Orbital Decay Read Online Free PDF Page A

gonna live for seven thousand years?”
    “Probably not that long, in my case.” He looked around the room at his colleagues, all younger. “I’m in my mid-forties, detective. I’m already showing a few gray hairs. The modifications will slow the aging process but, if your DNA has already started to age, it can’t be reversed, only slowed down considerably. Kids who get the shot will live for a hell of a long time, though.”
    “Oh, shit!” Dwight heaved himself up from his perch on the table, staring at Ben. “You were in the boardroom with Hachette. You’re infected. If you touched any surface at all, if you were even breathing when you walked in there, then you have it.” He went over to a bank of glass-fronted refrigerators and pulled a vial from a polystyrene block. He grabbed a syringe from the counter and tore the plastic wrapping off.
    “You need a full shot,” Riggs explained. “We need to get a strong dose into your circulatory system so it can get ahead of the infection. At this point, it’s a horse race, but the infection starts out with a pretty weak hold so the shot should be more than enough.”
    “Should be?” A shudder.
    “You might have a few skin lesions, maybe a few sores in your mouth and nasal passages but it’ll pass quickly once the neighboring cells are fully protected by the shot,” Dwight said, holding up the needle. “The healing process is a bit faster than usual, but not by much.”
    Ben stood there numbly, torn between fear of what the needle contained and knowledge of what was almost certainly crawling through his body already. He said nothing as the needle slid into his vein. A sharp prick followed by a cold tingle as the serum flowed into his bloodstream.
    “There’s also a chance the virus might mutate again and turn the inoculation against you.” Riggs said with a shrug. “CL13 might have just been an aberration or it could have been an indicator of a one-in-a-hundred ratio of mutation. We don’t have a big enough sample size to know for sure.”
    Ben looked up from the growing red dot of blood on his arm, staring at Riggs with one eyebrow raised. “And you couldn’t tell me that before giving me the damned shot?”
    “Would you have refused the shot, detective?” Dwight said in a tired voice. “You’d die without it. Absolute guarantee. Would you really prefer that to a shot at living for a couple thousand years in good health?”
    Ben’s skin tingled. Thousands of years! If I survive the process, that is. He shook his head slowly, still holding Riggs’ gaze. “Not sure I’d want to take the chance if I wasn’t already looking death in the face. I bet a lot of folks down on Earth would turn it down.”
    “They don’t have that luxury,” Dwight said. “Our executive VP locked the place down, but not before he jumped ship to try and save himself.” He still held the needle, looking as though he wanted to stab someone with it. “Stupid bastard landed his escape pod on the roof of our head office on Wacker Drive. I managed to get a link with Sheila, his admin, and she said he took his regular car service home. Even if the army has him locked down, he’s had a chance to contaminate the office, the elevator and lobby of a seventy-eight-floor building, not to mention the driver and everyone he’s been in contact with. And all that was five days ago.”
    “First rule of containment,” Riggs chimed in darkly, “something always gets past the net, no matter how wide you cast it. My money’s on the driver,” he added. “He’s probably dropped off a couple dozen execs at O’Hare by now.”
    Ben was backing away as he heard all this, holding a hand out in negation. He came up against a steel sink with a vent hood built around it, his retreat cut off. “You’re telling me this is loose on Earth? My wife and kid are down there, in Chicago.” The shift in perspective changed everything. It no longer seemed right to think in terms of the separation, of