‘Sometimes he was lucid. He was calm. He prayed. But then his prayers would dissolve to gibberish and obscenity. He spat and swore as we injected him with morphine.
‘He slowly began to choke. His throat became obstructed by fine hairs that seemed to grow deep within his lungs. We gave him a tracheotomy.
‘He languished in a coma. Intracellular breakdown. Clots forming in his liver and kidneys. Gastrointestinal bleeding. His breathing was laboured and shallow. His mouth slowly filled with metal spines, slowly forcing his jaws apart.
‘Strange needles bristled from his flesh. His skin was mottled by blotches and ulcerated lesions. The virus attacked his ocular cavities. Burst blood vessels turned his eyes near black. Liquid metal leaked from his tear ducts.
‘He lay comatose for several hours. We took blood and saliva. We took liver biopsies and lung cell cultures. We drained spinal fluid. We drilled his skull and took brain tissue.
‘He woke. He roared, and snarled and tore at his restraints. Hassim had gone, and a monster had taken his place. I made the decision to end his suffering. I administered Demerol. It should have been a lethal dose. It should have paralysed his heart and lungs. But he arched his back and continued to fight.
‘I powered up the surgical drill, slotted it through the hole in his forehead and bored deep into his brain. He convulsed and died. Perhaps I should have preserved his brain intact. But I wanted to end his torment. Besides, subsequent human trials would allow us to study the precise manner this strange disease attacked the spine and brain stem.
‘The train arrived. It slid into the valley like a silver snake. Four lab units resting on flatbed wagons. I had the lab cars shunted into the tunnel. Jabril paid the Syrian crew with fistfuls of gold.
‘We used a crane truck to swing the lab units from the rail cars and set them down in the cavern beside the bio-dome.
‘The labs were well equipped, but I decided it would be inappropriate to perform a full autopsy of the dead cosmonaut. He needed to be shipped back to a proper research facility for extensive examination. I ordered Konstantin sealed in his triple-lined steel coffin and stored in Lab Four, the virus vault, ready for transport to a more appropriate site.
‘Hassim was a popular soldier. Jabril explained his absence to the men. He told them Hassim had died of septicaemia as a result of a cut sustained while exploring Spektr. It was a plausibly mundane account of his death.
‘We held a funeral. Buried a body bag full of rocks. Said solemn prayers over an empty grave. Gave him a soldier’s headstone: a rifle staked in the ground, helmet balanced on top. Later that night, when the men were singing and drinking, we began the dissection. Hassim would indeed get a funeral. When the autopsy was complete, when his body had been stripped of useful tissue. He would be little more than a jumble of bones, cartilage and hair. His eviscerated remains would be dumped in a deep pit and smothered in lime.’
‘Tell me about the dissection.’
‘We examined tissue removed from his cerebral cortex and spine. The structure and molecular composition of this pathogen is unlike anything I have ever seen. Forget the usual viral proteins. I’m not even sure it would class as a virus at all. This is a complex organism. The structure is almost crystalline. An ordered lattice. High-tensile strength yet it maintains a constant viscosity. It is a lethally efficient parasite. Swift dendritic growth. It commandeers flesh and bone for its own sinister purpose. Once the fibrous viral strands have penetrated the nervous system, fused with the cytoplasm of host cells, they immediately begin to interfere with neurotransmission.’
‘What are you saying? The brain is damaged? Victims can’t think straight? Or are you saying the mind is actually rewired?’
‘I’m saying Hassim died long before his heart stopped beating. He was eaten from within. The insect intelligence that looked out from behind his eyes as he spat, snarled and pulled at his restraints — it wasn’t him. Some other creature inhabited his body. I don’t understand this organism. I don’t know where it is from. I don’t know what it wants. But it is implacably hostile.’
‘What about a vaccine? An antidote? Is there any way to reverse the infection?’
‘You can’t inoculate against this malignancy, any more than you can inoculate against a shark attack.’
‘Plants? Animals?’
‘We tried to infect dogs. They quickly died. This organism seems to prefer a human host.’
‘Could you put a name to it?’
‘We called it Mystery Pathogen One. EmPath for short.’
‘How long can a person live once they become infected?’
‘Irreversible brain damage within a matter of hours. The body itself can last many weeks. Metabolism slows almost to a standstill. Low heart rate. Low respiration. They exist, almost in a state of suspended animation, until they sense the presence of a fresh host. Then they are galvanised to action.’
‘Tell me about the human trials.’
‘Your man in Baghdad supplied us with test subjects.’
‘General Nassar?’
‘He sent us a truck load of Shi’ite deserters. I believe his emissary received a kilo of gold in exchange for each man.’
‘How many expendables?’
‘An initial batch of twenty. We conducted medical examinations. The men had clearly been kept in poor conditions for many months. Two of the prisoners were suffering from tuberculosis. I decided they were inappropriate experimental subjects. I had them terminated. The rest were given yellow jumpsuits and housed in a couple of Conex shipping containers. Each man had a number and blood group tattooed on the back of their left hand. It made them easy to identify, and spared us the need to use names. We dug incinerator pits, ready to receive human remains.’
‘How did the soldiers react? The men you assigned to guard the prisoners?’
‘The Republican Guard were the creation of a totalitarian state. Supposedly praetorian troops, but utterly docile. We had their absolute obedience.’
‘And your Russian colleagues?’
‘They knew what to do. When time came to shut down the operation, when our mission was complete, all Iraqis on site were to be exterminated. We would wait until evening. Give the men food and alcohol. Let them sit round campfires and drink themselves into a stupor. Then the Russians would take position with .50 calibre machine guns. It would be quick, thorough. There was some talk that we might keep a work party alive. A few men to help hide bodies from aerial surveillance by dumping them among the citadel ruins.’
‘Tell me about the weapon.’
‘This is madness. There can be no “tactical” use of this weapon. It cannot be contained.’
‘Did you complete the weapon? I have to know.’
‘Please.’
‘Just finish your story. Then you can die.’
‘We built a production line. We propagated amplified cultures. Human flesh suspended in amino acids and calf foetus serum. The virus cultures were harvested, freeze-dried and milled. Then they were micro-encapsulated in a polymer coat.’
‘Is it viable? As a weaponised agent?’
‘It’s the perfect battle strain. Supremely resilient. It can easily survive blast dissemination as the payload of an artillery shell, cluster bomb or missile warhead. It is impervious to sunlight, and most chemical counter-measures. We refined a single litre. That was the results of our efforts. Particulates held in suspension, four microns in diameter. Fine enough to enter the upper respiratory tract. We loaded the warhead reservoir. Air-burst over any major city would be devastating. A slow-settling cloud of infection. Odourless. Invisible. Commuters would be coughing blood within minutes. Mass panic, mass casualties. Victims would soon turn savage. The streets would become a war zone. Men, women, children. Ripping throats. Gouging flesh. Picture it. New York, Los Angeles, quickly turned into a living hell. The government would have to respond within minutes if they were to have any hope of containing the situation. The only effective response, the only hope of halting the spread of infection once it began to vector, would be a nuclear strike.’