It was on the second evening after our arrival when I was disturbed by the ringing of my phone. Seeing it was from Lormek changed my demeanor into expectation for a fresh report, as I had not experienced more than a few texts from him since our last conversation. I moved into the study and closed the door, not wanting to be bothered. Disappointment and a foreboding replaced my willingness for an update when I found that it was a woman’s voice on the other end.
“Is this Mr. Rosyth?” she asked me in an almost inaudible, strained voice. It sounded as though she had been crying a great deal and was still struggling to make sure more tears didn’t escape her.
“Yes. Is this Carloma?” I asked, knowing full well it was, for Lormek would not have allowed anyone but his assistant to use his phone.
“Yes, the professor wanted me to call you,” she said, somewhat composing herself.
“Is he all right? What happened?”
“H-he’s sick, I think. He was in a lot of pain when I left him. He couldn’t really talk. He wanted me to tell you to get as far away from the cities as possible. There’s something that’s making people really sick.”
“People are getting sick?”
“In the last couple hours we’ve seen more and more people experiencing a great deal of pain of some sort, but before we could study more, the professor got sick himself and then asked me to leave.” Her voice was overflowing with remorse, the emotion choking her throat for a second, but fought to swiftly regain her self-control. “We saw them,” she continued. “We obtained an air sample shortly after the ship opened and in it we saw thousands of microscopic bug-like things. The professor said they looked artificial. ‘Microbots’ is what he called them. He thinks that the other ships are going to spread these microbots to the other cities and make more people fall ill.”
So Lormek’s assumption was correct. The ship did contain microbots, but I never considered them carrying the capability to detach from the ship and possessing the ability to cause an illness. I then remembered the gray mist I witnessed dissolving into the air. “Do others know about this?” I asked Carloma, who did not seem to mind the short pause I undertook. I was sure she needed it, too.
“Yes, I sent the results to others.”
“Thank you, Carloma. Please, get somewhere safe.”
“Mr. Rosyth,” she began to say, but a silence arose, in which I could only hear her irregular gasps for a long moment. “Mr. Rosyth, I-I think he’s dying.”
The grief-filled words were not unexpected, given her state, but an aching throbbing coursed my body until I was left dazed. I did not want to openly express my wounded emotions and was resolute to remain as self-possessed as possible. I replied, “His message won’t be in vain, and trust me when I say that old bastard has lived more than both of us combined. Goodbye, Carloma, and stay safe.”
Not a thing was stirring in the study room. Even the trees I had seen swaying in the wind outside the window were currently motionless with me. “He’s dying.” Carloma’s words kept resonating in an incessant cycle. I had a sudden wish that I had accepted his offer to join him, in what turned out to be our last conversation. It would not matter if he couldn’t speak and it wouldn’t matter if I couldn’t come up with something to say. I knew it would be enough for us to give each other that wholehearted look close friends could give to one another to let them know everything they needed to know. I was left praying to my ancestors that he knew, nonetheless.
After a few deep inhales, accompanied with maybe one more, I became committed enough to reveal all that Lormek gave his remaining strength to bestow to me, including his own approaching passing. Dayce was the only one spared from this recent intelligence. I would tell him in my own way when we were alone. They all knew something was amiss as soon as they saw me, since I could not completely hide how drained and weary I was. Only Liz could grasp what the conceivable loss of my friend truly meant to me. Even my mother had little idea that Lormek had essentially become the premier father figure in my life. I was not able to fathom why I chose to emulate a brutish, blunt, and crass womanizer, but it happened. Everyone else assumed most of my visible stress came from the information I imparted about the artificial infection.
It must have been less than half an hour afterwards when the world at large began to share in our distressing enlightenment. Everything Lormek warned me about was manifesting itself before our eyes. Story after story emerged on television about this newly detected disease sending an increasing amount of the inflicted into hospitals. It first started near the initial strike in Dorvale, but it was quickly spreading to cities all across the globe, each one sharing the alien Tower in their backdrop. It did not take a great deal of time or intellect for the public and governments to comprehend what the cause of this readily dispersed infection was. Their instantaneous solution to this impossibly unforeseen occurrence was to quarantine all twenty-three cities as quickly as possible, despite the fact that millions wanted nothing more than to leave. In Iva, people exploited the old tunnel systems and underground bombing shelters to try and escape from the synthetic contagion, but most cities had no such shelters, and people were becoming frantic. While the day fell in Hornstone, so did their anger grow. Riots in all the affected cities were swelling, being fueled by the infection’s increasingly horrific effects.