‘They needed to die,’ he said. ‘How else could I have kept humanity together? It was worth the sacrifice. Anyone would have done the same thing. It wouldn’t have been safe to let any survivor just turn up. It was bad enough with the infection.’
‘Interesting,’ Eva said, keeping her voice level. She felt the hate radiating from him. This was good. ‘So how many more did you kill for the sake of humanity? There’s the crew of the Utah, and the weather scientists. And now your oldest friend, Dillon Wood – is there a limit to how many you’ll sacrifice in order to stay in control?’
‘None!’ he said, struggling against his bonds once more. ‘That’s why I survived,’ he yelled, spit frothing at the corners of his lips. ‘I’m prepared to go beyond, do what’s necessary. Without me, none of them out there would be here right now. It’s all thanks to me!’
‘Yes,’ Eva said. ‘It was all thanks to you. Wood didn’t want to run the machine you had her build, did she? It was you who made her. I imagine the people who had invested in it were putting pressure on you for results.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Gracefield said, hanging his head for a moment, clenching his jaw. The wound on his shoulder was still bleeding, and had made the sleeve of his suit jacket wet and glossy.
‘Then explain,’ Eva said, taking another look outside. The islanders were rapt, their full attention on Gracefield’s building. They stood like a clay army, awaiting orders to reanimate. ‘The A20 you put together must have wanted some return on your new power source.’
‘They knew nothing,’ he said finally, admitting it with a small laugh. ‘Neither did the investors. Dillon had it all planned back in college, but the idea was too dangerous, they said.’
‘They?’
‘The energy companies. They just wanted to keep burning oil. Once I was in the White House, I saw it all: the global cartels, the companies. The governments were powerless. When the Russians and the Chinese cut the rest of the world out of their energy production, the writing was on the wall: the West would fall into an energy deficit. The economy would crash.’
‘So what happened then? With Dillon’s research, I mean. Was it suddenly going to solve all the West’s requirements? Overnight? Why not source backing from Congress if it was that dire a situation?’
‘Because they were nothing but puppets! Don’t you get that? We were infiltrated. Lobbyists, filthy money, bribes . . . That, you stupid fucking woman, is what made the world turn back then. I was trying to bring us freedom from that! I couldn’t do it politically, so I had to take other actions. Dillon was a genius, but her work was discredited from the day she proposed it for her PhD.’
‘Why?’ Eva said, noticing movement outside: the group were coming to some kind of conclusion, and she feared they might be rallying for Gracefield.
‘Because it was too radical, too dangerous. But we had to do something. We had to take power for ourselves!’
‘And you knew the dangers if it went wrong, didn’t you? Both you and Wood did, and you ignored them.’
Gracefield shook his head, smiling again. A laugh came out in a sudden burst. ‘It would be worth it, though, we both knew it. Sure, there’d be a sacrifice; we guessed that, we ran simulations. The worst-case scenario was we’d lose most of the Western seaboard – but what’s a few million if it meant we could start again? We’d save billions – can’t you understand that it’s all just math? Numbers! We’re nothing but a collection of atoms, each one with a different number. We just wanted to move them in our favour.’
Eva leaned forward, grabbed his injured shoulder, and squeezed. ‘You’re out of your goddamned mind, you know that?’
Gracefield yelled at the pain but continued to smile. The yell turned into a laugh. He then stopped suddenly and stared at Eva as he said, ‘I saved humanity. Look around; we’re free!’
‘So you killed the WhiteSquare scientists to cover up the fact that your technology was the cause of the drowning. You hadn’t taken into consideration the solar weather when you ran it, had you? You were ignorant and greedy and selfish and you fucked it all up for everyone, didn’t you?’ Eva jumped off the table now and grabbed him by the throat.
‘Yes, Your Honour!’ Gracefield gargled with glee. ‘I killed them. Did it with my own hands. I took responsibility. But I saved these people, brought them here to start again. To build a better future. I am the one who saved us!’
Eva let go, staggered back away from him, her hands trembling. She knew then that he was indeed insane. His mask had finally slipped.
‘Why don’t you just kill me now so you can be the hero?’ he taunted her.
Eva stood and held the pistol out, aiming it at his face, her chest heaving with each breath. One pull of the trigger and she could end him.
Bella barked and ran to the door. Eva spun round to see Marvin enter the room, a rifle in his hand. At first Eva thought he was going to aim it at her, but the admiral stormed past Eva and approached Gracefield, who looked up at him with a blank expression.
Marvin spat in his face and looked to his rifle as if deciding whether to kill him or not. Two other men entered the room and held up their hands. ‘We’re not here for you,’ the one on the right, the one with the blond hair, said. His partner, a short dark-haired man with gaunt features, pointed to Gracefield.
‘You lied to me, to us,’ he said. ‘You made us complicit in your sick conspiracies. You manipulated us into funding those damned machines of yours. Your simulations were bullshit. You knew the dangers, didn’t you?
Gracefield just smiled a lazy smile and slumped to the side, his head resting on his shoulder.
‘The deaths of billions are on our hands because of you!’ the blond man said. ‘And now, everyone knows it. You’re done, William. You’re done.’
Marvin turned to Eva and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For bringing me here, for doing all this, getting the truth out, finally. We’ll deal with Gracefield now.’ He added, ‘Are you okay?’
‘I am,’ Eva said. ‘The others . . . Are they—’
‘They’re fine. Marcus got us out. The islanders heard everything. There’s a kind of peace out there now. A shocked peace, but it’s over.’
As if already anticipating that, Marcus entered the cabin.
‘Jesus, girl, that was some broadcast!’
‘You all right?’ she asked, concerned that he might have got hurt in the blast.
‘Yeah, I’m okay. Everyone’s fine, just stunned, along with the rest of the islanders. There were a couple that tried to rally for Gracefield, but they were soon taken care of. Come with me: we have something else to do before all this is over.’
‘What is it?’ Eva asked.
‘The generator,’ Victoria said from the doorway. ‘Gracefield’s damned machine. It must be destroyed. It’s the master unit, the one that controls the other seven – the islanders have agreed to take us there.’
Eva shook her head in disbelief. ‘You knew there were more of them?’
‘We didn’t know,’ Marvin said, defending Victoria. ‘That bastard lied to us. We thought there was just one machine.’
‘As did we,’ the gaunt investor said. ‘We were told nothing about a network of them.’
‘Come on,’ Marcus said, taking Eva by the elbow. ‘Let’s go.’
Marvin faced Gracefield and spoke to Eva without looking back. ‘We’ll finish things here.’
Eva had barely left the cabin when the blast of the rifle exploded from within the building and over the PA speakers. The whole island became still and quiet in that moment as though the Earth had stopped spinning.
Even the rain had stopped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It had started to rain again by the time Eva and the others had reached the machine.
Duncan and the rest of the Utah crew had made the journey with her, telling her about the sub’s sinking while they walked. They still had Gracefield’s vessel, but would have to speak with the islanders first, find out what they wanted to do on
ce they had time to process what had happened. Eva still wasn’t entirely sure they would be receptive to working together after the Gracefield affair.
But that was a bridge she’d have to cross later; the machine was first. Some of the islanders had come along with Victoria to see the destruction of Gracefield’s legacy. They all surrounded it now, a human protection circle.
‘It even looks evil,’ Duncan said from Eva’s right. He and Annette were standing together, along with Jim and Gloria. Victoria stepped forward between them and stood at the base of the structure, carrying Gracefield’s laptop under her arm, having recovered it on the way out. One of the islanders, a young man with an almost circular face and long, black hair, held an umbrella over her head, protecting her, and the computer, from the weather.
They all stood there, in the shadow of it: the Banshee Project.
The pulsing rhythms in the ground were stronger here, almost primal.
‘It feels as though it’s alive,’ Annette said, leaning into Duncan. ‘Like it’s breathing.’
Eva looked up at it, trying to find the words to describe it. From where she stood at the base of the incline on which it stood, it looked like an old-fashioned radio transmitter, but without the dish. A steel cross-section, about ten metres tall, that reminded her of the lighting rigs used at concerts. The base was half that wide and tapered almost to a point at the top: a tall, narrow pyramid for the apocalypse age.
A black rod as thick as a drainpipe ran up through the metal and terminated at a flat disc at the apex of the structure. A crackle of electricity emanated from it, making Eva’s guts cramp with awe, or fear. She couldn’t tell which.
The central rod glowed red near the base. Heat rose off it, turning the rain into steam. Power cables like tree roots twisted away towards the valley, carrying the electricity outwards to the buildings.
One of the young men from the village told them how they had brought the machine here in parts, transported on Gracefield’s submarine. At the time, he said, they had thought it was just a generator of sorts. None of them knew it was Wood’s experimental technology.
‘So what now?’ Marcus said. ‘We gonna destroy this thing or what? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting cold and wet and want this over with.’
Eva took the cue, snapped back to the present situation, and approached Victoria, ducking beneath the umbrella. ‘You know how to use the system?’ Eva asked as the other woman opened the laptop and looked at the screen. The display looked much the same as it had when Eva had looked at it in Gracefield’s cabin: still the same terminal windows, the same flow of data, the same indications that this thing was somehow connected to seven others like it around the world – presumably under water now.
For the next ten minutes, Eva and Victoria attempted to make sense of the system.
‘Come on,’ Marcus said. ‘Can’t we just blow the damn thing up?’
‘It’s too rooted into the rock,’ the man from the village said. ‘Took us days to drill down. It’s at least five metres below the surface.’
‘What’s on the end of the rod?’ Eva asked.
The man shrugged, seemingly struggling to describe it. ‘It’s metallic,’ he said. ‘With coils running around it. It’s like a beehive, but upside down. I’m not an expert.’
‘That much is clear,’ Marcus said.
While the group were discussing how to dismantle it, Eva realised that that wouldn’t be enough. ‘There’re seven other devices we need to worry about,’ she said. ‘This is the master, right? If we just break it, or destroy it, there’s no guarantee the others will malfunction. We need to get into Gracefield’s system first and take it offline that way – then we can destroy the damned thing.’
‘She’s right,’ Marvin said, moving up through the crowd now, with the two investors by his side. ‘We need to take this offline through the software first.’ The blond man nodded, confirming what Marvin had said.
Over the next hour, they laboured at Gracefield’s system. Duncan, Annette, and the rest of the Utah crew had gone back down to the village. Marvin and the two investors had promised them they’d be safe. They had arranged a meeting with the islanders later in the day after everyone had rested. They would work out what was to happen next the old-fashioned way: with compromise and debate.
‘God damn it,’ Victoria said.
‘What is it?’ Eva said, looking over Victoria’s shoulder. The screen had lost its individual terminal windows now and just showed a simple grey background and a single box in the middle with a blinking cursor.
‘We need a code or a password or something to shut the system down,’ Victoria said. They tried every combination they could think of – from anagrams of Gracefield’s and Dillon Wood’s names to random numbers and letters.
Then it hit Eva. Numbers! The numbers in the Russian notes. ‘Marcus, do you still have the notes from the Utah?’
He checked his pockets, swore, and then shook his head. ‘I can’t remember who had them last. Did Tom have them on the sub?’
‘Damn!’ Eva said, kicking her boot against the machine. ‘The notes mentioned some numbers, remember? They were out of context, didn’t seem to refer to anything.’
‘You’re right,’ Marcus said. ‘I can remember them, though. I stared at those bloody numbers for hours. They’re burned into my brain.’ He grabbed the laptop and typed the numbers out, then handed the computer to Eva. ‘Wanna do the honours, see if it works?’
With trembling hands, Eva took the laptop. Victoria and her umbrella-holding assistant crowded in close. They all hushed as Eva hit the ‘Enter’ key with her right index finger.
The pulsing beneath their feet dissipated. A low whine ebbed away, like a dying electrical motor winding down. ‘The atmosphere,’ Victoria said, turning around slowly, ‘it’s not charged anymore . . .’
She was right. The laptop screen changed from just a blank wall of grey to a single terminal window with a stream of code and systems reports. Eventually, after a few minutes, the laptop beeped, and the flow of data stopped. A single line was left at the very bottom. It read: D01-offline.
Another line appeared: D02-offline.
And then another, all the way to the final node on the network, and the final Banshee machine. Number eight, the master: offline.
‘It’s done,’ Marcus said. ‘Holy fuck. It worked!’
Eva sighed heavily and closed her eyes. It was finally done. And all thanks to Marcus’s memory. She grabbed his face and returned his earlier kiss, letting the rain fall on them as they soaked in the relief of the situation.
Gracefield was dead. His machines were offline. They’d learned the truth.
And, although far too late, the world finally had its justice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Over the course of the next day, Marvin, Victoria, and the two investors helped the group to negotiate a way forward. The rest of the islanders, still stunned from the events, had agreed that the crew of the Utah could take Gracefield’s sub to retrieve those from the flotilla who wished to live on the island.
There was some still bad feeling towards Eva and the others, but most seemed to be moving towards a grudging acceptance. The more outspoken members of the A20 had focused their aggravation on Marcus.
Eva and the rest of the Utah crew sat around a small round table in one of the ramshackle huts, drinking coffee and making plans. Marcus sat next to Eva, close, but not too close; Duncan was glaring at him from the other side of the table, even though it appeared to Eva that he had found a close friend in Annette. Jim, likewise, seemed happy in Gloria’s company.
‘So are you sure about this?’ Jim said, staring into Eva’s eyes as though he had somehow been hypnotised.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure. I’m staying here.’
‘As am I,’ Marcus said. ‘There’s a good opportunity here. Lots of confusion, various factions . . . It’ll keep me busy for some time.’ He grinned mischievously, and even with eve
rything they had gone through, and how he had effectively saved the day, he still couldn’t get a smile from Jim or Duncan.
A part of Eva hoped it would stay that way. She liked the dynamics of their relationship: predicable, comforting. Two opposing forces magnetically enslaved to each other. Although they perhaps didn’t realise it, they were more alike than they would admit. They needed each other to spark off, to keep themselves honest and motivated.
‘Besides,’ Marcus said. ‘I had already agreed with the family that if we found a decent future, we’d take it. They’ll be coming back on the sub to join us here.’
Jim groaned. ‘Of course they will.’
‘We want to come back too,’ Duncan said, referring to himself and Annette. ‘Make some solid plans, a permanent life. But I will go back to the flotilla, help out on the sub. And if possible,’ he said, looking at Eva, ‘I’ll see if Danny wants to come back with me.’
Eva closed her eyes and let the words wash over her. She had hoped that would be the case but had feared Duncan wouldn’t want Danny to come to the island. She hadn’t even been sure Duncan would want to come back now that she and Marcus had some kind of weird relationship that even she didn’t understand. But to his credit, Duncan hadn’t taken it personally. She guessed that all the drama with Gracefield and at the base had helped him to see the bigger picture.
‘What about you, Jim?’ Eva asked. ‘You’re really wanting to return and stay on the flotilla?’
‘Right now I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘You lot have made it a difficult choice. I’ll make up my mind when I get back there. See how I feel – see how we feel.’ He looked at Gloria and smiled. They held hands.
Just a few hours later, Marvin was at the door of the hut. ‘Ready then, gentlemen? We’re going to set off now. I’ve got a crew together from the A20. Patrice, Bernita, Karel, Brad, and Ahmed are all coming, too. We should be back at the flotilla in about eight days.’
Jim, Duncan, Annette, and Gloria stood, their packs all ready to go.
They said their goodbyes and left Eva alone in the hut. Marcus had gone to see them off. She had stayed behind, fearing that she would break down at the sight of them leaving. She needed to retain the hope that they would return, and that they would bring Danny with them.
Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2) Page 26