I swiped forward again, asking myself why I’d never heard that name before. From the way she spoke I could tell they had used it before, for other tests, if not this one, where the virus was largely academic. It shouldn’t have been new to me. For probably the thousandth time I scolded myself for not paying enough attention to the details of the project, and to the people that were making it happen. Other than Britt, I barely know a thing about them that wasn’t in their dossiers. Their sleep cycles, their dining habits, the way they took their coffee in the morning, who got along with whom, and who just kind of got along. Their interests outside of work, what they talked about at meals, what each of them had waiting for them had they finished in the bunker…all thing things I should have known to help me shape them into a team. I didn’t even know the girl’s name, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t I know that?!? Britt must have mentioned her a dozen times, and it wasn’t like there were scores of people amongst which to get lost. I should have had that stuff down cold.

And then that always got me wondering…what else did I miss? Were there signs I should have seen? Hints that things were getting skewed? Could I have prevented a catastrophe if I had caught them and stepped in? Noticed Charles, perhaps, getting burned out by the schedule and given him some R&R before he made a key mistake? Or made Miller’s frustration, building layer after layer with every unsuccessful launch, and maybe put some guard rails up before he went too far too fast when things finally started to click? Could I have…

Swipe

No, I told myself. No use thinking like that. What’s done is done, and there isn’t any changing it. We’ve got a job to do down here. That’s all that matters now.

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and tried to focus back on the holo–

“Holy Sh-” My blood froze. My woolgathering fell off a cliff, and I found myself starting through the translucence of the holoscreen. Staring into Britt’s face…his real face, drained and lifeless since we’d entered, and into his real eyes, which somehow, suddenly, stared directly at me–

No, I realized, and sighed with relief. Not the real Britt. Just another image on the holoscreen, rendering in such a way that it overlaid him perfectly. It gave the impression of a single, composite Britt that was dead everywhere except the eyes.

I took a couple of breaths and wondered why the screen would show me this. An image of Britt, by himself, sitting in this selfsame chair, with the Tower dark and silent behind him. As it queued up the scene I shifted a few feet to one side so that it wouldn’t be between me and the body. I expected it to follow me as I did, tilting as needed to maintain its facing with the audience, but it remained where it was, hovering a couple of feet in front of the body. Britt must have put some sort of lock on it before he…ah, logged off.

I rose from my crouch and picked over the body, searching for the device he’d used. The pockets of his coat were empty so I patted down his khakis. A badge, a wallet, a universal identification device that was useless now but, while he was alive, would have combined with the electromagnetic signature of Britt’s own body to grant him access to his condo, his office, his Mercedes, his bank account, and a smattering of other keyed receivers he didn’t need down here in the lab and now would never need again…but nothing capable of holoscreen projection. I rolled the body over and checked the cavity of the chair, thinking it might have slipped out as Britt convulsed, then under the chair itself. I even dragged a couple of fingers through the blood, despite the fact that the puddle was far too shallow to conceal any known projection device. It sloshed around inside the crust that had formed around its edges, making a sort of volcanic pool, but did not yield any secrets.

What the hell? I stood up and wiped my hand on the side of my suit. Which accomplished nothing, of course, since it was sterine wiping upon sterine, but my mind was elsewhere. I looked back at the screen and watched as it continued pulsing, first bright, then dim, fading in and out, over and over and over again. How is it…

POW!

A shot rang out from deep within the bunker. I ran after it.