EIGHT

Wearing a gas mask to protect himself from any remaining mist from the fear pheromones, Avery Weldon stepped down from the stealth chopper and waved his crew onto the ground with him. There were six new recruits to the National Intelligence agency. They too wore gas masks and carried stretchers.

Knowing they would follow, Avery didn’t hesitate as he made his way across open ground to the side of the rusted soovie and the motionless bodies of Billy Jasper and the kid named Theo.

Ten minutes, max, Avery thought, before any of the dispersed crowd returned after the collective panic attack. Plenty of time to load both of the bodies and clear the area.

Avery wasn’t looking for a crowd though. He had an undercover agent inside the soovie park. Avery expected the agent any second.

“We’re in,” Avery said into the microphone inside his gas mask, speaking to the undercover NI man who had called in for a helicopter rescue of Billy and Theo. “Now’s the time to get out if your cover is blown.”

The gas mask was equipped with internal speakers.

“I’m cool,” came the disembodied reply. “Nobody saw me lob the bomb. I ran with the rest of them.”

“What about when you Tasered our targets?”

“Only had to Taser Theo, to keep him from dispersing. Here’s what you should know. The big one didn’t run.”

“But he’s down,” Avery said.

“I didn’t put him down,” the agent said. “He made it to the soovie before falling. The pheromones didn’t scatter him with the rest.”

Avery was impressed. Not many had the mental strength to resist the bombardment of senses inflicted by fear pheromones.

But if the undercover agent hadn’t put him down, what had?

Avery knelt beside the big one. Frowned at the sight of a broken-off needle in Billy’s forearm. The agent who had called them in said it started with a death doctor. Avery made the obvious conclusion. He clicked off his internal microphone to speak to his crew.

“This one goes straight to the paramedic,” Avery barked. That fact that Billy Jasper wasn’t dead yet was another testament to his strength. “Tell medical staff he was probably pumped with chemicals, likely some kind of euthanasia cocktail.”

Four of the men strained to lift Billy and, once they had him on a stretcher, hustled him back to the paramedic on the chopper. The other two loaded Theo.

Avery went back to the internal mike. “You there?”

“Where else?” his agent said, somewhere among the rows of soovies.

“If your cover isn’t blown, maintain the operation.”

“For as long as you want.” The agent sounded cavalier, and Avery guessed there was good reason for it. As long as no one in the soovie park suspected the agent’s role, it was relatively easy living in exchange for substantial hardship pay. This agent had been recently divorced. He needed the money.

“Out then.” Avery clicked off. He frowned again. This time because he heard sobbing.

It came from the rusted soovie. The girl. She had been protected by the soovie’s windows from the fear pheromones dispersed by a lob grenade.

He stood and flashed a beam through the window, catching the small girl in the face. He waited for a scream of terror at the sight of his gas mask but immediately realized the girl was blinded by his flashlight. Could only see the bright whiteness.

“Where’s Billy?” she said through tears. “My mother stopped breathing.”

Avery knew what had led to their agent risking a blown cover. Avery would not have authorized the stealth chopper to get here otherwise.

The small girl was now at the mercy of the rest of the soovie park inhabitants. There were hardly any children in soovie parks. Of all that might be inflicted on the girl, slavery wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

But she wasn’t his business. Soovie parks were soovie parks, outside of city borders, outside of city concerns. If people made a choice to live there, they accepted all the consequences that went with it.

But Avery was a father too. “Come here,” he told the girl.

She shrank back at the strange voice and clutched the body of her mother, sobbing louder.

Avery calculated how much time remained of his self-imposed ten-minute deadline before the soovie park inhabitants started drifting back. Some of them, from experience, would realize that fear pheromones had been used to disperse them and would be eager to get at the contents of the soovie of the latest dead among them.

“Come here,” he told the girl. “I’ll get your mother to a hospital.”

The hopeless will cling to the slightest of hopes, and the girl responded to his lie. She unlocked the soovie door and stepped out.

Avery scooped her in his right arm and lifted her off the ground.

“We need this one too,” he announced to his crew.

“My mother! My mother!” She began to pound on Avery’s shoulder.

Then traces of the remaining fear pheromones, brought by inhalation, reached the olfactory region of the girl’s nasal cavities, just below and between her eyes. The smell, faster acting and more powerful than any other sensory cue, caused her mitral cells to fire a message directly to her nervous system. Almost instantly, she was overwhelmed by panic, incapable of rational thought.

Avery had miscalculated. Not about the presence of lingering fear pheromones, nor about her physiological reaction to them. And he knew the dangers of trying to stop adults from fleeing as adrenaline jolted their bodies. He’d been wrong in thinking he was strong enough to contain the girl when the panic hit her.

She exploded in his arms. The flurry of her blows knocked his gas mask askew.

In surprise, he sucked at air and had just enough rationality to swear at himself for his carelessness.

Then the fear hammered him senseless too. With a roar, he blundered and flailed toward his own crew.