The
Hive
Sunday, August 29, 4:14
P.M.
Time Remaining on the
Extinction Clock: 67 hours, 46 minutes
E.S.T.
We found the computer room without incident,
but there was a nasty surprise inside.
The computers were slag.
Every last one of them. Rows of networked
supercomputers leaked oily smoke. Puddles of melted plastic and
silicon had formed around each one.
“Son of a bitch,” growled Bunny. He slipped
a prybar from his pack and forced open the front panel on one unit,
but the insides were a melted mass that looked like a surreal
sculpture.
Top poked at the melted goo. It was still
soft and hot. “This just happened. We missed it by a couple of
minutes.”
No one said anything, but we were all aware
that while we were in the New Men barracks we could have been here.
Should have been here. A few minutes might have changed
everything.
“What’s the call, Cap’n?” asked Top
quietly.
“We better hope we can find some disks or
paper records,” I said. “And I mean now. You two work on
that.”
“Where you going, boss?”
“I want to go have a talk with our boy
Carteret.”
“He won’t help you,” said SAM. “And you
can’t threaten him. He’s a mercenary. He’s really
tough.”
“Then I’ll have to ask him real nice,” I
said with a smile.
I headed out alone, watchful for guards and
tiger-hounds and any other bit of nastiness that the Hive might
have to throw at me, but the halls were empty. My heart was sick at
the thought of losing all that computer data. If that meant that we
wouldn’t be able to stop the release of a pathogen designed for
ethnic genocide.
God, I didn’t even want to think about
that.