Read Technosis: The Kensington Virus for Free Online Page B

replied, not looking up.
    “Oh,” Louisa said, and put on her shoes.
    “Mom, Dad, don’t make me start counting,” Jane warned.
    “You can drive,” Mitch told her.
    “But I don’t get my permit until next -“
    “You can drive,” Mitch snapped, and got up from the bed.
    ∞
    The transport vehicle took them out from the base to a healthcare campus outside Silver Springs, Maryland. They arrived at what looked like a typical day in corporate healthcare. Transports parked, people queued up in lines awaiting a chit to enter the wing of the campus their care was scheduled in for that afternoon. Disagreeable clerks were reviewing files and complaining to union stewards about working conditions and medics were looking suicidal as they returned to the scene of the previous day’s healthcare crimes.
    “We’ve got KV activity in the psych ward. We are here on a containment basis,” Rosen explained as the team suited up outside the transport.
    The other nine members of the team had already put on their goggles, set personal tech in the transport safe and were prepared for deployment. The tenth member, Jamie, was struggling to get his goggles on.
    “Baxter, are you having a problem?” Rosen asked him.
    “Yes, sergeant,” Jamie admitted, as the strap to his goggles threatened to split his face in half.
    “It’s like this,” Rosen said, removing the glasses from Baxter.
    He positioned them on the bridge of Baxter’s nose then pulled the strap back across Jamie’s head.
    “Thanks sergeant.”
    A few of the other members of the team snickered.
    “What is rule number one?” Rosen asked.
    “Don’t get Sergeant Rosen killed,” the team chanted in unison.
    “Correct.”
    “We will enter together, proceed through the processing center and down to the psych ward. There we split into two teams. Team red will be taking identification and extraction with Baxter bird dogging for us. Team blue will do mop up. Psych ward is second floor, two exit points, one stairwell and one elevator. Remember the rules for KVs,” Rosen said.
    “No Tech, No Talk and No One Gets Out Alive,” the nine members of the team responded.
    “All right, let’s move out.”
    “Sergeant, I don’t know how to bird dog,” Jamie complained.
    “You’ve got your goggles. Check the thermals. If they are lower than they should be they are either really sick or really dead. If they are either, and they are still talking, they’ve got the virus.”
    ∞
    Jane sat in the car shaking. Fourteen years and seven months on the planet had not prepared her for this. This was the day her parents had truly lost it. Her father hadn’t said a thing to her the entire drive over. He hadn’t checked the settings, the guidance systems, nothing. He’d sat quietly in the passenger seat as she had sweated her ass off driving in the late afternoon traffic north of Baltimore. All he did was send messages on the panel. He didn’t see the near misses, the over corrections she made when a federal transport came alongside them. Not a word. Then they got out of the car and left her there.
    Once she managed to prize her fingers from the steering wheel she promised herself that she would go into the building and tell both of her parents to go to hell. That was when she saw the eleven uniformed men get out of the federal transport vehicle on the other side of the parking lot.
    ∞
    Jamie looked at the members of the team around him. Where they showed heat signatures they were a bright red. As they made their way into the health campus he saw the people queued up; they were red to bright red. The clerks and the union steward were also red. Rose pulled off his goggles and flashed a badge at a security officer, who scanned it. Then he gave Rosen an all clear and the team moved into the corridor.
    The eleven of them took the elevator to the second floor and Rosen signaled for them to split into their respective teams. Blue team stationed members at the stairwell and the