Whispers on an Undying World

The Lantern

On went the hour of her catching up, it went surprisingly quick. In the last few minutes they were running around trying to get the last of their work finished before they pulled into the camp. Much to their surprise they were immediately ushered into a huge airport hangar, the ceiling felt like it was a mile away. A man in his late forties was the first person they saw when the back of the semi opened; behind him were dozens of men running around. There was chatter nonstop and it would have been confusing if the man hadn’t taken control of them and took them from the Lab.

Before they left, Micha made sure to have both of her duffels along for the ride. As they trotted along Micha kept getting looks that she would ignore, however it was very clear that no one took her seriously. In fact an old man that didn’t bother introducing himself at all but said that it was ridiculous that a bunch of students had this type of job.

They ran through make shift roads, up and down stairs until they finally managed to get to the control room. By the end of the walk Micha was ticked off, but the computer room was enticing. As soon as she passed through the doors the alarms started blaring, they must have an anti-roaming room set up. The thirty people in the room looked up at them, as the man started to raise his hand Micha raised hers to him. The alarms kept going off as she made her left hand into a fist then twisted to the right, undoing the hand lock.

Flipping through a little bit of security code, she gave her software a door then shut off the alarms. In less than thirty seconds she was in the door and flipping through what information they had. The fact that the only different info they had was the most current. Micha stood on her tippy toes then touched the toe of her other foot to her heel, the roller blades popped out and she did the same for the other side. After skating down the aisle and then sliding to the front of the room and skid to a stop. After bowing her head she smiled at the room of confused people.

“Hello, my name is Mikala Anderson. I’ll be working with you and I would appreciate the help of your full intellect so we can do something about this pandemic.” She held her hands in front of her as she called the Doctor. “Eagle to the Doctor, conference with the lantern.” It rang for a moment before the ever endearing voice of the Doctor came on the overhead.

“Have you arrived yet Miss Anderson?” She gave a few orders on her end then was silent.

“Yes we have, I just conference you with what will be called the Lantern. The actual room is bigger than I thought it would be.” Before the Doctor could answer she laughed. “My point, Dr. Rosenberg, for making this call is to request that I commandeer control temporarily so I can catch everyone up with what we know.”

She was silent for a full ten seconds before sighing. “Full leadership is given to Miss Anderson, however when she is no longer needed she will be put onto her little projects.”

Smiling, Micha waved her little group in so they could set everything up. Mike was already on the line with Matt and was setting up all of the big monitors with the information they planned on showing to the crew. Although it was the same information they hadn’t come up with the same conclusions, they were concerning themselves with how it was spreading so rapidly and the lab was focusing on why it was mutating in that way.

“Thank you, Dr. Rosenberg. Lantern conference release.” They went back to a one on one call so she could complete the rest of her request.

“This is the part where the And comes isn’t it?”

“I want to be put on the team that implants the devices, before you can argue think about it. I’m the creator so if there are any problems I can fix it on the spot; also you will be in my ear so if I’m doing something wrong you can have any of the officers with me take me away. You will have complete control.”

“Why do I have the feeling that I will regret saying yes Miss Anderson?”

“Dr. Rosenberg, my methods work and you won’t admit it but you know. You also understand that what I’m saying is true.” Micha stood still and waited for her to answer, after a long moment the Doctor did.

“If you so much as step out of line without good coming out of it, you will be shipped to a room with no light for you to work on your projects. Do you understand Miss Anderson?”

“Perfectly, thank you so much. I will get everything set up so we can move out in two hours, like your plan said. Eagle out.” Micha turned and looked at the group, each having an odd look on their faces. They probably thought it was a terrible idea to have a young girl in an odd get up be in charge of them. “You heard the boss lady, let’s get started.”

“Hold up, there’s no way I’m working with a half-dressed girl and a bunch of kids. Just go home and let the adults do their jobs.” Micha knew that at least one of them was going to have a fit.

Micha skated up and stopped quickly in front of him. “Hello, I would like to work well with everyone here. What seems to be the problem?”

“People are out there dying and you probably blew a general to get in here. This isn’t a game.” He looked like he was sleep dep rived and in his late thirties, probably hasn’t eaten since yesterday at the earliest. In fact half the team looked exhausted, after she was finished she was going to demand half of them to take a rest then the other half to wait until they get back then take a nap.

“That’s true, it’s not a game. That is why the lady in charge gave me the job. I would really like to skip this part, go get some rest and food. When you’re good come back.”

Micha turned to help set everything up but was stopped when he yelled. “Dr. Rosenberg may have made you lead but I’m not following.”

Breathing Micha turned around again and gave up. “Matt, what have you found on this guy?”

They had agreed before that if anyone sent up red flags in the initial scan they would be sent out of the room until they were finished. Matt spent his brief time finding everything about the one screamer. “Tyler Marks, thirty-six. Recently divorced with two daughters, the ex-wife got full custody of both girls because the reason of divorce was abuse. Two years ago he was banned from all 7-eleven’s after going in there drunk and drinking straight from the frosty machine. He also has an outstanding warrant for his arrest in North Carolina for a hit and run.” Matt laughed then turned around to look at her. “Three days before ground zero he was fired for taking a hooker into his secret base and I quote, ‘She got excited by flashing lights and grease.’ The only reason he was put on this team was because he was the head of his department and they hadn’t found a replacement yet.”

The horror on this guy’s face was priceless. “Wow, you are a keeper aren’t you? Ok Mr. Marks, I’ll make a deal with you. You leave and get something to eat then come back after you rest, or I have you tied down with some of my handy dandy duct tape to that chair and force fed like a toddler.” After staring at him for a second she smiled, and then he nodded. “Great, now the children will get to work. Have a nice rest Mr. Marks.” The old guy that had led them was hiding a chuckle when he had one of his men escort Marks out.

When the tired man was gone, their escort walked up and patted her on the shoulder. “If this wasn’t such a serious situation I would be asking you out for a beer. Get to work Miss Anderson.” After that he left and let her speed to the front of the room.

She had no resistance after that, it was easier than she could have hoped to commandeer a government facility but now was not the time to admire her attempts. “Who has been watching the cameras?” A group of three raised their hands and Thomas walked over to them. “Are there any behaviorists here?” One raised his hand and Sean walked over to him. “What about biologist?” Two off to the right raised their hands and Garett walked to them, which left Matt and Micha. “To fill you in on our plan quickly, I’ll just show you. We have already been told that the plan so far is to go to a high population of infected then a medium then a low. The idea is to see why they are populating certain areas and not others however for what we noticed it’s going to be difficult to get to the center, where the real puzzle is.” Micha scrolled through her eagle eye screen and threw up the map they managed to create. It popped up onto the biggest screen so everyone could follow along. “We sent the map already so you know the coloring. Does anyone have anything they would like to say?”

It was silent for a few moments before a girl in the front row raised her hand, Micha had to resist the urge to laugh and waved her to speak. “I noticed that someone in the lab was reviewing some specific tape of the outbreak. It almost appeared like they were looking for something, so I watched it as well and noticed that most of the videos were related to the schools.” Her voice was quiet as she didn’t look up but instead pulled up a video on her screen and turned it to face Micha. “So I went through the feeds that hadn’t been watched yet and found something I thought you would want to see.”

Rolling up to her, Micha watched the video. It was from an ATM machine that showed a new building in the background, it was smaller so it could be mistaken for anything other than a school. The video was a group of kids running up the steps and closing the doors behind them, there was movement against the door windows that implicated that they were putting something in front of the doors. “I’ve watched videos surrounding this place, from the moment those kids went through the front door to now nothing has gone in or out. There were a few infected that hovered for a little but besides that, nothing. There are still kids in that building.”

Looking at the video then girl with the short blue hair, Micha nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Richelle.”

“Well Richelle, I would like you to come up with a realistic plan to get a team in and out to get those kids.” Micha turned to talk to Matt but Richelle held up her hand. “Go ahead.”

“There’s something else, I just thought the school should come first.” Her brown eyes looked concerned, like she was about to say something that no one else had listened to. “There’s something that doesn’t make a lot of sense, I’m sure who ever has been watching the same videos I have been noticed.”

Micha waited for her to continue but when Richelle didn’t Micha turned back to her. “Richelle, I take everything into consideration. Whatever you’re thinking, I won’t ignore the possibility.”

After visibly steeling herself, Richelle spoke. “For whatever reason, I haven’t seen any pre-pubescent children get attacked by the infected. For that matter, the youngest victim looked no older than seventeen. I chose that school because a girl that was attacked went into that school, they have cameras in there but I haven’t been able to get in to see if the girl died. However there is no evidence that the infection has spread inside the building.”

“Matt?”

“Already on it.” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he got pass the cyber wall. “Looks like the power shut off yesterday; I’m going to get them back online then go through the data base. Give me a minute.”

“Sean, what do you think?”

He was sitting back in his chair, frowning at his screen. “I agree.” After a moment he pulled up a public record of every type of building service in the quarantined zone. “The blue outlined buildings are schools or have children in them, the yellow are schools that have a video record of kids locking themselves in. The orange are kids locking themselves in but an infected gets in them.” All of them stared at the screen for a few seconds before noticing a very interesting pattern. “The infected are calmer around children, more aggressive around adults. There are no infected children that have been found.”

Micha chuckled and had her flip through all the video evidence that supported her claims. “Mother nature is ironic, survival of the fittest and in this cases the young. Behavioral team, have you noticed a mob mentality even in their frenzy?”

The girl right next to Sean, in her mid-thirties, was the first to talk. “It appears they work in collective decision, they are mainly non-verbal so we haven’t found out how they’ve been communicating. However there have only been few cases that show the infected alone, that being the case it is concluded that they are highly social.” She then sighed. “They also kept their intelligence at least to a certain extent. Which brings me to the question, why haven’t they stormed the walls? None of the walls have a chance of holding out if a mob stormed them, these people can still open doors and use appliances but they don’t make an actual attempt to escape.”

That was a possibility they had already crossed but had no proof so they hadn’t brought it up to the Doctor; the fact that she had come to the same conclusion said it was a stronger possibility. “Try and think of a way to prove that. A scheme or something that we can do while in the field.”