Page 17 of Shadow Blind

Jesus, what have I done?

Movement to his right snapped him back to the present. He twisted, his rifle scope following his eyesight. A distant, sharp pinch dug back into his thigh. Benny stood slightly behind him; his rifle muzzle locked on Hutch’s splayed frame. Had Benny fired on Hutch, or had Aiden? Did it even matter?

Aiden’s gaze lifted to Benny’s bare face. It was twitching. So were his hands. But the bloodshot eyes that held Aiden’s own were aware. The blind, blank sheen was missing.

“Tell the docs it started with a tingle, an electrical buzz in my brain.”

Aiden found his voice. “You tell them. You’re still you. Fight it while I get the rope.” He tried to spring to his feet, but his left leg buckled. He hit the ground again. Grunting, he rolled back to his knees. That dull pinch was getting sharper by the second. “Fight it, brother. You can beat this.”

“No time.” Benny’s face twisted. “I can feel it taking over. The rage. The paranoia. The certainty I need to fire on you before you can fire on me. I don’t own my mind anymore.” His hand dropped to his holster and drew his sidearm. “Find out who did this to us. Make them pay.”

When Benny’s hand rose, Aiden was too numb, too stunned to evade the shot. Only Benny didn’t aim at him. He stuffed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

And then there was one.

Aiden ripped off his helmet, tipped his head back, and howled his grief and rage into the dark sky. When he fell silent and looked down, his hands were twitching.

Chapter seven

Day 2

Washington, D.C.

Clark took a sip of coffee, picked up his Montblanc diamond-studded ballpoint pen, and paused to admire it. Not only was the pen subtly elegant and fabulously expensive, but it was a pleasure to use. The ink flowed with fluid ease and dried quickly. No smudges. No fuss. Just expensive excellence. The best the world had to offer.

Life was good.

But then he’d promised himself such a life back on those street corners of LA where he’d hooked for food and shelter. And again during his education at MIT, which he’d attended thanks to a very exclusive escort service that had booked him out to their wealthy female and male patrons as both arm and bed candy. The clients he’d met through the service had given him an appreciation for the finer things in life and a distaste for sex. A fair trade.

He glanced at the time stamp on the video feeds scrolling across his laptop screen and jotted down a note.

Subjects infected 6:30 pm 2/08. He listed the D.C. time rather than Tajikistan. Tracking was easier that way.

The new cameras combined video and audio, which helped track the progression of his new weapon. When the bots hit the inflection point, the subjects devolved into violence, which got loud. Shouting, screaming, and slamming things around was common. He’d know through the audio feed the instant his little soldiers had seized their hosts’ brains.

It was two hours since the SEALs had been infected by his NNB26 bot prototype. In earlier test subjects, the mental deterioration showed about now. But these six were SEALs—with all the stamina and mental fortitude the title implied. Perhaps they could withstand his weapon’s grip a little longer.

No matter—two hours, or three hours—the six men were living on borrowed time.

His laptop display was split into six mini screens. Each small window was tagged with a name. Thomas Acker, Nathan James, Peter Hutcheson, Aiden Winchester, Sean Backman, and Chris Jennings. It was nice to have actual names attached to his subjects, rather than those adolescent nicknames.

Squirrel? Grub? Lurch?

Ridiculous.

As he settled back in his Pininfarina Xten Chair and waited for his new weapon to seize the SEALs’ amygdalae and hypothalami, he gazed out his penthouse window toward the Pentagon. The Potomac River looked like a ribbon of black velvet from the fifteenth floor, while the Pentagon was glowing. No doubt Admiral Hurley was huddled somewhere in that radiant building, with the rest of the brass watching and waiting. Possibly praying—to whatever entity he prayed too—that his men would escape the insanity of Karaveht.

But there would be no reprieve. His nanoweapon would make sure of that.

The test had gone remarkably well. Sure, his planning had been meticulous. He’d identified every conceivable obstacle and removed them, but some things were beyond his control. Such as the delivery system in Karaveht. The distribution and subsequent infection of the locals had been time sensitive. It was essential the weapon deploy, infect, and kill the residents prior to the SEALs’ arrival. If the SEAL team arrived too early, the locals, in their infected state, would kill them before the bots could take hold, and he needed to prove his bots worked on special forces types.

Injecting the citizens would have given him more control over the timing. But injection would lead to scrutiny, and possible detection. Nor could they send infected individuals into the village. For exposure to occur through an infected individual, there had to be direct physical contact. A touch. A kiss. A hug. Sex. And it was difficult to control when such events took place.

Eventually, he’d chosen the well to disperse the bots. On his orders, Kuznetsov had dropped five vials of his little soldiers into the water. They’d tested this delivery system in the lab, so they knew the approximate time between the vial dump and the first infections. They’d adjusted the parameters for the size of the well and the distribution through the water pipes. The first people to drink the water would have infected their families and friends. From there, the infection rate would just keep escalating.

His new technology really was the perfect weapon.

From the condition of the bodies on Winchester’s camera, the villagers had died late last night, long before the SEALs arrived. Perfect timing.

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