Infected

He entered the bedroom but didn’t want to sleep there; the sheets remained spotted and streaked with blood. He was in there only long enough to grab a clean gray long-sleeved Detroit Lions T-s.h.i.+rt. Then he hopped to the bathroom, pounded four Tylenol and headed to the couch. He let himself fall into the inviting cus.h.i.+ons.

He was out within seconds.

MARGARET SETS UP SHOP

Margaret called the shots. They commandeered a med/surg floor at the University of Michigan Medical Center. Med /surg is fancy-pants hospital slang for medical /surgical. Without Murray’s approval she’d ordered not just one, but two portable BSL-4 labs installed in the wing. That SARS was a nasty sucker, couldn’t be too careful, right? The hospital administration put up a fight, demanding to know the risks, the health status of the community and a bunch of other nicey-nice s.h.i.+t that Margaret simply did not have time to deal with.

She had an executive order. She had the deputy director of the CIA in her back pocket. These people were going to give her what she wanted, and that was that.

They had to be ready. Two cases in Ann Arbor, and they’d been so d.a.m.n close to catching a live one. If they got another chance, she might get her shot to see just what the h.e.l.l these triangles were.

Agent Otto came through the door, carrying a five-foot-long cardboard tube.

Margaret’s pulse jumped up a notch — she wasn’t sure if it was from seeing Otto, the portfolio, or both.

"Did you get the printout, Clarence?"

He flashed his wide, easy smile. "No problem, Doc. I think I made some Kinko’s employees happy. I’m guessing it’s not every day they get sworn to secrecy at midnight and use their large color printer for national security."

She helped him pull the rolled-up printouts from the tube, and they started taping the final artistic works of Kiet Nguyen up on the wall.

PROGRAMMING

Perry would never know how close he came to getting real help. The NarusInsight STA 7800, the machine that scanned all the calls, picked up the word triangle from his call to Triangle Mobile Home Sales but did not find any of the context words that would alert the CIA’s watcher. Had Perry changed a few words, possibly even just one

But Perry didn’t use the right words. The system didn’t forward the call to the watcher. Still alone in his fight for survival, Perry slept.

He slept like the dead.

The Triangles did not.

The subconscious mind is a powerful device. Repeating things over and over to yourself, visualizing a success again and again, virtually programs your brain to go out and make those images a reality. The opposite also holds true — if you’re convinced you’re a loser, that you always seem to lose your job, that you can’t save money, that you can’t lose weight, you tell yourself these things over and over, and guess what? They come true as well. The subconscious mind takes the things it hears over and over and makes them reality. The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between success and failure. The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what helps you and what hurts you.

The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between good and evil.

All night long, Triangles repeated the phrase in Perry’s head. More than a hundred times. Definitely thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand. Over and over.

kill him kill him kill him

It was a short phrase, and they didn’t even really have to "say" it — all they had to do was send it to his auditory nerve, a high-speed data dump into Perry’s programmable subconscious.

There were others close by, others of their kind. Sometimes they heard voices, like their own, but not coming from within the host’s body. Some hosts were far away. One was very, very close.

They knew nothing of where they came from or what they were, but the stronger they became, the more they knew why they were here.

They were here to build.

And soon the Triangles would join with those of the nearby host, become one group, one tribe, then move to join even more of their kind. The glorious construction would begin. But first they had to keep the host alive, keep him out of danger, keep him away from the Soldiers.

kill him kill him kill him

Mental and physical exhaustion held Perry in a deep, deep sleep. He was stone-cold out for just under fourteen hours. The Triangles incessantly repeated the phrase until the Tylenol kicked in, they caught a solid buzz, and drifted off with visions of the glorious construction that would soon become a reality.

REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

Bill Miller stared at the TV. Columbo was on the Sunday-Morning Mystery Movie, but he wasn’t really watching. His fingers drummed against the remote control.

What the h.e.l.l was Perry doing? Didn’t answer his phone. Didn’t answer instant messages. Didn’t answer his door. Bill hadn’t gone this long without talking to Perry since they’d first roomed together in college. Something was wrong. Really wrong, like "Oh,f.u.c.k, my parachute won’t open" wrong.

Bill had called a dozen times so far, leaving a message every time but never getting a response. He’d watched his IM client, seeing if Perry would log on: nothing. He’d even left a friggin’ note, like some psycho girl.

Perry was obviously home, and he wanted to be left alone. But man, this was Sunday. f.u.c.king football Sunday. Their tradition dated back almost a decade, through tertiary friends that came and went, through seven girlfriends (five on Bill’s side, two on Perry’s — the only game that Bill had a chance of winning against the super-athlete).