Protocol

Garrison didn't move. He stood naked in front of the flickering monitor, his back rigid. The muscles in his shoulders looked like carved stone under the yellow emergency light.

"Who is that?" I asked, sliding off the bunk bed and pulling my torn shirt over my shoulders. My fingers fumbled with the buttons. "Garrison, who is in the secondary bay?"

"Dr. Aris Thorne," Garrison said, his voice flat. He didn't look back at me. He kept his eyes on the screen where the man in the white coat stood. "He was the chief medical director for the central district weapon upgrade program. The man my father contracted to build the sanctuary's defense network."

"He doesn't have a mask," I said, stepping closer to the console. I pointed at the screen. Thorne's face was completely bare. His skin looked smooth, almost translucent under the bay lights, but there were no black veins pulsing on his neck. "How is he breathing down there? The secondary bay links directly to the ventilation lines we thought were compromised."

Thorne smiled through the lens, as if he could hear me. He tapped the silver device in his hand, and a sharp hum vibrated through the desk beneath my fingers.

"I can hear your little clinic girl, Commander," Thorne's voice crackled through the speaker. "She has an excellent eye for detail. Tell her why I don't need a mask, Garrison. Tell her what we were actually working on before the red cloud rolled over the city."

I turned my head to look at Garrison. "What is he talking about?"

Garrison reached down, grabbed his trousers from the floor, and pulled them on with sharp, violent movements.

"He's talking about a lie, Valerie. Thorne didn't build a defense network. He built the delivery system."

"The delivery system?" I stared at him. "The red fog... it didn't come from a biological collapse outside? You knew about it?"

"I knew they were testing a gaseous pathogen to neutralize the outer zone riots," Garrison said, buckling his belt with a loud click. He finally looked at me, his eyes dark with a mixture of guilt and fury. "But my father told me the trials failed. He told me the project was scrapped three months ago. They lied to me so I would keep managing the security forces while they prepared the real deployment."

"It didn't fail, Valerie," Thorne's voice interrupted, smooth and mocking. "It exceeded every expectation. The necrosis rewires the cellular matrix within four minutes, creating the perfect defensive infantry. No fear, no pain, no choice. But we have a small issue with the cognitive decay. The miners at the summit lost too much processing power. They are animals."

"And what does that have to do with us?" I demanded, leaning toward the microphone on the console.

"Not with you, my dear. With your sister," Thorne said.

He shifted the silver device, and the video feed split into two panels. The second panel showed a containment cell inside the secondary bay.

Inside the cell, lying on a steel gurney, was Cynthia.

My hands flew to my mouth.

"She's dead. Garrison shot her. I saw the bullet hit her chest."

"A minor setback for an apex adaptation," Thorne chuckled. "The bullet destroyed her left lung, but the pathogen had already initialized the reconstruction protocol. Her body didn't die, Valerie. It adapted. She is currently maintaining seventy percent of her pre-infection neural pathways. She remembers you. She remembers what the Commander did to her in that truck."

Through the glass of the containment cell on screen, Cynthia's eyes snapped open. They weren't the solid red of the miners. They were a bright, piercing crimson, but her pupils were still there, tracking the camera lens. Her lips moved, forming words without sound.

I am coming for you.

"Open the inner vault doors, Garrison," Thorne said, his tone turning cold and demanding. "The General's backup codes are invalid now because I initialized the laboratory override. If you do not drop the airlock bolts from the command desk within two minutes, I will purge the oxygen from the upper living quarters. You will both choke on your own blood before the fog even touches you."

Garrison reached out and hit the mute switch on the console, cutting Thorne's voice off instantly. He turned around, grabbed his rifle from the floor, and shoved a fresh magazine into the receiver.

"We aren't opening that door," Garrison said.

"If we don't, he kills us in this room," I said, my voice rising as I looked at the digital oxygen meter on the wall. The green bar was already starting to tick downward. "Garrison, we have ninety seconds."

"There is a manual ventilation bypass in the maintenance crawlway behind the kitchen," Garrison said, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the door. "It feeds directly from the secondary water table storage. If I can get to the valve, I can isolate this cabin from the central system. Thorne won't be able to flush the air."

"And what about Cynthia?" I asked as the door slid open and we burst into the dark corridor. "If she has her memory, she knows exactly how this bunker is laid out. She lived with our father for twenty years, Garrison. She knows how military sectors operate."

"She doesn't know this outpost," Garrison growled, running down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen unit. "This place was classified. She only knows what Thorne tells her."

A loud hiss echoed from the ceiling vents above us. The faint, steady hum of the intake fans died, replaced by a deep, hollow sucking sound. The air in the corridor instantly turned thin, making my lungs strain as I took a breath.

"He started the purge," I gasped, stumbling against the wall.

Garrison caught me around the waist, lifting me effortlessly against his chest. "Hold your breath, Valerie. Don't let the pressure drop hit your lungs."

He kicked open the low door of the kitchen pantry, revealing a small, dark square hole in the concrete floor.