“Milo is full of life, Dr. Warner, and I am happy to entertain guests.”
Guests? Clearly Milo saw this as an opportunity to make a new friend. Kate smiled at him. “Call me Kate.”
“Yes, of course I will, Dr. Kate.”
“So really, how’d you learn English out here?”
“Rosetta Stone—”
Kate eyed him playfully, but the young man just nodded. “It’s true. I received it in the mail, from an anonymous benefactor — very, very mysterious. And very fortunate for Milo. We don’t get too many visitors. And when they say you speak English, it has to be Milo, no one else speaks English, not as well as Milo. I learned for fun, but look at my luck!”
Kate grabbed a cup of water from the table and helped David wash down a few antibiotic pills. She had selected the broad spectrum antibiotic, and she hoped it would do the job. IV antibiotics in a hospital setting would be ideal. She fed him a large pain pill as well. When he came out of the delirium, the pain would be real, and she wanted to get ahead of it.
What to do next? A thought occurred to her. Rosetta Stone. “Milo, you have a computer?”
“Of course; that’s how we found you.” He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially. “Cryptic email.”
Kate stood. “Email? Can I use—”
Milo bowed. “No, I’m sorry, Dr. Kate. Qian wants to see you. He says as soon as you give the medicine to Mr. Reed, I must bring you to him. He is a very serious man, not funny like Milo. He says he has something to give you.”
CHAPTER 68
Main Auditorium
Indo-Immari Corporate Office
New Delhi, India
The small talk died down as 200 pairs of eyes in the auditorium focused on him, waiting for the reason they had been dragged out of bed at 6 AM. Dorian walked out into the middle of the stage and surveyed the crowd. Most were Immari Security. There were a few dozen from other Immari subsidiaries: Immari Research, Immari Logistics, Immari Communications, and Immari Capital. They would all play a role in the coming operation. And then there were the Clocktower Operatives.
The New Delhi Station Chief swore he had eliminated anyone who could be a problem. Immari Security had helped with the purge, and there were still a handful of analysts and field operatives in the brig — pending “final assessment”. Only the Station Chief and Dorian’s Immari Security unit knew the details of Toba Protocol and what had to be done. Dorian needed to keep it that way, but he also needed help, a lot of it, from all the people in the room. Hence the speech, the convincing — something Dorian wasn’t used to. He gave orders, and they were followed. He didn’t ask; he told, and his people didn’t ask questions. But these people would; they were used to analysis and thinking independently. There wasn’t time for that.
“You’re all wondering why you’re here, at this hour, in a room with so many new faces,” Dorian began. “If you’re standing in this room, you have been chosen. Chosen as a member of a task force, a very special working group, an elite team that Immari Corporation and all its predecessor organizations are pinning its hopes on. What I’m about to tell you cannot leave this room. You will take what I say here today to your grave. Some of it will be hard to believe. And some of what you’ll be asked to do will be even more difficult, in ways you can’t yet understand. I must tell you now that I can’t give you all the answers. I can’t assuage your conscience, at least not right now. After it’s over, everything will make sense. You will know the vital role you played in history, and others will know. But you deserve some answers, some reasons for the terrible things you’re going to be asked to do.”
Dorian paused and paced the stage, scanning the faces.
“Here’s what I can tell you. Immari Corporation is the descendant, the modern incarnation, of a tribe of people that left this area, we believe somewhere in India, Pakistan, or possibly even Tibet, around 12,000 years ago. We’re not sure the exact date, but we know it was some time shortly after the last ice age, when the flood waters raised sea levels hundreds of feet, destroying the world’s coastal communities. This group had one goal: to uncover the true origins and history of the human race. These were people of great faith, and we believe they created religion in their quest for answers. But as time passed and humanity progressed, a new avenue of investigation emerged: science. And science remains the core of our work today. Some of you have seen small parts of this grand operation: archaeological digs, research projects, genetic experiments. It is our great work. But what we found, we never could have imagined. I’m reaching the end of what I can tell you, but you must know this: many years ago, we discovered a clear and present danger to the human race. A threat beyond belief. We have known for almost 100 years that a day would come when we had to battle this enemy. That day has arrived. Each one of you is a soldier in the army that will stop this coming apocalypse. The next two days and what follows will be difficult. I’m not talking about a brush fire conflict in a backwater country. This will be a battle for the human race, for our very right to survive. We have one goal: humanity’s survival.”
Dorian retreated to the center of the stage, letting the audience take the speech in. There were confused looks, but there was also engagement, heads nodding.
“Questions are surfacing in your mind. Why can’t we go public? Why not enlist the help of governments around the world? I wish we could, truly. It would ease my conscience about what has to be done. Indeed, your conscience is the other enemy you will fight in the days to come. And going public would also lift the burden, the proverbial weight of the world — knowing we weren’t the last line of defense, that help was coming, that there were others battling the enemy, that we could fail. But we cannot fail, just as we cannot reveal the details of the threat. It’s the same reason I can’t tell you all the details, why I can’t sit here and justify every last thing I’m about to ask you to do, though I wish I could. If we went public, the result would be mass panic, hysteria, a meltdown of society at the very instant we must stay intact. There are seven billion people on this planet. Imagine if they knew we were facing extinction. Our goal is to save the lives we can. There won’t be a lot of them, but if we all do our part, we can ensure that the human race survives. Those are the stakes. And we aren’t just facing the great threat. There are other, smaller obstacles. Governments, media, intelligence agencies. We can’t beat them, but we can hold them at bay long enough for our plan to work. And that’s what we must set about doing, right now. The packets my men are passing out are your assignments — subgroups, responsibilities, your marching orders. The actions are drastic, but so is our situation.”