The call with Bryce ended, leaving a void of silence in Elara's office.
"I can't wait for The General to get here. He needs to take actions as soon as possible." She muttered. She didn't hesitate. Her eyes danced across her B-Wax, and the holographic face of the General materialized before her.
"I was on my way ma'am." The General said.
"Tell me more about your plan," Elara's voice was a shard of ice.
"A solo operation is a death wish," the General countered, his image flickering. "If Bryce traces the virus to you, you're finished. But if it's linked to all eleven Caliphs, he can't move against everyone. We need the others."
"The others are terrified of him. They'll never agree. We do this secretly. He won't trace it." Her tone left no room for argument.
"As you wish. You know the weapon. It's one of Charlene's."
"Which one? She has a gallery of horrors."
"The hybrid. Biological and radioactive. The one she built to kill her father."
A cold dread washed over Elara. "That weapon is why Earth is a tomb. You were too young. The files are sealed. Let me enlighten you. It's a toxin, programmed to identify a specific gene sequence. On contact, it replicates at an insane speed, killing the host instantly. Our scientists refined the girl's design. We deployed it silently on the battlefield. It worked… too well. It began contaminating the environment. We created an antidote, but after the war, the radiation had mutated. It became permanent. We were trying to strip the radioactive component when Bryce issued his ban."
A grim smile spread across the General's face. "You Caliphs are incredibly secretive. We were told that nuclear fallout doomed the Earth, but when my division came across the weapon, we discovered that it was responsible for Earth's destruction. We dismissed this information as a conspiracy theory. However, my division succeeded where yours failed. We further refined the weapon, and now, it's a pure biological agent.
A slow, cunning smile touched Elara's lips. "Excellent. Launch it. Set it to expire in one month. Target fifty percent of the… non-essential population. Customers and workers should not be targeted, even if it drops the final count below fifty percent. It must be highly contagious. And no minors. Not a single one. Most importantly, it cannot be traced to us."
She severed the connection without another word.
Elara's gaze turned inwards, her B-Wax translating her intent into a silent, encrypted pulse. A moment later, Stella's voice was inside her head, clear as if she stood beside her. "Stella. Confirm it for me. Charlene is in the Onyx Bunker?"
"You know I can't lie to you, Mother. I don't keep secrets from you." Stella's voice was a quiet sigh.
"So you're managing Tekkins Telecommunications?"
"Yes, Mother."
"Good. I have a task. Send a directive to every communications company and content platform. They are not to release any news about a virus. You will personally handle the social media algorithms. I want the word 'virus' scrubbed from the public feed."
"Understood. But… which virus? What's happening?"
"No questions." Elara terminated the call, sinking into her couch as a long, weary sigh escaped her lips.
*************
Tekkins Telecommunications headquarters hummed like a living organism. The air thrummed with the whirring of countless robots, their metallic forms gliding between machines in a perfectly synchronized dance. Fluorescent lights gleamed off their chassis as they worked, a silent army of proxies.
Most Martians didn't work; they transferred their memories and consciousness into these androids, granting them superior strength, stamina, and intellect to labor on their behalf. Today, every unit was focused on a single, encrypted directive from the CTO, Stella.
The message was to be bounced through a daisy-chain of devices, its contents only assembling into clarity at the final destination. Untraceable, but unmistakably urgent.
In one branch, three human teens worked alongside fifty-one androids. They were there because they couldn't afford their own proxies yet; a stint of manual labor was their ticket to an automated future.
One of them was Meera.
A fair-skinned, short girl, she was usually a fountain of gossip and chatter. Today, she was unnervingly quiet. Stella's warning had been explicit: focus on the task, tolerate no mistakes. They were being monitored.
"Why is this so important?" Meera whispered as a colleague passed her station. "We don't even know what we're sending."
She got no reply.
"Have you opened the files?" she pressed.
"I did. I don't understand a thing. Now leave me alone," the colleague whispered back, hurriedly moving away.
Meera pouted, returning to her machine. She leaned back against the wall—directly in front of a surveillance camera, blocking the view of the camera.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The encryption method…it felt familiar.
It looked like Morse Code, an ancient cipher nobody used anymore. She used it to encrypt her own diaries, a shield against prying eyes.
She stared at the code for minutes.
Then it dawned on her.
This is Morse Code, but most of it was written upside down.
She rearranged them, placing them in the right manner.
Then Shivers ran through her spine.
But it wasn't the method that shocked her. It was the message itself, now clear as day in her mind:
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO GIVE OR DISCUSS ANY INFORMATION RELATED TO ANY VIRUS.
She quickly composed her face, forcing her expression into neutral boredom, a chill tracing its way down her spine.
Why? she screamed internally. Why are we sending this?