In his peripheral vision, he saw her look up from the two screens, which were each mounted on what looked like video game controllers. They sat atop a paper map spread over her lap.
“Why?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Never mind.”
The controllers weren’t for video games. Instead, they each controlled a quadcopter drone. Both drones had cameras mounted on their undersides and were flying three hundred feet up, two miles away from the Chevy Silverado Jimmy was driving through the Rockies.
Using the drones’ camera feeds, Tara had effectively extended her line of sight to miles in every direction. Her eyes had been glued to the displays for hours as she looked for signs of Chambers’ and Benson’s convoy, or the military convoy that had taken Max, or the secret installation where the agents were holding him.
The moment they’d left the Federal Building in Pueblo, she’d wanted to go break into a Walmart to pillage the electronics section. First, they’d found this dual-cab Silverado in a parking lot a couple blocks away from the fallout shelter. Then, they’d driven to the Walmart to steal the two drones—complete with screens built into their controllers, since downloading a smartphone app was out of the question—as well as extra batteries.
On their way out of the store, Jimmy had nabbed the biggest gas can he could find, along with a siphon pump if it came to that. Then he’d insisted on finding a gun shop to break into. There, he’d added a couple Colt semi-auto rifles and two tactical shotguns to his dad’s old hunting rifle, along with plenty of ammo.
The weapons and the filled gas can were now stored safely beneath the truck’s bed cap. They’d filled up both the truck and the can at the first gas station they saw. Thankfully, an operational power grid meant the pumps still worked.
He found himself glancing at Tara again, and resisted the urge to shake his head. She really is crazy. Resourceful, though, in her own way. Gotta give her that. And I guess it’s better than just sitting there.
Each drone had a flight time limited to thirty minutes, which Tara said was actually pretty long. Jimmy had still suspected that at least one of them would crash into a stream or something, but he’d never flown a drone, and hadn’t known that they automatically returned to the controller at low power.
Whenever that happened, Jimmy had to pull over so Tara could pluck the drone out of the air, swap out the spent battery for a fresh one, and send it on its way once more.
To support all this, she had two power bars plugged into a dual-outlet three-pronged inverter, which in turn was plugged into the Silverado’s only cigarette lighter. The power bar sprouted a forest of cords—four drone battery chargers, since it took twice the flight time to charge each battery, as well as cords leading to the two controllers.
He’d attempted, several times, to highlight how unlikely it was, even with the ability to search several miles at once, that they’d manage to find Max when he could be anywhere in the Colorado Rockies. Probably, that installation was deep down some hidden access road, so he doubted they’d have much luck sticking to the main passes. In fact, he vaguely recalled Chambers saying as much to Max. The agent had actually given them the coordinates for the installation, but Jimmy hadn’t bothered to memorize them. He decided not to mention that to Tara.
They were currently driving north on Route 285, along a stretch where the mountains were distant enough on both sides that it barely felt like they were ‘in’ the Rockies at all. But Tara assured him that a few miles more, the range would hug the road once more.
For all the good it will do.
Unless they were able to spot a sign of Benson’s convoy, or somehow catch up to them, Jimmy put their chances of finding Max at roughly zero.
Although, Jimmy and Tara had been traveling pretty nonstop. Maybe if the convoy had to stop more frequently for pee breaks, they had a chance of coming up on them. But for that to happen, Jimmy would have to be driving in the right direction, and he had no idea whether he was or not.
“I still can’t believe you’re willing to go to all this trouble after spending just one night with Max. I’ve known the guy for years, and it just doesn’t make sense to me.”
This time, Tara didn’t look up. “What else am I supposed to do, with the world ending all around me? If Max really can do something about the invasion, I want to help however I can.”
Jimmy was about to point out again that ‘helping’—assuming there was anything they could do to help—would first involve finding him, but he decided not to waste his breath. Instead he said, “Nah, it’s more than that. You like the guy. That’s what gets me. He’s never had a girlfriend. Never kissed a girl, to my knowledge, let alone slept with one. And yet now he has you chasing him across Colorado, flying two drones at once just for a slim chance of finding him again?”
He expected her to get pissed off, but she laughed instead. “I find it funnier that you’d get jealous over a girl you just met.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not jealous. Just confused.”
“I know jealousy when I smell it, Jimmy Somerton. And the fact you’re jealous tells me something about you. It tells me you think a lot of yourself.”
Jimmy rolled his eyes.
“I saw that.”
He shook his head, wishing he were high. But Tara wouldn’t let him drive stoned, and she couldn’t take a turn driving, because she wasn’t willing to let him fly the drones at all.
It wasn’t just wanting to be high that made him want to smoke, either. Memories of slaughtering Ravagers back at Fort Benson kept replaying in his mind, on repeat. How good it had felt, and how much he wished he were back there, dropping them again, one by one.
On top of that, he felt angry for no reason. The weed helped him stay calm, and now that he’d been sober for a while, he felt the aliens’ influence seeping back into his mind.
He wanted to hurt something.
But for now, he just kept driving.
46
3 days to extinction
After Janet struck him, she escorted him back to the circular room and ordered her men to see him strapped into his simulator. He felt his pilots’ eyes on him as he crossed the chamber. It made him wonder what they thought happened, and what their opinion would be if they knew.
The 1st Earth Strike Fighter Squadron began another simulation. And when they failed that, they began another.
It wasn’t hard to figure out the pattern. Failure always came when Max made a decision that stemmed from his desire to keep as many of his pilots alive as possible.
Often, his decisions would get results—at first. Then, Janet would cheat. Interceptors would come from nowhere, the enemy’s weapons would mysteriously get more powerful, or three more saucers would appear over the horizon. Max’s fighters would have no chance, no matter what he did. And they would lose.
After, Janet would take him into her office, where she would subject him to some sort of painful humiliation. Each time, the discomfort she inflicted would ratchet up a degree. After, he would return to the simulator room, slightly more battered than before, but with his chin up. He would nod at his pilots, and they would begin again.
I won’t give in to her. If she won’t allow me to bond with my pilots using words, then I’ll do it using my actions.
Clearly, Janet’s philosophy for fighting the aliens was different from his. But ultimately, Max knew that whatever lessons she was trying to impart with the simulations were ultimately meaningless. He’d already figured out that she had no real intel on the enemy’s actual capabilities, because they changed in every simulation.
Sometimes multiple saucers appeared over the horizon. In one simulation they would have interceptor fleets, and in the next they’d have none. Once, the ship that took down his squadron had what looked like plasma turrets positioned all along its rim, protecting its topside by filling the airspace above it with bright-blue projectiles of pure energy.
No matter how clever Max’s tactics, the simulations nev
er allowed his squadron to escape Earth’s gravity well to make for the moon. Janet’s point was clear: without following her approach, they’d never make it off the ground.
“Why not simply do as I say?” she asked as he picked himself off her office’s plush-carpet floor, trying to suck air back into his lungs after a savage kick from one of her men. “They’re just simulations. You could save yourself a lot of trouble.”
Trouble. That was one word for what she was doing to him, and having her men do.
He did have an answer to her question, though he wouldn’t say it.
Never give your enemy information you don’t have to give.
The answer was this: what he did in these simulations would shape what happened during the actual mission.
If he succumbed to Janet’s will—her desire for him to treat them as disposable ‘assets’—then they would think he had no more respect for them than she had for him.
But if he showed them that his top priority was to keep his squadron intact, to keep as many of them alive as possible and bring them home…
…then they would trust him.
Yes, he understood that people would die in this fight. And that he would have to live with those losses for the rest of his life. But there was a difference between using people as chess pieces and forging a bond of trust with them.
His way was the superior one. He felt that deeply, in his bones.
So he refused to compromise. Refused to break.
The visits to Janet’s office continued. The beatings continued, getting worse each time.
During these visits, he often found himself wondering how far she was willing to go in order to bend him to her will. Compliance was one thing, but what good would it be to win compliance from a beaten, shaking dog? That was what he’d become, if this kept up long enough. It was what anyone would become if they were subjected to escalating pain and humiliation for an indefinite period.
But they also had limited time. If Janet truly planned to send them into space against the aliens, soon enough that humanity would have even a small chance of reforming a global civilization, then she needed to act fast.
Was waterboarding in his future? Other, even more brutal forms of torture?
At the end of his second day at the secret base—a day that seemed to last for years—Max learned what approach Janet would take next.
She had him dragged into her office one final time. Two soldiers stood close to him, maybe to make sure he remained upright. He was exhausted, and even standing pained him. On his way down the hall, he’d swayed, and almost fallen over. But he’d recovered on his own, determined to accept no assistance from these people.
“Tomorrow, there will be a new penalty for noncompliance.” Janet might have been discussing items to add to a grocery list. “Tomorrow, your parents will be brought in to endure disciplinary action for your insubordination.”
To Max’s shame, he almost said they weren’t his parents. Then again, maybe he should say that—to try to convince Janet they meant nothing to him. That she shouldn’t bother torturing him.
But it would do no good. After all, they were the reason he was here. If he hadn’t come back for them, Janet wouldn’t have him in her custody.
She smiled, as if she could watch his thoughts unfolding. “It may have occurred to you that I can only take things so far, when it comes to how much pressure I can apply to you while preserving your ability to perform your duty. No such limitations apply to Cynthia and Peter Edwards. I wonder how far you’re willing to let this go, when it’s their dignity you’ll be sacrificing. Their humanity.”
She nodded, and the soldiers on either side took him by the arms and led him from the room. Max had noticed that when they weren’t delivering beatings on Janet’s orders, they treated him with as much respect and restraint as the situation allowed.
Are they having doubts about all this? Or are they content to continue following orders until someone else stops her?
GDA operatives had probably been selected for their own compliance. He wondered if the scientists who’d finessed his genetic code had attempted to make him compliant, too.
He doubted it. That seemed counter to their goal of making him resistant to the aliens’ influence.
Well, they’d achieved that goal. And in doing so, they’d created someone who resisted them, too.
Unlucky.
The soldiers took him to his room, where they watched him limp to his bed and fall onto it. With that, they shut the door. A series of thunks followed—the many latches and locks that had been installed just after his arrival.
He wanted to stay awake, to come up with some sort of plan for handling tomorrow. He couldn’t allow Janet to come between him and the men and women who would fly this mission with him—likely the most important mission in all of human history. But he also couldn’t let her harm Cynthia and Peter Edwards. If his guilt-drenched nightmares had been bad before, they would be unbearable if he allowed that to happen.
But his body demanded rest, and before long he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
At least, it remained dreamless for a time. Or maybe what happened was more than a dream.
In the dream, or the vision, or the visitation—whatever it was—Max awoke to the same room, except blackness had replaced its previous whiteness. Not darkness. The room was still well-lit. Blackness.
Tara stood before him, and she was the light source. The light was white. She shone with it.
“Who are you?” he asked. He’d already figured out that this wasn’t really Tara Benson, the farm girl-turned-nanotechnologist, but someone else. Something else. Something using her likeness as a vehicle for communicating with him.
She opened her mouth, and her lips moved, but no sound was made. He squinted, trying to read her lips.
Then the words came, delayed by several seconds. The end of each word faded into silence, creating an effect that reminded him of spoken words played backward.
“Come to Nevada,” Tara said in this strangely echoing voice. “The only hope for victory awaits there.”
Max shook his head. “Where in Nevada? And how? I’d need to get out of this place first.”
“—Nevada,” she answered. From watching her lips, he knew the first part of her sentence had been cut off. Was she—this entity—actually having trouble communicating, or was this a way to limit the information she gave him?
“Tell me who you are,” he said. “I have every reason not to trust you, right now.”
“Come to me,” she said. “Come to Groom Lake. I’m waiting.”
“How?” He shouted it, this time.
“Let me in.”
With that, the all-black room vanished, and Max was cast back into the formless void of sleep.
Before he woke, he had the same dream he’d had back in the forest clearing, where he’d made camp with Jimmy and Chambers. The dream of being with Tara, and of expecting a child together.
This time, he ached with the desire for the dream to be true. Having met Tara only once, and having spent less than twenty-four hours with her, he already knew he was deeply in love with her. Part of him wanted badly for this dream to be his life.
But a larger part still recoiled in horror about subjecting a child to this fallen world. He couldn’t do that. He had to make sure it never happened.
It would happen anyway, he knew.
He woke hours later, clammy with sweat. Over him, the bedroom’s single LED bulb still shone. He’d been too tired even to turn out the light, and the soldiers hadn’t done it for him.
“Let me in,” the otherworldly version of Tara had said. Just as she had said it back in the gas station, and then in the GDA camp.
Well, it worked out then. Sort of.
His fear remained that this was the aliens’ attempt to compromise him. But his fear of staying in this facility was greater.
So he opened himself again to whatever force had allowed him to do what he’d done amongst the circl
ed military vehicles.
The iterations began, and he tried to work out an escape attempt. One that left no one harmed, and which ended with him outside this place, free and heading west. To Nevada.
He ran through a thousand different versions of reality. Ten thousand. A million. He lost count.
In each one, at the start, he found that his door had been left unlocked. How that was possible, he had no idea, but he trusted that it was true.
Except, beyond that, he found escape was impossible. This part of the facility was crawling with soldiers carrying tranq guns, and even the strange abilities conferred by this force couldn’t get him past them.
There were simply too many, and each iteration ended with him falling into unconsciousness, anesthetic-filled darts sprouting from his skin.
Even alien powers had their limits, it seemed.
47
3 days to extinction
Ted made it to within five hundred meters of the installation door before running out of forest to hide him.
At this range, the .300 Win Mag sniper rifle, which he thanked God Benson had acquired last year for his arsenal, wouldn’t require much compensation for his rounds’ velocity loss.
He’d come to favor the Win Mag in Iraq, for its accuracy and stopping power. It was also perfect for this situation, especially with its suppressor.
He needed the two men guarding the installation door to go down and stay down. If he was successful, Benson would lead his men in a charge to secure the door while Chambers darted forward to see whether his key card still worked.
Their plan hinged on that, too: whether they’d be able to gain entry. He knew that Janet didn’t have the high-level access to erase his credentials from the base’s systems. Only General Andrews could do that, and if Andrews was here, then everything changed anyway.
But he’d seen no sign of Andrews’ arrival as he reconnoitered both approaches to the installation, and he had to assume the general hadn’t made it from Washington. They couldn’t very well walk up to the guards and ask.
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