shattered into thousands of tiny shards and blew outward. The sudden change in pressure sucked dozens of scraps of loose paper into the air. They were wafted out through the jagged opening.
Still dazed and sick, Parikh stared after them in utter, uncomprehending bewilderment. He drew a single deep, shuddering breath.
3 ... 2 ... 1. The blinking digital readout went dead. A relay valve clicked and cycled inside the cylinder. And then, with a quiet, snake-like hiss, the nanophage canister began releasing its highly compressed and deadly contents into the outside world.
The cloud of Stage II nanophages drifted silently and invisibly through the shattered window. There were tens of billions of them, each still inert - each still waiting for the signal that would bring it to life. Pushed outward by the Harcourt lab's own air pressure system, the vast mass of microscopic phages gradually dispersed and then slowly, ever so slowly, slid downward through the air.
Still spreading, this unseen mist settled onto the thousands of stunned Lazarus Movement protesters watching in horror as explosions ripped through the upper floor of the Teller Institute. Millions of nanophages were drawn with each breath and carried down into their lungs. Millions more entered through the porous membranes of their noses or filtered through the soft tissues around their eyes.
For several seconds these nanophages stayed inactive, spreading outward through blood vessels and cell walls by natural processes. But one out of every hundred thousand or so, larger and of a more sophisticated design than its companions, went active immediately. These control phages prowled the host body under their own power, hunting for one of the various biochemical signatures that their sensor arrays were able to
recognize. Any positive reading triggered the immediate release of coded streams of unique messenger molecules.
The nanophages themselves, still floating silently through the body, carried only a single sensor of their own, a sensor able to detect those coded molecules, even when they were diluted to the level of a few parts per billion. Its creators coldly referred to this aspect of their nanophage design as the "shark receptor," since it mimicked the uncanny ability of great white sharks to sniff out even the tiniest drop of blood drifting amid the vast depths of the sea. But the comparison was cruelly apt in yet another way. Each nanophage reacted to this faint whiff of the messenger molecule exactly as though it were a shark scenting fresh blood in the water.
Trapped in the middle of the mob, the lean, weather-beaten man was the first to recognize the true horror descending on them. Like all the rest, he had stopped chanting and now stood in grim silence, watching the bombs going off one after another. Most were detonating on the Teller Institute's north and west sides - sending huge pillars of flame and debris soaring high into the air. But Malachi could also hear other, smaller charges exploding deep inside the massive building.
The woman pressed next to him, a young hard-faced blonde wearing a surplus army-issue jacket with the sleeves rolled up, suddenly groaned. She fell to her knees and began retching, quietly at first and then uncontrollably. MacNamara glanced down at her, noting the needle tracks scarring her arms. Those higher up were livid, still raw.
A heroin addict, he realized, feeling a mixture of pity and disgust. Probably lured to the Lazarus Movement rally by the promise of thrills and the chance to take part in something bigger and more important than her drab everyday life. Was the young fool overdosing here and now? He sighed and knelt down to see if there was anything he could do to help her.
Then he saw the grotesque web of red-rimmed fissures spreading
swiftly across her terrified face and her needle-scarred arms, and he knew that this was something infinitely more terrible. She moaned again, sounding more like an animal than a human being. The fissures widened. Her skin was sloughing away, rapidly dissolving into a kind of translucent slime.
To his own horror, MacNamara saw that the connective tissues beneath her skin - the muscles, tendons, and ligaments - were dissolving, too. Her eyes liquefied and slid dripping out of their sockets. Bright red blood welled up within those terrible wounds. Beneath the mask of blood that was now her face he could see the pale white of bone.
Blind now, the young woman reached out desperately with clawed hands. More red-tinged slime poured out of the shapeless cavity that had once been her mouth. Sickened