The Annihilation Protocol

by Laurence, Michael

  “Or not,” Ramses said. “He sounds like a real dick.”

  With the aid of their flashlights, they’d easily be able to outpace Kameko. Mason’s best guess was that the cameras were set up near the junction of tracks 60 and 61, which meant that if they followed the sound of the incoming train, which grew louder by the second, they ought to be able to catch up with her. They could only assume Grand Central Station was her final destination and pray she hadn’t figured out which combination of individual trains running nonstop throughout the city would be arriving at the terminal at the same time, armed and ready to be remotely triggered.

  “We have to hurry,” Mason said, and broke into a sprint. “Come on!”

  * * *

  The Scarecrow emerged from the underground to find itself surrounded by people. The press of bodies was overwhelming. It felt as though everyone was looking at it, and yet it knew that couldn’t possibly be the case. No one ever saw it, or perhaps they merely chose to look the other way.

  Its timing needed to be precise. There would be no second chances and either it succeeded and many people died or it failed and died alone. Either way, at long last, its life would soon be over, and it would make sure it took the last of those responsible for its torment with it.

  And the fool didn’t have the slightest clue.

  * * *

  The ground on both sides of the tracks was rocky and uneven, forcing Mason to run between the rails and try to hit the ties and not the spaces between them, slowing him to an uncomfortable extent. His light swinging ahead of him made the entire world seem to tilt from one side to the other. Walls covered with graffiti and soot blew past, bricks to one side and concrete to the other. The clapping sound of his footsteps echoed from dark alcoves on either side, inside of which any number of traps could have been rigged, but he was simply out of time and had to start taking chances. If the Scarecrow reached the terminal first, they’d all be dead soon enough anyway.

  The rumble of the subway car faded and a deep red light materialized in the distance. It switched to yellow as he approached. By the time he reached the junction, the light was green and illuminated a concrete barrier with vertical rust and water stains. He recognized it from the surveillance footage. Kameko had been here less than ten minutes ago. They could still overtake her if they were fast enough.

  Layne’s flashlight cast Mason’s shadow ahead of him onto the active tracks. He hit them going full speed and fell into stride on ground worn nearly level by decades of unrelenting use. The whole world seemed to shiver with the sheer volume of trains converging on and departing from the station. The overhead lighting grew brighter, the fixtures closer together. Another track appeared to his right, a dozen feet away, on the other side of a colonnade of iron girders.

  A train roared behind him, its headlights bursting from the darkness.

  He ducked from the tracks and glanced over his shoulder in time to see Layne and Ramses silhouetted against the lights bearing down on them. They lunged aside a split second before the train blew past.

  Th-th-thuck. Th-th-thuck. Th-th-thuck.

  The ferocious wind of its passage buffeted them with enough force to knock them off stride.

  Its brakes screeched as it slowed. Mason caught a glimpse of a black box with an antenna affixed to the underside of the last car. And then it was gone.

  They were out of time.

  The platform materialized in the distance, between the tracks. Yellow staircases leading upward. Massive electrical cables running down the walls. Partitions made from squares of opaque glass.

  Mason jumped up onto it and ran toward where the passengers disgorged into the crowd waiting to board. Holstered his pistol before he caused a panic. Fought upstream through the seething mass of humanity working its way against him.

  They had to be getting close now. He hoped to God they weren’t already too late.

  * * *

  The sea of faces parted before the Scarecrow. No one so much as looked in its direction, and the few who made that mistake quickly averted their eyes and cleared its path. None of them had any idea what was about to happen, let alone that the remainder of their lives could be measured in minutes. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, which was neither its fault nor its concern. They knew what they were. Humanity was a scourge upon the planet, and while these people hadn’t been party to its torture, they knew what monsters did to children in the dark of night and condoned it with their silence. They didn’t care what happened to others behind closed doors, as long as those monsters kept them safe. It had been easy to turn a blind eye because it wasn’t happening to them.

  But today it was.

  * * *

  Mason had to slow and turn sideways. Raised his arms and stood on his toes to see over the heads of everyone surrounding him.

  “Out of the way!” he shouted.

  He merged into the herd ascending the ramp toward the station. Found enough space to move and bolted away from the tracks. Through the dimly lit corridor connecting the lower platforms. Into a marble-tiled arcade with stores on either side. Nearly barreled through a janitor cleaning up a spill. The old man swore and threw his mop to the ground. Mason hurdled the wet patch without slowing.

  The main concourse was directly ahead, framed by a domed entryway. He saw the globe clock and the arched windows over the heads of a riot of people.

  And among them, a sugegasa. A broad conical straw hat.

  He caught a glimpse of flannel and denim, and the startled expressions on the faces of the people who hurried to get out of the Scarecrow’s way.

  “Freeze!” Mason shouted.

  He drew his weapon, sighted it squarely on the back of the Scarecrow’s head, and prepared to end the threat right here and now.

  Screams erupted all around him. Bodies ran in every direction. Uniformed officers fought through them. One shouted from the marble landing at the top of the twin staircases beyond the circular kiosk.

  The Scarecrow swayed as she stood there. Cocked her head first one way, then the other. Slowly turned to face him.

  “No,” Mason whispered.

  His heart sank.

  The Scarecrow had outmaneuvered them again.

  72

  Rand Marchment stood before Mason, dressed as all of the other victims had been. The sugegasa had tipped back on his head, revealing eyes filled with terror. His pupils were dilated so wide, they nearly eclipsed his irises. Sweat glistened on his forehead. Tears ran down his cheeks. His lips moved in an attempt to speak, but no sound came out.

  A uniformed agent wearing a helmet and a Kevlar vest assumed position on the landing of the marble staircase and shouted down at him.

  “Drop the gun!”

  “Federal officers!” Layne shouted.

  Their voices were barely audible over the screams of those fleeing the main concourse.

  The Scarecrow had used the chemicals in his workstation to create lysergic acid diethylamide—LSD—and given Marchment a massive dose, as he must have done to the volunteers at Edgewood. He probably didn’t have any idea where he was or what he was doing.

  Or even what was real and what wasn’t.

  Sirens wailed outside. Transit police in domed white electric carts sealed off the main exits. DHS and JTTF agents appeared as if from nowhere. Drew their weapons and aimed at the two of them, standing in the center of the concourse.

  “Hold your fire!” Mason shouted.

  Marchment held a black metal box in front of his chest. Antennas protruded from the top. There was a digital clock face on the front, only it didn’t display the time. It counted down from 00:02:13 to 00:02:12 as Mason watched. The red wires attached to it passed above the bib of Marchment’s overalls and through the gap between the top buttons of his shirt.

  It was a remote detonator, and when the countdown reached zero, Novichok gas would be released from dispersal units affixed to the trains departing from the terminal.

  “Hold still,” Mason sai
d.

  He kept his pistol trained on Marchment and used his left hand to grab one side of the flannel shirt. Ripped it open to expose the deputy secretary’s bare chest.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  These were no mere electrical cords; they were blood-filled catheters exiting a gaping wound underneath the collar of Marchment’s shirt. The skin had been retracted, exposing the muscles and tendons and blood vessels, which appeared to be the source of the lines.

  * * *

  The Scarecrow shoved through the hordes of revelers struggling to find anyplace to stand behind the rails to either side of the main walkway, where people were crammed so tightly together, there was hardly enough room to breathe. Banks of lights had been erected on fifty-foot poles and on elevated platforms where police monitored the bedlam through various surveillance devices. Digital billboards cast a carnival glow onto men and women wearing parkas and ponchos, party hats and novelty glasses, over whom lorded celebrities in private Plexiglas boxes, preening for the cameras.

  The ball perched above the roofline of One Times Square, several blocks behind the Scarecrow, ready to make its 141-foot descent to the top of the seventeen-story column of billboards. In front of it, a wall of reporters and cameramen stood on the other side of a railed barricade, at the foot of the bronze statue of Father Duffy on his plinth, his back to a Celtic cross chiseled from green granite, their cameras directed up the ruby red stadium bleacher stairs ascending onto the roof of the TKTS ticket booth. A specially designed podium with the seal of New York City had been erected on the uppermost steps. Five men in suits stood behind it, flanked by a phalanx of NYPD officers in full crowd-control gear, basking in the glow of the spotlights directed down at them from the rooftops, where snipers and drone operators had taken up covert positions. Electric advertisements towered over them from the narrow side of the Renaissance Hotel.

  “I Love New York” blared through the loudspeakers and the cameras started to roll. One of the men stepped up to the podium. The music faded and an expectant silence fell upon the crowd.

  “It is with great pride that I announce the future has arrived,” Peter Andrews, the governor of the state of New York, said. His voice boomed throughout Times Square, commanding the attention of the million-plus people stretching as far as the eye could see. “Today will go down in history as the day this great city declared its independence from fossil fuels. Our long-standing commitment to green energy demands more than lip service; it requires putting our money where our collective mouth is. It takes nearly two hundred megawatts of electricity—that’s two hundred million watts—to light up this glorious square. This morning, we lit it with fossil fuels for the last time. Tonight, the ball will drop on the past and usher in the grand future all New Yorkers—nay, everyone in the entire world—deserve.”

  The crowd roared its approval. Cameramen jostled for the perfect shot of the five men, with the billboards scaling the Renaissance Hotel behind them and the statue of Father Duffy in the foreground, as Reuben Covington, the mayor of New York City, assumed the podium.

  “On this night,” he said, “we will cut Times Square, one of this great city’s most recognizable landmarks, right out of the grid. From this moment forward, it will be serviced by the solar photovoltaic arrays on the surrounding rooftops, which will not only power the businesses and the billboards but will lead the charge in our citywide efforts to transition to sustainable clean energy and meet our goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions eighty-five percent by the year 2050.”

  The thunder of applause was deafening. Covington raised his arms to better soak up the adoration. The policemen enforcing the barricade in front of the statue and ceremonial stairs turned to witness an event that would forever change the course of one of the grandest cities the world had ever known.

  The Scarecrow forced its way right up against the rails.

  * * *

  “Evacuate the station!” Layne shouted.

  She held up her badge like a shield and kept her body between Mason’s and the agent with the gun aimed at him from the balcony.

  “Listen to me,” Mason said, but Marchment’s eyes couldn’t seem to focus on him. He holstered his weapon and took the deputy secretary’s face between his hands. “I need you to listen to me very carefully. That box you’re carrying is designed to send a signal to remote devices on the trains arriving all around us at this very second. That signal will cause the remote devices to release Novichok gas, which the trains will then trail behind them and spread throughout the city, killing millions of people—including you—so it’s important that you hold really, really still so I can figure out how to disarm it.”

  00:01:38.

  00:01:37.

  “Keep going,” Marchment said. The inner workings of his neck moved and shifted in a manner that was both fascinating and horrifying. “Walk straight down the tunnel and keep going. Climb up onto the platform. Stand in the middle of the concourse. She said she’d take the stinger out of my neck if I did. Can you see it? Can you take the stinger out?” He gestured toward the flap of skin hanging from his open throat. “It feels like it’s somewhere around here.”

  Mason took the box from him and turned around. Ramses stood behind him, his arms raised and his palms open in the least threatening manner possible. There had to be at least a dozen red dots swirling on his chest from as many laser sights.

  “Help me, damn it!”

  His old friend glanced down at his chest, then looked up at the officers and agents surrounding him. He hesitated only briefly before saying “Fuck it” and rushing to Mason’s side.

  “Hold this for me, okay?” Mason said.

  He stretched the catheters as far as they’d go without putting strain on the vessels in Marchment’s neck and passed the detonator to Ramses. It appeared as though one tube had been run from the internal jugular vein through a hole in the back of the box, from which another emerged and made the return trip to the external jugular vein.

  00:01:06.

  00:01:05.

  “Do you have a good grip?” he asked.

  Ramses nodded.

  Mason carefully pried off the metal casing to reveal the inner workings. He identified the circuit boards corresponding to the antenna array and the clock. A flow-control valve on the main line. A series of small silver tubes that looked almost like batteries, only thicker. And what appeared to be a small hydraulic generator. Blood entered through one side and exited the other, creating the electricity to power the detonator in the process.

  00:00:54.

  00:00:53.

  Brakes screeched outside. The sirens were just on the other side of the doors. Red and blue lights reflected from the marble floor.

  “Tell me you know what you’re doing,” Ramses said.

  Mason held up a hand to silence him. He needed to concentrate.

  00:00:46.

  00:00:45.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it in a hurry,” Layne said.

  JTTF agents swarmed the building. They burst through the doors, wearing bulletproof vests and gas masks, their assault rifles already seated against their shoulders, and took up position in the mouths of the various passageways and along the upper-level railings.

  Layne pivoted between them, shouting her identification and demanding they hold their fire.

  The Scarecrow had figured out a way to use a portable hydroelectric generator and Marchment’s own circulation to power the detonator.

  00:00:38.

  00:00:37.

  And the only way to shut if off was to stop the flow of blood.

  73

  “And we owe it all to the gentlemen behind me,” the mayor said. “Allow me to introduce the innovators whose shared vision will help transform the city as we know it into the city we always dreamed it could be. Mr. Jonathan Feltman, director of the Department of City Planning. Mr. Aidan Dunham, president of the New York City Urban Development Corporation. And Mr. Slate Langbroek, chairman
of the executive board of directors for Royal Nautilus Petroleum and its newest subsidiary, Nautilus Energy. Together, they designed and produced the miracle you’re about to witness, which involved more than just slapping a bunch of solar panels on the rooftops surrounding us. They installed a fully integrated smart grid system with its own intelligent power-management system capable of diverting excess energy to on-site storage units and drawing from them during peak hours. A self-contained network capable of achieving total energy independence.”

  The three men waved to the packed square. Flashes strobed. People cheered.

  “In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of New York has generously agreed to offer subsidies and tax incentives to any company willing to follow suit,” the mayor continued. “It’s only a matter of time before there are Green Smart Grids in every building in this great city. But those are just words, aren’t they? Here in the Big Apple, we let our actions speak for us. What do you say we get a demonstration of the best New Year’s present the Earth has ever received?” The ground positively trembled from the applause and stomping feet. “Mr. Langbroek, would you care to do the honors?”

  Slate pumped his fist for the crowd, shook the mayor’s hand, and assumed his place at the podium. He wore an overcoat with a scarf and gloves. His cheeks and nose were bright red from the cold. He was the last of a bloodline that needed to be purged from the world.

  “I prepared a speech about the challenges of advancing a petroleum company into a clean energy future, but I’m just as excited as the rest of you, so what do you say we see what this baby can do?”

  All eyes turned toward the opposite end of Times Square as the ball officially started its descent.

  Langbroek and the other men on the top stair shielded their eyes from the spotlights to better see.

  The buzz of the crowd made the air shiver.