Charger and her guards marched them through the mall's gigantic, echoing corridors, past coffee shops, pizza places, bookstores, toy stores, and even a store that sold video games -- the first such store he had seen in this zombie-world. He found himself wondering what kinds of video games might have existed here; he wondered if it might be possible to take a few games and consoles back with him, if he could find any in good working order.
All of these shops were abandoned, of course, and many of them had been converted into living space for the refugees of Georgetown. It was hard to tell how many people were now living in the mall, because it was late and most of them were sleeping on their cots or in their sleeping bags, but there must have been a few hundred at least. The few who were still awake at this hour looked up at them with haunted expressions. These were a fearful, frightened people, a people who had lost hope. The blank looks they gave him left Stu feeling oddly unsettled.
They were led through the mall and into a store that must have been a large clothing outlet at one point, but which had been converted into a combination garage, warehouse, and laboratory; there were complicated machines all over the place, powered by conduit running through walls (and, Stu assumed, into the parking lot, where those dynamo engines had been installed). Though the technology he saw here was obviously very advanced, everything had a makeshift quality to it, as if it had all been thrown together rather hastily. Bizarre handheld instruments, wooden crates, huge cube-shaped monoliths that looked like they might have been computer banks or servers of some kind, tables full of chemical compounds, microscopes, blood rockers, centrifuges, incubators, refrigerators, and various other high-tech paraphernalia were scattered all about.
In the midst of this chaos was a small, kindly-looking man with white hair and black eyebrows, wearing a lab coat. He was quite old, probably around eighty, small and wizened and hunched over a desk, but when he looked up at them, his eyes were bright and alert. He stared at Stu.
"It's true, then," the man breathed. "You're here."
"I'm here," Stu said uncertainly. "You're...Dr. Snowe?"
He got up from behind his desk and shook Stu's hand vigorously. "Dr. Alistair Snowe, at your service." After looking into Stu's eyes for a moment, and seeing the color of them, he said simply, "You have the ICON system."
"Y-yes," he admitted. "Virge...Virge gave it to me."
"Virge. Wayman. They're really dead?"
"I'm afraid so."
"But you found your way here, regardless. Remarkable." He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. "You couldn't have come at a better time. We were on the verge of defeat, but now..." He turned to Charger. "There's no time to waste. Go find Ula. We should start preparing a new colloid derivative immediately. Mr. Brakely...I'm going to need a blood sample, to start, and then we'll have to do a lumbar puncture--"
"I'm sorry," Stu said. "But I'm not doing anything, or consenting to anything, until you tell me what's going on. Virge and Wayman never explained to me why they brought me here, why I was needed, or anything about the ICON system."
"Ah. That's unfortunate."
"What's an ICON system?" Lucky asked.
Stu turned to his friends. "I have a lot of questions for Dr. Snowe. I think I might be here a while. Maybe the three of you should get some rest."
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"I think that's a good idea," Luna said. "C'mon, Lucky, Millie. Stu can tell us all about it later."
"I'll find some accommodations for them," Charger said, and she and her guards departed with them.
Dr. Snowe climbed up on a stool next to a big biosafety cabinet and bade Stu to sit as well. He did so, pulling up a stool and facing Dr. Snowe squarely. This was it, the moment he had been looking forward to for months. But where to begin? He took a deep breath, thinking it over, and finally asked, "Why was I brought here?"
"Well...that's complicated. But I suppose you could say it all began with the alien ship that crashed into the desert thirty years ago."
Stu blinked. "The Vroom?"
"Is that what they're calling it? We'd heard the base had been taken over by the Desert King, but--"
"The Desert King is dead," Stu interrupted.
"Indeed?" This surprised him. "Well, at any rate, it all started with that ship. Our technological revolution, the zombie outbreak, the entity into which I installed the ICON system...all of them originated from within the depths of that ship."
"The entity into which..." Stu shook his head, not understanding. "You're going to have to explain that."
"Of course. As I said, it's complicated. But everything started with that ship. I was part of the original team dispatched to study it, after it fell to Earth. I was already working directly for the Astrian government at that time -- I don't mean to brag, but I have Higher Accreditations in biology, physics, and engineering, among other disciplines."
Stu didn't know what a "Higher Accreditation" was, but he took it mean that Dr. Snowe was some kind of genius. "Go on."
"What we found on the ship..." He smiled sadly. "It was incredible. The technology we found there was beyond anything any of us had ever dreamed of. We were able to reverse-engineer some of it -- grav boosters, dynamo engines, net sets, microengineered circuit panels, things like that -- but much of it remained a mystery to us, right up to the outbreak."
"Dynamo engines are alien technology?"
"Quite so, quite so. Of course this was hidden from the public -- the existence of the ship itself was a closely-guarded secret. We did our best to make it seem as though these technological wonders arose organically from our own research at Akiva and Paradise Laboratories. Our rivals in Rurik, Jipang, and Jizhou were skeptical, naturally, but the Astrian government was very good at keeping secrets and as far as I know none of them ever discovered the truth."
This was interesting. Stu had always been a little puzzled by the high-tech weirdness of this world, which was otherwise so similar to his own, and this was apparently the explanation for it -- these people had managed to advance their science by reverse-engineering the alien tech they had found in the ship.
"It's been thirty years since the ship was discovered," Dr. Snowe went on. "We had twenty years to study it. But as I said, there were some things about it that were totally beyond our ken. For one thing, we had no idea what the ship was for, or what sort of species might have been controlling or operating it. There were all kinds of different creatures inside the ship -- in fact it was something of an interstellar zoo -- but we were unable to communicate with any of them. Some were obviously lower lifeforms, but others...well, I won't get into that. In any event, most of the creatures died in the crash, but approximately thirty percent survived, and naturally we began to study them."
Stu felt that they were beginning to get a little off-topic. "What does this have to do with me, and why I was brought here?"
"I'm getting to that. One of these aliens we found in the ship was a creature we called the Werewolf, although its lab designation was Subject 83456. We called it the Werewolf because that's what it resembled, a sort of small, humanoid wolf, with an enormous set of jaws. It was quite timid, though. It had been badly injured in the crash, and it never quite recovered, even after ten years. Shortly before the outbreak it took a turn for the worse. I had studied the creature extensively over the years, and the authorities at the base thought I might be able to help it, so arrangements were made to transport it to my facility at Akiva Air Base. Unfortunately it never arrived."
"What happened?"
"It escaped somehow. It found its way to a small town, where it attacked a young man." He sighed. "And then it died."
"I don't--"
"That man it attacked was named Stuart Brakely. He was our index case, our patient zero. The first zombie." Dr. Snowe looked up at him with sad eyes. "He has another name now, of course. We call him the Dread."