“No myth,” he says. “It’s real.” Then he looks down at his handheld and reads, “Two thousand years ago, Emperor Qín Shi Huáng discovered the secret to eternal life; a vial containing the potion is buried with him at his tomb near Xian, China. The tomb was first discovered in 1974 by Chinese farmers digging a well. You and your team will timeleap to 1974 right after the entrance to the tomb was found.
“One more thing you should know,” says Luca, “is that the Emperor buried an army with him so that he could have a second kingdom in the afterlife. To get to his tomb, your team will need to first navigate through large burial rooms containing an army of warriors made from clay.”
A clay army? This guy was even more fruitcakes than Uncle.
“Is that all?” I say.
Luca nods, turns his back to me and flicks the holo of the Great Hall back on.
But my feet aren’t moving. “Are you sure that there isn’t anything else we should know about the mission?”
Luca spins around to face me. There’s an angry expression on his face. “I already told you everything you need to know.” He practically spits the words.
“Yeah, well that’s what you also said on the last mission,” I say. “But when we got there, we found out the intel was all wrong.”
I can’t believe I said that. If he goes back to Frank with this, I’ll probably be in for some major punishment for challenging Luca’s authority.
Luca stands up from his chair and rises to his full height, which is a good foot taller than me. He narrows his eyes to slits and looks down at me. “Be happy I told you as much as I did.”
“Uncle would never send new recruits into an unknown situation,” I fire back.
Then, surprisingly, he begins to laugh. His laughter fills the entire room.
It’s not a happy kind of laughter. It’s bitter and cruel and meant to make me feel small.
As I leave the Viewing Room, my entire body is shaking. I wait until the trembling slows before mindpatching Abbie to tell her to get everyone ready.
March 30, 1974, 5:43 P.M.
Near Xian, China
Total darkness. The air is cold, and there’s a smell of dampness all around. We’re at the bottom of the well dug by the Chinese farmers. A rough wood board covers the entrance to the tomb.
“From here on in, everyone stays quiet,” I mindpatch the others. “And no one moves until I say it’s safe.”
I remove the board, step into the tunnel and walk about ten yards before arriving at the real entrance to the tomb.
Adjusting my ocular implant, I have my translator read the runes on the entranceway: Swift death will visit those who despoil the tomb of Emperor Qín Shi Huáng.
I take a deep breath to calm myself. The last thing I need is to end up on the wrong end of an ancient Chinese curse. But there’s no getting around it, as far as I can see. Despoiling is exactly what we’ve come here to do.
I run my hands lightly over an area of packed earth next to the runes. Just as I suspected: booby-trapped. It’s a simple mechanism. The first person to pass through the entrance will be impaled with a spear. It’s possible of course that after more than two thousand years of sitting idle, it won’t work, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. After all, the sixty-year-old HiSense television set in the lounge at Headquarters still works perfectly, which is proof enough for me that the Chinese are good at making stuff that lasts.
“We’ll have to do a short leap to get inside,” I say to the others. “The entrance is booby-trapped.”
I program my wristpatch, and we all join up. “On three,” I say. “One, two—”
“Wait,” Judith says.
“What?” I say. It comes out a little rougher than I intended, but I can’t help it. It’s been a long day.
“What if there’s an earthquake while we’re inside—won’t we be buried alive?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say without missing a beat. “And that’s why we have to do the snatch quickly.”
Before anyone else has the chance to object, I tap my wrist twice.
We land in a room roughly the size of the Yard at the Compound. The rounded walls have been hewn from the rock and the ceiling is very high. There is a dank, unpleasant smell in the air.
“This is one of the halls leading to the antechamber to the Emperor’s burial tomb,” I say. “The snatch object is buried with the Emperor in the crypt that lies beyond the antechamber. Before we continue, I want to remind everyone of the rules. No touching anything. We all stay together, and if something happens, follow my or Abbie’s directions precisely. Now, everyone stay behind me.”
I lead the recruits through the hall. Abbie takes up the rear. Except for our breathing and the thud of our feet on the hard ground, there is total silence. Something about the quiet is unsettling. The air feels heavy and, well, evil. I never thought I’d say this, but I’d almost welcome one of Razor’s interruptions right about now. Maybe I’ve been watching too many zombie holo-flicks, but it feels like the crypt is waiting for us. Waiting until it has us all in its clutches before sealing us in here forever.
As I approach the antechamber, I’m rocked by a wave of dizziness. I silently curse Frank for sending us on this mission when I’m still not over my time fog. How am I supposed to lead the recruits when I can barely function myself?
I wait until it passes and then duck my head to enter the antechamber. When I look up, I stop dead in my tracks. Abbie has switched her beam to wide view. And the view is astonishing. We are in a room the size of Yankee Stadium, filled to capacity with row upon row of life-sized sculpted clay warriors, some with weapons, some without, even some leading clay horses. Luca wasn’t kidding when he said there’s an army of them. There must be thousands of figures here!
As I make my way down one of the rows, I notice something even more incredible: no two warriors look alike. Each of their faces is different—as different as the faces of real people.
A scream rips though the air, echoing off the stone walls of the chamber.
“Everyone down!” I yell.
A moaning sound. But from where?
The beam from Abbie’s light bounces off the surrounding clay figures. I switch my night vision to max.
There is the moaning sound again. I glance ahead and see a figure slumped on the ground. It’s Judith!
I rush over to her.
“I should have . . . waited for you, but . . . the horse was so beautiful,” she says, her voice weak. The shaft of an arrow is embedded in her left shoulder. I bite my lip. If the arrow had hit a few more inches over . . . I don’t want to think about that.
“How . . . ,” I begin to say, but before I’m finished, I know the answer.
Ten feet away, affixed to the carved side of a terra-cotta chariot, is a spent crossbow. It must have been rigged to fire when someone stepped into range.
“Stay with her,” I shout to Abbie, and make my way to the crossbow.
It’s a simple setup. The weapon fires automatically when a thin wire has been tripped, which Judith must have done, unawares. But as I look closer, I notice something that sets my teeth on edge. The firing mechanism is made from titanium. There’s no question. It has been tampered with recently.
I run back to Abbie and Judith.
“I’ve got to get her to a hospital,” Abbie says. “You take the others back. I’m taking her to New York Presbyterian.”
I nod and signal to Gerhard, Dmitri and Razor.
“We’re aborting the mission,” I tell them.
Blessedly, no one says anything. Not even Razor. When I reach out my hands to take Dmitri’s and Razor’s, they feel cold.
A single word echoes through my brain as I punch out the sequence on my wrist.
Escape.
October 7, 2061, 9:18 P.M.
Central Park
New Beijing (formerly New
York City)
How’s Judith?” I ask as soon as Abbie steps from the path.
“She’s hurting but she’s going to be okay,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “They took out the arrow, patched her up and gave me some pills to give her for when the pain gets really bad. The doctor said she was really lucky . . . it could have been a lot worse.”
“Where is she now?” I ask.
“I took her back to the Compound,” Abbie says. “When they started asking a lot of questions, I knew it was time to go.”
I nod and look through the trees to the monastery. No one is about in the garden. The monks are probably doing their evening meditations . . . finding their center of calm. I wish I could find my center of calm, but all I can feel now is anger. Anger at Frank for sending us on the Xian mission and anger at myself for not refusing to go.
“Abbie, Frank rigged the crossbow to fire at the first one to enter the tomb,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“The firing mechanism was new—made from titanium. My guess is he either did it himself or had Luca install it for him.”
Abbie’s silent for a moment and then says, “I was afraid of this happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“At lunch, I heard a couple of the other trainers talking. What they were saying sounded so wild that I thought they were joking. But now I don’t think so.”
“What were they saying?” I ask.
“That not all of their recruits returned with them from training missions.”
I stare at her. “You mean, some of them got caught?”
“Not caught. Left behind. On Frank’s orders.”
I take a moment to let Abbie’s words sink in.
“He’s culling the recruits, Cale. Eliminating the ones he thinks aren’t the best.”
It all adds up. The Gathering and the crossbow attack are more proof. But it’s not only the recruits he wants to get rid of. That crossbow arrow had my name on it. Frank wanted me to lead the recruits into the tomb.
“There’s only one thing to do,” I say, switching to mindpatch. “A mass escape from the Compound . . . all of the recruits.”
“How?” she says. “We can’t timeleap with them because their wristbands are tracked. If they leave outside of a planned mission, the bands will automatically bring them back here.”
I had done some thinking on this after my meeting with Frank. “We have to get them out without using technology first—over the roof,” I say. “The doors and the fire escape are heavily monitored and alarmed. But there’s only one holo-video feed for the roof. We kick it out and then take everyone across the roof to the next building and down the fire escape.”
“And then what?”
“Then we take them to the Buddhist temple,” I say. “It’s just a block away from the Compound. At a dead run, we could probably make it there in three minutes.”
“What can we do from there?”
“We shuttle them home—to their real homes—using the time pod.”
“But that’s going to take forever,” Abbie says. “The pod only fits three people. And the longer it takes, the more chance Frank or Uncle has of finding our hiding place.”
“I think we can squeeze in four kids,” I say. “I know it’s not foolproof. But I bet Dmitri can turn off the tracking for the pod. Every other way will be harder.” I shudder to think how much work it would be for him to turn off the tracking for forty-five wristbands, that is, if he could even do it without Uncle or Frank finding out.
She looks at me and nods.
“And another thing,” I say, “we don’t tell the recruits about the plan until the very last minute.”
“But then how will we know if they’ll agree to go?” she asks.
“We’ll know because one of their own is going to convince them.”
“Who?”
“That’s what we have to decide,” I say. “The only way for the plan to work is if we have one of the recruits in on it. Someone all the other recruits look up to and trust.”
“Who do you think?” Abbie asks.
“Razor,” I say.
“No way. She’s unpredictable. She’s only out for herself.”
“That may be changing,” I say, thinking back to the talk Razor and I had right after returning from Operation Coronation.
Abbie crosses her arms over her chest and says nothing. I know what she’s thinking. It’s far from the perfect plan. But right now it’s the only one we have.
“We’ll also need to knock out Uncle’s systems the moment we’re done,” I say.
“No,” says Abbie. “You’re not seriously thinking of—”
“Why not? Dmitri will love the challenge. You’ve got to admit that he’s brilliant when it comes to technology.”
“You realize that if we involve Razor and Dmitri,” Abbie says, “we’ll be putting their lives in even more danger.”
She’s right. It’s a tough decision to make. “We can’t do this alone, Abbie. It’s too big.
“Also, we’re going to need Phoebe,” I say. “The information requirement is huge. We’ll need intel on the home times/places for all recruits. And then we’ll need to erase all the records. The only way she’ll do it is if we offer to take her with us.”
“Okay,” Abbie says. “But Phoebe can’t keep a secret. Once she knows, it won’t be long before Uncle or Frank finds out.”
“That’s why we have to act quickly.”
“How quickly?” Abbie asks.
“Six days. The day before Uncle’s coronation.”
I look her straight in the eye, and she returns my gaze. I haven’t said the words, not even over her mindpatch. But there’s no need to. We both know what must happen.
We have to make sure that Uncle and Frank can’t start over again.
We spend the next hour doing prep work for the escape, which we’ve code-named Operation Exodus. Abbie heads to the Compound to brief Dmitri and Razor and to get Dmitri started on figuring out how to extricate Phoebe from the net. I go off in search of materials for the rope bridge that we’ll need to escape via the roof.
When I’ve got everything, I make my way to SoHo and stash the stuff out of sight behind a Dumpster in the alley. Someone has spray painted THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH in big black letters on the brick wall. I wonder when “nigh” is. If it’s more than a week from now, I’m good with that. By then, if the escape succeeds, all of the recruits should be safe at home with their families. But if we’re talking tonight, that’s a totally different story.
And judging from the weather right now, tonight looks like a definite possibility. The sky is pitch-black, and a chill wind is whistling into the alley. There’s a feeling of impending doom in the air.
I try to shake off the bad vibes and head into the Compound. As soon as I enter, the overhead screen darkens. A single bolt of lightning flashes across the screen, coalescing into the words, “Go away. I’m not talking to you.”
“Phoebe, have you seen Abbie?” I say, ignoring her little jibe.
The screen changes again. This time the image is of a hand with perfectly manicured and polished fingernails. I watch as first the thumb and then three of the fingers curl in toward the palm, leaving only the middle finger extended.
“That’s rude,” I say.
“Not half as rude as what you have in store for me,” Phoebe says.
“What are you talking about?”
The hand giving me the finger fades, and in its place is Phoebe’s grandmother figure, lying inside a coffin. She peers over her half glasses and says, “Don’t play the innocent with me, O Caleb the Betrayer. I know what you and Abbie are planning. How could you?”
“How could I what?”
“How could you leave me here while you escape with all the others? Do I mea
n so little to you?” Big tears roll down her face and drop off her cheek, staining the satin cushions inside the coffin.
How did she find out? But then again, this is Phoebe we’re talking about. She has her ways. I was going to tell her . . . only not this soon.
She sits up in her coffin and glares at me. “Make it happen, buster, or I’m telling.”
I stay silent for a moment as if I’m considering her threat. “Okay, Phoebe, you can come,” I say finally.
The screen changes again. The coffin has been replaced with a field of daisies. Grandma Phoebe picks one and turns to face me, all smiles.
“You’re a good boy, Caleb. Now you had better hurry and go see Abbie. She’s been looking everywhere for you.”
Darn.
“Where is she?”
Grandma Phoebe methodically plucks the petals from the flower.
“Try the courtyard.”
“Thanks . . . and, Phoebe?”
“Yes, my darling boy?”
“Of course you haven’t talked to anyone else about this, correct?” I say.
“Of course not,” she says. “What do you think I am? A blabbermouth?”
I’ll take the Fifth on that one.
As I hurry to the courtyard, Phoebe shouts, “I’m making my packing list!”
Abbie is sitting against the brick wall, gazing up at the sky.
“We have to call off the escape,” she mindpatches me without looking my way.
“What?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Frank knows about the plan,” she says.
“How do you know?” I sit down next to her.
She glares at me. “It’s obvious from the way he spoke to me. And he gave me a weird smile.”
“Isn’t that what he always does?”
“Trust me. Maybe he doesn’t know exactly what we’re planning, but he suspects something. All I did was get Razor and Dmitri on board but he knows something’s up. He’s called off all snatches for tomorrow—I think he wants to keep a close eye on everyone.”
“Phoebe knows, too—she must have seen Dmitri working on things,” I say. “And if she knows, that means soon enough the whole place will know.”
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