Burn by Bill Ransom Read Free Book Online Page A

Artificial Viral Agents, because the aftereffects of the tranquilizer left him trembling all over like a weak kitten and he hated feeling weak, like being at his father’s mercy when he was on a rampage.
    “Look at this!” Harry shouted, waving his arm at his tiny chamber. “You keep criminals better than this. Chill, you gave all of us Litespeeds. Crammed in here with a cot, a pump toilet with a see-through curtain and a camping sink in a goddamn warehouse. . . .”
    “It’s temporary, it’s necessary and you know it,” Scholz shot back. “Besides, you have your console with the usual network access. . . .”
    “Don’t give me that ‘temporary’ crap, Scholz,” Harry said. “Ten minutes in here is eleven minutes too long. And I’ve already found the gates you put on that so-called ‘network access.’ Everything’s triple-snooped, so that I’m shut down if I try to get out of the neighborhood. That Agency card you gave me is a major red flag.”
    “I thought they took that at ViraVax when they took your clothes.”
    “Yeah,” Harry admitted, “they did. But I ran it through my Litespeed at home and got the coding sequences for verification and access.”
    “You mean, you remembered a sixty-four-digit code? And the random sequencing fuse?”
    “I remember everything,” Harry said, and shrugged. “But it didn’t do me any good.”
    “This is a security matter,” Major Scholz said. “You can understand why we don’t want . . .”
    “Why you don’t want the world to know what you’ve done,” Harry finished. When Scholz’s gaze went cold and distant, he added, “They couldn’t have done it without you, you know. Or without my dad. Personally, I think we should tell everybody.”
    “What good would that do?”
    “It would get a lot of good minds working on the problem,” Harry said. “And warn people, in case it’s contagious. Is it contagious?”
    “Contagion-factor tests are being run now,” Scholz said.
    “This could be a multistage thing that doesn’t flag the CF,” Harry said.
    Scholz’s blonde eyebrows arched in surprise.
    “Very good,” she said. “That’s what Dr. Chang thinks.”
    “I’d like to hear from Marte Chang what Marte Chang thinks,” Harry said.
    Scholz shrugged off his surliness.
    “I think Dr. Chang wants you to help her research this problem within security parameters. I’ll help wherever I can.
    “Where are they taking our blood, by the way, if it’s so dangerous? And what about the people who took our blood? And the suits we wore, the ambulance and chopper we rode in . . . ?”
    Major Scholz put up a hand to stop him, and pointed with her thumb towards the back of the warehouse, farthest from the runway.
    “Well,” she said, “the ambulance and your hazard gear, the hazard gear and clothing of the two doctors, four nurses and six medics who helped you, the clothing and equipment of the guerrilla team who found you . . . those items are being buried in concrete behind this building as we speak.”
    “Chill,” Harry said. “What about the people? And that chopper?”
    “The people are quarantined, as you will be soon. The chopper’s been sprayed with three kinds of death.”
    Harry flicked his right middle fingernail against the glass.
    “What’s the difference between ‘quarantine’ and this prison we’re in now?” he asked.
    “You’re in ‘isolation’” Scholz said. “Marte Chang says there is more than one variation on this AVA. You each may have none, all or several agents in your bodies. We don’t want any of you acquiring more while you’re in our care.”
    “And you don’t want anyone acquiring them from us.”
    “No, we don’t. And, frankly, I don’t want to catch anything here myself, clear? We just found another pile of Meltdowns in the Gardener warehouse across the runway. There was a palm-cam in there with them, we’re analyzing the record now. Dr. Chang suspects that it’s their ritual water that carried the