The holo had cut to another scene, this one in the administrative offices. Britt was at his desk – the same one he used for our conference call less than a week ago – speaking with Miller, Rauch, and the girl, who stood before him in a semicircle, as if to block any possible escape. The reflection of the fluorescent bulb that lit the room glared off Britt’s forehead. The atomic clock I’d gotten him as a joke on his ten year anniversary hung on the wall behind him, blitzing through its microseconds.

“Let me get this straight,” Britt was saying, “it read Rauch’s mind?”

“Sure looked that way,” Rauch replied. “The tower coded exactly what I was …ah, daydreaming, about, and that last line of text…word for word what I was thinking about Miller and his…uh ‘management style’ just before it appeared. No offense Miller.”

“None taken.” Miller took a load off on the edge of the guest table. His body seemed to slough into itself, like a snowman in the thaws of spring. He clearly hadn’t had a chance to rest.

“It was just a little frustrating, you know? You kept putting up arm-bars right when I was in the zone. Or at least I thought I was. In hindsight it was probably just the Tower syncing up with my neural impulses.”

“I said none taken!” Miller hissed. His eyes sharpened with his tone and flicked in Rauch’s direction, but the rest of him stayed shapeless and slouched. He didn’t even turn his head.

Britt ignored the interplay. “How?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Miller breathed. The drone of the HVAC systems, accentuated by the measured ticking of the atomic, let him know that no, it wasn’t. “He’s got the bug.”

Britt gasped, and edged back in his chair, whatever words he’d had queued up for whatever response he’d been expecting dying on his parted lips. He Rauch smiled back nervously. “Come again?”

“Don’t worry,” Miller said, “it’s harmless. We weren’t experimenting with anything nasty on this one. Worst case scenario the hair on his temples starts coming in brown in a couple of weeks.” He ran a hand through his hair, as if wondering how a little brown might look on his own scalp. “But we’ll get back in there this afternoon and throw the kill switch, just to be safe. No reason to let him spread it around.”

Britt grabbed the edge of his station and, with some effort, eased himself back into the well. He clasped his hands and rested them on the steel. “Are we sure?”

“Sure as we can be.”

Britt waited patiently for Miller to elaborate, but this time Miller did not oblige.

The girl bailed him out. “We had Rauch put it through the paces once we figured out what was going on. Let it read his thoughts, I mean. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it seemed to get the general idea of whatever Rauch was thinking. It was a lot like the coneys, actually, only with lines of text instead of the image overlays we saw on Monday. We think because he was plugged in to a coding interface instead of to an EKG.”

“I could fool it though,” Rauch added, not without a touch of pride. “If I was distracted, or if I really didn’t feel like thinking about the thing she wanted me to think about, it kind of got confused. Like with the grilled cheese sandwich…that’s your idea of a meal, not mine. Part of me couldn’t help but want a cheeseburger instead, and that one came through as a garbled mess. And I had to be pretty passionate about the topic for it to pick me up word for word, like it did with that first message about Miller.” He made a move like he wanted to follow up with another comment about his senior, reconciliatory or otherwise, but held his tongue. As if deciding Miller wasn’t worth the effort.

Britt nodded, then repeated his question. “But are we sure? Can we prove the virus is causing this phenomenon? Have we tested Rauch for infection?”

Miller shook his head no. “Wouldn’t do us any good. We never lo-jacked the Haggarty.” And then, before Britt could ask him why, “this was an off-the-shelf blank of a strain, remember. Designed as a vehicle and nothing more. The goal is to cause as little disruption to the host as possible. A tracer would have compromises that goal.”

“What about the mechanical half? You can’t tell me we don’t have eyes on that.”

“Of course. We always build those in. The tower can pick them up anywhere their signals are active.”

“And?”

“What do you think we’ve been talking about this whole time?”

Realization dawned. “I see.” Britt clasped his hands behind his head and eased back in his chair. The hem of his coat hung limply at his sides. Its open front grazed against the tiled floor. “Do we know what happened?” he asked. His head was back, his eyes on the ceiling, ears listening to the cooling of his station’s holo. “How the virus broke contain?”

“Not yet.”

Another pause. Eyes flitted back and forth, circling like gnats in a swarm. They gravitated towards Rauch, settling on him one by one. “Don’t look at me!” he protested. “It wasn’t my fault! I followed all the protocol! I used all the airlocks! I cycled both the de-con systems! I even checked their statuses…all indicators green! Run the feeds if you don’t believe me! I did everything I was supposed to!”

Britt nodded. “I’m sure you did.” He sat up and clapped his hands to his knees. “Well, priority one has to be the kill switch. Find it, throw it, and make sure it does its job. After that we find the leak and plug it. I don’t care how harmless this…Haggarty, did you call it?” Miller and the girl nodded. “I don’t care how tame it is, we need to be able to trust our systems. Once that’s done we can discuss this little discovery of yours and figure out what it means. Oh, and I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will anyways…none of you hooks in to the interface until we’re back on solid ground. Kapeesh?” They fidgeted where they sat or stood. Britt locked eyes with each in turn, extracting from each another nod. Rauch, in particular,

Britt settled back in his chair. The HVAC system cycled up from somewhere deep within the bunker. The clock ticked off the seconds. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said softly.

Miller sighed and spilled himself onto the floor. He rose on legs that were not quite steady and shambled towards the lab. He gained a modicum of strength as he moved. Rauch and the girl followed.

Britt watched the door glide shut, shushing gently on its casters, and busied himself with something on his holoscreen. Then with a few other artifacts at his station, then with something in one of his cupboards, though he seemed to do more arranging than he did actual work. After a few moments he stopped, brought up my IP on his holo, checked the readout on the clock behind him, and tapped his foot a couple times. His finger hovered over the call button for an agonizing moment, but in the end it fell without tapping. He put the holo to sleep instead, and joined the others in the lab.