by Gini Koch
The image got larger. “Say when,” Henry said.
It took several magnifications. “When. Okay, everyone, look at the top of the space ship. It’s a rounded dome, right?” The room chorused agreement. “Okay, inside that dome, does it look like there’s a more sparkly cube?”
“Can’t tell,” Big George said. “The picture
s too degraded.”
Christopher went to the screen and touched it. He held his hand there a good minute. He turned back, and his face was pale. “I recognize something in that area of the ship. It’s faint, but familiar enough.”
“You used one when you were little, right?”
He stared at me. “My mother told you?” he asked finally. I felt White stiffen, just a bit.
“In a way.” When I’d first met the Gang from A-C, Jeff had implanted something into me, which turned out to be a message from his late aunt. I’d only had an essence of a tiny bit of Terry within me, and ACE had removed that when we’d found him, but it had been enough.
I’d seen ӀTerry give ten-year-old Jeff a glowing cube, telling him it was just for him and Christopher to use. It was part of the memory she’d programmed Jeff to implant, so my seeing the cube was intentional on Terry’s part.
Since then I’d always wondered how it had worked, how she’d created it, because I’d never seen anything like it before or since. We had no idea, because the cube had been taken by a person or persons unknown sometime after the boys had used it. Jeff and I had hoped it was his parents who had found it, but they insisted they hadn’t.
I now had a good idea of who had. “Clarence found the Power Cube, took it, and that’s what they used to find our invading friends.”
“Most likely.” Christopher’s face had drained of color. “If they’ve used it, then they know everything Jeff and I can do.”
Yi
CHAPTER 84
“MAYBE THEY DO, BUT MAYBE THEY DON’T.”
Shockingly, my fabulous words of wisdom and comfort didn’t seem to make Christopher feel any better.
White went to his son, put his arm around Christopher’s shoulders, and brought him away from the screen. “Let’s sit down for a moment, son.”
While White and Christopher took time to calm down and forestall freaking out, I considered the latest fun facts.
Terry hadn’t been stupid, and she’d been very aware of what was going on. Based on the cube, she might have known more than any other A-C who wasn’t close to Yates. Plus, A-Cs were big on the fail-safes. I put my money on her installing something to protect her only son and nephew. Whether that had been broken or not was probably the issue. And the baddies had had over twenty years to try.
Less, though, because LaRue was the real brains of this particular operation, especially now that Yates was a deader. The trophy wife, who’d only been around for about ten years or so. Still might have been enough time.
I found myself wishing Madeline Cartwright were still alive. She’d been the brains behind the whole Titan Makes Scary Weapons stuff, and more besides, but she’d understood me and I’d understood her. We’d liked each other in that sense, once all the masks were off, even though we were enemies. I knew she’d known about this.
So, had to think like she had. But not aloud. For once. First time for everything. But Cartwright had done all her work in secret. So, to think like she did, I couldn’t share.
Normally not getting to think aloud would allow my mind to wander off topic. But I was honestly too mad and afraid to allow it. I couldn’t afford to wander until Jeff and Chuckie were back, and we had some handle on how to protect our world.
What would Cartwright have done with the knowledge that there were hidden rooms all over the place? If they were rooms at all? I felt certain she’d have come to the same conclusion I had—that they’d been put into րplace long ago and well before the A-Cs had ever arrived.
Like the rest of the Bad Guys League, Cartwright had wanted to live forever, and she wanted to be the one in charge. She wasn’t into the fame portion, but she was all about the power stuff. So, what do you do, when you know someone out there is more powerful than you and also not as nice as the people you’re used to dealing with?
My brain kicked, and I jerked. “Marling and Cartwright made the supersoldiers and androids to fight the invaders. It’s not their only purpose, obviously, but that’s their double duty. Which means they have something in them that we can set off to make them react and fight for us, not against us.”
“Then let’s hope James and Tim are successful,” Christopher said. “Because I don’t think we can fit the entire population of the planet into the Dome.”
“The Dome . . .”
“What?” White asked.
“Big George, can we zoom over to New Mexico and take a look at one of the red circles?”
“Sure.” The picture on the big screen changed. “You want Area Fifty-One?”
It was circled in red, but that wasn’t my main focus. Yet. “No, the one over here.” I went to his terminal and pointed it out. “That’s the Crash Site Dome, where the Ancients crash-landed in the nineteen-fifties.”
“It’s off limits.”
“Note the red circle. Yeah, no kidding. The Dome is an incredible power source, but it’s so well hidden, and so well protected, that it’s always been left alone, by our enemies on Earth and from much farther away. What I want to know is this—is there a dead zone under the Dome, or secret tunnels leading to it?”
“We haven’t had time to really map the Southwest,” Big George admitted. “There’s been so much to do locally, and much of that state is off limits anyway.”
“Then let’s bet on the side of yes.” ACE had been far too specific about the Dome, far too willing to let me shove as many people in there as possible. The Dome was key to whatever was going on; that’s why it was ACE’s entire protection focus.
“Why?” Christopher asked. He looked and sounded normal. Good. “The Dome goes down several levels. If our builders had discovered an al
most impregnable secret room, I think they would have told us.”
“Not if they were Yates loyalists, and, trust me, you have a lot more of them than you realize. There were even more when you were first exiled here. It would explain a lot, including how the Dome is the most hidden of all your Bases, why it’s never been attacked, and why it has so much power.”
“It’s the half-life from the Ancients’ ship.”
I had to remind myself that A-Cs were really raised not to question their elders. If the older folks said something, it was taken at face value unless and until pointedly proven to be incorrect.
“We’ve been told it’s the half-life from the Ancients’ power supply. And I’m sure that’s true, in its way.” I was sure because 99.9% of A-Cs couldn’t lie believably to anyone,ۀ and the best lies were based in truth. They got around the deficiency by leaving things out, versus making things up. “What they left out, I’m almost a hundred percent certain, was that they found some other power source when they were building the Dome.”
“If so, I was never informed,” White said.
“I’m sure you weren’t, because I’m sure whoever found whatever’s under the Dome was a Yates loyalist.”
“Let’s say that’s true. Why would the Ancients’ ship crash right over a dead zone?” Christopher countered.
“Oh, sadly for all of us, I have an easy answer for that. Because it was brought down by something and landed pretty much on top of its killer, so to speak.”
Yi
CHAPTER 85
“ALRIGHT,” BUCHANAN SAID SLOWLY. “Let’s say you’re right.”
Christopher sighed. “She’s usually right.”
I went to him and put my hand on his forehead. “You okay?” Christopher rolled his eyes while Buchanan chuckled.
“Your file indicates a high degree of accuracy,” Big George said.
“I’ll bet it doesn’t say it that nicely. But, Malcolm, where were you g
oing with this?”
“What do we do about it? Race to the Dome? Get everyone out of the Dome? Shove them into these tunnels? Try to breach one of the dead zones? Evacuate half the world? And I think some focus has to be given to what Valentino wants in the Embassy.”
“Those are all good questions. I think we leave everyone in the Dome for right now. As for Clarence . . . no guess for why he’s trying to get into the Embassy. I’ll toss ‘he’s trying to find something he or the others hid in the Embassy’ into the collective hat. It’s someone else’s turn now.”
Ravi cleared his throat, confirming the trend was now an epidemic. I realized he’d been quiet for quite a while. Checked. Nope, he and Jennifer weren’t making out.
“Yes, Ravi? What have you been up to while the rest of us have been fretting?”
“Well, it occurred to me that we have these dead spots all over the globe. Chuck’s had us focus mainly on the D.C. ones and some of the Eastern Seaboard, but he’s also had us take a cursory glance at France and Paraguay.”
“Do tell.”
“There’s a full tunnel network in the Paris area. A less sophisticated system is in Paraguay, in the Chaco region. We’ve been paying attention to these anyway, but our monitoring went hot earlier, remember?”
“Yeah, it was like fifteen minutes ago. I’m not that forgetful.”
“Closer to twenty minutes, maybe a half hour,” Stryker mutteredހz.
Ravi chose to ignore my sarcasm while I ignored Stryker. I chalked both up to personal growth. “So, based on the information I have on the androids, they don’t need a special sized room. They could be stored anywhere, including in the tunnel system, just waiting to activate.”
“Are they in the tunnels somewhere?” Franklin asked hopefully.
“No. However, I then considered the supersoldiers. Chuck told us a very little bit about them, but I’m clear they were close to twelve feet tall, meaning no dead zone we’ve mapped so far could hold them. They’re also too big to go through the tunnels. At least, the tunnels in the U.S.”
“You’re saying the tunnels and dead zones in France and Paraguay are bigger?”
Ravi shot me a hurt look. “Way to steal a man’s big moment, Kitty.”
“Just part of my charm.”
“So you’ve always said. Anyway, yes. The android signatures were erratic, in part, I believe, because they’re so well done that they appear almost a hundred percent human. But we also have a signal for the supersoldiers to work with, because Chuck brought one back here for me to play with.”
“What the hell?” Stryker said. “I didn’t know about that.”
Ravi shrugged and looked smug. “You thought he was joking, so he knew you wouldn’t take it seriously. Besides, you can’t reverse engineer.” Jennifer looked as if she’d made her future life choice and was already picking out curtains and china patterns. I checked—Jeremy looked as though he wished they were both back at the Mall. Brothers were like that, at least so far as I’d been told.
“Can too,” Stryker muttered.
“So, what’s the bottom line, Ravi?”
“The supersoldiers aren’t trying to pass as human, so their signals are far more basic. With the information gleaned from the android we were able to identify commonalities between the android and supersoldier signals and isolate them from the general electronic chatter that runs twenty-four-seven.”
“We?”
“I’m working remotely with the team in Dulce. Which is why we’ve moved so quickly. Anyway, we’ve identified where the signals came on-radar, if you will, cross-referenced against known formations and attacks, particularly the one at the President
s Ball, which was the clearest data we have. Most of this data is from Centaurion Division, which Dulce shared with me, and I’ve cross-referenced. Then I cross-mapped it with dead zone parameters of enough presumed size to be able to house them, focused on Paris and the Chaco, and radiated out from there.”
“And?” Franklin sounded impatient. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t care how Ravi and his A-C team did it, if his answer was going to help.
“I’ve sent the coordinates to Commanders Reader and Crawford. Teams are converging.”
“Um, the last I heard, Commanders Reader and Crawford were trying to bring down superbeings and supersoldiers alive while also trying not to die.”
“Oh.” Ravi looked s Purprised. “Sorry. I sent the kill switch information to them while you were all discussing everything else. Supersoldiers are down and under control.”
We all turned and looked at the screen that had been running our Paris feed. Sure enough, there were no more explosions, and the supersoldiers were in a nice formation. I could see the Eiffel tower in the far distance. Happily, it appeared to be standing and in one piece. I put this into the win column, because said column was pretty empty.
“That covers France, right?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome. So, what’s going on in Paraguay? Are Tim and his team dead or still fighting? The kill switch can’t work on a superbeing.”
Ravi shrugged. “It can when they’re not real.”
Yi
CHAPTER 86
I LET THAT ONE SIT ON THE AIR for a bit while I considered how to phrase the next thing I was going to say. Went with the classics. “What the hell?”
Ravi sighed again. “They look like superbeings, but they aren’t. They’re supersoldiers designed to look like superbeings.”
“How in the world is that possible?”
“The same way the supersoldiers are made, only these are covered with a clear metal, which is why they appear to be superbeings. The point is, though, that they have a kill switch, just as the others do.”
“Wow, the Evil Genius Club really likes to give you options in your personal choice of destruction method, don’t they?”
“How long have you had this information?” Christopher asked, voice tight.
“I’ve had the remnants of the supersoldier for about a week,” Ravi said. “Because what happened at the President’s Ball wasn’t hidden from those in power, Chuck couldn’t bring it to me until the release was cleared by his higher-ups. I had to work on it in secret because Chuck didn’t want the other guys to know.”
“Bastard,” Stryker muttered.
“Why does Ravi get all the fun jobs?” Henry whined.
“Who authorized that, do you know?” Armstrong asked, before the rest of the guys could whine and complain.
“I can check if it’s important.”
“It is.”
“What’re you thinking, Senator?”
“It’ll depend on who gave Reynolds the release.”
Ravi typed away. I noted he was using both hands. “Ravi, your head hasn’t exploded.”
“No. I was able to reverse the tracker, with help from the good people at the Science Center. It wonnce ling /font>
“Who said I was panicking?”
“I know you. Anyway, while doing this I was also able to remove the kill switch. I’ve tried to track Chuck, but it’s like everything else, the signal’s not clear enough to be sure where he is. On the other hand, your team in Paraguay is, as we speak, taking control of the supersoldiers and pseudosuperbeings, just as the team in Paris is.”
“How did you figure this out?” Christopher asked. “You didn’t have one of the ‘fake’ superbeings to work with.”
“Their signal signatures are similar to the one Chuck brought me. There are minor variations per supersoldier, of course, but frankly, the differences are more pronounced per ‘batch’ than per supersoldier.”
“I was told . . . by someone who would know, that the supersoldiers Chuckie has under his control are different from all the others.”
“Yes, their signals are indeed different. Stronger. I can’t speak for anything else about them other than the signal they send. It’s different, but not that different, if you will.”
“Awesome. So, this is good news. Right?”
/> “Right.”
“How many are there, can you tell?”
“Yes. Based on the signatures I can identify, we have at least a thousand.”
That sat on the air for a longer bit. “Wow. That’s, um, a lot.”
“Only if they can fight the invaders,” Franklin said. “Otherwise, ten thousand honestly wouldn’t be that many.”
I’d seen these things in action, Franklin hadn’t. “Trust me, that’s a lot. Good lord, do they have some factory or something?”
“Want my hypothesis?” Ravi asked.
“Sure.”
“I believe the dead zones function as sections of a factory.”
Henry snorted. “Too far apart to be useful.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Omega Red said. “It’s quite possible. They do it with cars all the time.”
“It’s unwieldy,” Big George shared, backing the Dr. Wu Team.
“How does this get Jeff and Reynolds back?” Christopher asked before Hacker International could go into a full-fledged, completely off-tangent discussion that would turn into a shouting match followed by a group sulk, none of which we had time to indulge, even though it tended to be worth the price of admission.
They were all quiet for a moment while Christopher treated everyone to Patented Glare #4. “It doesn’t,” Ravi said finally. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat, ensuring the epidemic would continue. “Senator, just found it—Clifford Goodman from Homeland Security authorized the release.”
“That’s good, right? Cliff’s a friend of Chuckie’s.”
Armstrong nodded slowly. “ 뀀I think so.”
“Interesting,” Stryker said. “I’ve been looking at the C.I.A. files Big George found on all of you. Not sure what your teams are going to come up with, but this section seems key for what’s going on. ‘Team works well together. Separately they are much less effective. Separation of Katt