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  I said, “Hey, we captured a larva specimen. Need anything else?”

  Tasker said, “We already have a vehicle on the way to retrieve it.”

  “You do? How did you—”

  “You need to come with us. We’re going to have a meeting.”

  Marconi said, “Am I invited?”

  “No, this is not going to be part of your reality show, Doctor.” She turned back to me. “We’re going to come up with a plan of action, and you’re going to be on board with it and you’re going to stop impeding our every move. We have the exact same goal. There is no reason we can’t work together.”

  John said, “Other than the fact that you would literally murder us right now if you could.”

  “Society is nothing more than people cooperating with other people they’d much rather murder. Listen to what we have to say, you’ll find out we’re not the bad guys here.”

  22. THE HEROES AGREE TO HELP MURDER A DOZEN CHILDREN

  I was hoping we’d get to ride inside one of the NON vehicles—I was curious to see the interior—but apparently that wasn’t allowed for non-NON employees, so we were simply told to follow them to the meeting location. I wasn’t surprised to see that we were being led toward the converted farm supply store that was now calling itself the IAEEAI Lab and Wellness Center.

  I wasn’t quite sure what kind of occult temple shit to expect inside the building that NON was apparently using as a field HQ, but it was kind of disappointing. Inside was an open space that had been recently renovated for use as offices and could easily have passed for an insurance company’s customer support call center. Past an unmanned reception desk were cubicles and glassed-in conference rooms. Against the wall to our right was a series of vending machines and that black coffin thing they’d rolled out in the parking lot a couple of days ago—the portable doorway to … wherever. A man in an orange jumpsuit walked over to it and opened the door. On the other side I got a glimpse of what appeared to be a green field on a sunny day. The guy took the last gulp from a Styrofoam coffee cup, tossed the cup through the door, then closed it.

  The office area was only half of the building, however, and the insurance company illusion ended abruptly at a concrete wall with a thick sliding steel door in the center. So, probably not a supply closet. There was a row of red warning lights along the wall and below them, large painted letters said:

  IF LIGHTS ARE FLASHING PERFORM RITES OF BLACK VEIL

  FAILURE = NERVE BURN CYCLE

  THIS MEANS YOU!

  I thought we’d be taken to the coffin door to hold our “meeting” in some nightmare dimension where the office furniture was alive and the bagels screamed when you bit them. But, no, we were just led to the largest conference room. Inside, one wall featured a single window granting us a view of the misty industrial park. Next to the window was an inspirational poster depicting a bunch of bees crawling over a honeycomb above the words, TEAMWORK KILLS THE WASP. At the center of the long conference table was a phone with speakers snaking out like the arms of a very spindly and fragile robot octopus.

  Tasker directed us to sit on the opposite side of the table from her. Agent Gibson shuffled over and sat next to his partner with some difficulty, leaning his cane against the table next to him.

  Tasker said, “Do you want a drink or any refreshments before we begin?”

  John and I said no, Amy said, “Does your chip vending machine have those spicy Cheetos in it? I have change.”

  I shot her an annoyed look but, as usual, it just bounced off her. To my horror, Agent Tasker nodded to Gibson, who sighed and with a monumental effort climbed to his feet and shuffled out of the conference room, across the vast concrete floor, and over to the vending machine. He returned and tossed the Cheetos bag onto the table in front of Amy and began the laborious multistep process of sitting back down.

  Amy noisily tore open the bag with her teeth and shook some Cheetos into her mouth.

  Tasker said, “Now, you are to remain silent unless asked a direct question. You are not being invited onto this call to offer your opinion and this is not subject to a vote. You may or may not be asked for information. It will be explained to you what the next course of action will be, and we will seek reassurance that you will not interfere. Are we clear?”

  Amy said, “I’m sorry, the crunching is really loud in my head. I think I got the gist of it though.”

  Tasker punched a button on the phone, then dialed, then entered a twelve-digit code. There was a tone, and she leaned forward.

  “Sorry we’re late, I’m going to do a roll call. Utah, are you on?”

  The answer was muffled clicking noises.

  “Utah, I’m not hearing you.”

  “We’re here, is this better?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Las Vegas?”

  “We’re here.”

  “Chicago?”

  “We’re on, Josaline.”

  “Bangkok?”

  An answer in a language I assumed was Thai.

  “Effingham?”

  Another answer in a language I didn’t recognize.

  “Bernard? I understand you’re calling in from the road?”

  The reply was the sound of an electronic voice announcing that Gate 34-B was boarding. A breathless male voice then came on and said, “Sorry, I’m here, I’m at the airport. Let me get to a quiet spot.”

  “And do we have HQ on the line?”

  The answer was a series of deep rumbles, like the sound a mountain would make if it had gotten woken up in the middle of the night by the neighbor’s loud music. I assumed it was the phone glitching again but Tasker nodded as if she could hear it clearly and said, “Yes, all three of them are here, my lord.”

  I exchanged a look with John. Amy stopped chewing. Agent Gibson sat up straighter, as if not completely sure the thing on the line couldn’t see him.

  Tasker, in her most professional voice, said, “You’ve all been briefed and I assume you reviewed the memo I sent out approximately twelve minutes ago. The issue as you know is that Undisclosed is in the middle of a Class G outbreak with at least one larva attached to a living host and a second now in containment, en route to this facility. Though there are no sightings as of yet, we now have reason to believe that ten more will manifest themselves, their origins already implanted in a group of human hosts. We’ve brought in the three locals discussed on yesterday’s call to talk about options for containment. They are in the room with me now, you should see their dossiers on your screens, designated 919A, 919B, and John.”

  A male voice said, “Hey this is Tom in Houston, is this the budget call?”

  “No, it is not, that was moved to Thursday at two. Now, as you know, the outbreak can be traced to the entity we have designated B3333B, which is attempting its second breech, via a reproduction cycle that has not previously been observed.”

  Amy said, “Excuse me, can you tell me what a Class G outbreak is?”

  An annoyed voice on the phone said, “Who is that speaking?”

  “Amy Sullivan, I’m one of the locals. Is a Class G, is that on a scale from A to Z? If so is A the worst or is Z?”

  Tasker said, “Class G is potential extinction level. Please remain silent until asked a question. Now, the method for terminating the larva discussed in the memo was tested during Incident 404 twelve years ago and the results were very, very promising. We will proceed in two stages. First, we must track and collect the larvae and contain them in one location if possible, preferably here in the field office. Second, we must create a satisfactory cover story for the termination of same. There will then be a separate operation to disrupt the breeding cycle of B3333B itself.”

  Amy said, “Hi, it’s me again, but just to clarify, we’re discussing a plan for kidnapping and murdering a total of twelve children in a country where the entire news cycle catches fire over one missing kid? And the idea is to do that in such a way that nobody will care or even be slightly curious. Got it.”

/>   A deep rumble emerged from the speaker, the voice from “HQ.” Everyone went quiet.

  Tasker said, “It won’t happen again, my lord. Now, the concerns raised by 919B are valid, the cover story will be paramount. The world will believe these children have perished.”

  Amy said, “Plus any parents or other concerned types who try to get in the way.”

  “We will try to minimize that.”

  An elderly female voice spoke up on the phone for the first time. “This is Martha, and I want to register my objection right now. I was told—assured—that first on the agenda for today would be the allocation of funds for the Miami project. We’ve been waiting on this since January, guys, this can’t wait any longer.”

  Tasker said, “This isn’t the budget call, Martha.”

  Amy said, “It’s Thursday. At two.”

  Tasker grimaced, rubbed her temples, and said, “The cover story will involve an incident that would leave no recognizable bodies behind, for obvious reasons.”

  John said, “Right, like if they fell into the ocean and got eaten by sharks.”

  Amy said, “Why would they be in the ocean?”

  John said, “We could have them win a contest or something? Oh! Make it a plane crash. Tell them they won a trip. Plane goes down in the ocean, in the part of the ocean where there are the most sharks.”

  “So these kids get to experience the terror of a plane plummeting to earth?”

  I said, “They’re not kids, and we have no indication that they can experience terror. And you don’t need anything like that. You just need to do it in such a way that the public sees it as unavoidable.”

  Amy said, “How in the world do you do that?”

  I said, “You say the kids are infected with some weaponized disease. Ebola, whatever. Say Nymph did it, and you’ve got to quarantine the kids to keep anybody else from getting sick. Say you’re bringing them in for treatment. Then once you’ve got them in quarantine, just say they succumbed to the infection, that it was too late. Then tell them Nymph is dead and that there are no other victims. Tie up the whole story with a neat little bow.”

  There was silence in the room. The rumble from HQ sounded. Tasker looked very nervous.

  Amy looked back and forth from me to Tasker and said to the latter, “That’s your exact plan, isn’t it? I don’t know how to feel about that.”

  “Not Ebola,” said Tasker. “That would be a recipe for panic. Polonium 210 poisoning. Slow-acting, fatal, but not contagious. Still, the corpse is mildly radioactive and we would explain that we will be unable to release the bodies of the children, for safety reasons.”

  John nodded. “Then you put the radioactive bodies on a plane, and arrange for the plane to crash right into the mine monster. The radioactive material in the kids’ bodies triggers a nuclear explosion.”

  Tasker tried to pretend she hadn’t heard that. Forcing calm into her voice, she said, “Again, all we need from you is your assurances that you are not going to interfere.”

  Amy said, “Wait, you’re asking our permission?”

  “We don’t need your permission. There is no reason we can’t all be in agreement.”

  “And if we’re not in agreement, you’ll have to find some other way?”

  “We would discuss that.”

  “But you can’t harm us. So you need our permission.”

  I said, “I don’t think there’s any disagreement here. You saw the larva attack me, that part of the debate is over.” To Tasker, I said, “Then we should be good to go. Assuming, of course, the other ten children show up and you’re able to corral them. If the bikers find them, good luck convincing them to turn their kids over to you shady fuckers.”

  “We have a plan for that contingency.”

  Amy sighed and crumpled up her Cheetos bag. “I’m sure you do.”

  To the phone, Tasker said, “Termination of the two existing specimens will proceed immediately. Mikey Payton is secure and will be here within fifteen minutes. A team will be dispatched to the Loretta Knoll residence momentarily.”

  Amy said, “I want to go with them.”

  “You are not going to interfere.”

  “I don’t want to interfere. But I want to be there. If you don’t let me, then I’ll interfere.”

  Tasker said, “Any further questions?”

  The rumbling mountain voice spoke up once again, and this time it continued speaking. It was a voice I could feel in my gut and in my shoes as it rattled the floor. Gibson and Tasker listened intently, the way you’d listen to a jury delivering a verdict at your murder trial. The sound of fates being decided.

  It spoke for some time, maybe a full two minutes, and it was one of the longest two-minute spans of my life. I tried to detect emotion in that voice, to see if it was delivering good news or bad, if it was angry or pleased. But whatever sentiments were being expressed were beyond me, maybe beyond any human.

  Finally the voice rumbled to a halt, the aftershocks subsiding. The sense of relief in the room was palpable.

  Tasker nodded, swallowed, and said, “Yes, my lord. Thursday at two.”

  23. A PLAN WITH NO POSSIBLE FLAWS

  Amy

  They were in John’s Jeep, parked outside Taco Bill on a street hidden under a sheet of rippling water in a neighborhood that looked like it had dressed up as Venice for a costume party and then woke up in a dumpster. Amy wasn’t even sure why she had insisted on coming, maybe she wanted one last look at Maggie, to try to see the monster, to shake this feeling.

  She had to admit, NON could certainly play subtle when they wanted to. Instead of rolling in with an army of scary-looking trucks and men in space suits (a sight all too familiar to the residents of this city), they had simply approached the Loretta Knoll home in the agents’ nondescript sedan followed by an ambulance. (Had they stolen one?) Amy watched as they approached the door and explained the situation to an increasingly panicked Loretta, then tried in vain to calm her. The story would be that the other abductee had tested positive for this dangerous toxin, that they just needed to bring Maggie in for tests, that every minute counted, blah blah blah. They all went inside, Amy figuring that the odds of them deciding to take the child by violence increased with every passing second. She got that Bunny Bread knot in her guts.

  But, finally, the NON people emerged with Maggie. And, right behind them, was her mother.

  You’d have to kill Loretta, too.

  David reached back, took Amy’s hand in his and said, “You did everything right, babe. Everything you said, we need you to say those things, to be that person. You were basing it on what you knew. You can’t let it tear you up inside—that’s what They want. But once you land on the right thing, you don’t look back, you don’t apologize. I know this looks different from your end but you have to trust us here.”

  Amy said, “So now we’re basically following NON’s orders and you’re fine with that.”

  “I’m not fine with anything, ever. But, as far as I can tell, what NON wants is to keep things on an even keel, to keep people from panicking. That’s not always a terrible thing to want.”

  Amy said, “No. What they want—not just NON, but everyone like them—is for us not to panic, but to be just scared enough. You know that scene in They Live where he puts on the glasses and all the signs have all these propaganda messages hidden in them? In the real world if you put on those glasses all you’d see is one message, repeated everywhere: BE ANXIOUS. Buy this thing or your friends will laugh at you, eat this thing or you’ll get fat and nobody will love you, watch the news to find out who’s trying to kill you today.”

  “Yeah, but all that stuff is real! There’s actual reasons to be scared!”

  “The problem, David, is your cynicism only runs one direction. If somebody comes on TV and says everything is great and wonderful, you don’t believe it, you say they’re blowing smoke up your butt. You demand proof. But if one second later, some guy comes on and says everything is falling apart, you
automatically believe it, no questions asked. If those people had told you that this mine monster situation was no big deal and that we should just go home, you wouldn’t have believed them, not for a second. But the moment they said it was a Class G apocalypse, you were on board. As if nobody ever has motivation to tell you things are worse than they really are. And you know for a fact that’s not true! Nothing controls people like fear.”

  John said, “We’re moving.”

  They followed the sedan back toward the wellness center. On the way, a pair of the flat-black trucks silently moved in front and behind them, ready to do containment if “Maggie” should transform and get loose.

  There were no incidents, however, and the three of them were allowed to follow the NON team back into the field HQ where they proceeded to haul Maggie past the office area and toward that rear concrete wall with its huge steel door. The bizarre painted warnings had been covered by a series of posters reminding staff to wash their hands and to please dispose of food waste properly, lest it attract ants.

  The steel door slid open soundlessly and Maggie and her mother were hauled into the chamber beyond. The little girl was bawling her eyes out, and Loretta seemed on the verge of a breakdown. Amy, John, and David followed them back. The steel door, Amy noted, was a foot thick. Beyond it were a number of cells with clear walls that Amy suspected were forged from a substance much stronger than Plexiglas.

  This facility clearly had not been built within the last two days.

  Maggie was taken past the glass cells, into a room at the end of the hall labeled STAFF ONLY. This time, Loretta was made to stay outside, reassurances being muttered to her by a very competent-looking guy in doctor scrubs. Amy had the horrific thought that they were just going to euthanize Maggie right then, in that room, and that Amy would have to watch them break the news to Loretta.

  But about ten minutes later, the STAFF ONLY door opened—it made a hissing sound—and a few kind-looking folks who looked like staff from a hospital pediatric unit led Maggie Knoll to one of the cells. Her hair was wet and she was wearing baggy hospital pajamas, as if they’d hosed her down. Amy wondered if those people were actual medical staff, or if they were just actors NON had hired for their false flag operation (the ominous black cloaks were nowhere to be found—today, the facility was playing the part of a laboratory and wellness center to a T).