by A. G. Riddle
“That’s where you’re wrong: you can’t control him. He was willing to betray his brother. You think he won’t sacrifice Peyton? Or Avery?”
“Why are you here, Lin?”
“I think you know by now.”
Chapter 46
By instinct, Peyton had wandered back to the narrow passage where she and her mother had found the cave painting of the doe. It stood proud in the lantern light. The wall beside it was smeared and gouged out, as if it had been gutted. That’s how Peyton felt.
She hated waiting. She wanted to do something. But there was nothing to do.
She sat and clicked the light off. It was pitch black and damp, and every second felt like an eternity. It was like she was a speck of dust floating in endless black space, weightless, no light, no direction up, down, forward, or backward.
The earpiece crackled, and Rodriguez’s voice came through in clips, deafening at first.
Peyton winced and focused. She wondered how long she had been hiding.
“I repeat, we have a resolution. Dr. Shaw has reached an agreement. All units come to location yellow.”
Location yellow?
Rodriguez added, “That’s the comm relay point. All units proceed now.”
Peyton dreaded hearing what the resolution was—but hearing her mother was alive… It was a huge relief. And it gave her hope.
She clicked her light on. It was a like a supernova exploding. She waited and let her eyes adjust, then began hiking out. She turned a corner and, too late, saw a flash of movement from the corner of her eye. A hand wrapped around her, covering her mouth, and pulled her back.
Peyton struggled, but a voice she knew whispered in her ear: Adams. “Stay here, Doc.”
She stopped moving.
He released his hand.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Location yellow. It’s our pass phrase for all clear but stay alert.”
“I can stay alert.”
He moved around her. “I made a promise to your mother. I’ll call you when I’m sure it’s safe.”
He turned her light off and slipped into the darkness, footsteps like a pebble falling down a well, the sound echoing and dwindling to silence.
Once again, she waited in darkness for what felt like an eternity.
Adams called over the comm, “Dr. Peyton Shaw, it’s all clear. You can exit the cave.”
Peyton wanted to run, but the ground was too uneven—and would be unforgiving if she fell. She hurried, the cave opening becoming lighter with each turn. To her surprise, she didn’t meet a soul—not Avery, or Nigel, or Rodriguez, or any of the Citium troops.
She rounded a bend and stopped, letting her eyes adjust to the bright light. She held an arm up to shield her eyes as she hiked out. There was no one by the cave mouth, only cigarette butts and protein bar wrappers.
She made a beeline for the visitor center. The parking lot was filled with military vehicles, but completely devoid of soldiers.
She pushed the glass door open—and reeled back in horror. Bodies were stacked on top of each other like fallen tree limbs, a human brush pile atop a red-black pool of blood.
Peyton looked away, suppressed the urge to retch.
Beyond the bodies, more soldiers—these still living—lay face down, hands zip-tied behind their backs, feet bound too, strips of cloth tied around their eyes. In the cave exhibit, in the shadows, someone was hammering something. No, two people—there was an unsynchronized cadence, like blacksmiths striking two anvils.
Adams stood by the information desk, rifle in hand, a glint of triumph in his eyes. “We’re secure here.”
“How?”
He jerked his head toward a closed door behind the dais, where Rodriguez stood. Peyton followed him, and held her breath as the door swung open.
Yuri stood in the center of an office, his back arched, hands bound behind him and taped to his body. A blade was held at his neck, a line of blood below it, streaks running down like legs of red wine in a glass. Lin Shaw stood behind him, out of reach of his hands.
“She cut the head off the snake,” Adams said. He shrugged. “Well, threatened to.”
“Status?” Lin asked.
“They’re tied. About done with the phones and radios.”
“Good. Finish prepping our prisoner for transport.”
Lin drew the blade away from Yuri’s neck and shoved him toward Rodriguez, who caught the man, sat him in a chair, and began lashing him to it with duct tape.
Yuri looked at Lin. “Last chance.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Rapture Control will be back online any second now. We’ll have access to every person who received that cure.” His eyes drifted to Peyton.
“Gag him too,” Lin said as she walked past Peyton, into the lobby, and past the stacks of dead bodies and the rows of living ones.
Peyton and Adams followed her to the source of the hammering sound. Avery and Nigel were seated around a pile of radios and sat phones, raking them over one at a time and busting them with the butt of a couple of handguns. Peyton saw the gun’s magazines lying nearby.
“How can I help?” she asked.
Adams drew his gun and ejected the magazine. “Feel like smashing something?”
“You have no idea.” She took a seat next to Avery and began.
“Avery,” Lin said. “Disable the vehicles.”
Avery rose. “How many do we need?”
“Two. Just in case one breaks down.”
“On it.” Avery went out to the parking lot. Through the plate glass window, Peyton could see her popping hoods and fiddling around inside.
To Adams, Lin said, “Begin retrieving the cases.”
With a nod, Adams headed off, and Lin went to assist Rodriguez.
Peyton kept her head down. She crushed a phone, grabbed another, and repeated. She expected more Spanish troops to arrive, but none came. “Are we getting reinforcements?” she asked Nigel as she crushed the hand piece to a radio.
“Lin decided against it. Security risk. She thinks maybe someone in the British or Spanish military gave away our location.”
“Makes sense.”
They resumed their orchestra of destruction in silence, each pausing only long enough to take a quick bathroom break. It was simple, satisfying work, and Peyton was glad for it.
Adams and Rodriguez came and went, moving the cases at an inhuman rate. They were drenched with sweat by the time they sat down in the lobby and tipped their canteens back. Avery had returned from the parking lot by then and washed up. She walked to the information desk, then disappeared from Peyton’s view and yelled out, “Hey!”
Lin responded, but Peyton couldn’t make out the words.
Adams and Rodriguez leapt to their feet, as did Nigel and Peyton. They ran toward the two women.
The door to the office stood open. The chair where Yuri had been tied up was empty. Strands of duct tape hung from it, the edges even where they had been cut.
“I tied him up tight,” Rodriguez said, staring at the chair.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lin said. “He’s gone. And we need to go too.”
No one said what they all knew: Yuri hadn’t freed himself. One of them had done it.
Chapter 47
Conner and his men had been hiding in the racquetball court under Desmond’s garage for twenty hours. Empty MRE cartons dotted the catwalk. Two of the mercenaries were playing cards by helmet light. Doctor Park was asleep. Desmond lay under the catwalk, still sedated, his breathing shallow.
Conner opened a laptop and tried to connect to one of the drones.
Out of range.
He motioned to the closest Citium operative. “I’m going out.”
He pushed the door open and waited. It was quiet. He ventured into the basement and activated the app again.
Out of range.
He walked up the back staircase, pausing every fourth step. The house was silent.
He crept down the cen
tral hall and plopped down in the great room. The drone footage finally appeared on his laptop. There was no sign of the X1 troops. As planned, the enemy combatants had pursued Conner’s vans and Humvees. They had no doubt searched Desmond’s estate, but they hadn’t found the hidden room. After all, they wouldn’t have been looking very hard for it, as they were sure their adversary had fled, just as the lieutenant had told them, relating the plan he had overheard Conner whisper to Major Goins.
He closed the laptop and returned to the racquetball court. He scooped Desmond up in his arms, and his men and Dr. Park followed him upstairs, through the back door, and under the cover of the old oak trees into a neighbor’s yard. The neighbor’s house was empty, as he’d suspected. The people on this street in Atherton owned homes in the mountains and on the coast—and on remote islands. Some even owned the islands themselves, and the private airstrips on them.
In the garage he found a Fisker Karma, plugged in, and a black Chevy Suburban.
“Take the gas guzzler,” he said.
When Desmond was loaded in the back, he turned to Dr. Park. “Location?”
“It’s near Bair Island. Hold on.” Park studied the map. “It’s the airport at San Carlos.”
Conner considered that. It was the perfect place for an ambush. But he had no choice.
Chapter 48
The two vehicles raced through the winding Spanish roads at high speed, Avery behind the wheel of the lead truck, Adams driving the other. Between the hills and curves, Peyton felt like she was on a roller coaster.
“Avery, if you drive any faster, we’re going to travel back in time!”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” She pressed harder on the accelerator, and the engine screamed louder.
At the Santander airport, they loaded onto a Spanish Air Force jet while Lin and Adams conversed with a colonel commanding the forces there. Lin refused to take any additional troops with them. Soon Avery was in the cockpit, and they were once again in the air.
At cruising altitude, Avery engaged the autopilot and joined the others in the crew compartment. It was an open space with seats at the rear and reminded Peyton of a smaller version of the plane she and her EIS agents had taken from Atlanta to Nairobi a month ago. That felt like another lifetime. And on this flight, she felt like the student, her mother the teacher. A teacher reluctant to share her knowledge.
“A destination would be nice,” Avery said. “Other than the American South.”
Lin unrolled a sleeping bag and slipped inside. “Soon.” She motioned for Peyton to bed down beside her.
Peyton unrolled another sleeping bag, and the others did the same. Adams and Rodriguez had arranged to take turns staying up to monitor the autopilot.
Everyone was exhausted, and in Peyton’s estimation, Lin most of all. Her face was inches from Peyton’s, and when Lin closed her eyes, the strength seemed to drain out of her. What she had done at Altamira had taken a toll on her, though she had hidden it well. There was so much Peyton wanted to ask her mother, but the questions would have to wait.
Just before she slipped off to sleep, Peyton noticed that her mother was hugging a bag, like a suitcase with shoulder straps. She was sure she hadn’t taken it to Altamira. She must have gotten it there. But when? And what was inside?
Chapter 49
Avery couldn’t sleep, so she returned to the cockpit and suggested to Adams, who was currently on shift, that he catch some shuteye. He was happy to oblige; he was as exhausted as the rest of them.
Avery couldn’t turn her mind off. She kept thinking about the siege at Desmond’s home, imagining them storming it, Desmond getting shot in the crossfire. She wanted to be there more than anything in the world.
The sat phone buzzed, and she grabbed it. “Price.”
“Avery.” She knew immediately from David Ward’s tone that it was bad news. “We lost ’em.”
“You’re kidding. How? I mean, you had them—”
“Conner McClain is good—”
“I don’t want to hear how good he is. There are only two possibilities: he left the house or he’s still there.”
“We tracked down all the vehicles. It took almost ten hours—”
“Ten hours?”
“They used X1 troops as human shields. We couldn’t fire. Had to run them down. They went in four different directions. We didn’t find McClain or Hughes. We… interrogated his second in command. He insists McClain was in the last van. He wasn’t.”
“Then he’s still in the house.”
“We’ve searched it—top to bottom.”
Top to bottom. For a moment she was back in the racquetball court, sweating, panting, volleying with Desmond, then rolling across the floor, him leaning down to kiss her and the wall inside her breaking down.
“Avery? You still there?”
“I’m here. There’s a hidden room.” She had assumed the standoff would have ended in a firefight, never a game of hide-and-seek in the house. It never occurred to her to tell them about the racquetball court. She felt like such a fool.
“Yeah, the reading nook in the study. They found—”
“No. It’s under the garage. A racquetball court. You access it from the basement—through the wine cellar. There’s a false brick that opens the door.”
“Hang on.”
She could hear him making a call on another sat phone. Then he returned. “They missed it. I’ll call you back.”
Avery answered the second the sat phone rang.
“We searched the racquetball court,” Ward said. “They’re not there, but we found some MRE cartons, recently eaten. We think they slipped out after the search teams left the first time.”
Avery thought for a moment. Desmond chose his home as a location for a reason. Why? To get help? To put himself on their radar? That was likely. If it was true, what would be his next stop? An escape route? Another location they both knew. One that offered options.
Only one place fit that description.
“I think I know where they’re going. The San Carlos Airport.”
“We’ll deploy teams—”
“Don’t. Let’s not make the same mistake. Let it play out. You remember what Des told us there.”
“Yeah.”
“I want you there, David. Please.”
“Hughes asked me the same thing. Look, Avery, things are in motion here. The whole world is coming unglued—”
“And you can’t hold it together. We can’t play defense. It’s time to stop these people. Hughes is the key. Please. Go there—for me. I’ve never asked you for anything.”
“You want me to take myself out of the middle of the action here, go there, and simply wait and hope Hughes shows up?”
“Yes. If you remember, he asked me to do that once. I didn’t like it, but I did it. And it got us this far. Please, David. He asked you. And now I’m asking you. There’s nobody I trust more. We need him.”
“We? Or you?”
“Both, okay? I need him. I want to see him. But it’s more than that. He’s the key to everything.”
A long pause. Avery thought about pressing the point, but one thing she knew about David Ward: he always pushed back at aggression.
“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll go. I’ll give it twenty-four hours. I’m leaving after that.”
Avery exhaled, relieved. “That’s fair. Thank you, David.”
Chapter 50
The Chevy Suburban drove through the night, headlights off, the streets lit only by moonlight. The roads were eerily quiet, deserted, like a world after people.
From the back of the van, Dr. Park provided directions to the airport at San Carlos, his face illuminated by the smartphone. The phone was like a modern-day talisman, guiding their band to an artifact that would save their people and their cause. They had to know where Desmond had hidden Rendition. It was their only hope. Conner’s only hope of getting his brother back.
The airport’s gate was open, and the place looked deserted
. Conner rolled down his window and inhaled the smell of San Francisco Bay. It was a mix of salt water and fresh water; nearly half of California’s rivers and lakes drained to the sea here. The Bay Area was a symbol of the new world, and of the Citium itself: a nexus of thinkers, people creating a new society, their technology unleashed upon the world, for its betterment, whether the rest of humanity wanted it or not. The Citium would take the masses into the next world, kicking and screaming if they had to.
“Hangar twenty-seven,” Park said, looking at the smartphone’s screen.
The soldiers got out, broke in, and pulled the hangar doors wide open. Conner had expected to see a plane waiting—perhaps Desmond’s escape plan. But he saw only corkboards littered with pages and photos, connected by strings. Tables ran in rows between the corkboard, empty except for a few cardboard boxes.
He moved behind the wheel and eased the SUV in. The hangar doors closed behind.
He got out and took in the strange scene, paying particular attention to the articles pinned to the boards. Pictures. Bios. News articles. He recognized them.
How was it possible?
From the vehicle, Dr. Park called, “We’re getting a new feed. Memory is starting.”
On his phone, Desmond clicked the address Conner had sent him. The directions led to a pier in San Francisco.
Avery had left only a few minutes ago, the moment she had heard the address. Was she going there? He desperately wanted to know what was going on with her. He sensed that he had been lied to, and that hurt—particularly coming from her.
Questions about her dogged him as he drove north, out of Atherton, toward San Francisco.
The Kentaro Maru was larger than he remembered. It sat tall in the water, long along the wharf. The gangplank was guarded by two Citium Security operatives.
One held up a hand as Desmond approached.
“I’m here to see Conner McClain.”