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THE VIRUS DUET

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D. J. Butler


Captain Li Qiang sat in a black Nissan Paladin sedan across the street from Tokyo’s Marunouchi DoubleTree Hotel and Convention Center. The upper-middle-class sedan would pass unnoticed in any business district in the world, even with its privacy-tinted windows. This particular Paladin was the off-catalog XE model, which featured: self-driving, so Captain Li could sit unobserved by human eyes; electronic surveillance scrambling, so he could ensure no enemies of any secular or mortal nature could observe him; and bulletproof glass and a hardened chassis, in case any planning missteps led to a shootout.

A joss stick smoldering in the Paladin’s ash tray protected him against observation by supernatural enemies. The demons, for instance. The Soul Eaters clamored for release—could they be watching Li? And perhaps it was fanciful, but he liked to imagine that the name of the car itself, the Paladin, brought him luck. A paladin was a warrior with a sacred cause, protected by the benevolent powers of heaven. Just like him.

A meticulous planner, Li was very careful about avoiding exposure.

Captain Li wore street clothes, unremarkable gray slacks, a black jacket, and running shoes. His service-issue pistol lay on the Paladin’s shotgun seat.

The DoubleTree crawled with businesspeople and engineers, some Westerners, but many from the eastern and southern Pacific Rim like Australia, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and others. The DoubleTree hosted this year’s J.P. Morgan Aerospace and Defense Conference. The executives and engineers—Li could tell them apart because the executives dressed like Taiwanese pimps and the engineers dressed like they still needed a mother’s care—were from aerospace manufacturers, but also software engineering firms, semiconductor companies, telemetry innovators, and a host of other industries that lived adjacent to the production of jet airplanes, like the pest-eating birds on the back of a rhinoceros.

Captain Li served as an intelligence officer with the People’s Liberation Army. In other years, he might have attended the conference himself, posing as, say, the bodyguard of an executive from a compliant Chinese firm participating in the three days of product demos, presentations, sales pitches, and schmoozing. During his career, he’d used such disguises to harvest technologies stolen by hundreds of agents embedded in as many technology companies all over the world. He might attend a conference and come away with a dozen new schematics, passwords, and samples tucked into his travel bag.

Today, his interest was considerably narrower. He was after one man and the secrets that man carried—secrets that would determine the success or failure of the demonic forces the PLA would soon unleash on the world.

The secrets of Alex Chen.

Named Chen Jun by his parents—both now imprisoned—Alex had adopted a western name in school, and had used it in his work at Microconductor Trading Company. The giant chip manufacturer was ostensibly Korean, but dominated by its acquired American subsidiaries, to the extent that half its VPs and directors were Americans. MTC’s American culture and personnel were what allowed it to do US government and security work, including supplying the processor chips for the state-of-the-art F-29.

Day two of the conference was just beginning to wind into motion. Attendees staying at other hotels were starting to straggle in. They wore sunglasses or held hands over their eyes against the light, and they sucked at water bottles or black coffee, trying to take the edge off their hangovers. Alex Chen had a room at the Marriott Ultra across the street, and Captain Li sat watching the ground between the two hotels.

Autobikes, electric rickshaws, and buses dominated the scene. Conference attendees shuffled through like the walking dead, serviced by a host of bodegas, kiosks, and cart-mounted vendors sandwiched between the district’s premier banks and four-star hotels. Li saw plenty of cars, but at this, the ground level of the district, they were mostly parked, or looking for parking. Cars that passed through tended to move on one of the three elevated roadways, colloquially known as the Knee Road, the Waist Road, and the Shoulder Road. Crystal assemblies gathered light at the tops of the buildings and then gently diffused it all the way down to these three elevated roadways.

Alex Chen emerged from the Marriott Ultra. His white shirt was not completely tucked in, and might have been the shirt he had worn the day before. His hair was unkempt, and he had one trouser leg tucked into a white sock.

Alex was, of course, an engineer.

Captain Li did nothing. It wasn’t his job to do anything at this moment, other than observe.

Alex stumbled to a coffee vendor, a cart on the sidewalk that mounted four different coffee machines and a spring-loaded dispenser of cups, lids, sugar packets, and stirrers. Two men stood in line in front of him. Alex rubbed his eyes blearily, fumbled thick spectacles into place, and tried to read the prices printed on the green side of the cart.

He hadn’t finished reading yet when the two customers both turned toward him. They grabbed Alex by his arms, one on each side, and pulled him back. A black van stopped, its side door rolled smoothly open. The men threw Alex inside and jumped in. Before the door shut, Li saw one of the men pull a black hood over Alex’s head.

Captain Lie didn’t follow the van. He knew another route to get where it was going.

Operation Duet was coming to an end.


Captain Li stood at ease with Colonel Xu Longwei in the observation area, separated from the interrogation room by a one-way mirror. Both rooms were painted drab green, floors, walls, and ceilings, and lit with archaic fluorescent tubes. Alex Chen stood in the interrogation room, furnished only with two simple wooden chairs and a table between them. At the direction of a soldier and under the muzzle of a rifle, Alex slowly stripped off his clothing.

The colonel wore fatigues. He had no rank insignia and wore his sidearm openly. An older man, he was burly with a hard slab for a face. Captain Li was still dressed in street clothing, though now he carried his pistol in a concealed holster at his hip.

Three hours had passed since the abduction. The extraction team had flown Alex back to the mainland in a capacious Xian Y-21 cargo jet, with him hooded the entire time. On the flight, he had delivered a memorized string of characters to the extraction team’s leader.

Li had flown in the same Y-21. He’d sat quietly in the corner, never taken off his sunglasses, and avoided all conversation. He’d watched Alex carefully during the entire flight. Upon landing, he’d followed Alex and his handlers to this facility.

Alex hesitated when he was down to his undershirt and briefs. He was doughy, showing how soft a man became when he worked too long behind a desk. “This seems unnecessary.”

“My orders are to shoot you if you fail to comply,” the soldier said.

A tinny one-way intercom carried the voices into the observation room. This was an old facility, an abandoned secret military base. Not all of its infrastructure had been modernized.

“Reports indicate the extraction was a success,” Colonel Xu grunted.

“No shots fired.” Captain Li nodded at Alex. “And we have him back.”

“Good job.” Colonel Xu nodded. “What will MTC think of his disappearance?”

“Maybe that he was kidnapped by a competitor,” Captain Li said. “Sometimes that’s the cheapest industrial espionage there is. Or maybe that he was kidnapped for personal reasons. We planted evidence of gambling debts in his hotel room.”

“It won’t matter what they think for long,” the colonel grunted.

Captain Li nodded. How long? Days? Hours?

“After we hear Chen Jun’s story,” Colonel Xu said, “what shall we do with him?”

“He will be expecting us to release him,” Li said. “I would recommend that we hold him until nothing he can say will jeopardize the operation. In isolation.”

“Ah, Army intelligence.” Colonel Xu smiled without humor. “So humane.”

“The most humane thing will be a quick war,” Li said, “with a prompt American surrender. This is the humaneness I favor.” He hesitated, then tried an indirect approach. “You say that it won’t matter for long what MTC thinks?”

“Yes, yes.” Xu chuckled. “You are impatient. So am I. The time is upon us.”

Upon us? How soon?

But it wouldn’t do to show too much curiosity. Li nodded.

“I am thinking,” Colonel Xu said, “of bestowing a singular honor upon Chen Jun. Speaking of the time being upon us.”

“Yes?” Li asked.

“Unique,” Xu said. “An honor reserved only for one man.”

Alex had finished undressing and stood totally naked. He turned, and the soldier conducted a body cavity search with brutal mechanical efficiency. While Alex had nothing concealed on his person, a distinctive series of tattooed glyphs ran from his right shoulder blade straight down to his hip in a line. They looked Chinese in style and form, but none of them amounted to an actual Chinese character, and they were unreadable.

“You may put your pants back on,” the soldier said.

“Only my pants?” Alex asked.

The soldier nodded and stepped to the door. Alex pulled his pants on and sat facing the door, his back to the mirror.

The soldier left, and an interrogator carrying an electronic tablet came in and sat across from Alex. Captain Li didn’t know her name, but he’d seen her before; she was a hard-faced, needle-eyed woman dressed in green fatigues. Her hair was cropped short and streaked with white.

“You were contacted by Falun Gong,” the interrogator said.

“No,” Alex said.

The interrogator raised her tablet and showed Alex a recorded video. Li couldn’t see the images from where he stood, but he knew what they showed: Falun Gong approaching Alex at Mission Dolores Park in San Francisco, where they’d invited him to undertake exercises with them, and he’d declined.

Captain Li had studied the video extensively.

“I had forgotten this moment,” Alex said. “But they didn’t contact me. I was walking in a park and had a chance encounter.”

“Why did you hesitate when the two women approached you?” the interrogator asked.

“I don’t believe I did hesitate,” Alex said. “But you certainly know that some of my family members are imprisoned because of their attachment to the subversive Falun Gong sect. If I hesitated, perhaps it’s because I saw those women and thought of my own family’s behavior, and felt shame.”

“You sympathize with the Falun Gong,” the interrogator said. “Admit it.”

“I deny it,” Alex said. “I am a materialist. I believe in science and the will of the people.”

“Even if the people were not to choose scientific materialism?” the interrogator asked. “Do you believe in the will of the people if the people choose capitalism? Do you believe in the will of the foolish American people?”

“The people, properly informed, will always believe in scientific materialism,” Alex said. “And the people, properly informed, will always choose socialism and the revolution.”

“You have Falun Gong tattoos,” the interrogator said.

Alex chuckled slowly. “Is that what they are? I can’t read them.”

“No one can read them,” the interrogator said. “They’re incomplete.”

“Perhaps they are Korean,” Alex suggested. “You’re aware that Korean businessmen drink heavily.”

“Like Russians,” the interrogator said. “They’re not sophisticated people and they engage in unsophisticated, unscientific practices.”

“That’s true,” Alex said. “And when you meet the engineers or the negotiators of another Korean company, after the meetings, you have to prove yourself by drinking as much as they do.”

“Soju,” the interrogator said.

“And hongju,” Alex added, “and rice wine. And recently, when I experienced this . . . unscientific practice . . . I woke up with the tattoo on my back.”

The interrogator sniffed and stared into Alex’s face.

Li had already read the analyses of the tattoos. The Army had made Alex strip here, to reveal the tattoos as well as to humiliate him, but they’d captured surveillance footage of the tattoos months earlier. They could make nothing of the characters, which seemed to be a row of partial glyphs, as if the tattoo artist had been working from a column of text which had been half erased.

“You accomplished your mission,” the interrogator said.

Alex nodded. “I gave the codes to the extraction team.”

“These will ground the American F-29 fighter jets?” the interrogator asked.

“All of them,” Alex said. “It’s a failsafe to prevent theft and sabotage.”

“Ironic.”

Alex shrugged.

“Why was your mission called Operation Duet?” the interrogator asked. “I thought you planted a computer virus, but ‘Duet’ sounds as if you sang a song.”

“I planted half of a virus,” Alex said. “Hardwired into the microprocessors I designed for the F-29’s navigation system. This is why I infiltrated MTC. This is what I have been working on for almost a decade.”

“Half of a virus?”

“There is a second agent, who built the other half into the F-29’s navigation software. Upon installation, the virus assembled itself into a whole and began transmitting data.”

“Including the grounding code.”

Alex nodded.

“And this other agent?” the interrogator asked.

“I never met him,” Alex said. “Or perhaps the other agent is a woman. The individual works at the software engineering firm assigned to the project. I suppose if you haven’t met him, he may still be embedded there.”

“With more missions to carry out?”

Alex shrugged.

“This is a heroic task you have accomplished,” the interrogator said. “When our demon army is unleashed on California tonight, America’s principal fighting jet will be unable to launch, and we will achieve both total surprise and complete supremacy.”

“Tonight?” Alex asked.

Tonight?

“Or soon. This victory will be thanks to your efforts. You should have a parade and a medal. You should be given a luxury apartment. Your name should be taught to schoolchildren everywhere.”

“I am happy to serve the revolution,” Alex said.

“Do you not resent this interrogation?” the interrogator asked. “You did as you were asked, but instead of a hero’s welcome, we kidnapped you off the street. Instead of a feast, we forced you to strip in an interrogation cell.”

“In a time of war,” Alex said, “one must make extraordinary sacrifices.”

“What if the sacrifice required is to wait out the war in a cell?” the interrogator pressed. “To be released only after the war is over and your secrets can be told?”

“I’m happy to serve,” Alex said. “Soldiers will die on the battlefield. I cannot do any less.”

Colonel Xu chuckled.

Captain Li kept his face expressionless. He noticed Xu checking his watch.

“Shall I have Chen Jun escorted to a cell?” Li suggested, his voice carefully flat and neutral.

“Come with us, Captain. You too shall have your reward for your excellent work on this operation.”

“The same reward that Chen Jun gets?” Li smiled faintly.

Xu chuckled. “Oh no, not that special. But maybe more enjoyable.” He chuckled again. “In the long run.”

They opened the interrogation room and the interrogator left. Alex was shrugging back into his shirt and shoes. He had a studied look of humility on his face, and not a hint of recognition as he met the two officers.

“Chen Jun,” Xu said. “I am Colonel Xu Longwei, and this is Captain Li Qiang. Though you did not know it, you were undertaking Operation Duet under our direction.”

Alex bowed.

“Do not trouble yourself with what the interrogator suggested. You will not wait out the war in solitary confinement. Indeed, you are to receive a special treat, a reward just for you. I will take you now and show you the great engine of our imminent victory over the Americans.”

A look of delight crossed Alex’s face. “Is it true that we shall ride to war behind a horde of Soul Eaters?”

Xu frowned at Li. “After our victory tonight, we must examine our organization to see who leaked this information.”

Li nodded.

Tonight.

But then Xu frowned. “It doesn’t matter for the moment. Come, Chen Jun.” He wrapped his arm around Alex’s shoulders. Then he directed the engineer through wide corridors and down several flights of stairs toward the center of the facility.

“Yes,” the colonel explained as they walked, “tonight we release the Soul Eaters. The Americans are not expecting such an attack and will be surprised in any case. The Soul Eaters ride the sky faster than sound, many times faster. Before dawn, the Americans on the West Coast will hear their thunder. And, thanks to you, the Americans will scramble their great war jets and find them inert. America will surrender within twenty-four hours. And if she doesn’t, then she will fall.”

“It is what we worked for,” Alex said.

The colonel led them onto an iron-latticed observation deck. Li would have guessed that they were already below ground level by now, but a shaft descended from here, dropping beneath the observation deck into visual infinity. There was no handrail. Ducts ran up the shaft. Looking upward toward the opening at the top, Li saw a hint of twinkle that he took to be stars in the night sky.

Along the ducts were painted elaborate characters, some in scripts Li could not read. Those he could were spells. Some were amulets defending the building from attack; others gave direction and willed the targets of the spell to race across the Pacific Ocean to California. A flat slab of stone, the size of a child’s mattress, lay on the observation deck. It too was marked with characters across its upper surface and around its sides, but Li couldn’t read these.

The center of the shaft was filled with light that pulsed to a two-second beat. It was green, like a lightning bolt that had fallen ill and been bottled up in a tube. As it expanded, it nearly touched the deck; at its maximum point of contraction, it was a thin column, thirty feet from the platform.

“This looks like an energy weapon,” Li said. He had meant to keep his mouth shut, but felt astonished and overwhelmed at what he saw.

“Ghostbusters,” Alex said.

“Yes.” Colonel Xu harrumphed. “And as with the Ghostbusters, the stream of energy traps the devils. We have been awaiting only the result of Operation Duet. With your codes in hand and ready to broadcast, we will now release the Soul Eaters. The people’s sorcerers have prepared this shaft like the barrel of a gun, which will launch these demons at our enemies.”

Li searched the shaft and saw no other human beings.

“Very interesting,” Alex said. “I am honored beyond my expectation that I am permitted to see this weapon. May I also be so honored as to see the demons themselves?”

“You will have more honor than that.” Xu drew his pistol and shot Alex Chen in the belly.

Alex dropped to the iron grate, blood streaming down his legs. His glasses slid over the platform’s edge and disappeared. He clasped his wound with both hands and gasped.

“I am happy that I can die for my people,” he gasped.

The people,” Xu said.

Alex only grunted.

“Look.” Colonel Xu gestured with his pistol at the column of light. Its pulsing had stopped, and it was swollen to its maximum extent, a green lightning bolt fixed in the center of the shaft. It hovered only centimeters from the observation deck—

And there were faces inside it.

The faces looked human, but they were too large. Some had multiple rows of teeth, like sharks. Others had two pairs of eyes, one set above the other. Some had slit-shaped pupils like those of a cat; others had the hourglass pupils of goats. Some had snakes for hair, some lacked noses, one had a scorpion’s tail for a tongue.

They pressed against the edge of the lightning bolt like trapped animals clawing against the walls of the cage. Captain Li thought he could hear their voices, wailing, whispering, cajoling, and threatening, but he couldn’t make out any words.

“A sacrifice is necessary to release the Soul Eaters,” Colonel Xu told Alex. “You have the great honor of being that sacrifice. I shall see it recorded in history that you volunteered for this privilege, the bravest of the brave.”

“Why?” Alex gasped.

“Your family is undependable,” Xu said. “Untrustworthy. Un-Chinese. Nonscientific. Believers in ghosts. You are not to be trusted any more than necessary.”

Alex squeezed out a rattling laugh. “Believers in ghosts? And what about demons, Colonel? Are these demons scientific materialists?”

Xu frowned. “That is different. And in any case, I am not going to argue with you.” The colonel holstered his sidearm. “Captain, help me get the sacrifice up onto the altar.”

The colonel bent down to grab and lift Alex.

Captain Li drew his pistol and shot the colonel. He aimed for the shoulder, and not center of mass as dictated in training—he wanted to incapacitate the man. When the colonel fell back, Li shot him in the other shoulder, and then once through each knee.

The shots, mingled with the colonel’s bellows of pain and rage, echoed through the shaft.

The devils pressed harder against the edge of the light. Their faces swelled up and bulged, like balloons inflated to the point of distortion.

Li removed the colonel’s pistol and threw it into the shaft. He patted the officer down and found no other weapons.

“Traitor,” Colonel Xu growled.

“Can you stand unaided?” Li asked Alex.

“No,” Alex grunted. “And I am dying.” But a light of understanding and hope dawned in his eyes.

Li nodded. He stripped off all his own clothing, setting it in a neat pile out of the colonel’s reach, with his pistol on top.

He turned to show both Alex and Colonel Xu his back. “As you can see, I have tattoos of my own.”

“They match the traitor Chen’s,” Xu said.

“No. They complement Alex’s tattoos. Together, our tattoos form a single vertical line of glyphs. A spell, in fact.”

“Did you go drinking with Korean businessmen as well?” Xu spat.

“On his way home from that drinking contest, Alex met me,” Li explained. “Though he never saw my face. We were tattooed then, in great secrecy. I have been very careful, naturally, to keep my own tattoos a secret, knowing that Alex’s would inevitably be revealed.”

“What is this?” Xu snarled.

Li knelt and carefully helped Alex undress. Alex’s skin was clammy and cold to the touch; he had very little time.

The devil faces bounced around in the light, raving and slobbering.

Li helped Alex stand. He wrapped his arm under Alex’s shoulder and around his back, lining up the two columns of half-glyphs, merging them into a single vertical line.

“Why, Colonel,” Captain Li said. “You are slow and dense. Alex has already explained to you exactly what this is.”

“It is a virus,” the colonel said slowly. “In two halves reuniting to form a spell.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “I knew there was another infiltrator, but I did not know who he was. And, to be honest, I thought he might not find me in time.”

“I was with you all along,” Li said, “brother.”

“I am dying,” Alex said. “We must make the sacrifice quickly.”

“The sacrifice?” Xu thrashed in pain, but he was intent and focused. “Will you unleash the demons, then?”

“No,” Li said. “We will destroy them.”

“And the grounding code?” Xu asked.

“It is real,” Alex said. “But that doesn’t matter, because you won’t be able to use it. You will have no Soul Eaters for the invasion.”

“Ironic,” Li said.

“I am slipping,” Alex said.

“Stay.” Li took a took breath. Locked chest to chest with Alex Chen, he led the man through the First Exercise. Xu hissed and sputtered, but to no avail. The motions, the controlled breathing, and the stretching of the exercise, also called Buddha Showing a Thousand Hands, calmed and strengthened Li.

Alex’s breathing also became more regular. He could only raise one arm above his head, but he did so in synchronization with Li’s movements, stretching, relaxing, and breathing. The clammy feeling of his skin faded. Was it Li’s imagination or did the bleeding also stop?

As they showed the thousand hands, the green light slipped from the observation deck to the edge of the stone slab. The beam of the light seemed thinner, somehow, in an arc above the line where it contacted the stone. Had a door opened? The Soul Eaters withdrew a meter and waited, surprise and confusion on their faces.

With the First Exercise completed, they separated and stood next to each other, then stepped onto the stone. Li could feel the light as a faint warmth on his naked skin. He looked down at Xu; the colonel was dead. His face was twisted into a rictus of rage.

“When we step through,” Alex said, “the demons will be destroyed. But so will we.”

“In a time of war,” Li said, “one makes extraordinary sacrifices. Are you ready?”

“Yes, brother,” Alex said.

Li gripped the other man tight again, bringing their glyphs into alignment.

They stepped into the light.


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