The Mother Code Read online

  He’d instructed Rose’s second-in-command, a young captain fresh out of West Point, to be ready for the worst. But the officer in him still wanted to gauge the readiness of the captain’s troops. “Busy day for the EMTs,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. “This thing is sure causing a panic. They say it’s the flu, but it’s not like any flu I’ve ever seen. My mom down in L.A.—she had to go to the ER this morning.” The officer paused. “Sir?”

  “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “Where is Captain McBride?”

  Rick stared at the back of the young man’s head, his brush-cut hair, his square jaw. Then he gazed out the window at the busy street. They weren’t ready—they could never be ready. Most likely he would never see this place again, and if he did, it wouldn’t be the same. “She was called back to D.C.,” he said, “for a conference.” He left it at that, and the sergeant did too.

  The car turned right on North Point and drove a few doors down before pulling to the curb. “Wait for me here,” Rick said. “I’ll be right down.” Struggling up the stairs to Rose’s second-floor apartment, he fished in his pocket for her key and let himself in. The bedclothes were still strewn on the floor after the rush of the previous morning. Absently he picked them up, catching Rose’s scent as he tossed them back on the bed.

  He found his valise on a chair near the closet and stuffed his few belongings into it. There’d really been no reason to come here. He’d just needed it; one last taste of the way things had been. Across the room from the bed, a barely audible voice emitted from Rose’s wall-mounted video screen. He leaned over to flip off the power, but stopped.

  “We’re receiving reports of an explosion at a site in central Maryland,” said the young woman on the screen. Rick turned up the volume. “Sources have confirmed sightings of military surveillance aircraft over the area, which is known to house government facilities. Wait. We’ve confirmed that the site has been bombed. The target appears to have been Fort Detrick, a facility used by the U.S. military for medical research.”

  Rick’s eyes locked on the screen as the display shifted to a newsroom in New York, a male reporter, tickers streaming to all sides of his pallid face. “Since the initial explosion at Fort Detrick, numerous other explosions have rocked the Washington, D.C., area. Unconfirmed reports cite attacks on the Pentagon and on a complex of buildings near Bethesda, Maryland. Antiballistic missiles have been launched from Andrews Air Force Base to intercept what appear to be incoming enemy missiles. All civilians in the region are instructed to take cover. The capital is under attack. I repeat, the capital is under attack.”

  Rick was startled by the buzz of his wrist phone. He glanced down at its screen. ROSE. Dropping his valise, he punched the phone on. “Rose? Is that you?”

  “Rick . . .” Her voice was small, faint.

  “Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “. . . Detrick. Reception is bad . . . talk long.”

  “Are they still bombing? Can you get out of there?”

  “The director says you’re coming . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t come . . . !” Rick could hear a cacophony of other voices in the background. Though her words were difficult to distinguish, Rose seemed to be yelling into the phone. “. . . not ready.”

  “What? What’s not ready?” Silence. “Rose? Are you there?”

  “. . . Gen5s need to be launched . . . Code Black.”

  “Rose? Rose!”

  “. . . sorry. I know I didn’t follow procedure . . . special protocol . . . Tell Kendra . . . we can’t let the babies be lost—”

  The line went dead.

  Turning on his heel, Rick plunged out into the hall and hobbled back down the steps to the street. Flinging open the back door of the waiting car, he climbed inside. “There’s been a change in plans. Radio ahead to the airfield. Tell them I need to get to Los Alamos.”

  As he settled into the backseat, he felt something digging into his thigh. He reached down into his pocket and drew out a thin necklace, the tiny silver figure of a woman poised as if readying for flight.

  19

  JAMES TURNED OVER, struggling to get his bearings. A row of LEDs in the ceiling overhead glistened off the railing of the gurney next to his cot.

  “James.” It was Robbie, gently jostling his arm. “I’m sorry. Your father is gone.”

  James stood up, placing his hands on the railing. He gazed into Abdul’s face, at rest. “Thank you.”

  It all came back. His mother’s serene countenance, the word DECEASED across the display over the head of her bed. His parents would be cremated on-site. Vaguely, he wondered whether they would have wanted that. Was there some sort of religious prohibition that applied? He shook his head. He’d never known the truth. He was left only with questions, and no one to answer them.

  “James,” Robbie said, “if you’re still feeling well, you need to go. There’re rumors that they’re going to quarantine the place. No one will be able to get out.”

  “What about you?”

  Robbie offered a mock salute. “Duty calls,” she said with a wry smile.

  As they parted ways at the side exit, James noticed his friend’s eyes, red from lack of sleep. She didn’t look well. “Robbie,” he said, “thanks for taking care of them.” As she turned to go back inside, the doctor coughed lightly into the crook of her arm.

  The sun was barely up, but the lot was still packed. Skirting the fleet of media trucks now blocking the front entrance to the hospital, James headed toward a line of autocabs waiting on the road. He heard the reporters bleating into their mics as he hurried by. There was no point in going to the airport—the governor had called a state of emergency and all nonessential air traffic was grounded. But what was that? He stopped to listen—something about a bomb attack in Washington . . . He watched the reporter, her face contorted as she updated her listeners on the latest tragedy. While he’d waited out the final moments with his father, at last succumbing to sleep, the world outside had turned upside down.

  Suddenly he spotted something across the lot: his father’s car. He remembered Abdul’s voice on the phone, two nights and a lifetime ago: I will drive. With all the commotion, he no doubt hadn’t been able to get an ambulance.

  Reaching into the bag of his parents’ effects that Robbie had given him, he came up with the fob. He ran over to his father’s old electric, unplugged the charger, then wrenched open the door and inserted himself into the front seat. Feeling like a thief, he put the car on automatic and homed it to Los Alamos.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T UNTIL the car gained the freeway that James let go his breath. His hand shaking, he punched in Sara’s name on his father’s dash phone. “Home city?” asked a female voice.

  “Los Alamos, New Mexico.” Sara’s photo appeared on the screen, and he pressed it. He heard a series of clicks. His heartbeat thudded against his ribs as he waited for her to pick up.

  “Hello?” Her voice was soft, dreamy.

  He heaved a sigh of relief. “Did I wake you?”

  “No. I mean, yes. It’s okay. I was sleeping in. The lab’s closed, as you know.”

  “Yes.” James sat back against the hard bench of the car seat.

  “I was trying to call you, actually.”

  “You were?” He closed his eyes, once more imagining his abandoned phone.

  “Yes. It’s just as well that I can’t go in to work. I . . . I’m still not at all well.”

  James sat up, the rush of blood past his ears almost deafening. “Wh . . . what’s happening? Do you have a cough?”

  “James, could you please just listen? Don’t go all M.D. on me . . .”

  James stared out the front windshield at the freeway. It was eerily empty for a Monday morning. He blinked, marshaling his senses. His shaving kit. In it, Sara would find the an
tidote. It was one of the small test canisters that Rudy had given him, before the order had been handed down to start dosing. He hadn’t used it. “Sara,” he said, “you know the little blue toiletry kit I keep at your apartment?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “I left it under the bathroom sink.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I need you to get something out of it. There’s a little canister, like an inhaler. On the side it says ‘C-343.’ Call me back when you find it. Not on my phone. Call me back at the number I’m calling from now. Can you do that for me?”

  “What is all this?”

  “It’s a medicine. You need it. Just trust me. You need it.”

  “But . . .” Sara paused, and he found himself listening for the sound of her breathing, the hint of some deadly obstruction. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  James gripped the phone, his knuckles white. Safe? Safer than nothing, he supposed. He was taking it, and he was still here, wasn’t he? “Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked dumbly.

  “Because,” she said softly, “I’m pregnant.”

  20

  RICK PUNCHED KENDRA’S secure number into the in-flight phone. Despite the chaos at the federal airfield, it had been easier than he’d thought to get a flight to Los Alamos. All flights to airfields anywhere near D.C., commercial or military, had been diverted. His assigned pilot, a small blonde with a thick Southern accent, had readily agreed to take him to Los Alamos instead.

  But after countless attempts, he’d given up trying to reconnect with Rose. He wracked his brain, trying to make sense of what she’d said about the Gen5s. Code Black—the launch protocol to be used to protect the bots in case of a threatened security breach. Did she know something? Was there a threat to Los Alamos? He kept coming back to her final instruction: Tell Kendra.

  Kendra’s voice came over the line, uncharacteristically shaky. “Jenkins here . . .”

  “Kendra, it’s Rick Blevins. I assume you’ve heard—”

  “General . . .” He heard a crackling sound, like something being moved aside. Then her voice came back, stronger. “Yes, we have. The hack was enough, but now we’ve got the Code Red. Not to mention the missile attacks. We were in touch with the Pentagon when the attacks started. Now we can’t raise anyone.”

  “Is everyone there with you now?”

  “We’ve got Rudy, myself, and Paul MacDonald.”

  “And Dr. Said?”

  “James has disappeared. He got a call last night, about twenty-three hundred hours. We thought it might have been you . . . Anyway, he left the facility. No one knows where he went. His phone doesn’t pick up either.”

  Rick stared at the phone. Said. The hack at Fort Detrick. The Russians had known ties to the Karachi arms cell that Farooq Said had put together. Five years ago, even as he’d been working on James Said’s clearance to use NANs at Emory, members of a related cell had been detained in Maryland. Had he slipped up, after all? Had James outwitted him? “If he shows up, I want him detained.”

  “Detained? How . . . ?”

  “MacDonald has a weapon, right? Tell him to be ready.”

  “I’m sure there’s no need—”

  “Just . . . do it, okay? If Said comes back, call me. And if anyone else from DOD contacts you, direct them to me at this number. Meanwhile . . .” Rick was breathing hard now. For a moment, his thoughts went blank. Then he pictured the Mothers, their dark forms looming along the back wall of the robotics bay.

  “Meanwhile?”

  “How much antidote do you have?”

  “Enough to tide us over for at least three months.”

  “Good. We can deal with that after we’ve launched the Gen5s.”

  “Launched the . . . But we haven’t even finished checking the latest code—”

  “Listen, I’m pretty sure that if we don’t launch them ASAP, we’ll never have the chance.”

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the line. “Sir? Are we going to be attacked?”

  “I think we have to be ready for that eventuality, yes.”

  “But why? The people who hacked Detrick have no idea . . .”

  “They might.” Rick clenched his fists, the knuckles white. Said. Said was embedded at Los Alamos now. And though the good doctor didn’t know everything about the plans for Gen5, he knew enough. “We need to launch, and it needs to be under the Code Black protocol.”

  Kendra exhaled. “Code Black . . . I’ll do what I can to get ready. But, General . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Where will you be? Where are you right now?” Kendra’s voice was quavering again. She was starting to panic.

  “I’m on my way to you. I got a plane to fly me direct to Los Alamos County. I’ll grab a cycle and meet you at the lab. I should be there before midnight.”

  “Okay.” There was another shuffling sound, and Rick imagined Kendra clearing her workspace, readying for this next challenge. “But we should have Dr. McBride online as well . . . Is she still at the Presidio?”

  “No,” Rick said. “She was called to Detrick.”

  “Detrick? But I was expecting her here any day . . .” Once more, the line went silent for a moment. Then Kendra cleared her throat. “Oh . . . I’m so sorry . . . Do we know . . . ?”

  “I haven’t been able to raise her. But . . . I know she wants this done,” Rick said.

  Another silence. A muffled cough. “Okay,” Kendra said at last. “I’ll have an assessment ready for you when you get here. We’ll need to talk about the risks of a Code Black launch. And the readiness of the Gen5s for such a launch.”

  “Good,” Rick said.

  Breaking the call, he reached for a bottle of water. From the cockpit, he could hear the pilot coughing—a dry, hollow sound. “You okay up there?” he called.

  The pilot turned in her seat. “Yes, sir. Maybe just a touch of that nasty flu.”

  Outside his window, Rick could see only a flat layer of clouds, obscuring the ground below. He thought about his options—if the pilot lost control, he wasn’t sure he’d know how to fly this thing . . .

  The pilot coughed again. “Sir? Do we have more on Maryland? It makes no sense . . . Why aren’t we mobilizing?”

  Rick felt a weak nausea rising in his throat. If there was time for an investigation, he had no doubt it would be clear that the missiles used were compatible with Russian SS-96 submarine-based launch systems. If there was time. As he’d watched, the vid screen at the Bay Area federal airfield had displayed drone footage of fighters circling over the forests of central Maryland, more explosions on the ground, billows of smoke obscuring the smoldering ruins below. He had to accept it. Detrick was gone. Most likely, Rose was gone too. “I’m sure Andrews can handle it,” he said.

  Again, he imagined the Gen5 bots waiting patiently in their bay at Los Alamos, their wings folded tight along their backs. Rose might be gone. But she was still there, her essence instilled in one of those bots—a vessel meant to carry her child. Even if that was all he had left of her, he’d do anything in his power to defend it.

  * * *

  IT WAS JUST past eleven p.m. when he pulled up in front of the building. Kendra was waiting for him, slumped in a chair at the receptionist’s desk. Rudy, she explained, was checking on the incubators. Mac was running systems checks on the Gen5 bots.

  “Has Said come back?”

  “No. And since you told us to hold him at gunpoint, I’m glad he hasn’t. Seriously, General, can you share your thoughts about James?”

  “Nothing certain. But I think we need to question him before letting him in on anything more.”

  Giving him a strange look, Kendra produced her ever-present tablet. Together, they ran down the Gen5 checklist.

  “Unlike Gen3, the Gen5 bots are coded. Each embryo is assigned to a specific bot,” Kendra began.
>
  “Correct.” This was just one of the many things that made Gen5 special. Each child needed to be matched with the installed “personality” of his or her biological mother—a key element of the bond they would share.

  “Luckily, Dr. McBride shipped me the most recent codes last week. Our team here was in the middle of debugging the personality codes when the Fort Detrick hack occurred and General Blankenship ordered a shutdown here. But since you called, I’ve been able to continue working off-line.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t easily fix. Of course, I’m in no position to assess the specific content of the files. I can only evaluate the file structure—to make sure that the contents would be fully uploaded to the correct space in memory. And that the appropriate level of duplication has been applied. Things like that.”

  “So, everything checks out?”

  “Dr. McBride was very thorough.”

  Rick winced. Of course Rose had been thorough. How many times had he stared into those eyes, imagining the intricate workings of the mind behind them? “Anything else?”

  “General, there is one thing . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “The timed instruction hasn’t been installed. The clock is there. But there are no instructions as to what to do when the clock times out.”

  Rick held his hand to his forehead. Two scenarios for the Gen5 launch had been laid out. The best scenario, the Safe Protocol, was most like that used in experimentation up until now. The Mothers would remain on or near the Los Alamos grounds. If no one survived to intervene, they would birth and rear their offspring in community. If someone did survive, the bots could be inactivated simply, and the newborns retrieved.

  But this was not that scenario. This launch would be dictated by the tenets of Code Black. Due to the security risks that had prompted such a launch, the Gen5s would be dispatched in stealth mode, their onboard defensive lasers armed. To avoid detection, they were to scatter across the deserts of southern Utah. In the beginning, this would assure that their charges would not all encounter the same threats to existence. But it also meant that the children would lead solitary lives in their formative years.