Archon of the Covenant by David Hanrahan Read Free Book Online

back out of the hall. Lewis’ body was gone.  The airlock was open on both sides. DDC39 rolled slowly over the bloodstain, past the airlock chamber, and into the gym.
     
    The sentinel scanned the area between the bloody remains and the area inside the gym. The assay sat undisturbed on the rolling cart. There were three emptied syringes crushed on the floor near the cart. A fourth syringe, emptied, sat atop the cart. The sentinel switched into black light optics and analyzed the floor. A large set of male footprints traversed the entire gym – a repetitive and blurred circle stamped around the cart. A smaller female print went into the gym and then back out past Lewis’ stain. A single, shoed print from a child was firmly planted near a bench in the corner. No blood traced near the child’s feet. A solitary phantom in the ultraviolet petroglyph.
     
    DDC39 paused, locked into this faint glow. A child. It considered, processed, what had happened here. The sentinel switched into thermal and zoom optics, analyzing the area down to its smallest details. Lewis’ mortal residue left no doubt about his demise, and some other violence occurred – but the footprints and syringes? The sentinel extended its arm and picked up a shard from a broken vessel. A small receptor sprang forth from its palm – a biomonitor.
     
    The sentinel tested the fragment and returned a result its own memory suggested was too improbable to be true. So it re-tested it. And re-tested it. The sequence was for a cortical hypotrophy vaccine. An entirely new and promising sequence. The DNA string was a combination of the disease itself and something that it was not. The scenarios computed from within the sentinel’s core processor left very little doubt: some healthy survivors had made a last stand here, and had been able to derive a vaccine that might save the rare few who were uninfected. And hope of all hopes: a child was here, appears to have received the vaccine, and was taken away.
     
    The midday sun crept into the gym through a series of dusty skylights overhead. The sentinel clicked off its LED lights and positioned its solar panels into the warmth of the Sonoran UV. A radical set of possibilities illuminated deep within the sentinel – a great synthesis of realization and digital fulfillment. An artificial joy.
     
    *              *              *              *              *
     
    For months, the Sonoran desert had hummed with life but now grew silent as the air cooled and the days grew darker. The Ocotillo leaves had turned orange and now fell, leaving the blunt spines bare – dead coachwhips of the arid wild. The bleats and calls of the kit fox and coyote disappeared as the wildlife found winter shelter in the crevices of the foothills. The winds died down and the rustling of the bare mesquite quieted to a whisper. At times, the lone sound in the lost barren was high in the Madrean Sky Island, the kingdom of the Santa Catalinas, where a solitary Northern Flicker was boring into an Ironwood.
     
    A light flurry of snow dusted the aspen and pine high in the reaches of Mt. Lemmon. The white crest jutted into the sky and cut through the winter clouds. For weeks, the sentinel ascended the circumference of the Catalinas following trace movements of a large revin pack – the only tracks leading out from Bio3.
     
    In its ascension, the sentinel had discovered a record of man’s ruin – the revin tide crashing at humanity’s shore, the sediment of civilization. On Thanksgiving, DDC39 had reached High Jinks Ranch and found the remains of a last stand. Two heavily armed families from Oracle had retreated here, pursued by a swarm of starving revins. In another era, Buffalo Bill had mined for tungsten and gold in this outpost when it was known as Campo Bonito. On Christmas Day, 1911, Buffalo Bill dressed up as Santa Claus and entertained the children of miners. After his death 6 years later, his