly revealed a portable propane torch he’d concealed under his jacket.

He found himself mildly astonished. None of these people had any connection to himself or Vaughn, but they were about to do his dirty work as effectively as a hired mob of mercenaries.

An ironic smile grew on the Overseer’s face. In the depths of their fortress-laboratory, Vaughn and TAU were obsessed with having computers actively control human minds. Seeing how easily people could be manipulated with just fear and rumor, the Overseer wondered if they even needed to bother.

With the crowd growing more vocal and unruly, the Overseer knew the time to act would be soon. And yet, as he prepared to do what he could to set off the riot, he noticed a problem that would require a more hands-on solution.

Though he’d arrived on Reunion as quickly as possible, the NUMA crew had beat him to the punch. By the time he’d reached the top of the beach, they were already in place, taking samples from the dead animals and zeroing in on the mysterious wounds.

Watching through a small set of binoculars, he could see them cutting and scraping at the pustules and bite marks. He watched as they took samples of the small nodules embedded in the skin and blubber.

He realized instantly that it would do no good to burn all the animals and leave those samples in existence.

Tracking the scientists back to a large tent near the center of the action, he saw them perform some sort of cataloging process. Samples were labeled and stored in plastic cases. Data was entered into a laptop computer. He couldn’t tell what tests they were running on-site, but he needed to make certain that both the samples they’d taken and the data they’d collected were destroyed.

Fortunately, he’d come prepared for more direct action. In the pockets of a bandolier hidden beneath the oversized hoodie, he carried three high-explosive incendiary grenades. One would be enough to obliterate all the sample cases and equipment in the tent. He figured he’d use two, just to be sure. But the computer presented a different problem.

The Overseer was experienced enough in covering his tracks to know that Interpol, Scotland Yard, and the American FBI had been very successful pulling data from ruined hard drives, even those that had been smashed, shattered, or burned. He knew the only way to truly destroy data on a hard drive was to run it under a powerful electromagnet, something he didn’t happen to have on him.

He decided the simple approach would be the easiest. While the crowd was burning the carcasses, he would simply take the laptop with him, leaving the pair of grenades behind to obliterate everything else.

“These people are ready to act,” he whispered. “Best we light the match now, before their enthusiasm begins to wane.”

Hidden in the Overseer’s ear was a small earbud. A microphone in the device would pick up his voice by sensing the vibrations through his jawbone. It delivered slightly distorted tones, but allowed him to speak with Vaughn and TAU in real time.

Vaughn’s response was barely audible. But the Overseer didn’t need to hear it; he knew what was coming.

Within seconds, the people in the crowd began to get alerts on their phones. They began to see the images, edited by the computer into deepfake videos of the biologists injecting the animals with large syringes. Additional fakes purported to show American military documents detailing plans to use large marine animals as weapons to spread disease, with trial runs to be conducted on isolated islands like Reunion.

Finally a suggestion was made. And repeated over and over again, from ten thousand accounts both fake and real. It read simply: Start the burn.

People in the crowd began to chant the slogan, and it soon became a rallying cry. “Start the burn! Start the burn!”

A man climbed up on the hood of one of the police cars and began shouting about the destruction of evidence. The police tried to drag him off, but he kicked one officer in the face and evaded the reach of another.

“They’re trying to silence us!” he shouted. “They want to hide the truth. Look at them with their gloves and masks. They’re safe, but we’re in danger!”

The Overseer laughed at the scuffle and the good fortune of having such a character in the crowd.

The man climbed to the car’s roof, evading capture until one of the police climbed up and tackled him. He continued shouting as they pulled him down and carried him away. “Start the burn! Start the burn!”

The crowd was raucous now, a chorus of voices in unison. The police looked nervous. A scuffle broke out and then turned into a full-fledged brawl. Surrounded and outnumbered, the police resorted to pepper spray. The crowd pulled back, but they were too packed in; there was nowhere to go.

Time to act , the Overseer thought. He ran forward, tackled the policeman with the pepper spray. Ripping it from his hand, he turned and sprayed it at the other officers, and the crowd surged in behind him.

“If they won’t start it,” he shouted, “we can start it ourselves!”

With his act of violence and the police turning tail, the collective mindset of the crowd changed instantly. Within seconds they were charging down the hill, fists in the air, slogans being shouted with rage. The mob spread out and picked up speed. They were chased by a few dozen policemen, who were powerless to do anything to stop them at this point.

From the top of the beach, the Overseer watched them go. They rushed toward the members of the fire brigade, who were in charge of the canisters of kerosene and other flammable materials. The brawl began again and the contingent of firefighters was quickly overwhelmed. The cans of fuel were taken by force and hauled across the beach.

In a ritualistic frenzy, the mob raced to the nearest carcasses, splashing lighter fluid, kerosene, and gasoline across them and setting them on fire with any ignition source they could find. One canister spilled all over the beach, its fumes igniting in an oddly shaped swath. It looked as if the sand itself was burning.

Farther on, one of the rioters got as much fuel on himself as he managed to dump on a dead porpoise. When the flames erupted, he caught fire, too. He was saved when one of the firefighters who’d just been knocked down and overrun grabbed him and dragged him into the surf.

The Overseer grinned, enjoying the brawl. He turned and gazed toward the tent, where the samples and laptop lay. Now all he needed was the right opportunity to finish the job.