Quaranteam: Phil's Tale (Ch. 21)

Chapter 21

November 15 th, 2020

"What's on the agenda for the day?" Phil asked Linda with a smirk on his lips.

"You know damn well what's on the agenda for the day," his partner told him, rolling her eyes. "You still sure you don't want to be there in person?" They both glanced at the clock on the nightstand; it read 10:30 a. m. "I know I'd feel a lot better if one of us was there directly."

"We can't risk it, Linda," he sighed. "As much as I want all of this to be true, until we've verified that it is, the only thing we'd be doing by going personally is complicating the risk factor by like ten times. If this really is Eve McCallister, the last thing I want to do is draw attention to her. From Fielder, from Covington, from Haunton... If this solution she's promising us is real, then the last thing I want is someone else getting ahold of it before we've had time to study and replicate it."

"Do you think she really has what she's promising?"

"I do, because otherwise she'd have McCallister himself in tow," he told her. "Unless, of course, her husband's dead and she figured out how to dead man's switch to pair herself to a new person. That isn't what her message claimed, though."

"No, she said she had a method to safely reassign a woman from one man to another, which sounds like an utter game changer."

"It is," Phil grumbled. "Several months of research and development into it, and we haven't even gotten a whiff of being able to do this. It's so fucking frustrating. I hate putting women into this situation that we can't get them out of without killing their male partner, but I hate the idea of letting all the men across the world die even more."

"Phillip Marcos, like it or not, you helped save the world," Linda said, balling up one hand in a fist to rest on his chest. "I know you've got that Catholic guilt thing running pretty strong in you, but the last thing I want is for it to eat you up inside that you haven't done enough. It's okay to need other people to help out here and there. And if this Eve woman's got the solution to repairing women to new men, you will say thank you and you will just use it to learn as much as you can in continuing to make things better, because that's the kind of thing you do."

"Alright, get the girls on it, and make sure they aren't followed or tailed. Who're you sending?"

"K-Rod and Pax."

"Pax?"

"You know, Kiki. She used to go by Pakky, but we've been hanging around some Brits lately, what with some of the Gemivax people on site. One of them nearly took a swing at me when she heard me say it out loud. Kiki said she didn't understand what they were getting so uptight about, and it didn't bother her, and it was her we were talking about. Turns out the Gemivax researcher, name of Sabrina Joshi, thought we were referring to her and not Kiki. Paki is a racist slur in the U. K., but Joshi's not even from Pakistan - her parents emigrated to England from Nepal, so that probably saved me a clocking..."

"Right, got it. If it's fine with Kiki, it's fine with me. They going to be okay being away from their partners for a while?"

"They both made sure to get dosed this morning before they headed out to the pickup site," she told him. "They decided they didn't want to risk being late in any way shape or form, so they headed out several hours early and decided to just wait at their respective locations. I got a message from them a few hours ago confirming they're both where they're supposed to be, and they're radio dark until they're at the site. K-Rod's watching the house and Pax's picking up the package."

"You didn't want them to stick together the whole time?"

"I wanted someone to keep tabs on the house, and couldn't spare a third, so I had them split up. It's not optimal, but we're not expecting Eve McCallister to be rolling with an army, do we?" Linda said. "And even if she was, aren't we expecting Greerson to hold up his end of the bargain and make sure she isn't completely dangerous to us?"

"I think that's the hope," Phil said as he got up and out of bed. "We'll know in about four hours, give or take. What else is on the agenda for today?"

"Both you and Andy have got deliveries today, so that'll be fun. They both arrived this morning, and we're just waiting for the all-clear on making sure they don't have allergies or odd reactions to the serum."

"Right, it's the director with two names for Andy and... who is it for me?"

"Amelia, the Creole woman from New Orleans who's Audrey's friend from med school. She's the one who specializes in child development? And she seemed like she'd get along well with everyone, from what we can tell from a handful of Zoom calls."

"How did our Oracle results come out?" he asked, stepping into the bathroom, turning on the shower, reaching in to check the water temperature.

"84%, so good enough," Linda said, crawling out of bed before walking over towards the door of the bathroom. "She's in isolation right now, though, because she's got the Orange Variant, so don't worry when she starts stuttering on the imprinting, because that's to be expected, remember."

"We're definitely seeing an uptick in the number of Orange Variant cases," Phil said as he climbed into the shower. "That's two full batches that have had cases of that in the last week. Whatever region we keep getting these people from, they need to be more careful."

"That's just it, Phil," Linda said as she reached in to check the water temperature for herself before turning it up a little. Phil knew she preferred it a bit warmer than he did, but she mitigated that by generally standing in front of him and taking the brunt of it. "I don't think it's a region - I think one of the Love Buses has got a leak or something, and we're bringing healthy women onto it who pick up the virus along the way."

"You looked into this theory yet?"

"Not yet," she said, stepping into the shower with him, moving to her place in front of him hogging the hot water. "I wanted to let you know about it before I started poking around. People around here still mostly look at me as just being in charge of personnel security, so any time I try and stick my head out past that, I get some dirty looks."

"From whom?" he asked as he drizzled body wash over her, his hands smoothing across her body to get her good and lathered up, but also getting a few feels in while he did it. "You tell me so I can go kick some heads in."

"Don't worry about it, babe."

"I do worry about it, though," he told her. "You should be just as respected around that base as I am, and if I have to start kicking people in the face to make that happen, I will."

"The people are my big concern, Phil. Our people. You and Bill and Charlotte and Miguel and everyone else," Linda said as she stepped back out of the shower, not wanting to wash her hair today. "I'll leave the world and civilization saving stuff to you." His phone started to buzz on the counter, and Linda glanced at the face on the screen. "Bill's calling for you. Want me to answer it?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

She knew the code to his phone, so she typed it in and answered it. "Hey Bill, he's finishing up with the shower, what's up? Uh huh. The whole batch? Yeah, alright, I can imagine that'll be a little bit of concern. I'll make sure he shakes a leg and we get in there as soon as we can. How dangerous is it? Really? Only post serum, huh? A'ight, shouldn't be too much to worry about that. Yep, see you shortly, Bill."

"What's that all about?"

"So, the entire contingent that showed up for injection today has the Orange Variant of DuoHalo," Linda said to him. "They're all completely quarantined and getting injected by the high-risk team, so we're being extra cautious."

"Any idea where they picked it up?"

"Big Orange Variant spike down in Austin last couple of weeks, so that's what we're figuring, is that the whole Love Bus picked it up from someone there and passed it on to nearly everyone at the redistribution hub," she said as she started to get dressed. "Intake commander sent an alert as soon as they arrived on base, so anyone who was in contact or even close proximity to that Love Bus is having an immediate encounter with their primary or one of their Team if they are the primary, or, if they can't do that, take one of the emergency field tests and see if they've got OV, and if they do, self-quarantine until they can get connected with a partner. It doesn't last long outside of the body, but it's highly contagious in short ranges and proximity, and despite what we've tried to beat into those people's heads, they get close and personal during the redistribution hub at the airport."

"We've been at this for months," Phil said, turning off the shower and stepping out of it, grabbing his towel. Phil didn't have a lot of rules about the house, but he did have one - the big fluffy crimson towel was his and his alone. "You'd think the people over at the distribution center would've gotten all our notes about the Variants and what to retest for on pickup."

"The Air Force's line of thinking, babe, is they're already on their way to get the serum, so if they do have DuoHalo, it'll get washed off them as soon as they arrive here," Linda said, putting her hair up into a bun. "I know it's doesn't always work that way, but it works that way 99% of the time. The Orange Variant's one of the few ones that doesn't, and that just sprung up a few weeks ago. Nobody's trying to intentionally sabotage anything, they're just not completely current on all the weird variants that are springing up. Maybe you should put together some sort of quick memo, nothing more than a page or two, detailing all the Variants we have on file so far. Hell, I could probably use the refresher, so I imagine a bunch of others can too."

"Yeah, okay, I can try and squeeze that in today," Phil said. "I want to take the director over to Andy personally, though, so be ready for us to head over there around 5 or so."

"Even with the Orange Variant?"

"It shouldn't be too much of a concern unless there's other complications," Phil said, sliding his watch on. "We're already rolling in later than we should be, so let's get to work."

Phil's manor was more modest than Andy's mansion, but it was still a mansion, with two stories and over a dozen bedrooms, three living rooms and his own private pool with hot tub in the back. He'd been moved into the place relatively early on after DuoHalo had been discovered and they'd gotten the first few successful tests of the Quaranteam serum, but even though that was several months ago, the place still didn't quite feel like home. Linda had said it was because they were spending too much time in the lab or on the base and not enough time at home, and he was starting to agree with her. Hell, he'd never once driven onto his own property, although that was likely not to change any time soon, as neither Linda nor Violet wanted him behind the wheel of a vehicle, as it meant something regarding his safety was out of their control.

It was certainly a far cry from where he'd grown up, a small three-bedroom house that had housed him, his parents and his sister Victoria that his father had given to him when his mother had died. His father had moved to live with a bunch of uncles down in Los Angeles and had died only a year or so after his wife, nearly a decade ago. His bedroom growing up had been smaller than most of the closets in his new house. He still technically owned the old house up in San Carlos, but after moving all the stuff from there to his place in New Eden, he hadn't been able to push himself to go back to it. If he did, he knew he'd want to check in on the neighborhood, and the weight of knowing so many of his neighbors were dead and buried felt overwhelmingly taxing, even if he wasn't especially close friends with any of them.

He felt like leaving it all behind was basically his only way out, so sooner or later, he'd just sell the house and that would be that. But he hadn't been able to bring himself to do that yet.

"You know, at some point you're going to have to tell your sister how big your Team actually is," Linda said from the driver's seat as they drove the ten minutes from the mansion to the base itself. "Same's true for Andy. Shit, I bet he's figured most of it out already."

"At this point, I'm just going to hold off telling him everything until we're a little further past this. Maybe sometime next month he and I can sit down, and I'll walk him through everything, lay it all out so he knows everything behind the curtain," Phil said, watching out the backseat window of the Tesla Model Y. "Of course, I'll have to get him cleared for everything first."

"I've already started putting some of the clearance paperwork through, babe," Linda told him with a smile. "I figured you'd want to let him in at some point, and knowing you, as soon as you decide you want to do it, you're going to do it, whether or not you've stopped to clear it all in advance or not. So I'm just trying to stay a few steps ahead of you."

"Why do I have a feeling today's going to be a total mess?"

"It's just one of those days, baby," Linda said to him.

Once the car was on the base, they drove over to Phil's designated parking space near the entrance and headed into the building they used as their headquarters. Phil needed to get to his office first and do a sweep and clear of what had come in overnight before moving on to writing up the guidelines about the variants they knew about.

While his office had been cleaned up some for the interview with Katie Couric, it had devolved back into its chaotic state almost immediately after, as Phil never seemed to be able to keep stacks of paper in order, always having a sort of filing system in his head that nobody else understood. It was almost some sort of natural defense screen, so that if anyone broke into his office, they wouldn't know where to find anything, much less what anything was for.

He opened up his laptop and scanned through his inbox, which was a veritable nightmare of messages all marked Top Priority, something that made Phil grumble with amusement every time, as he knew of no way for 37 messages to all be his current top priority. But a few of them came from key names he knew and recognized - some people from the Gemivax team, some from the pharmaceutical production teams and one from the White House Chief of Staff.

Needless to say, he opened that one first.

When the President had been on site, her Executive Assistant had given Phil an encryption key that was meant for him to use when communicating with the White House, a little keyfob authenticator with a 15-digit number that changed every thirty seconds. He typed the number it was currently showing into the decrypter and the message became legible.

"Hey Phil, just saw the footage from New Eden that Katie Couric's team shot in sort of an early first cut at the piece," the message read. "Everyone at the base looks great, and your friend Andy Rook certainly seems like he was an excellent choice for a spokesperson. That said, you and I both know that Sarah Washington's meet-cute story, while true, isn't the reason why they ended up in his care, and Katie Couric has some pretty harsh accusations about the rot that it sounds like has infected the base over there. We're hoping the encryption will keep anyone else in New Eden from reading our communications, so if there's people we shouldn't trust, you should tell us, and we should start looking into it. Even if you can't prove it, if you have suspicions, that's good enough for us."

Phil sat and stared at the message for a few minutes before he finally composed a reply.

"Hey. There was a compromise in the system for a while, but we've figured out how they were doing it and patched up the vulnerability, as well as made a list of whom got paired with incorrect Oracle results. I suspect that General Fielder is in the know about these issues, if not even directly responsible for them. I know Miguel Cunningham, the creator of Oracle, is not one of the guilty parties, as he helped me fix the problem. I suspect there may also be ties to local rich businessmen, including a guy named Arthur Covington the 4th and the mayor of New Eden, James Haunton. I also have reason to suspect that the person who confessed to the murder of Veronica DeLaCruz, Brian Morrison, did so under orders from Covington. I should've known that we were definitely going to get flies with this much honey lying around. My opinion is not to do anything directly yet, but to begin preparing whatever it might take to replace Fielder with someone more stable here in New Eden. Things aren't off the rails yet, but it feels like it wouldn't be too hard to get them there with a little push, which means sooner or later, things are going to go to hell. Being ready ahead of that would probably be useful. I don't think having a man in charge of this base is the best decision, so if there are female Generals in the Air Force, or if there are going to be some soon, getting one prepped to take over here wouldn't go amiss. Also, it's worth letting you know - the wife of original Quaranteam developer and Russian defector Adam McCallister, Eve Merriweather McCallister, is apparently attempting to de-defect (refect? double defect?) back to the States, and apparently has a method of reassigning a woman from one man to another without that man having to be dead or present. While we don't have confirmation of this, the fact that she attempting to return to the U. S. without her husband indicates to me a strong likelihood that she's telling the truth. I don't have on-site data to confirm yet, but if this is true, it would give us what people have been asking for since this project began - a second chance. I will keep you updated as to this when I have more concrete information, but insist this information be kept between you and the President and no one else. I have kept the loop incredibly small on my side - only a handful of people know, and I am not bringing the woman onto the base itself until I can confirm the veracity of her claims and get her reassigned to someone other than her husband, which she insists is her plan as well. It may be a week or two before I can get back to you on this, and I know how odd that is, considering you are just aware of the expected ten-day max between dosages, but Eve was paired using one of the very earliest iterations of the Quaranteam serum we had. She might be able to withstand longer-than-normal periods between dosages. That said, we are sure she's returning from Russia, so the trip itself provides a number of complications. But it's hope, Madam President. Hope that we can undo the pairings of people with those undeserving, that we can correct mistakes that we made along the way, that we can undo some of the mess we made along the way. Will keep you informed as soon as I have news."

He encrypted the message using the tool he'd been given and his keyfob, and then sent it off to the Chief of Staff.

The next thing he needed to do was draft up a document covering all the DuoHalo Variants they had discovered, so he opened up a Word document and started typing up the list.

"Known Major DuoHalo Variants:

Red Variant - Thought to be now extinct. Much higher fatality rate among both men and women, higher transmission rate but extremely low survival rate outside of body, dying within minutes of exiting the body, unlike the standard 120 hours typical DuoHalo can live on surfaces. Originally named as such because of the telltale bloodshot eyes carriers displayed as a symptom. Orange Variant - Second variant of DuoHalo. Slightly higher fatality rate. Increased time for imprinting, even if not regenerating. Those who have been cured of the Orange Variant will experience more frequent need for dosing (sexual transfer with partners), capping out at about a week, for the next 2-4 months, although that varies from person to person, with some women experiencing the increased demand permanently. Also, a permanent side effect of having contracted the Orange Variant is that semen from a man other than the man the woman is paired with will have less toxicity to the skin of that woman (around 50-60% efficacy) but it will also send the woman into a furious rage where she will attack anything she considers to be a threat, meaning her principal is always safe, but other Team members are not always guaranteed. This information should be given to anyone exposed to the Orange Variant. It is somewhat less contagious than standard DuoHalo. Often detected by the telltale stuttering of the subject's saying of the word 'imprinting' during the process although we suspect that's just a tic. Yellow Variant (Smooth) - The Yellow Variant, or the Smooth Variant, as it is often referred to, will cause a woman who is imprinted to lose all of her hair upon imprinting, although this condition is temporary. She will also have a more intense reaction to the Daniels effect, the short version of this is that it means these women will be slightly clingier and more protective of their partners. No other long-term effects have yet been noticed, although the Smooth Variant seems to be a great deal less common these days. Contagion rates seem small. Green Variant (Waxed All Over) - The Green Variant, or the Waxed All Over Variant as it was first called, seems to be an offshoot of the Yellow Variant, in that it also causes a woman to lose all of her hair, however upon imprinting, she will not have the overprotective nature we have seen in Yellow Variants. There is, however, a secondary side effect that occurs post-imprinting, rapidly accelerating hair growth. While this does not seem to push body hair beyond its normal capacity, the hair atop a woman's head will grow at a remarkable rate, approximately half an inch every hour, for somewhere between 10-20 days afterwards. Again, no other major side effects seem to have been detected. This seems to have higher contagion and survival rates, and we have seen a recent uptick in reports of this. Blue Variant (Me First) - This variant seems to induce a certain level of competitiveness in Team members, almost trying to counteract the Daniels Effect, making Team members vie for the principal's attention, even to the level of violent confrontation, thus the nickname 'the Me First Variant.' Again, this effect only seems to last for a couple of weeks post-dosing to flush the virus from the system, but reports are those two weeks are utter hell with everyone at each other's throats. This Variant seems to mostly be contained to Africa, although some reports of it outside of that continent have been reported. Indigo Variant (Florida Spring Break) - This variant causes poor judgement and aggressive behavior in those it infects, and we have found that it is incredibly powerful in temporarily lowering both inhibitions and common sense. People infected with it will start fights, cause property damage, and often spread the virus through blood and spittle, shouting and bleeding over anyone they come in contact with. This variant seems to mostly be in Europe, although there have also been reports of it in both Mexico and Australia, as well as sporadic reports here in the United States. We suspect this variant may have originated from rogue researchers in Canada but have been unable to find proof of that. Violet Variant - This variant causes disorientation and clouds memories, making it difficult for the person to easily access their long-term memories, although short-term memory seems to function mostly well. Imprinting/dosing these individuals does seem to remove its effects but they may find themselves unable to recall what happened during the time they were under the influence of the variant. Zulu Variant - At this point, we had run out of colors and decided to use the NATO alphabet, starting at the end. The Zulu Variant is mostly a Canadian variant, and it seems to have mostly had only the side effect of decreased hearing and vision during the infection, with no side effects post-imprinting/dosing. Yankee Variant - One of the more dangerous variants, the Yankee variant interferes with the language portion of the brain temporarily, rendering those infected with an aphasia of speech, an inability to say what they intend to correctly and consistently. This effect does seem to mostly go away post-imprinting/dosing, however there may be a lingering juxtaposition of two words permanently that the Team and person will simply need to learn to live with. Our first case, the woman in question has swapped the words "pedicure" and "defrosting," for reasons we are still unable to explain. (This happens in only 2-5% of those infected with Yankee Variant.)Xray Variant - Another dangerous variant, those with the Xray Variant also develop temporary hemophilia, which prevents the blood from clotting after injury, and those infected run the risk of bleeding to death from a relatively minor injury. This is purged with imprinting/dosing. No known aftereffects post purging. Whiskey Variant - The most recent high-risk variant, the Whiskey variant causes a version of the Dunning-Kruger effect in those infected, where the infected become convinced that they have extreme knowledge and skills in subjects they know nothing about. A person with the Whiskey Variant will consider themselves an expert in all things and can often be argumentative. Most of this disappears post-imprinting/dosing, but in some cases, we have seen a tendency for those previously infected with it to have a predilection to get fixated or even mildly obsessed with whatever it is they are focusing on at the time. This variant currently seems confined to the eastern seaboard of North America, with no cases having been reported any further than 100 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean."

Phil finished up the report, had Bill glance over it, and half an hour later, it was on its way to nearly everyone in the Air Force involved in the Quaranteam project, as well as those involved in Quaranteam research in friendly nations, simply as a Be On the Look Out (BOLO) for those who were having to deal with identifying, gathering and treating those who hadn't been given a shot of the Quaranteam serum yet. He also sent copies to a few other individuals on some of the other international teams, including a cute member of the Gemivax team from Liverpool who Phil was fairly certain spent most of their last conference call flirting with him personally.

He was sure some of the information in the list was more speculative than proven science, but the way they were working these days, it was better for people to be overly paranoid than not prepared enough. They needed to get whatever the facts were at that moment out to other responsible individuals, people who knew better than to leak a speculative list out to the press or the public.

"Hello love?" Charlotte said, poking her head into the room as Phil was starting to get up and stretch, having been working on the list for a couple of hours. "Can I borrow you for just un moment?"

"Sure," he said, moving over, intending to kiss her on the cheek, but she turned her head and kissed him on the lips, a soft smile on her face. "We are imprinted, Phillip, so you'd better get used to kissing me."

"Sorry, I'm still trying to be respectful of your late husband, and y'know, trying to wrap my head around how many of my coworkers I'm sleeping with," he said with a slightly nervous laugh.

"Mmm, well, how's the song go? Get get get get over it," she said with a giggle that made her seem much younger than she was.

"What do you need?" he said as they started to walk down towards the elevator.

"You were planning on taking Maya Steele over to Andy today, oui?"

"Yeah, that was the plan. Something wrong?"

"Non, not wrong, but... interesting," she said. "I need you to come look at Maya's blood work. I think we may need to keep her another day or two."

"Why's that?"

"Her bloodwork's come back with some interesting results, and I feel like if you imprint her today, we won't get a chance to study her bloodwork."

"She's in the batch that has the Orange Variant, yeah?"

"Yes, but here's the thing, Phillip. I think she's patient zero for this batch, so if we can walk her through the last few days, we might be able to pick up a trace on who's intentionally spreading this, because looking at her bloodwork now, I'm more convinced than ever this Variant is manmade..."

Phil frowned for a second. "You're right, let's go take a look at the bloodwork, talk to Maya for a bit and then I can call Andy."