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Chapter 39

It was with a little surprise that Andy stepped out of his front door to see a familiar electric blue Tesla parked in front of it, Phil helping Maya remove her things from his trunk. “Hello Maya,” Andy said, walking down the steps towards her, seeing Emily and Sarah were already there, Emily talking with Maya while Sarah was crouched down next to the little carrier, giving the dogs inside scratches while cooing at them affectionately. Linda, Phil’s bodyguard and one of his partners, was also there, but her attention seemed to be more focused towards the driveway leading up to the house instead of on any of them. Andy didn’t mind. He knew Linda’d been under a lot of stress lately, much like Phil had. “Hope you don’t come to regret your decision to be here, Maya,” he teased. “It’s a whole hell of a lot of people, and I wouldn’t have blamed you if you wanted to turn around and head out for the hills.”

Maya’s hair was still dyed green, in that undercut flop hair cut she’d seen when they’d talked over Zoom a couple of days ago, but it wasn’t just her shoulders that were tattooed now, but in fact she had full sleeves on both arms, a wild mix of graffiti style tattoos and traditional Japanese images, classically styled samurai locked in battles with demons done in washes of hypermodern framing. She looked like a cyberpunk character sprung to life. She was dressed in a tank top and baggy brown cargo pants with a seemingly endless number of pockets on them. She had a large suitcase with her, as well as a smaller wheelie bag travel case and a satchel purse slung over her arm. Andy expected the rest of her things would show up in a few days, much like the rest of the girls’ things had, by delivery.

“Nah,” she said with an easy smile. “During our conversation, everything you said seemed like we’d be a good match, and Em here’s one of my closest friends, so if you’re keeping her happy, I suppose you’ll do just fine for tending to my needs. I wouldn’t mind a day or so to get settled in before we got right down to it, though, if that’s fine by you.”

Andy nodded. “Of course, believe me, the last thing I want to do is rush you into anything. Take some time and get settled in here. Catch up with Em and Sarah, ask them all the questions you like. You can introduce Stan and Ollie to Muninn and Huginn, and see who’s tougher, my cats or your dogs.”

Maya moved over and kissed him on the cheek. “Your cats, no contest. I love my little boys, but they’re scared of their own shadows, and wouldn’t last five seconds. Oh, they think they’re tough but they’ll turn tail and run at the drop of a hat. They’re going to love exploring the house, though.” She was shorter than he’d expected, but he could see how muscular she was, built more like a scrapper than a dancer or an acrobat. He remembered that Emily had told him she had originally been a stuntwoman before becoming a director, and he could see bits of scar tissue woven into the mesh of tattoo work on her arms, concealed just enough that they wouldn’t be caught at first, but not so hidden that they were invisible, as if she was proud of the war wounds she’d gotten in the first stage of her career.

“And if they do shit anywhere, either Maya or I will clean it up, Andy, promise,” Sarah said, as one of the dogs happily licked her finger through the grate.

“Hopefully none of your team fucks up packing up my things and shipping them over here,” Maya said to Phil.

“Hey, they’re not my team,” he said defensively. “They work for the government, just like the rest of us. But they’re generally pretty good at getting things from one place to the other. Sarah and Emily both had their stuff sent here that way, so they can tell you.”

“It was rather strange, seeing everything I have ever owned stacked on pallets, wrapped in sheet plastic, being unloaded from the back of a massive lorry and laid out on our driveway, but everything was there and nothing was damaged or dinged,” the blonde Brit said, “so one mustn’t complain too loudly. And, of course, they couldn’t bring anything from my London home, but that wasn’t to be expected. I rather think that will remain where we stay when we are finally allowed to travel over there once more. Any word on that, Dr. Marcos?”

“I’m not at liberty to speak for any other country, Miss Stevens, but I can say our friends across the pond have been getting some of our serums in preparation for a mass rollout within the next few weeks, so while we’re not on the other side of this yet, we might be starting to see some light from the other side of the tunnel.”

“I understand, Dr. Marcos, but I was hoping that I might be able to introduce Andrew to my parents sometime early in the new year.”

“Never say never, Miss Stevens, and you may live in hope, although the entire world’s going through a massive restructuring, now that people are starting to realize the scale of the casualties.”

“I thought the rest rus escort of the world wasn’t as badly hit as the United States,” she said. “Oh dear. How bad is it?”

Phil sighed, shrugging a little. “Globally, somewhere between 60-80% of the world’s male population is likely to be dead by the time we’re finally through this thing. Some countries took the lockdown very serious, and your native England was one of those, and they’re looking at closer to 40-60% fatalities, but others have been hit much much harder. China’s closer to 90% and their entire government is in disarray, as the women are working to figure out what works for them and what they want to discard.”

“Who made out the best?”

“New Zealand,” Phil laughed, rolling his eyes. “Can you believe they didn’t get even one casualty from this? They locked down their islands and didn’t let anyone come over, and we sent them some of our serum too, so they’re struggling to make out what to do with it, considering they don’t have our numbers problem.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, the serum’s a lot more effective for a man if he’s paired up with multiple women who’ve got the serum running through their blood, but it’s still basically fatal if administered to any man directly, so what is New Zealand going to do with all the single men who don’t have a partner? It’s a good problem to have,” he said, “but it’s still a problem.”

Emily leaned her head against Andy’s shoulder, and he put her arm around her to give her a hug, seeing her crestfallen face. “It’s almost incomprehensible that nearly all the cast and crew of any movie I ever worked on is likely dead,” she said, her eyes watering with tears for a moment before she wiped them away, trying to stoic up. “I don’t even know where to begin grieving, it’s simply so immense a tragedy. So many lost souls.”

Sarah and Maya moved over and they all hugged the tiny blonde for a long moment. “We’ll get through it together, Ems, the only way we know how,” the tall redhead said.

Emily tilted her head up and Sarah leaned down to press her lips kindly to hers, a soft and warm kiss, more of concern than affection, at least for the moment, before Emily pulled back, smiling up at her. “You always did know how to keep my mind moving,” she said. “Well, we should show you the house, Maya, and let you pick a bedroom of your own. I think there’s still a handful unclaimed to choose from.”

“Any of them have a door leading into the back yard so it’s easy to take Stan and Ollie out?” she asked, as the group of them slowly untangled from one another.

“I do believe such a room is available,” Emily said, plastering on a smile, trying to move past her sadness with her best ‘keep calm and carry on’ attitude. “Let’s go have a look, shall we, and see what we can do about getting you settled in.”

“And then we can have some much needed drinks!” Maya laughed.

“Not too drunk,” Sarah giggled. “At least not before Andy comes and joins us.”

“Go easy,” Andy said with a grin. “Dinner’s in a couple of hours, so maybe let’s save the hard cocktailing until after you have some food in your stomachs, hm?”

“Oh sure sure,” Maya said. “We won’t start in on the real drinks until after dinner, but I could probably do with a cocktail or so just as a warmup. Cosmos, ladies?”

“Not until after you have a room chosen and have settled in,” Emily said, placing her hands on her hips, trying to look as stern as possible. “I truly must insist.”

Maya rolled her brown eyes but grinned back at her. “Ever the prim and proper lady with a stick up her ass,” she said, grabbing her big suitcase with one hand, the dog carrier with the other.

“I got that for you,” Sarah said, taking the dog carrier from her, as she leaned in, stage whispering to her. “The stick’s not the only thing she’s gotten up there lately.”

That sent Maya off into a blast of laughter, as the three women headed into the house, Emily pulling the wheelie bag behind her, all of the luggage taken into the house, as Andy glanced over to look at Phil, as Linda moved over to stand closer to him.

“You didn’t have to bring her over here yourself Phil,” Andy said to him. “You’ve got plenty of people over at the base for that kind of thing.”

“Not as many as I used to,” he said. “You heard about this Valhalla Shores they’ve set up over in Pacifica?”

Andy nodded. “Yeah, the other Phil called a little earlier today, told me he’d been moved into there. Why, are they taking some of your people?”

“Seems like it. Maya was in the last batch of people we were doing serum injections for here in New Eden for the foreseeable future. Me and my team have been retasked, with studying the long term effects of the treatment, and with finding a way to help women survive if their male partner is killed. This thing we’ve got, it’s kept a bunch of us alive, but the last thing I ever intended was for sıhhiye escort it to be binding men and women together.”

“Fucking McCallister,” Linda grumbled.

“Who?” Andy asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Phil said. “Anyway, they’re using the base next to Valhalla Shores to be doing serum induction and pairing now. New Eden’s mostly a closed community at this point.”

“Mostly?”

“Nothing’s ever truly completely done, so if we get special requests, or emergency needs, we’ll add some more people to New Eden, but they want us focused on countering these side effects so badly that even the people who are being moved into Dos Eden are mostly going to be dosed elsewhere. There’s a large facility in Oakland that’s basically going to be the headquarters for serum induction, even though I told them it would probably be easier for all the Dos Eden people to just be inducted here, but the higher ups are adamant I start working some of this out.”

“I mean, that’s probably for the best, isn’t it, Phil? What happens right now if a man dies and he’s partnered to multiple women? They just go insane?”

“Well, no,” Phil said, “but it’s not pretty. We have a sort of temporary work around, but I think it’s cruel, and it’s certainly not anything I want to be advertising.”

“The hell are you talking about, Phil?”

“So fairly early on in the crisis, we had to send some samples out to Washington, so they could see about getting some key people inoculated against the virus. We sent enough that all of Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff could’ve taken it if they wanted, but almost to a man they refused. The military leaders were a lot smarter about it, though, and many of them decided to have their partners take the treatment, so they would have some level of immunity from DuoHalo. The fact that General Brown, who took over for General Goldfein in August, was so proactive in making sure the top brass at the Air Force were inoculated might just be the defining action that saved this country from extinction.”

“Once again,” Linda said with a sigh, “the black guy has to work three times as hard just to get so much as a thank you.”

“Well, when I have the privilege of meeting General Brown, I’m going to thank him hard enough for three people, because he’s basically the only reason any of us are alive,” Phil said. “He sprung into action, and made sure that we were working to get our solution, the only workable solution, out to as many people as possible, as quickly as we could. And he’s the person who assigned you to me, Linda, so for that I’ll be eternally grateful, because you’ve saved my life more than a couple of times over the past few months, in more ways than one.”

“I told you, the sniper was a freebie, so he doesn’t count,” she said, a hint of flirting layered into her voice. “So that means you only owe me, like, three or four, tops. All the emotional, mental stuff, that’s all Audrey’s doing. She’s the one who takes care of your brain while I take care of the body.”

“Oh she does her share of body care too,” Phil teased back.

“I suppose,” Linda said with a wink. “Anyway, tell Andy what you needed to.”

“I’m getting there, Linda, just be cool.”

“Pssht. Like you know anybody cooler than me.”

Phil looked back to Andy with a grin and a shrug. “When she’s right, she’s right. Did Lesser Phil say much about Valhalla Shores?”

“Only that they were super strict about their quarantine rules. He was calling to tell me he didn’t think he’d be able to do poker for the foreseeable future, because he couldn’t come and go any more. He said that if he left the area, he had to spend a week in quarantine before he’d be allowed back in to see the rest of his family. Struck me as sort of an over reach, considering we’re all basically immune to DuoHalo, as long as we’re having regular contact with our partners, right?”

“Theoretically, yeah, although we’re still doing a lot of testing on that,” he said. “Well, I guess the Air Force is doing that testing, because right now, I’m just focused on making sure we get women the ability to survive the death of their partners.”

“You said you had a workaround.”

“Not a good one,” Linda interjected.

“Agreed,” Phil said. “So if a man dies, as long as his body isn’t too badly damaged, we can harvest slightly necrotized semen from his corpse, introduce that into one of his partners, and it will act as a sort of a reset function, but the woman needs to be reimprinted almost immediately. As soon as the necrotized semen hits her system, she’ll basically be in a state like the one you found Piper in, in a crude, violent frenzy.”

“Jesus,” Andy said, “who the hell knows about this?”

“The women who are staffing what few emergency rooms we have open near any induction centers, and the staff of the centers themselves, so we’re keeping the loop pretty small on it, at least sincan escort for the time being. It’s given me a starting place on where to work on a reset serum, but I’m still quite a ways from having anything even vaguely useful.”

“Have you considered trying to get the serum to work on men without the need of the pairing?”

Phil shot him an annoyed look. “What a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?” he said, slapping his forehead. “Yes, I fucking thought of that, but it’s almost like our serum is actively fighting against pairing with immunization suspensions. We suspect we had someone sabotaging the project from the get go, so it’s entirely possible the bastard had this whole thing baked in there for some other reason. God only knows what the sick motherfucker thought he was going to do with it.”

“If you think you had a saboteur–“

“No,” Linda interjected, “we know we had one. His ass fled to Russia.”

“Russia? Seriously?”

“It’s part of the reason their military and political cabinets are in so much better shape than ours, although they clearly didn’t have the infrastructure to mass produce it, considering how horrible the casualties of their population are. While the Russian authorities had plenty for themselves and their generals, their population was hit harder than almost anyone else’s, with close to 90% of the Russian male population dead. Putin’s not anywhere near as scary when most of his military bases are staffed by corpses, and there’s nobody to climb inside of his tanks.”

“But what about all the women of Russia? With so few men there, there’s no way your system would work, would it?”

Phil nodded. “I mean, DuoHalo isn’t anywhere near as fatal to women as it is to men, so I think the Russian gambit is to just hope enough women survive DuoHalo naturally as to keep the country even vaguely functional, while all the important men have at least a dozen partners each, to ensure they’re always completely buffered from the DuoHalo virus. I’m almost wondering if this was what the saboteur had in mind when he started tampering with my serum in its early days, trying to invent something that would enslave women to men. Christ, if he was still here, I’d shoot him myself,” the Filipino-American man said, scratching the back of his neck.

“Get to the point, babe,” Linda told him. “Our absence off base raises red flags the longer we’re gone, and the last thing we want is them getting suspicious.”

“Suspicious?” Andy scowled at his good friend for a moment. “Phil, what the hell are you up to?”

“You remember when you told me a few years ago that you thought one of your superiors was actively getting in the way of you getting promoted?”

“I do remember that,” Andy said, “and I also remember you telling me that I was being paranoid and that I should just forget about it.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I was wrong, okay, and maybe someone’s actively trying to keep my project from developing a version of the serum without the sexual side effects.”

“Phil are you–“

“Listen, will you?” Phil said, grabbing his friend’s shoulder. “The military has thought overpopulation was a giant problem in the U.S. dating back thirty years, and they had all sorts of contingency plans to reduce the population, not only of our country, but of the entire world. They called it the ‘die back’ contingency. I know it sounds insane–“

“It sounds insane, Phil, because it is insane. Our own government planning mass casualty events across the globe?”

“It was all supposed to be theoretical, Andy, whitepapers and proof-of-concept stuff, but nobody was every supposed to have built anything, but I’m starting to think that’s what DuoHalo is, somebody’s die back contingency that got loose and got out of control, because the Russians acted way too quickly quarantining their people for them to have just ‘gotten lucky.’ They knew this was coming, long before anyone else did, so I think it’s their fuckup, and they just got lucky that we had something that could counteract it, and so be it if it’s got some mad scientist’s project woven into it. That just gave them a foothold into getting their hands on it.”

“Phil, we’ve known each other a long time, and if there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you love your secrets, so if you’re telling me all this, there’s got to be a very good reason for it. You wouldn’t give me a peek behind the velvet rope like this without an extremely important cause. What’s going on?”

His friend sighed, glancing over at Linda, who simply shrugged, before he looked back at Andy. “I’ve doled out a lot of favors over the last several months, so now it’s time for me to ask one of you, and it’s kind of a big one, so if you say no, hey, I get it, but realize I need someone I can trust on this.”

“Talk to me, Phil.”

“So you know how we had someone defect to Russia?”

“Yeah?”

“The Russians had some defect to us.”

“Seriously?”

“It gets funnier,” Linda said, a grin on her face.

“So the guy who defected from us, the one who we think caused a lot of the mess with the imprinting in our serum, his name was Adam McCallister.”

“Okay.”

“The group that defected from Russia? The person who reached out to me on their behalf was Adam’s wife, Evie.”

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