‘Insurance, to start with,’ Costa said. He sent a glance in Patrick’s direction. ‘No matter what the colonel says, I had doubts about the nature of Hargrove’s activities from the start. Langley’s always kept certain projects or people under watch, no matter what their success rate. With Hargrove, it became gradually clear he wasn’t on the leash we thought we had him on – anyone’s, in fact, except maybe what he claims to have.’ Instead of expanding on this, he continued, in a grimmer tone, ‘Then after what I saw and learned when I got to Monticello, I knew he wasn’t going to end this any way but his own – and that scared the hell out of me.’
He cast his eyes down for a moment, perhaps in shame at such an admission. When he raised them, though, any sign of this was gone. ‘I also knew I didn’t have a chance of stopping him and his team – not on my own, and not without backup from Langley, which would take too long in coming.’ He made a little wave, taking in the Longhouse, and the campus. ‘Given who we were chasing, I had to get to the bottom of this, and report to Langley, before Hargrove finished whatever he’s got in mind. So I got ahead of him by Agency jet, got on base, and observed from there. Once I saw what he was planning, I pushed the insertion option, as a way to get eyes on what we might be facing, and act accordingly.’ His mouth thinned in an angry grimace. ‘Apparently Hargrove guessed that, too.’ He pulled himself straight. ‘Which leaves me here – something I suspect you won’t take lightly.’
Quiet fell again. Greg looked to Leah, and the others. They looked back, and at each other, none of them showing any obvious signs of communicating. To any other Golems, though, they were practically shouting, trying to decide at the top of their lungs what to do with all that had just been dropped on them. Greg didn’t know, himself – only that he wasn’t sure how much he trusted from this story, and that they didn’t have long to decide. The other were likewise divided: Megan coming down on ‘shoot-em and dump-em’ side, Jorge for the ‘dig deeper’ approach, Leah somewhere close to his views. Only the undercurrent of indecision united them all.
All except Hiroshi, that was. He sat motionless amid this silent discussion, darting his gaze this way and that to follow what was being shared. When at last Greg and the others stopped ‘eye-talking’, he broke the stillness. ‘Thank you for being so… frank with us, Agent Costa.’ The Council leader rolled back his sleeve, touching a command on his clinger’s holo-display. ‘We will return you and Colonel Patrick to your quarters, while we discuss what you’ve both shared with us. Once we’ve reached a decision, we’ll proceed from there.’
The Longhouse doors opened. Two Golems in clingers beneath civilian camo jackets and pants, their hoods up, strode into the assembly area. One of them marched up beside Costa, while the other walked over to where Patrick was still sitting, staring emptily at the floor. The agent didn’t flinch as a new black bag went over his head. Patrick stood up slowly, also letting the cloth cover his eyes without a word or move.
When they were gone, Megan rounded on Hiroshi. ‘I may have only worked a short time with Costa – but ten minutes was enough. He never shared more than he had to, even when lives or missions were at stake, and never hesitated to lie if it served the Agency; it’s Day One classwork for them. And Patrick’s trained to resist interrogation, practically to our level. What’s stopping him, and Costa, from stringing us along, or just flat-out lying?’ She picked up the helmet, almost waving it in Hiroshi’s face. ‘And how did this help, except to piss off one of them?’
‘They gain nothing by lying,’ Hiroshi said calmly, not bothered at all by Megan’s challenging demeanour. ‘Costa might, if the matter wasn’t as urgent. But if he’s as well-trained and connected as he seems – and to be briefed even in general for Project Golem, he’d have to be – he knows he can’t prevaricate for long, not with us. And he has to find out what we know and are planning, and soon – his bosses won’t accept anything less. That means he has to see this through to the end, wherever it takes him – which entails sharing as much as he can about the mission at hand. His training might say otherwise, but so long as he keeps anything else potentially sensitive to himself, he poses no risk to himself or the Agency by talking.’ A momentary smile. ‘Especially since he’s now at the heart of something more “sensitive” than anything else on the planet.’
‘And Patrick?’ Megan inquired, less confrontationally. She’d long been good at easing off the anger, and more so for Hiroshi than anyone else – though that could change in a microsecond. She hefted the helmet again. ‘You saw his reaction to this. Even if he has anything worth sharing, what are the odds he’ll do so now, with the state he’s in?’
‘He may have thought about holding back at the start, given his skills, and how much in the dark he’s been kept by Costa,’ Hiroshi replied. But the sight of that’ —he pointed to the helmet—‘was enough to provoke a response he couldn’t suppress – far from it. He and his people, they’re just following orders. Orders he doesn’t understand, and now hates even more for getting them killed. And by his behaviour towards Costa, I’d judge he wants revenge. Not necessarily on the agent, although that’s still a possibility. On the person that brought him out here in the first place – and who, as his behaviour and the facts suggest, left them to face us alone, expecting them to be killed or in a state where they could be, not long after.’
‘You mean this Hargrove,’ Jorge cut in. He frowned, more in thought than annoyance. ‘I’ve scoured every conceivable nook and cranny of the NeoNet, and done the same in every older Web archive and classified trove I could think of in D.C. and around the world, government, military, covert, and corporate. Not a trace of this guy ever came up in any search relating to the smallest element of the Project. The Pulse could have affected the files pointing to him – but there would still be something.’
‘Unless there was nothing to begin with,’ Greg said. ‘We never existed, from day one. No names, no faces, no background on the families we came from. Not a single hint of the lives we might have had, if we hadn’t been picked for the Project. Nobody gets erased that completely.’ He paused. ‘Not without serious help – or serious clearance.’ Almost of themselves, his eyes slid to the canister. ‘Only a few reasons someone would get that kind of makeover.’
Leah followed his gaze. Her eyes widened a fraction, but otherwise showed no reaction. Jorge looked puzzled, while Hiroshi stayed inscrutable. Megan appeared confused, too – then understanding flared in her eyes. ‘You mean – one of us?’ she asked softly. ‘You think Hargrove’s another Golem?’
The others’ eyes all locked onto him. Greg met them each in turn, taking a slow breath, before going on. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. It’s like we talked about before: All we do know is that it’s somebody who knows enough – about us, or the Project – to stay on our trail practically from the start, and to come up with a few new tricks, based on what it created.’ He pointed to the needle fragment. ‘This “Pax Contingency”. The blades at Chicago and Monticello. The Tacitus. The AllSpec glasses. The ARC abilities – faster and more comprehensive than ours. That kind of ability only existed in one place – or so I thought, before seeing those brown-coat bastards.’
He nodded at the far wall, toward the north and the Sound. ‘I didn’t recognise any of them, from the Project.’ A moment’s glance at Leah showed she hadn’t, either; Cayden’s look was similar, though like before, it was difficult to tell. ‘But that doesn’t mean a thing; anyone with the Project’s kind of tech and money can easily alter faces. And from the looks of them, they had serious surgery, beyond anything we had.’ He held out his arm, turning it so the clinger’s fabric shimmered in the light. ‘We were all improved the same way: speed and strength from the training, with ARC for regeneration and enhancement. The surgeries weren’t gentle, but they weren’t invasive, or excessive.’ For a moment, the memory of the white-clad figures rose up. Forcing it down, he resumed. ‘The attackers… they’d had far more work done than any of us. Muscle enhancement, strike plate and othe
r skeletal implants; almost anything, from the scars we saw.’ He let his arm drop. ‘The only thing they didn’t have were clingers – and if they had, I seriously doubt we’d have the whole Council here, right now.’
No else spoke. He took another breath. ‘Thanks to the Bomb, there’s no way of digging up the Project – even if we knew where to look to begin with. The dreams, or flashes, don’t yield any clues, and the Pulse made sure of any records.’ Megan scowled at the mention of the ‘dreams’; she’d long been edgier about them than anyone else. Jorge looked uneasy; Hiroshi rigid. Greg stole a look at Cayden, to see the same neutral expression from before, after the plane crash. ‘The only way we’re going to find anything like the answers we want – on the Project, ourselves, all of this – is if we work every piece of the puzzle we have. Patrick and Costa are two. The Brown Coats and Hargrove, another two.’ He pointed to the canister. ‘And the biggest one, connecting all of them, is that. Once we know what’s on it, and how it’s being protected’ —he stole yet another look at Cayden, whose neutral look had slid away a tad, revealing wary disquiet not unlike that back at the cabin—‘we can find a way to use that info to protect the Sanctuary – against these new enemies, D.C., anybody.’
Greg looked to Leah, and the others, all in turn; none of them showed anything. It was nearly half a minute before Jorge spoke up. ‘How do you propose we do that, Greg?’ He pointed to the canister himself. ‘We’ve tried everything, and it spat that back at us every time. Even if we had the Project’s equipment, there’s still no guarantee; with what we have, we’re basically beating at it with flint knives. And if this Hargrove and his outfit are so set on recovering it, then we don’t have even a fraction of the time needed to keep prodding at it.’
‘Then maybe we need to pursue other options,’ Hiroshi broke in. The other Council members turned to him. He set his hands in front of him, in the same style as when he began questioning Costa and Patrick. ‘As you all know, I took a team up to the Bremerton area, in search of possible supplies – rations, weapon and ammunition stocks, spare parts, anything that the US Navy might have been unable to salvage after the Bomb, and that we might have missed on our other sweeps. The odds were slim, but the drift and hotspots were lower at the start. And with Greg and Leah’s mission, it’s become even more important to check all possible approaches to the Sanctuary.’
His arms were statue-still. ‘We were perhaps a third of the way there, when our equipment began picking up traces of an energy source. Although it had nuclear elements, it was nothing like a fallout deposit; too stable, and the signature didn’t immediately register as anything known – to most, that is. We continued north and east; the source got stronger. Based on our pre-Turmoil maps and information, and the Overwatch scans, there was nothing in the area that could produce such a signal. On a hunch, I checked my clinger’s scanners for any transmissions or Net connections in the area. No communication frequencies came up – but there was a faint indication of a Net signal, further to the north. Somewhere between the old Navy Yard City, and the northern edge of the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base.’ Hiroshi’s features, already stoic, became stiffer. ‘What’s more, as we came more into range, the systems in our suits recognised elements of the frequency… as similar to those used in our own missions and internal comms.’
Greg sat up, straight as a ramrod. Cayden and Leah stared: the latter’s eyes huge, the former’s contracted in alertness or suspicion. Megan had gone even paler; Jorge merely gaped, his jaw hanging open. Eventually, Greg made himself speak, in a rough whisper. ‘You – you found the Project?’
Hiroshi’s chin went back and forth, in two small movements. ‘I don’t know what we found – only what it suggested.’ He brought his hands to his lap. ‘And we couldn’t get any closer to find out, after those initial findings. The rad count was rising fast – likely hot vapour from the Sound itself, where the Bomb blast was concentrated – and we couldn’t risk going any further. So I marked where we’d come to a stop, and ordered the team back.’ He nodded to the door. ‘Serge and Imran were with me, as part of their familiarisation; they joined us last week, from Morocco and the Caucasus. They took samples from the ground and water, while I attempted to record the frequency for Jorge to examine.’ The stoic look came back. ‘The moment I tried, however, the signal disappeared – and much of my clinger’s scanning equipment was rendered useless, for several minutes.’
‘Like what happened with the canister,’ Jorge murmured. His initial shock was almost gone, wonder and calculation taking its place. ‘So whatever’s protecting that, is protecting what you came near?’
‘Based on what you told me before the meeting, it’s a safe assumption,’ Hiroshi said. ‘What that is—’ A shadowy, uncertain look flickered across his face, before he rearranged it into solemn lines, and looked around at the entire Council. ‘I’d planned to bring this to you all the second I got back. If the signal and readings point to the Project’s site, or even the smallest evidence of it, then we need to pursue it at once. Once I heard you were bringing in prisoners, however – and after hearing your descriptions of these pursuers – I chose to wait, until we had a better assessment of the threats facing us.’
‘The assessment’s pretty damn clear from where I sit,’ Megan cut in. Her shock had faded, too, giving way to anger – some at Hiroshi, the rest at the general situation. ‘If those things killed the Rangers, then they’re already inside our perimeter by now, or watching it at best, probing for weaknesses. We don’t have the manpower to watch every square foot, or the gear and vehicles to get to incursion sites fast enough. And Overwatch is only useful so long as it remains hidden; we use it to alter a satellite’s orbit, to give us a better view, it sets off every alarm between here and the Atlantic.’ She darted a look at Jorge, seeking confirmation or daring him to tell her otherwise. When the other Golem gave back a grudging nod, she went on, ‘So unless we want to wait for them to start knifing us in our sleep, we need to start beating the bushes – and find out just what it is we’re sitting on before it comes at us, too.’ Now it was her turn to glance at the far wall, then at the canister.
‘That would be the wisest move – the latter, I mean,’ Hiroshi said. When Megan looked at him, confused, he elaborated. ‘We do need to get a clearer idea of what this’—he touched a finger to the canister—‘and the signal mean for us here. But as you pointed out, we don’t have the numbers to adequately maintain the perimeter or respond to attacks fast enough, beyond our core area. Should we risk sending out all but a skeleton crew – or everyone, even, if the situation demands – to hunt down these attackers, spreading out over hundreds of square miles and numerous hotspots, in the hope of flushing out an enemy that, by Greg and Leah’s reports, are equal to two or three of us? We still don’t fully know their capabilities, or weapons. Dispersed, even with full gear and heavy weapons, we run an unacceptable risk of being picked off, or distracted long enough for them to do serious damage to the Sanctuary itself – and grabbing the canister in the process.’
Megan glowered. ‘We can’t just sit here, either,’ she returned. ‘If – and it’s a damn big if – the signal somehow points to the Project, and to what’s on the canister’s drive, then we need to pursue it. But doing that means sending a team into the centre of the CZ, roaming around through dead cities and rad deposits for the source. The attackers are bound to see that, and move to intercept. That also exposes our location and potential resources, and leads to us risking getting picked off in a single, contained zone, instead of in patrols, where we have greater freedom of movement and present more difficult, less obvious targets.’ She stabbed a finger at the table. ‘We’re facing two threats here: one internal, one external. The external threat is immediate, and known; the internal, unclear in both respects – and therefore even more dangerous. We have to prioritise, and fast – otherwise one or the other’ll decide for us.’
‘There’s another threat to consider,’ Greg added. The others looked to him. ‘A
Ranger colonel and a squad of his best – plus a CIA agent – are off the grid, as far D.C. is concerned. The CZ’s unpredictable, and the units manning the perimeter have a measure of freedom to deal with any sudden events – spills, storms, terror cells, and so on – so occasional lapses in or difficulties staying in contact won’t be unusual right away. But Patrick’s operating well beyond his original zone. And they had to have had help from FOB Yakima; Wraith-upgraded Black Hawks still aren’t common, and only assigned to the largest commands. The loss of those alone is bound to draw notice, if it hasn’t already. Add in the missing personnel, and Patrick’s “reassignment”, and it’s only a matter of time – hours, maybe – before a major response is launched, by the CZ commands on their own, or with heavy support from Washington. And if they find evidence of us…’
He paused, letting the implication hang: if D.C. found them, Second Reconstruction or not, the cluster and smart bombs wouldn’t take long to reach them. Even nukes were a possibility, despite the hair-trigger fears during and since the Turmoil. Given the military’s mad scramble to abandon the bases in the Sound, another mushroom cloud could always be explained as a malfunctioning, forgotten device, or a terrorist cell attempting to steal one and setting it off by accident. Either would serve two key purposes: eliminating an embarrassing, deadly secret from the Vanguard days, and keeping the current government in power.
Hiroshi nodded, unperturbed – in fact, he even wore a little smile. ‘All good points, the both of you.’ He folded his hands in front of him. ‘So the central issue is: how do we solve all three threats, with what we have, and with a minimum of losses or exposure? What’s the best option that’ll let us avoid prematurely broadcasting our existence, preventing an attack on our people or the Sanctuary – and perhaps, at last, finding the root answers to how both came about?’
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