When Darkness Falls

Our Goals

Day 20

Eve was called back up to Wade's penthouse the next day, the guards escorting her through the elevator before they made it to the big double doors outside of the room. Eve noticed that it was the only door she had seen thus far that didn't open like the others. It appeared the doors did not lock at all, either from the inside or outside. She made a mental note as she walked in to find Wade standing in front of the giant window, looking out over the scenery with his arms clasped behind his back. He only wore a pair of black dress pants, a white button up shirt, and a black suit vest. As always, his hair was combed neatly and it made Eve feel underdressed.

When she entered the room, Wade finally turned to look at her. He smiled, then motioned to one of the white cushioned chairs.

"Good morning, Eve. Please, have a seat. I have some things I wish to discuss with you." He said, walking over to take a seat across from her.

"I believe a congratulations is in order. You have made history in many ways, not just due to your immunity. You are going to be the first human to give birth to a Hybrid child." He said casually.

Eve frowned. "Why did you call me here?"

Wade sighed, looking as though he was contemplating how to answer.

"Do you know what F6X is?" He asked.

Eve nodded. "It's the virus."

"Right, but do you know what it is?"

Eve shook her head. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

"F6X is unlike any other virus because it's not really a virus, not entirely anyway. Cerus Corporation was, by its design, a biological weapons manufacturer. We staged ourselves as a company that designed vaccines for current viruses to help the general public, and we did, but in the background, we were designing weapons of war." Wade said, his tone ominous.

Eve swallowed. The contempt she held for this man was almost enough to make her blow her cover, but she had to stay strong. Justice was coming for Wade Cerus, for the things he had done to the innocent.

"F6X is actually a nano robot, the first of its kind. It's a self replicating robot that uses organic materials to sustain itself and multiply. We designed it to be impervious to EMP's in case our client's enemies discovered that it was a machine. F6X is coded to act as a virus. It not only behaves like one, but it thinks it's one too. It's not intelligent like AI, but the bots act as a hive mind to ensure it's own survival."

Eve frowned. "You're telling me that the apocalypse happened because you designed a robot to be a pandemic level virus?"

"No, not designed, but that's what it ended up being, yes. I will admit, we were too ambitious in our timing. A few more years to refine the technology and we might have avoided what happened. But, we had clients who had invested billions of dollars into our tech and they were growing anxious. They wanted results, and in a way, we gave it to them."

"What went wrong?" Eve asked.

Wade sighed. "We made the nanites a little too self sufficient. They were supposed to be able to infect a targeted host, let's say, a group of soldier's in a neighboring country, without turning on its users. After the bots had destroyed the host, they would replicate and move on to the next. They were supposed to have a kill switch that would essentially turn them off when they were done."

"I'm assuming the kill switch didn't work?"

Wade shook his head. "When we tested F6X for the first time, we were unable to stop their protocol. Eventually, we had to quarantine the subjects to keep it from spreading. This worked for a short while, but they soon found a way to adapt. Since it needed to use organic material to survive, it began feeding on the hosts corpse. After about eight hours, F6X had learned how to hack its own programming. It was able to takeover what was left of the corpses, after they were essentially eaten, within twelve hours. Once it learned to move around on its own, we lost control of them after that."