24991120 | 0819

  Terminal Epsilon V | Shanghai Er Lang Sheng Medical Institute | United China

  31°18′37″ N

  121°31′27″ E

  The last set of doors was barely visible.

  They waited.

  Adam Nightblade stood before them with his Harbingers arrayed behind him.

  Four warrior elite in full battle armor.

  Silent. Resolute. Immovable.

  Zora stood at his right again, her presence like a held breath.

  Gideon and Harbinger 03 formed a measured arc.

  Their arms rested near, not upon their weapons.

  Vicki Shi stepped forward.

  She placed her palm against a recessed plate embedded in the wall.

  There was no scanner visible. No light. No sound.

  The walls acknowledged her.

  Stone and steel panels rumbled and hissed.

  They parted with a slow, reverent sigh.

  The space beyond was not a laboratory.

  It was a nave.

  The ceiling rose high overhead.

  Gothic architecture.

  Ribbed with structural arches, more reminiscent of a cathedral than a sterile medical institute.

  Light fell downward in vertical columns, pure and shadowless.

  Illuminating the chamber without glare.

  The air was cold.

  Icy cold.

  Filtered to absolute clarity.

  No hum of machinery intruded.

  No alarms.

  No sensors.

  A reverent silence reigned unchallenged.

  At the center of the chamber stood a pedestal.

  Draped in a gold-embroidered white cloth.

  Upon it rested a single container.

  Circular, smooth-sided, matte steel.

  Its stainless-steel surface devoid of markings save for a subtle ringed sigil etched near its base.

  Cryogenic lines fed into it from below, pristine and immaculate.

  The LED indicator unblinking green.

  The unit was active.

  Vicki walked to the pedestal.

  Adam and his Harbingers approached.

  Vicki turned to them.

  “My lords,” she said, “I present to you.”

  “The fruits of centuries of labor. Decades of sacrifice.”

  He saw it in the way her posture shifted, almost imperceptibly.

  “What is this?” Adam asked.

  Vicki stood unmoving beside the pedestal.

  She did not touch it.

  “Refinement,” she said. “The distillation of every failure.”

  He stepped forward then.

  Each footstep echoed once, then vanished.

  Vicki watched him approach.

  Her smile widening.

  He stopped before the pedestal.

  A presence.

  A corruption.

  A weight.

  An alignment.

  His mind flashed back.

  The journey.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The walk.

  The tour.

  The ICU wards.

  Stabilization.

  The operating theatres.

  Extraction.

  The Observation Galleries.

  Assessment.

  The Boiler.

  Incubation.

  Everything she had ever shown them since they were resuscitated.

  An unease stirred inside him.

  The missing piece.

  His breathing slowed.

  His heartbeat steadied.

  The tension he felt since they set foot within this place.

  Realization dawning upon him.

  They all caught on to his train of thoughts.

  “MOSES Prime.”

  “You named a viral strain after the First Prophet?” Zora rumbled softly.

  “My Lady Chainbreaker, I am but Her Servant.” Vicki replied.

  “As foretold. Her Harbingers will come.”

  Adam let out a brief sardonic chuckle.

  “You understand, my lord.” Vicki said.

  “Yes,” Adam said.

  She turned to face the Harbingers fully.

  “This is not a hospital.” Adam whispered.

  Vicki smiled.

  Zora felt it too.

  Gideon stiffened in recognition.

  Harbinger 03 tilted his head.

  Slightly.

  “What had you done?” Zora snarled.

  “What Her Eminence decreed,” she continued, “Judgment.”

  Moses.

  “You engineered a plague.” Gideon said, “a pandemic.”

  “Yes.” Vicki said, her smile widened.

  “Not any plague. The Ten Plagues of the Prophet himself.”

  “Madness.” Zora spat the word. “Heresy.”

  “You assumed judgment required transcendence. We believed gods must be beyond flesh.”

  She looked back at the container.

  “The truth is simpler.”

  Adam’s jaw tightened. “You put God in a bottle.”

  Her smile faded.

  “Yes.”

  The words settled into the chamber without echo.

  Adam’s gaze never left the container.

  The Harbingers stiffened.

  “You cannot contain judgment,” Vicki said calmly. “You cannot bottle selection. You can only carry it.”

  She reached for the container.

  Unsealed it.

  A hiss of displaced air.

  Mists.

  Liquid nitrogen.

  The doctor drew forth four syringes.

  Each sealed.

  Each filled with a translucent substance that caught the light without reflecting it.

  The Harbingers stiffened.

  It invoked inevitability.

  “Your arrival was pre-ordanied,” Vicki said, an edge of satisfaction. “Harbingers.”

  Zora’s hand twitched.

  Adam raised his hand.

  She stopped.

  “You were anointed,” Vicki continued.

  “Your genetic composition. The perfect ark for MOSES.”

  “Ark.” Adam’s voice was low. “You made us vessels.”

  She gestured gently with the syringes.

  “You shalt deliver Her Eminence’s Judgment, Harbingers.”

  The whispers of the Faithful came back to him.

  Whispers clung to him as he passed.

  They will lift us to the Promised Land…

  No more hunger, once the Harbingers march…

  I prayed. I prayed. I prayed…

  We are worthy. We are worthy.

  Zora stiffened.

  The Ritual of Anointment.

  The High Priestess.

  Thou shalt be the speartip, to deliver our wrath.

  Gideon

  Chosen.

  Adam smiled.

  A cold smile.

  Vicki inclined her head.

  24991120 | 0149

  Flood Bay V | UNHCR Salvation of the Sea | Eastern Mediterranean Sea

  34°58′12″ N

  25°06′45″ E

  “Careful,” he murmured. “This place is unstable.”

  Water sloshed softly against steel.

  The hold was partially flooded.

  Seawater pooling ankle-deep across the deck.

  Emergency lights flickered weakly along the walls.

  Casting broken reflections across rows of ruptured crates.

  The air smelled of rust, salt, and old chemicals long since leached away.

  At the forward end of the hold, the ship opened up to the sea.

  Not breached.

  Opened.

  Bow-facing doors yawned wide, their mechanisms frozen mid-cycle.

  Beyond them, the sea pressed in and withdrew with the swell.

  Cold water rolled across the deck in slow, deliberate surges.

  Seawater flooded the deck, then receded.

  “Fan out,” Cobra said.

  They waded in.

  “No signs of life.” Viper said as he consulted his scan.

  Python’s slate glowed as he jacked into the ship’s mainframe.

  “Cargo manifests are gone,” he said. “Deliberately wiped.”

  Boa crouched near a crate split open from the inside.

  Its interior was empty, save for shredded insulation and shattered brackets.

  “Stripped,” she said.

  “Scavenged for supplies,” Viper added, “or whatever they were doing.”

  They moved deeper.

  Smaller craft were berthed along the edges of the hold.

  Inflatable boats, rigid skiffs, shallow-draft launches.

  Most slumped in neglect, seams split, hulls fouled with salt and rot.

  Mooring lines lay slack and frayed, their winches long seized.

  “Look,” Boa said.

  A handful of docking bays remained immaculate.

  Their cradles clean.

  Fuel lines intact.

  Docking clamps freshly serviced.

  “Move there.” Cobra said.

  Bolted canisters lined the far wall along a service table.

  Identical copies to the containers they found in the observation gallery.

  But here they lay torn open.

  Their fastenings twisted, their content removed.

  Several lay half-submerged near the waterline, corrosion marking the touch of the tides.

  Salt had eaten deep into the steel where the sea had touched them longest.

  Some floated still within the flood bay.

  All were empty.

  Python stopped cold.

  “No,” he said quietly.

  He ran his scan again.

  Cross-referenced data.

  Pulled archived logs from corrupted memory clusters still clinging to the ship’s systems.

  His hands trembled slightly as he read.

  “Final transport logs,” he said. “Partial recovery.”

  Cobra moved to him. “Read it.”

  Python swallowed.

  CONTAINMENT TRANSPORT FAILED.

  INTERCEPTION PROBABILITY UNACCEPTABLE.

  VECTOR SURVIVABILITY UNACCEPTABLE.

  REVISION: HUMAN HOSTS.

  SCRUTINY MINIMAL.

  CADAVER ROUTES.

  Boa’s breath caught. “They were not moving the virus in canisters.”

  Python shook his head slowly.

  “Eyes in the skies, borders and customs.”

  “Viral burnt out, won’t survive the trip.” Viper mumbled.

  Then his eyes widened. “Oh no.”

  Python looked up at them.

  “People.”

  “No.” Cobra said, “corpses.”

  He then pointed to the edge of the flood bay.

  Beyond the maintained docks sat a sealed compartment, its tarpaulin flaps flapping in the gale.

  A hazmat tent.

  Makeshift.

  Modular.

  Designed for throughput.

  A processing room.

  They headed towards it.

  They found it.

  The syringes.

  Next to rows of pristine med-pods.

  Unused.

  “That’s how.” Viper said, “as cadavers.”

  “To the refinery..”

  “For extraction.” Python said, “refinement.”

  Inside, used syringes lay discarded in biohazard trays.

  Caps stacked with methodical care.

  Some trays overflowed.

  Others had been hastily sealed and abandoned.

  Along the far wall stood med-pods.

  Pristine, unused.

  Tethered still to self-contained generators humming softly in standby.

  Their batteries read full. Their seals unbroken.

  A gasp escaped Boa.

  “Sedatives. Suspended animation. Resuscitation.”

  Silence slammed into the hold.

  “They took the most suitable hosts.” Python continued.

  “Pumped them full of the strains, and put them under.”

  “Cattle,” Vipers said, “to the slaughterhouse.”

  Cobra stared at the discarded canister.

  “They were not experimenting,” he said. “They are refining it, off-shore.”

  “This was a handoff point.” Viper finished grimly.

  Python scrolled further.

  A final entry flickered into view.

  A list of subjects.

  Their compatibility ratings.

  “A5 Wagyu,” Viper hissed.

  Python shut down the slate.

  “It checks out.” He nodded grimly. “Mass infection here.”

  “We were looking at this wrong. The whole time.” Viper said.

  “The ship wasn’t a refinery,” he said. “It was a factory.”

  “They infected every victim that stepped aboard the derelict.”

  “They picked the crème of the crop,” Boa finished.

  The water sloshed again as the ship shifted beneath them.

  Groaning softly, like something relieved to finally be empty.

  “They took the premiums off-site,” Cobra said grimly.

  Boa whispered, “Jesus…”

  “No,” Cobra said flatly.

  “Church.”