Storm (Swipe Series)

temperature of it.
    “Apparently I’m one of the early victims,” Erin said. “And now that my vaccine is active, I’m here because I’m hoping you might have some way to turn it off.”
    Arianna looked suddenly as though she knew the tables had turned. No longer was she the one in control. No longer was shethe one holding the upper hand of knowledge. She laid a single dreadlock across her mouth and chewed on it for a moment, thinking, perhaps, of her next steps. “You’re a good sleuth and a better hacker, Ms. Erin Arbitor. But it appears you have a blind spot for the science behind nanotech. I’m sorry—one cannot simply ‘turn it off.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
    “Why not?” Erin asked.
    “Because a nanomachine is not a tiny assembly of metal and gears, and fairy tales, and microchips that flip on like in toasters and tablets. It’s not a circuit board at all. It is a molecule, plain and simple, modified ever so slightly to do our bidding. In this case, it is a virus designed to stay dormant without the presence of an activation protein. Tough as it might be for a computer hacker to understand, this isn’t simple electronics we’re dealing with here. This is chemistry. It’s biophysics . It’s messy . And there is no off switch.”
    “Well, can’t you just remove your activation protein from the environment? Wouldn’t that do the trick?”
    Arianna shook her head. “It’s a binding process. Once my virus comes across its activation protein, it’s active for good.
    “But here’s the thing,” Arianna continued. “My virus hasn’t come across its activation protein. My activation protein hasn’t been released at all. If it had been , Markless would be dying, not Marked. There’s no doubt about that.”
    Logan stepped forward. “How do you know?”
    “I see you’re a little slower than your friend,” Arianna said. “I’ve told you already, and I’ll tell you once more. But don’t make me say it again: I know because I don’t make mistakes .”
    “Then how do you explain the outbreaks?” Peck asked.
    “Out break, ” Arianna corrected. “By the sound of it, there’sonly been one. And whoever’s fault that was, my team had nothing to do with it.”
    “Are you saying this is someone else’s mistake?” Hailey asked Dr. Rhyne.
    “That’s precisely what I’m saying,” Arianna told her. “From what I’m hearing, last summer someone decided to take a test drive with Project Trumpet. But clearly they did so with a second activation protein—not the one that I designed. They must have used something else altogether. Something that activated the vaccine instead of the nanovirus.”
    “But . . . why?” Hailey asked. “And who? And how?”
    “Well, that’s the 98.6-degree question, now isn’t it?” Arianna turned to Erin. “So what do those memos of yours say, huh? Any mention of the activation? How it was released? Or who released it?”
    “No,” Erin said. “Nothing. I found plenty of documents pointing to Trumpet’s creation all those years ago. That’s what led me to you. And I found several memos between Michael Cheswick and the Trumpet Task Force concerning the effort to contain the outbreak. But nothing ever talked about the activation process itself.”
    “Well, it sure didn’t come out of my Science Center. Nothing so shoddy ever would. This trial run came from somewhere else.” Arianna shook her head, devastated. “Someone is butchering my beautiful work.”
    Erin stared at Dr. Rhyne, confused. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘trial run’? Are you’re saying this new activation protein isn’t present nationwide? That the vaccine isn’t yet active among the wider Marked population?”
    “Oh, quite certainly not. The data you’ve found suggests a very limited area of activation so far.”
    “But then how did I get sick?”
    “I don’t know,” Arianna said simply.
    Hailey frowned. “Well, hold on. If the activation protein hasn’t yet been released across the country, then we still have time to prevent a national outbreak.”
    “That’s correct.” The doctor nodded. “Though by the sound of it, our time is running out. Doesn’t take a scientist to know that a trial run is usually the first stage of a wider release. And this trial run happened six full months ago. If someone is preparing to release that second activation protein more widely . . . well, just remember—there’s no off switch.”
    Erin cleared her throat, her elbows