Olympus

Chapter 38

It's not Item 13. How can it not be Item 13?

A million questions raced through Megan's head as she stood in front of the scene before her, the questions flying by so fast that she could neither hold them for more than a second nor ascertain their logic in that space of time.

However, the crux of the query remained, what in the world was the containment box holding if not Item 13?

"What is it?" she asked Ricardo who was standing closest to it at that period.

Inside the containment box was a transparent glass structure. It held a metal rod seemly floating in space- probably by some electromagnetic force, Megan deduced from what little her science knowledge had grown since she took the job at Olympus.

Some strange-looking, octagon-shaped objects were attached to the floating rod; so small that she couldn't make out what materials they were actually made of, and so finely arranged that they almost looked like one whole piece of work if not for the tiny spaces in between them which was able to distinguish their individualities to the clever onlooker. The objects all together coiled to form a double helix around the rod which rolled on its circumference in a smooth, soundless operation.

No wires could be seen anywhere on the equipment. Nothing else really could be the seen on the equipment apart from what was obvious to the eyes.

This is one clever piece of design, Megan remarked as she took in the fantastic setup in front of her. Whoever had made the equipment had put in a whole lot of thought to its appearance, and that kind of meticulous forethought made her apprehensive all the more.

You don't just make such intricate art only for someone to dismantle it with the push of a button.

Just then, Ricardo passed his hand over the glass and its surface came alive, like some sort of touchscreen panel. A 3D image of the helices popped up alongside some string of letters and numbers; some marking each attached object, others floating at the side of the image. They all combined into a visible logical pattern that was presumably the code responsible for the working of the equipment.

"Meu Deus!" Ricardo exclaimed at the sight. My God!

"What is it, Rick?" Megan pressed closer now with the kids.

"If we thought Item 13 was bad news, this is worse, Megan. Much worse."

He keyed in a set of command through a touch keyboard that had appeared below the image and a new page appeared, and what confronted Megan made her blood run cold.

The small strange-looking octagon-shaped objects inside the structure were nanites – she should have guessed as much with all her sci-fi knowledge – but not the everyday kind; if there were everyday kinds. These ones had been programmed with some kind of high-level intelligence which was purported to make them harder to detect, harder to evade, harder to counteract.

But that wasn't what scared Megan.

With all the sophistication the nanites had been imbibed with, their purpose was a much simpler one – simple and deadly, she corrected her remark – they were programmed to kill; and not just in the simple manner either.

Now, nanites in books and movies were made in such a way that they carried poison or bombs or any of those other things which acted on contact and that was it, but these ones were of a much different calibre.

How the nanites operated in a manner of speaking was that they had been inputted with a string of codes. Megan figured out they were genetic code of Martin's targets from what she was reading. The file called it the sensitization stage.