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  Wesley paused, gauging the crowd’s reaction. Then he nodded. “I did.”

  There were some shouts of anger, but more muted than before. Now, the majority were baffled. Jeffrey looked at the crowd, spread his arms, then turned back to Wesley. “I think we all want to understand why. What could make you go from part of the team, to… to… cold blooded murder?”

  Wesley took a deep breath. This would be a challenge. “I did it because I learned the truth. I learned everything I’d been taught was a lie.”

  That turned them against Wesley once more. The shouts were louder now, calls to execute the traitor and murderer were vociferous. Jeffrey let them voice their anger for a moment, and then held his hand up for silence. He turned back toward Wesley and eyed him with a sad, bemused expression, the expression of a parent whose young child has just expressed with complete earnestness the truth of something the parent knows, through superior education and experience. “A lie?”

  “The virus was the lie. There is no virus now, not because of the work of this group and successful run of the Cleansers. There’s no virus now because there never was a virus. It was a story, carefully crafted and concocted by many brilliant storytellers, a lie and a story so well told that it would get people like me to buy in and willingly contribute to my own destruction.”

  Jeffrey shook his head. “You can’t be serious. The virus was real. Our scientists studied it, learned about it. We built tests to detect it, to identify those immune to its effects.” He shook his head. “I think you are the liar, sir.”

  “Have you seen the actual virus, viewed a living sample?”

  “Me? No. I’m no scientist!”

  “How many people saw it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He turned his eyes out on the crowd. “Surely there are people here who are experts in studying viruses, right? How many virologists out there?”

  He heard a few people shout out. “Okay, those of you who are virologists, did you see the virus?”

  “Of course!”

  “Was it a live sample that you extracted directly from a host and deposited directly to a slide for observation and study?”

  A pause. “Well… no.”

  “Curious, no?”

  “The contagion was such that handling it at all was a risk to all of society!”

  “Aren’t most viruses a risk? You surely have ways to store them safely, to observe in a manner that doesn’t put you or others at risk, right? Proper procedures and protocols you follow?”

  “Sure.” He couldn’t see the woman speaking, but he could hear her voice. Doubt. Confusion.

  “So you were given images of the virus to study, then. Not actual living samples.”

  “N… No.”

  “Let me ask you a question, then. You know now all of the specific actions this virus was supposed to produce. Flesh eating, things of that sort. If I gave you a computer program that let you alter images in any way you wanted, could you take an image of a standard virus and make it look like the virus you studied?”

  The room had gone silent. Stayed silent. Waiting for the response.

  And then: “Yes.”

  Wesley looked at Jeffrey. “I asked you earlier how many people had seen the virus. The official answer is one. One man saw the virus and took images for study. Who is that man? We don’t know; we are told he sacrificed his life to the virus’ pernicious effects, and that’s why the virologists here never saw the real thing.” He turned back to the audience. “The real answer to that question is zero.”

  Jeffrey looked confused. Concerned. “I’m still not sure I’m buying your story. Do you realize the implications of what you’re suggesting?”

  “You’re still not certain. Let me ask you this: until the effects of this new virus were known, until that single man—I think his name was Gordon Jones—documented the effects in his own blood… wouldn’t others have found that virus? Wouldn’t they send those samples to multiple facilities for study? Wouldn’t those other facilities have scientists who suffered the same fate?”

  “Those deaths might have been silenced.”

  “How very conspiracy theory of you, Jeffrey.” There were some nervous chuckles in the crowd and Jeffrey nodded, acknowledging the comeback. “Once Gordon Jones’ findings had been published, the deaths at other facilities—if they happened—would have leaked out. We would have heard the locations, the names, the researching confirming that Gordon Jones found. Nothing like that happened.”

  Jeffrey opened his mouth twice to say something, then thought better of it both times.

  “And let’s consider the solution. Rather extreme, wasn’t it? Why kill off all but the tiny percentage of the population estimated to be immune?”

  “It’s the only way to keep the virus from coming back.”

  “Is it, though? Why not an engineered anti-virus that seeks out that virus and kills it off? The Cleanser technology you mention? Why not teach it to find that virus in any living cell, in the soil, in plants, in fish… find it wherever it is and destroy it?”

  “That approach has risks.”

  “So does killing off 99.9% of the population. What if your immunity test was wrong on just a few people? You identify the wrong one in a thousand with the immunity and humanity is dead after you kill off the people who actually were immune.”

  “I…” Jeffrey paused and looked around. He glanced at his wife. “I… see your point.”

  “Have you read Gordon Jones’ paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rather eloquent for man dying from the symptoms of this virus, wasn’t it?”

  “Near death experiences bring with them exceptional clarity, and he had a message of extreme importance for the future of the planet.”

  “He wrote beautifully, but he left out a very important detail.”

  “Such as?”

  “He said that there were specific genetic markers but never said what they were. Why not? Were the genetic markers ever identified?”

  Jeffrey frowned. “I can’t answer that question.”

  “Then I will. They were not identified. The Phoenix Group spent inordinate amounts of money collecting genetic data, often without the knowledge or permission of people, in order to match the immune against these markers. But there were no markers identified.”

  “Sure there were.”

  “Who would have the list?”

  “People in data processing, people who would match genetic data of specific people against the criteria. They’d need the list to do that.”

  “I agree.” He looked out at the crowd he couldn’t see, but one he could hear and feel. “Anybody here in data processing?”

  “I am,” said a voice to his right.

  “You had access to all of the genetic data.”

  “Correct.”

  “You were given the full list of genetic markers for immunity against this virus, then?”

  A pause. “No.”

  Gasps erupted from the crowd. Wesley waited a moment before continuing. “No? What did you do with that data, then?”

  “We were given individual markers to look for. Nothing in combination with other things that you’d expect to mark a rare population like the one in a thousand immune to this virus.”

  “What types of searches did you do?”

  “Hair color, eye color, anything that might express as a physical or mental disability or deformity, genes typically expressing as specific body shapes, some work to try to identify genetic indicators of intelligence. Things like that.” The voice paused. “I… I don’t think intelligence gives you immunity from a virus.”

  Wesley looked at Jeffrey. “I agree. Those don’t sound like the types of things that would show immunity from a virus.”

  “You’re a virologist now, then?”

  Wesley looked back in the direction of the virologist, who answered before he asked. “None of those would be predictive of immunity to anything.”

  Wesley looked at Jeff
rey. “So. How do you know you’re immune, then?”

  “What?”

  “Were you told you were immune, Jeffrey? You, specifically? Not that there was a tiny population that was. When they recruited you due to your specific gifts, were you told that you were brought in to help humanity survive… or because you were immune?”

  Silence.

  “Are you immune to the virus, Jeffrey?”

  Silence.

  “Jeffrey?”

  “I don’t know!” The man looked flustered, frustrated, even angry… but Wesley thought he caught a hint of something in the man’s eyes, something triumphant and happy.

  “Nobody here was told they, specifically, were immune. Right?” He looked out at the audience. “Anybody?”

  Silence.

  “If none of you are immune, then why all the effort to find those who are immune? And where are they? Shouldn’t all of you be immune?”

  Silence.

  “None of you were told you were immune, not because you aren’t, not because you didn’t ask, not because they didn’t know. You weren’t told because there was. No. Virus.”

  He heard angry rumbles, but felt something else. Shame.

  They understood.

  “We all fell for the story,” Wesley said. “I did. I fell for it in the worst way possible, because I had a gift and somebody told me my gift would make me a hero, enabling me to save the human race. Everything I did was presented in those terms. I was told the criticality of my work, of getting the needed result as quickly as possible, that every day we didn’t have my finished product increase the odds we’d all be dead before we could fight back.” He felt the vibe now. “You were all told the same thing. It was reinforced. We all began to believe. We reinforced the story with each other, shamed and ridiculed anyone who dared ask awkward questions around the true motives of those funding all of this. We’re smart people; we couldn’t fall victim to a mere story, right? We had proof.” He shook his head. “In the end, we had nothing. Nothing but a story engineered to achieve an end result none of us wanted or would willingly aid.”

  He didn’t think a room holding more than a thousand people could be completely silent. But it was. He could hear clothing rustling as people shifted uncomfortably, trying to rationalize what he’d said against what they’d always known to be true.

  And they couldn’t.

  Jeffrey finally spoke. “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why go to the trouble to engineer all of this? Why dupe thousands to kill hundreds of millions, if not for something so noble as humanity’s very survival?”

  And it was the key question. These were good people. They wouldn’t want to believe the truth. “Can you handle the truth, Jeffrey?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Wesley offered him a sympathetic look. “I don’t want to handle it. I never did. So I’ll just ask you—all of you—to think about it. Talk about it. Decide, not because I told you, but because you see in it the painful motivation behind everything we’ve all spent our lives trying to achieve.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “Tell me.”

  Wesley looked at them. “The founders of the Phoenix Group had a dream. They wanted a world filled with a small number of people that the deemed desirable, be it for optimal health, physical beauty, creative intelligence… or an innate ability to act as a servant to those they’d been taught to see as their superiors. The problem? Too many people and too few meeting their criteria. They pushed out tools for finding the people who met their criteria—things like hair color and a lack of genes suggesting things like physical deformities—and ensured that those with good genes had lots of children. Those without? Usually sterilized, often framed with crimes that excused long prison terms, shunned to the outskirts of society. More tools to gather more data, more tools to push out stories they wanted believed, more control of the minds and emotions of people who believed themselves intelligent, not gullible enough to fall for obvious lies. The plan? To get enough people meeting their criteria, separate them in some fashion, and eliminate the rest. They’d have their utopia, an entire planet of people they wanted around, and devoid of those they didn’t.”

  Silence.

  “To answer the original why question of the day? That’s why. The people I shot and killed, the leaders you revere? They are the ones who wanted this. They are the ones who maneuvered and manipulated the entire world into doing their bidding, into creating their own perfect utopia, and who even created the means of ensuring their own demise. That, my friends, is evil in its purest sense: to seek personal gain at the greatest expense to the greatest number of other people. Evil of that type cannot be changed, cannot be reasoned with. If we merely stopped this plan, they’d hide, regroup, and come back again. Only one solution would work.” He let his face harden. “I did what I had to do.”

  The reaction finally came. “That’s ridiculous!” came a voice from the crowd.

  “Is it?” Wesley asked. “When these dignitaries visit, do they treat you as heroes for saving the world? Or do they treat you as servants, here to cater to their every whim, not worthy of even the most basic levels of human respect and decency?”

  The room was silent. The murmurs started. Small conversation in the crowd as people weighed his words against their training and experience. Stories of experiences with the elites of Phoenix. The tenor and tone of the conversational buzz grew more intense, more tinged with anger.

  Wesley didn’t know what they were mad about. They’d believed him. They’d learned the truth.

  And they might be angry at him because of it.

  He heard a grunt and squinted, trying to see out in the crowd through the bright lights, trying to pick out the people who were fighting. More skirmishes broke out, and the guards near the stage moved to break the combatants apart.

  When they left their posts, others came toward the stage. Leaped up on the stage. Wesley saw their expressions, the madness in their eyes.

  Yep, they were angry at him. Not at the people he’d killed for duping them all into killing millions. Him, for telling the truth.

  Now they would kill him for his truth-telling crime.

  The guards who’d marched here with him moved to intercept the attackers, but there were too many. The guards focused on protecting Jeffrey and Desdemona, under assault for allowing the “devil with the silver tongue” to bewitch the crowd into believing his lies, accusing them of being in league with their traitorous son who’d also fallen victim to stories like the tale Wesley told. They were pushed back, then hit upside the head with sides of their rifles to knock them unconscious.

  Two broke free and ran for Wesley’s bed. And none of the guards saw them; they were busy with the ten charging Jeffrey and Desdemona.

  Wesley, still hooked to an IV and heart monitor, still battered from the fight for which he’d stood trial, the fight in which he’d killed the evildoers and nearly suffered the same fate, couldn’t defend himself.

  He caught the blur in his peripheral vision, a blur that slammed into his would-be attackers, and suddenly those who’d do him harm were on the ground, moaning, unable and unwilling to give it another go.

  The blur moved to his bed, and Wesley recognized the man wearing the unusual clothing, the man who didn’t seem to fit in. That man looked down at Wesley with an admiring grin. “Okay there, Wesley?”

  “Yeah. Well, mostly.” He tapped the IV still stuck in his arm.

  “Good.” His face tightened. “Nobody will hurt you while I’m around.”

  The fights began to end. The vibe turned once more, away from embarrassed anger, toward focused determination, to finding a way to move forward and do good for those who remained in memory of those who weren’t.

  Jeffrey jogged over, beaming. “Hell of a performance, kid. You did good.”

  Wesley tilted his head. “You knew?”

  “Of course. Micah sent us your picture a while ago, before our friends showed up. Tha
t verbal cue, though… that helped.”

  Desdemona walked up, grinning. “If I didn’t already have an awesome son, I think I’d adopt you.”

  “You’re too young to be my mother.”

  She patted the top of his head. “Good boy.” Her face turned serious. “You meant what you said about my grandchildren?”

  “Yeah. They’re fine. At no risk of being discovered or hurt.”

  “When can I see them again?”

  Wesley thought for a moment. “I need one of those flying spheres.”

  “Wesley,” his new friend said. “You know machines can’t fly.”

  Then he laughed, and Wesley joined in. Jeffrey and Desdemona did as well.

  “You need a flying sphere?” Desdemona asked. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Wesley said.

  And then he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, the first he’d had in years. There was no evil voice in his head. No little machines waiting to dissolve him to dust.

  Just friends and allies who’d keep him safe until he was ready to take on the world again.

  It felt good.

  Chapter 23

  New Phoenix

  Deirdre had wondered what a reunion with one—or, preferably, both—of her parents might be like, now that she understood so much more about her world, her life, what they’d put her through, what they really thought of her. She’d hoped it would be after everything ended, after the tension and stress were gone, when they could be open. They might not reconcile, but there would be closure for her, at least.

  She’d never get that chance with her mother.

  And given the look on her father’s face, he wasn’t of a mind to reconcile anything relating to the father-daughter relationship.

  There were no hugs, no tears. Just two proud, stubborn people, staring each other down, daring the other to speak first.

  Oswald broke first. He paced the room, circling Deirdre. Deirdre stood still, didn’t turn to watch him move. “Very curious series of events, Deirdre. First, you pull that stunt with that boy toy you’d acquired, what was his name?”