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someone is making a profit on it."
"It's a pretty far leap in the logic," Royal said, "And right
now, patient 112 is sick and patient 119 isn't going to make it
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past the night. Couldn't something more be learned by an
autopsy?"
Tavish rubbed his face again. "We've learned all we can
from the dead. We need to know how to stop it from
happening in the first place."
Royal didn't look convinced. He cleared his throat. "Okay,"
he said. "I'll cover for you if anyone comes looking."
"Thanks, Royal." Tavish gathered his things to go.
Tavish's credits had finally arrived. He'd been notified by
instant message the day before. Midnight only had the one
bank in the lower part of the city. The official buildings along
the side of the road were almost lost behind the kiosks selling
bits of electronics, boots and all kinds of slightly suspect food.
Government sponsored drug dealers selling page after page
of Dose competed with drug dealers of less legal sorts. Tavish
had to push his way through the mass of people to the bank.
He was approached by a couple of young men, working the
day out of desperation, and when they walked towards him,
they staggered. They both had Launch sticks in their hands,
and the burning smoke made Tavish's eyes water.
"Need a ride?" the first one asked. He had been pretty
once, but his dirt brown hair was now just dirty. His eyes
were just slits, and he was rubbing his lower belly. "Come on,
mister."
"No, thank you," Tavish said, moving away. The second
boy stood by the wall, watching through his own narrow,
slitted eyes, and Tavish entered the bank and pulled the
secure door closed behind him. He had to scan his retina and
his fingerprint, and the machine dispensed him loose credits
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in the shape of plastic coins. They didn't feel heavy enough to
be real.
The two boy-toys had moved on to another mark, who
seemed more interested in their wares than Tavish was. Two
guardsmen moved past, took in what the boys were smoking,
and ignored the infraction.
Tavish shook his head. He made his way through the
throng to get to the center lane. From there, he had to wait
for a transport for hire to take him to the air filtration unit.
It was outside of the Alpha Site. A pipeline carried the
filtered air carved out of the western hills that provided
protection against the winds. The clean air was piped at
ground level to the air curtain and the air was purified twenty
feet above. He and Royal had been out once, on their third
day under armed guard, and the population inside the Alpha
Site had sweated through the evening as the machinery had
been shut down and samples were taken of every surface
within the facility. The huge fans driving the conditioner were
as tall as Tavish and the filtration unit cleaned the air to the
micron level. The residual heat from the cooling system baked
Tavish's skin. It had taken them over an hour to collect
everything, and then all day yesterday to run the tests, and
they'd gotten nothing but negative test results.
The foreman was a short man whose face was perpetually
shiny no matter how cool the control room was. When Tavish
announced himself at the gate, the foreman himself came out
to meet him. "Mr. Sanders," Tavish said, as they shook
hands. "If you would be so kind, I'd like to take another look
around."
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"There is no way we can shut down the system again,"
Sanders said, his round face honestly apologetic. "People
need their fresh air."
"I understand that," Tavish said. "I want to go in and take
samples with the machines running."
Sanders looked hesitant, just for a second, then shrugged.
"We can let you inside, I suppose, if you stay inside the
marked perimeters?"
"I can do that," Tavish said. "Thank you."
Sanders nodded. They came up the stairs together, and
Sanders opened the second blue door that led into the
machine room. Tavish went in.
The heat, with the machines running full bore, was like an
inferno. He kept inside the yellow lines clearly marked
between the filtration, the fans and the conditioners.
He took air samples in front of the filtration unit, and then
stared down at the huge circular fans nine-feet below the low
safety fence. Nothing was out of the ordinary. He moved
away from the equipment, and started to take random swabs
of the cave walls. He'd just taken a step along the back wall
when he felt the barest hint of a cool breeze.
He stopped, dead. They wouldn't have felt anything the
day before with the machines still, but the pull of the fans
made it obvious. He used his fingers to find the cracks in the
wall of a very well concealed passageway and a card reader
slit. He turned around, and went back to where Sanders
waited at the door for him.
"I'm going to need the small door in the back to be
opened," Tavish said.
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