Quaranteam: Book Two (Ch. 34)

Chapter Thirty-Four

May 13 th, 2021

They were on their flight back the next day when Phil's phone rang somewhere over Kansas. It was a FaceTime call from the lab, so Phil connected it to the screen inside of Andy's airplane. "Hey, Evie, what's up?"

On the screen sat Dr. Evie Merriweather (aka the ex-Mrs. McCallister), Dr. Bill McKenna and Dr. Charlotte Varma, all looking about as pleased with themselves as Andy or Phil had ever seen them before. "Phil... we got it," Bill said, holding up a triumphant fist in the air.

"Got... what exactly?"

"We've got the Sergei Swerve into a stable, utilizable formula, that has 90% efficiency between a group of just four individuals of any gender mix, any configuration, including accepting cross-keys," Evie said, grinning from ear to ear.

"Wait, cross-keys?" Phil said, leaning forward in his chair. "I thought we were certain that was a dead-end, a complete and total no-go."

"Forgive me for being the slow child on the plane," Fiona said, "but what does cross-keys mean?"

"It means that a woman--" Bill started.

"Anyone--" Evie interrupted.

"Anyone could be keyed to accept two, three, even four different unique seminal sequences, meaning you could put multiple men into a Team, and grant all of them the high resistance to DuoHalo without cross-contamination being a problem," Bill said joyously.

"And it lets us solve for all sorts of gender fluidity, queerness, transexuals, the lot!" Charlotte said, her smile large and beaming like the others. "Although it does come with a... rather unusual side effect, one that will take some getting used to." She giggled a little bit, glancing at the other two as if she wanted to see who would say it before deciding to say it herself. "Every woman who's relinked using Second Sergei will be a squirter upon sexual release."

"The transfer was one of the problems, but in attempting to ensure there would still be a transference of nanobots between both parties, we... ended up making all women ejaculate," Bill said, rubbing the back of his neck in awkward amusement. "It's a thing partners in those groups will need to get used to swallowing at least a little of, but it doesn't have to be a large amount. And we considered that a very small and reasonable ask for all the other things that this new improved version overcomes."

"Ninety percent immunity?" Phil said. "That's better than some smaller teams have. And we're sure this isn't another false hope situation like we had last year?"

Bill shook his head. "I made sure we passed several actual test rounds and have done full inert nanobot analysis post ejection, and this is the real deal. Using this new stuff we've come up with, you could basically create a Team out of any four people on the planet and make them basically as resistant as just about anyone else on even the bigger Teams."

"As high as the Goshers?"

"Well, not quite as high as the extreme large-scale Teams, but not all that far off it either."

"Been able to take out that mental programming loophole from it?" Melody asked.

All three of them looked a little crestfallen for a moment. "That's still there," Evie said, "but seeing as it's a thing we can control externally just by preventing anyone from saying anything during the assignment or reassignment, it's a moderate risk that I'm afraid we're just going to have to live with for the time being."

"So how does the lock/key system work with the new one?" Phil said.

Evie touched a couple of fingers to her temple. "We essentially establish each person as both a lock and a key, but the new system can only hold a maximum of four people per Team. That's another of the limitations of it."

"What happens if you try to introduce a fifth person into the Team?"

"It treats them as a hostile person, no matter what you do - toxic semen, toxic vaginal fluid, toxic spit. Basically, one toxic body," Bill said. "It's... not ideal, we know, but it's what we have. And we've been so excited by the progress that we decided not to be disheartened by the things that don't work and focus on the ones that do."

Phil sighed. "Well, it's my job to ask about all the shit that doesn't work, so what else is wrong with it?"

"Just one more thing, and it's probably a doozy, boss," Bill said.

"Hit me with it."

"We think Teams built like this won't be able to use Dead Man's Switches."

Phil's facial expression took on a quizzical look. "Wait, what?"

"So, it shouldn't theoretically be a problem, just because groups like this will have high immunity for long periods and should stay that way long enough for us to eventually science another way out of this mess. There is a possibility that we could use a Dead Man's Switch to try and essentially delete the dead person from the Team, reopening a vacant slot, but we won't be able to test that until we actually have someone in that position, and we'll offer those people the option of testing it when it comes to that, but even surviving as a three or two person Team with this new serum will grant a very strong resistance to DuoHalo. By the time their Teams are getting smaller because of other causes, we'll hopefully have a better option."

"It is a workable option for getting our LBGTQI+ citizens taken care of, so you should call the President, Evie," Phil said.

"Wait, me?" Evie said, squinting at the screen. "After all the heinous shit my ex-husband was responsible for, and you want me to present this information to the President?"

"We're already halfway back from DC, Eve," Phil laughed, giving a little shrug. "Unless you're so scared that I have to have Andy turn this plane around so I can go back and do it."

"No no... I... I can call her," Eve said, her voice settling into the idea that she was expected to call the President shortly. "It's just... you normally do this sort of thing."

"Well, you've been taking point on this as all the other stuff has been spinning up on me, Eve, and you deserve recognition for all the work you've been putting on this while I've been trying to chase down... everything else," Phil said. "I want you to start looking good in Washington's eyes, Eve, because you're putting in the work. You can even tell the President we could start using this version in China, if we're worried about the gender-population mismatch over there. Enjoy your victory lap. You've earned it."

"Thanks Phil. I will. Any other news from Washington?"

"Loads of things I have to wait to talk about until we're in person, but nothing completely earthshattering or unexpected," he said.

"How was Covington?" Bill asked.

"Alive. Still. Unfortunately."

"Still missing a hand?"

"Regrew it, sadly."

"Can't all be sunshine and roses," Evie said. "You two been keeping up on the news while you've been out there?"

"Bits and pieces, but I don't think any of us have looked at it since we took off a few hours ago. Just wanted to have some peace and quiet," Andy said. "Why do you ask?"

"You may want to turn on the news."

"Which news?"

"Any news," Bill said. "It's Africa. It broke about an hour ago. It'll be the lead story on pretty much anywhere you look. We'll talk to you about it when you get back."

Bill was right - it was the lead story on BBC news, CNN, MSNBC, even Fox News. They settled on the BBC coverage and watched to get caught up on what they'd been missing.

They were calling it "The Great Algerian Annexation."

Reports were still fuzzy, but it sounded as though the Algerians had included some kind of backdoor in their serum, one which allowed the Algerian military to invade and conquer many of the surrounding countries without so much as a shot fired. The surviving militaries of the invaded countries had just stood down, as if they had recognized they were on the losing side. There had been reports of trucks with loudspeakers driving around with some sort of song playing, which was causing enemy combatants to become docile and compliant, and now that reports of that audio weapon was getting out, resistance pockets were springing up, troops with earplugs or noise cancelling headphones, but that was only a fraction of what it should have been to repel invaders.

It had been difficult to determine how widespread the outlying expansions had been, but there had been reports in Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and plenty of the small western countries - Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, The Gambia, Senegal and the like - had rolled over and were now flying the Algerian flag.

The attacks had been targeted on just the main urban metropolises and government centers, and the control over the greater areas of the countries seemed tenuous at best. Reports were that members of the Nigerian government and army were collaborating with the Algerians, trying to form one giant consolidated country, and the strikes had been concentrated on key points where they could take the most influence and exert the most power, but how they intended to expand that control into the more rural and sparse areas of these countries seemed unclear. It had been an insanely big and risky gambit, but it had worked, at least for the moment.

Gabon was holding the line, and their serum had been used as the main one for Cameroon, Chad and Libya, which formed sort of the defensive wall that Algeria hadn't moved into, simply because they were already stretched thin, even with folding portions of the Niger and Nigerian armies into their own. The southern side of Africa's upper western jut - countries like Benin, Togo, Cote d'Ivorie, Ghana and Burkina Faso - were also mostly on Gabon's version of the serum, and as such, it seemed like Algeria was leaving them alone. But between themselves and their new acquisitions of Niger and Nigeria, there was a complete cut off of land travel between those countries and the rest of Africa. Sea and air would be their only means in or out.

This had been an attack of opportunity, and the various countries of the world were still struggling to even decide how to respond to such naked and relentless aggression, but the nations on Gabon's version of the serum who now found themselves surrounded by New Algeria were reaching out to nations like France, Spain, the UK and the US for support, to protect their sovereignty from Algerian aggression, assuming the Algerian Acquisition didn't just collapse in on itself like an overdone flan.

The Algerian government had, as of yet, issued no statements.

With these reports was additional reporting that the Algerian version of the Quaranteam serum was not based on the US's version, but instead on a sample that had been obtained from Russia before their collapse. The Algerians reportedly had two versions of the serum they were using - one they were giving to foreign nations, and one they were using internally, which did not have any of the docility triggers that the ones they had given to other countries had.

Early reports were that the distribution of the serum in its various incarnations had been reaching critical mass in Africa, and the Algerians felt like their flavor of the serum had reached about as far as it was going to go, so they had implemented their plan to seize control of and annex as much land as they could, simply growing their country and consuming as many others along the way as they were able to.

In less than a day, Algeria had taken 'control' of most of the African northwest's major cities, and in most cases, the local governments had apparently been happy to secede control to the Algerian military. President Tebboune of Algeria was now in charge of one of the largest nations on the planet, assuming it didn't implode from the shock.

Talking heads from both the US and the UK were on the air, assuring people that this sort of thing couldn't happen on domestic soil, that the Algerian version of the serum had never been given to any US or UK citizens, and that despite the immense land grab Algeria had just gone through, they still represented no large military threat to the world's superpowers, or what was left of them.

The talking heads also insisted that while Algeria could turn into a superpower, based on the land and population it had just gained, that did not seem an immediate threat.

"Well, that's gotta be the biggest map adjustment since the collapse of the Soviet Union," Andy said, mostly to himself.

"Certainly the fastest," Linda said, putting the television on mute, letting the pictures continue to play silence, so they could turn the volume back up if something ground breaking was happening. "It's going to make foreign relations an utter fucking nightmare for a while."

"They're the largest army in Africa," Melody said, "but that still doesn't mean they're that much of a threat. Most of their weaponry is ex-Soviet Union stuff, and in terms of raw troops, well, let's just say I wouldn't expect them to be knocking on our doors any time soon."

"But it's still an example of people taking advantage of this serum and using it to control the crowds," Phil said with a deep frown. "They're using it to calm and quiet masses, a sort of large-scale mind control. That wasn't what it was designed for. That wasn't what any of us wanted."

Andy put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "That's the danger with any technology. It gets loose into the world and people start using it for things you couldn't have ever dreamed. You can't hold yourself responsible for all of that."

"I know I shouldn't but I kind of do anyway," Phil said, kicking the frame of Andy's plane. "Sorry. I just hate that somehow in all my work towards science, we end up using even the good shit as weapons, sooner or later."

"How the hell do you think they did it?"

Phil shrugged. "Knowing what we do about the Russian variant of the serum, it wouldn't be that hard to bake in a trigger into the serum itself. Splice in an auditory trigger to start pumping the body full of relaxation chemicals. The one thing I'm sort of glad about this is that we're nearing world saturation, meaning there aren't that many people left who haven't been exposed to the serum already."

"While some of China is starting to get some version of the serum, Dr. Marcos, most of the country still has yet to be treated with it," Ming-Yue said to them. Andy was a little surprised at how often she seemed to be sitting and listening without contributing her opinion, and he'd made a point of trying to get her to speak up more. "I am even more glad now that we established the treaty that will get versions of your serum from your alliance into my people's veins and not..." She gestured at the television screen on the wall. "Whatever that is."

"Fucking hell," Andy said. "Could you imagine if China had gone with the Algerian version of the formula?"

"I suspect that's why this may have happened now." Ming-Yue replied, reaching out to take Andy's hand. She was still the newest of Andy's partners, and as such, often felt like a bit of an outsider, although they were doing their best to try and get her integrated well. "I know there were members of the CCCP who had been reaching out to Algeria, asking if they could provide enough serum to be able to handle the surviving population of China, but thankfully my group was able to make contact with you before they could ramp up their production enough to satisfy what little support the CCCP was getting inside of China."

"Well, the President gave us her assurance that the deployment efforts to get as much of China vaccinated as soon as possible are underway," Phil said. "Starting with major metropolitan areas like Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Macau, Tianjin and others, then working their ways out from there. It's divided between us, the UK and the Aussies, in a 50/25/25 split. We'd been considering downgrading the production speed of the serum, but as soon as you reached out, we and the other countries turned it back on full blast, and an entire fifty million doses of the sixty million we in the US had in reserves were sent over to your country. Your people are leading the distribution efforts, but I know it's got to be weird to have American, British and Australian military on your soil."

"Better we do it now than letting you lot walk in when the entire country is a graveyard, or filled with the sleepwalking dead," Ming-Yue sighed. "We had no options remaining, and it was time we stopped attempting to fool ourselves regarding that matter. Did the President give you any indication of how the inoculation efforts were going?"

"She said it was off to an excellent start," Andy said, "once the surviving Chinese military members stood down and accepted that we were there for humanitarian efforts."

"Not entirely humanitarian efforts, but yes, I take your meaning, Andrew."

"From what I'm meant to understand, most of the coalition's asks were very reasonable."

"You would, of course, think that, being that one of them is your country."

Andy shrugged a little bit. "To be honest, Ming-Yue, international politics has never really been my thing, so I can't honestly say one way or another. But I know that the President did try and cut as fair as a deal as possible, while still trying to get what's best for us and the others out of the matter as well. And you're doing what you have to, in order to keep as many of your people alive as you can."

The television showed cell phone footage of troops laying their weapons down outside of their houses and stepping forward to welcome Algerian military, their hands raised in surrender. The same image was shown, time and again, from different cameras, different angles, different places, but the motions were always the same, and the footage was always shown without sound, something Andy guessed was to keep from accidental exposure to whatever song they were playing that was causing the people to become so subdued.

It was crazy - Andy had only seen something like it once before in his entire lifetime, when he'd seen the people moving in tandem in Valhalla Shores. That complete and total lack of mental freedom, people locked into a series of orders they couldn't disobey if they wanted to.

"You should call people back home, Ming-Yue, and see if the reports on the ground match with what we're telling you," Linda suggested.

"I thought I couldn't contact Beijing?"

"You can," Melody said. "Just not while we're in transit. Once we're back in California, it's fine. Eventually, I'm sure it'll be okay, but right now, we still have to be in a heightened security stance with you. I'm sure you understand."

Ming-Yue offered a shy, almost apologetic smile, as if she was the one who had something to apologize for. "Of course, Melody. I understand. I know I have put you in a rather complicated position by insisting one of us bond with someone involved in the process, but you must--"

"Hey," Andy said, cutting her off. "We get it, okay? We all get it. It's an unusual situation for everyone involved, and there's a lot of complicated feelings we're all still trying to process. That's true for everybody. You, me, Melody, hell, even Phil and Linda have their own complications they're still trying to work through."

"Mostly around when we can carve out time for me to try and get pregnant again before my ovaries shrivel up like raisins," Linda grumbled. Linda was still a little touchy, having had an early miscarriage with the pregnancy she'd had last year. It had only been about seven weeks pregnant when her body had rejected the pregnancy for whatever reason, and she'd been somewhat reluctant to give it another go, although that was something she was starting to get over. Miscarriages were still about as common as they were before the nanobots got involved, which means any pregnancy had a 5-10% chance of failure during weeks five to eight. "I think I'm just about mentally ready to give it another go, though, when we're ready as a family."

"Hey, talk to my director of security, and whenever she feels comfortable turning the job over to someone else for a year, I'm all for it," Phil said.

"Talk to that bitch?" Linda joked, referring to herself. "I'd rather just have one of her subordinates decide she's taking the job for a year."

"Hey boss?" Violet said, not even looking up from her book she was reading. "I'm taking the job for a year."

"Who asked you, BigTits?"

"Boss, my superior officer's harassing me about my cup size again," Violet said, still not looking up.

"That bitch," Linda said facetiously. "You should take her job for a year."

"Got it, boss," Violet said. "Hey boss, I'm taking your job for a year."

"Goddamn it," Linda sighed, as everyone else laughed. "Outwitted yet again."

"No, seriously boss," Violet said, finally looking up from her book, which Andy noticed was his friend Larissa's book, 'Ions At Dawn.' "You keep complaining about it, and now I'm finally sick of it, so it's time to shit or get off the pot. So, unless you have any serious objections, starting tomorrow, you stop taking birth control and start trying to get pregnant. I told Phil I'm happy to wait a few years, let everyone else get settled first and then worry about it."

Linda looked completely dumbstruck, although the smile on her face said that wasn't a bad thing, as Phil finally broke the silence and said, "Thank you, Violet. She says, 'thank you Violet.'"

Violet looked back down at her book with a smug grin. "Well, she says 'thank you, BigTits, but I get the gist of it.'" A few seconds later, Linda walked across the plane, crouched down in front of Violet, and with tears in her eyes, mouthed the words 'thank you,' to which Violet just smiled, leaned down and kissed her. "That's tomorrow's problem, though, so lemme finish my book. It's gotten super interesting. They just inverted physics and I'm eager to see how that pans out."

It was a few minutes later when Andy's phone rang, and Andy saw it was Ash's face on the screen as he answered it as FaceTime. "Hey Ash, we're somewhere nearing the Rockies now, what's up? Everything good over there?"

"Well, my water just broke, so I'm starting to go into labor, but the contractions are miles apart, so your two daughters aren't in any hurry to get here," Ash said, her face almost as red as her hair, clearly in the back of the car. "But Sarah and Nicolette are taking me into the hospital, so if you don't mind coming straight there from the airport, it would be appreciated."

"Hi baby!" Sarah said, as Ash turned the phone to point the camera towards the front of the car.

"Hi Master!" Nicolette echoed.

"Looks like we timed that to a tee," Andy said with a slight laugh as Ash turned the camera back on herself.

"Niko threatened to come with, but little Matty's been keeping her and Jade busy, so I told them to stay at the house. I can't drive, so keep me distracted. How was old sour butt?"

"Annoyingly comfortable," Andy grumbled. "I wanted to see a man regretful and broken, and instead, he was smugger and fuller of himself than ever. He even seemed to be gloating, said he had a hand in some of the writing of the Men's Protection Act, if you can believe it."

"I... Nnnggghhh... I would believe that man was descended from the original snake from the Garden of Eden," Ash said, clearly having a contraction. "Phil, you tell Rachel next time she needs to go for something bigger than a hand. Or if she wants something smaller, a castration would've done nicely and kept him more in check."

"I think they would've given her a much bigger slap on the wrist if she'd done that, Ash," Phil said.

"What do you know about criminal law, Phil?" Ash laughed. "You're a bloody scientist, not Matlock."

"How far apart are your contractions?" Andy asked her, to pull her back on track.

"Thirty-five minutes, Andy, relax," Ash said. "I'll make sure they wait for you to get here. Lord knows, I can keep'em in if I want to."

"Don't do that, Ash."

"You don't get here soon, Mister, and I'm just going to tell these two girls they can't come out. Not now, not later, not ever."

"Aisling Genevieve Blake Rook," Andy said, putting on his best paternal voice, "you will not do anything to jeopardize your own health or the health of our children, you hear me?"

"Oooo... I like it when you get all 'tough fatherly love' on me," Ash giggled, giving him a sly wink. "You know I would'nae, so don't you worry. If the doctors say go, I'm gonna go, whether you're here or not."

"I'm at the mercy of the winds at this point, babe."

"With the contractions this far apart, I'm going to be okay waiting for you, I think," Ash said, glancing forward, as if checking where they were on the road, before looking back down at the camera. "Are we still set on the names 'Frick' and 'Frack' because I've started having second thoughts..."

"Oh good, it's not just me," Andy said, going along with the joke. "Yeah, it seemed a bit much for me, so yeah, we can go with our second or third option."

Ash offered him a warm smile that was layered with so many things - miss you, hurry home, get these parasites out of my belly, I'm about to become a mother and oh shit I'm so not ready for this - but in the end could be boiled down to just the one thing she said aloud instead, "I love you, Andy."

"Love you too, Freckles."

"See you soon." She hung up the line on him, he expected, because they were getting close to the hospital, and the doctors were going to have the standard barrage of questions, not that he knew what any of those were.

No one else in his Team was going to give birth this year, and so he was going to make sure when Fiona went into labor early next year, he was in town and could take her directly to the hospital. The out-of-town, on-the-road life was getting old, although it didn't sound like it was going to ease off any time soon.

"God, that's gonna be me in a few months," Phil said. "I hate to admit it, but I'm terrified."

"You've gotten pregnant as a man and kept it quiet this long?" Andy joked. "You truly are the world's greatest scientist. Lemme get the Nobel people on the phone."

"You know what I mean, you jackass," Phil laughed. "The whole 'becoming a father' thing."

"I think Audrey's more frightened than you are, Phil," Linda said to him, holding Phil's hand. "She's still thinking about outliving your daughter, and that's got her scared."

"It's a problem I'm still working on, but we'll see what we can do to make sure that we get a resolution that everyone's happy with."

"Outliving her daughter?" Ming-Yue asked curiously. "I seem to be missing some crucial piece of information."

Andy winced a little. They hadn't told Ming-Yue about that particular wrinkle yet, and it always came as a tough blow to those with relatives, or those who had planned on being parents. Andy hadn't gotten to know Ming-Yue well enough to know if she was either. "We should have a talk. Melody, go tell Lexi that we're heading straight to the hospital after we land," Andy said, and then prepared to break Ming-Yue's heart.