Free Arisen : Genesis by Michael Stephen Fuchs

Anyway, let’s just tighten up, lay low, and do our jobs. And keep ourselves safe.”
    Baxter strapped into his station, and the SEALs marched off to man the ramparts.
    And it was only as Zack mentally reviewed what he’d said that he took a look inside his head and recognized that what he was feeling was… relief . He was relieved not to have to go out there for a while. And he was having one other emotion, as well: he was spooked. Even more so now.
    Though there was, he knew, or should be, no shame in that.
    He just had to keep it to himself.

Gamma Rays
    Zack and Baxter spent much of the day dealing with Liberty Crossing.
    As those not in the game have little reason to know, Liberty Crossing is the home of NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center, located near Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. It consists of a large, nondescript white office building, with bullet- and blast-proof windows and with every office literally a vault, with a coded lock for entry. NCTC had their own staff, plus attachments from CIA, FBI, DIA, and JSOC. They also shared the complex with the Pentagon’s Joint Intelligence Task Force-Counterterrorism.
    Within seconds of the 11/11 attacks, Liberty Crossing was all hands on deck, working like Pharaoh’s slaves to figure out if there was anything headed America’s way next. This involved capturing and cross-referencing oceans of data, from anywhere and everywhere – including from Zack’s patch.
    It was dot-connecting on a massive scale.
    NCTC was essentially set up to be the single clearinghouse for CT-related intel. Never again with the CIA having the names and photographs of two al-Qaeda guys who had been learning to fly large jets… and the FBI knowing they were both in the U.S. on September 10th… but with nobody knowing both things.
    Today, later in the day of the attack, Liberty Crossing guys got interested in grilling Zack about the latest/greatest on the movements, activities, and plans of a-S and AQAP. And they had exactly zero time for hearing about a strange flu going around. If it wasn’t weaponized, and wasn’t actionable intel, they had bigger shits to take. Zack knew, because he tried to bring it up.
    I don’t know , he thought wearily. Maybe they’re right.
    “Britain’s locking down,” Baxter said from across the room, as Zack got off the line.
    “What, their overseas facilities?”
    “No, their country. Starting with air traffic. All of it. They’ve diverted inbound flights, and canceled outgoing ones.”
    “Everything? For how long?”
    “They’re not saying.”
    Zack knew that was a lot of aircraft. Just rerouting and landing the ones aloft would bring a whole new set of problems and risks.
    “But get this,” Baxter said, swiveling to face him. “They’ve also shut international ground traffic. Trains and ferries. They’re being turned away – back across the Channel, or back down the Chunnel.”
    Zack squinted. That was something different. “You think they know something we don’t? About a bigger plot, maybe?”
    “It’s possible.”
    Zack shook his head. “Hell.”
    “What? Something else?”
    “No. I was just thinking that the world’s really going to shit.”
    “You just worked that out?”
    “Nobody likes a twenty-three-year-old smart-ass, Baxter.”
    But Zack smiled at him. He knew he wouldn’t want his first assignment to be out there in Assville working for a burnt-out case like Zack. And with killer SEALs, and their wicked senses of humor, wandering the halls. Hell , Zack thought, it was a miracle Baxter had found his feet as well as he had . And to the point of being able to throw it back at them. That was a good sign.
    Baxter looked at Zack across the quiet and gently blinking room. They seemed to have hit a lull in the storm. “You really think it will be a virus that gets us in the end?” Again, he looked as if he were in a senior seminar.
    Zack shrugged. “I maintain a sort of mental leader board of apocalyptic threats. After