The Last Oracle (2008) sf-5

by James Rollins

  With the goal known, Gray careened the truck down the curving road toward the ongoing siege at the high-rise complex. The initial attack, while dramatic and surprising, had also clogged the road with rubble. One entire building had fallen across the central roadway.

  Gypsies in trucks continued to mount a fiery barrage.

  Others abandoned their vehicles and prepared for a ground offensive.

  Gray skidded his truck to where the men gathered and rolled out. Kowalski and

  Rosauro joined him. Hopping out of the truck bed, Luca called out in Romani. Men responded. After a few exchanges, Luca turned to Gray and hunkered down with him behind one of the trucks.

  The Russians have taken to the buildings, defending more fiercely the deeper you go.

  Gray knew why. They've pulled their forces back to defend the control station.

  If they've not already initiated Saturn, they will soon. We can't wait.

  Luca held up a restraining hand and glanced back toward the gathered ground troops. I have a man ah, here he is.

  A small figure ran low over to them. He wore cement-gray clothes and a black cap. The two Romani men spoke quickly.

  This is Rat, Luca introduced the newcomer.

  Nice name, Kowalski mumbled.

  He's a scout. Skilled at finding paths no one would think to guard. He may know a way, but it'll have to be a small party. No more than five or six. Luca looked around at their small group. Perhaps just us. Va?

  Va, Kowalski agreed, then glanced to Gray for confirmation.

  The other men will keep the Russians busy, Luca added, waving to the ground forces and trucks.

  We go then? Rat asked in stilted English.

  Va, Gray answered, earning a grin from the man and a clap on his knee.

  They readied their weapons rifles and sidearms and followed the small man toward a pile of rubble. Gray could see no way through. Luca motioned to the ground forces as they passed. A sharp warbling whistle spread across the smoky cavern.

  Rat waved their small team under a tilted section of wall. Gray ducked and found it led to a basement window of the closest apartment building.

  As they slowly continued into the scout's maze, Gray heard a shout rise behind him.

  Opre Roma!

  Like a flame set to dry grass, the clarion call spread.

  Gunfire and rocket blasts intensified.

  Continuing onward, Gray prayed they weren't too late.

  Savina moved swiftly down the stairs and into the bunker. She ignored the twinges from her back, the shooting pains down her legs, and her pounding heart.

  At the first sound of attack, she had the blast doors to the tunnel sealed and locked.

  Above, waiting for her, a group of the five strongest soldiers had been summoned by Dr. Petrov. The plan was to abscond with five children, carried on the backs of the soldiers. No more. She could not take all ten. Their best chance to escape was to move quickly and efficiently. The American prisoner had given her the idea. He and the children had fled out a back service tunnel. They would do the same.

  But Savina had one last measure to address.

  She entered the bunker and found the technician and engineer tearing out keyboards. They had already used magnetic wands to wipe the hard drives. The damage to the controls would guarantee that nothing would interfere with the progress of Operation Saturn.

  Is everything locked down?

  The engineer nodded his head vigorously. It would take an electrical genius weeks to repair it.

  Very good. She lifted her pistol and shot the engineer through the forehead.

  The technician tried to run, but Savina swung her arm and dropped him at the foot of the stairs, pierced through the neck. He writhed, choking on his own blood.

  She could not risk these two being caught. What they dismantled, they might be forced to fix at gunpoint.

  She could not let that happen.

  To satisfy herself even further, Savina grabbed a fire ax from the back wall and crossed to the boards. Lifting it high, she smashed both computers and electronics boards. Afterward, she rested the ax on the floor and leaned on its handle. She stared at the row of LCD screens. They still displayed views from various cameras. She considered smashing the monitors, too, but with her back in full spasm, she didn't know if she could lift the ax again.

  And in the end, what did it matter?

  She shoved the ax to the floor and stared at the centermost screen. Water poured in a toxic black stream.

  Let them see what she had wrought.

  She smiled, enjoying this one last act of cruelty, then turned and headed for the stairs.

  Let them watch the world die.

  No one could stop her.

  21

  September 7, 1:03 P. M.

  Southern Ural Mountains

  Pyotr led the man by his shirtsleeve. They ran through chaos. Soldiers screamed, glass shattered, rifles blasted, flames writhed, and smoke choked. But it wasn't chaos to Pyotr.

  He tugged Monk into a sheltering dark doorway as a soldier rounded a corner ahead, searched, then moved on. Pyotr hurried the man down a hall, up some stairs, out a window, and over a pile of rubble to the next building.

  Pyotr, where are we going?

  He didn't answer, couldn't answer.

  Reaching another hall, Pyotr stopped. In his head, he stretched outward along a thousand possibilities. Hearts glowed like small pyres, flickering with fear, anger, panic, cowardice, malice. He understood how each would move even before they did. It was his talent, only so much more now.

  For he had a secret.

  Over the past years, as he woke screaming from his nightmare, waking other children with visions of bodies on fire, there was a reason his other classmates performed so poorly on their tests afterward. The teachers believed it was just because Pyotr had scared them, but they were wrong. Pyotr's talent was to read hearts. They called it empathy. But he had a secret, something he only talked to

  Marta about.

  Something he knew from his dreams.

  He could do more than read hearts he could also steal them. It wasn't fear that made the other children perform poorly; they had something drawn from them. For just a few minutes after waking, Pyotr could do anything. He could multiply big numbers, like Konstantin; he could tell a person was lying by listening to how they talked, like Elena; he could see to hidden places, like his sister; and so much more. It filled him until he burned.

  He pictured the stars falling into him, screaming, feeding the emptiness inside him. In his dreams, he had always woken before he consumed them fully. Not today. Pyotr walked through a dream from which he could never wake. He knew he had crossed a line, but he also knew he had no choice. He was always meant to burn.

  Pyotr stared out at the chaos with a fiery gaze that was not his alone. Through a hundred eyes, he teased a pattern out of the chaos. Though he could not see the future or at least no more than a few seconds his ears took in every noise, his eyes interpreted every flicker of flame or shift of shadow, his heart read deep into what drove a man to choose to step here or there, to take that corner or not, to shoot or run. And with a shadow of his sister's ability, his senses extended a few yards beyond even that.

  And out of that chaos, a path took form.

  One he could follow.

  Pyotr crossed out into the hallway, guiding Monk behind him.

  He pointed to the left and Monk shot the soldier who stepped into view a second later. The man was learning to trust Pyotr's instinct. To move with him, to fire upon command, growing into an extension of Pyotr.

  Together, they crossed through the pattern.

  Moving through pure instinct.

  And that's what Pyotr was now: instinct fired by a hundred talents.

  He understood fully. Instinct was merely the brain's unconscious interpretation of millions of subtle changes in the environment, both at the moment and leading up to it. The brain took all that chaotic information, saw a pattern, a
nd the body reacted to it. It seemed magical, but it was only biological.

  Pyotr did the same now only a hundredfold more powerfully.

  He extended his senses, reading hearts, motivations, trajectories, distances, noises, voices, directions, cadences, smoke, heat and on and on. The million details filled him and sifted through the hundred minds he shared. From out of that chaos, patterns opened, and he knew each step to take.

  Where are we going? Monk asked again.

  Where you need to be, Pyotr answered silently.

  Pyotr led him down the stairs again, then pulled the man to the floor as a shot fired overhead. From there, they crawled under a row of steel desks as soldiers searched, then down another set of stairs to a long basement hall with branches into a maze of rooms and other passageways.

  Pyotr hurried.

  While he saw a pattern, he could not truly see the future. He danced faster along the threads of pure instinct, sensing the pressure of ages upon him. They were running out of time.

  The man grew more distressed, perhaps sensing the same.

  Where are you ?

  A new voice intruded, coming from the end of the hall, pitched full of surprise.

  Pyotr read the pound in the newcomer's heart. A name was called out with a ring of disbelief.

  Monk!

  Gray almost shot him. Rounding into the hall, Gray had found two figures running straight at him, one with a weapon pointed ahead. If not for the presence of the boy, Gray would have shot on instinct.

  Instead, he momentarily froze between recognition and shock.

  His friend did not. The pistol fired. Gray felt a kick to his shoulder, throwing him back. Pain lanced outward.

  Kowalski caught him as he fell and barked as loud as the crack of the pistol shot. Monk, you ass! What are you doing?

  Monk halted, tugged to a stop by the boy. His face collapsed into a wary mask of confusion. Who who are you people?

  Kowalski still fumed. Who are we? We're your goddamn friends!

  Gray gained his feet, his left shoulder blazing with fire. Monk, don't you recognize us?

  Monk fingered a red and swollen line of sutures behind his ears. No actually I don't.

  Gray stumbled over to him, his mind dizzy with questions, with the impossibility of it all. Was it amnesia or had they done something to him? How could Monk be here? Gray didn't care. He gave his friend a bear hug, earning a fiery complaint from his shoulder. Just a graze, but he would've taken a gut shot to have this man back in his life. He clutched even tighter.

  I knew it I knew it , Gray whispered fiercely. Tears welled and rolled. God, you're alive.

  Kowalski grumbled, He won't be alive much longer if we don't get moving.

  The man was right. Gray let Monk go, but he kept one hand on his friend's elbow, to make sure he didn't disappear again.

  Monk looked across the lot of them. Listen, he said and pointed outward. I could use your help. There's something I have to stop.

  Operation Saturn, Gray said.

  Monk did a double take in Gray's direction, then nodded. That's right. This boy can

  Monk suddenly twirled around. Where's Pyotr?

  Gray understood his confusion.

  The boy had vanished during the chaos.

  1:15 P. M.

  Kyshtym, Russia

  Elizabeth studied the image on the computer screen. It displayed the wall mosaic from the temple in India. Five figures sat on tripod chairs surrounding the central omphalos. From the hole in the stone, smoke swirled upward like a steaming volcano. A fiery boy rose above it, half buried in a column of the smoke.

  But it wasn't just the smoke that lifted him.

  At her elbow, Elizabeth had papers covered with scribbled lines of Harappan,

  Sanskrit, and Greek. She had images of the inscriptions on the wall and omphalos. She was not entirely certain of her translation.

  The world will burn

  She studied the mosaic closer. Five women slouched in their chairs, as if in a trance, but each held one arm raised toward the smoky boy. Her first thought was that it represented a conjuring of the boy or summoning of him. But now she knew better. They weren't conjuring him, they were supporting him.

  She glanced to the line she had freshly translated in full.

  The world will burn unless the many become one.

  It was a warning. The mosaic foretold what must come to pass or the world would be destroyed in some great fire. Elizabeth remembered Gray's concern that whatever operation was at work in these mountains would kill millions and most likely involved a nuclear or radiological event.

  She pictured a mushroom cloud, burning and smoking with hellfire.

  It was not unlike the billowing smoke from the mosaic.

  unless the many become one.

  She scrolled down to the bottom of the image, below the newly translated warning. She touched a finger to what lay there.

  A chakra wheel.

  Her fingertip traced a petal to the center. The chakra wheel represented the same warning. The numerous petals all led to one center.

  The many become one.

  She stared again at the five women, lifting a boy high.

  Certainty grew in her not only about the accuracy of her translation, but also about its importance. Elizabeth's body trembled with dread. She had to get word out to someone. She crossed to the satellite phone Gray had left her. He had instructed her to call Director Crowe if there were any problems.

  Still, she hesitated. What if she was wrong? What if she caused more of a mess?

  She considered keeping silent. But she remembered her father, and all his secrets. Of Masterson and his. She was done with secrets and half-truths, of words not spoken.

  No more.

  She would not be her father.

  Knowing her discovery was important, she raised the handset and tapped in the number Gray had left.

  3:18 A. M.

  Washington, D. C.

  Painter watched as the child was prepped for the operation. He stood with Kat

  Bryant in a neighboring observation room off Sigma's small surgical suite.

  Sterile-wrapped equipment waited to be employed for the delicate operation: ultrasonic aspirators, laser scalpels, stereotactic localizers. Trays of steel tools and drills with various burrs lined tables. Inside the room, Lisa,

  Malcolm, and a neurosurgical team from George Washington University Hospital continued the final preparations.

  In the middle, Sasha lay under a thin surgical drape. All that was visible was the side of her head, shaved, coated in orange antiseptic, and trapped in a rigid frame attached to a scanning device. In the center of the surgical field, her steel implant reflected the lights.

  Kat, pale and worried, stood with one hand on the window.

  Over the course of the past hour, a series of EEG results and CT scans had shown progressive brain damage in the child. Whatever was happening to Sasha, it was slowly burning out her brain. It was decided, while the child was still strong, to remove the implant. It seemed to be the focus around which the storm of neurological hyperactivity centered.

  Lisa had used the term lightning rod.

  The only way to save her was to remove it. The neurosurgeon had studied all the scans and X-rays. He believed the device could be removed safely. It would be a delicate procedure, but not beyond his abilities.

  That had been the first good news all night.

  Painter's phone jangled in his pocket. He considered not answering it, but he tugged it out and checked the I. D. From Kyshtym, Russia. He turned his back on the window, flipped open the phone, and answered it.

  Painter Crowe here.

  Director, a woman spoke, sounding greatly relieved. It was Elizabeth Polk.

  Gray left this number.

  He heard the anxiety in her rushed voice. What's wrong, Elizabeth?

  I'm not sure. Something I discovered, translated anyway

  Painter listened as she stated her case, her f
ears, what she believed was the message buried in an ancient mosaic.

  The oracles were all slumped in their chairs, unconscious, drugged, drained.

  Their sole reason for existing was to support the one who could save the world from destruction. I know this sounds crazy, but I think it's connected to what's going on today.

  As she talked, Painter had swung back to the window overlooking the surgical suite. Her words resonated through him. Slumped, unconscious, drugged

  Like Sasha's collapse.

  He remembered Kat reporting the girl called out her brother's name just before she collapsed.

  Their sole reason for existing was to support the one who could save the world from destruction.

  Painter saw the surgeon lift his scalpel, ready to begin the operation.

  No.

  He bolted for the door.

  Kat called to him. What's wrong?

  Painter had no time. He burst through the sterile prep area and into the operating room. Stop! No one move!

  1:14 P. M.

  Southern Ural Mountains

  General-Major, you should head downstairs to the bunker, the soldier warned.

  He stood a head taller than her, thick with muscle. We shall make a stand here.

  Another soldier dragged Dr. Petrov's screaming form into the room from the hallway. His leg had been blown off at the knee. Blood poured. Other soldiers ran in with the children carried over their shoulders. The group had been chased back to the apartment by the collapse of the Russian forces, retreating before the guerrilla assault.

  The large soldier pointed a beefy arm toward the stairwell. Please,

  General-Major. We will hold off as long as we can.

  The children Savina said, knowing her plan was crumbling around her. She could not let anyone else steal what she had started. Shoot them all.

  The man's eyes grew large, but he was a soldier.

  He nodded.

  Savina retreated down the stairs. She could not watch. Her legs stumbled under her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. The door to the room was four-inch steel. Barricaded inside, she would wait out the war above. Ahead, she noted the flicker of the screens beyond the doorway. In the center screen, water flooded poison into the earth. As she holed up here, she would take solace as she watched.