by Linda Nagata
“Shu’ up.”
He took a tentative step. Then another. They both struggled not to trip in the weeds. More steps. “Where . . . ?” he asked.
“A little farther.”
Every step she took demanded more effort than the last. She felt wrung out, exhausted. Her legs trembled and her spine ached from bearing Matt’s weight. Her stomach churned and her pulse hammered against her skull. But she kept going.
They left the weeds. Stumbled along a dirt road. Navy be here soon. Yet she saw no sign of pursuit. No quad-copter, no searchlights, no barking dogs.
Another few minutes, and a square structure loomed out of the moon-flecked darkness. A shed, on the edge of a banana grove. They needed shelter. A short time-out. So she steered Matt toward it, feeling him drift into unconsciousness, more and more of his weight bearing down on her until she snapped at him, “Focus, soldier!”
A hasp held the shed door closed. Ava had been ready to shoot off a padlock, but there was none, so she pulled the door open and shone her light inside.
Empty, except for a cardboard box stuffed with trash. Everything valuable—down to the padlock—must have been taken out ahead of the storm.
She steered Matt inside. He wilted to the floor and she went down beside him, her flashlight tumbling from her hand.
◇
That dream again:
Two little girls clinging to the smooth bark of a wind-stripped rainbow shower tree. Half submerged in rushing water, the unrelenting rain pouring down on them, they cried for help in haunting, high-pitched voices as Ava struggled to reach them.
These little girls were not her daughters. Not this time. Nine years had passed since she’d confronted the reality of their faces—the wind whipping their black hair into tangled streamers, their beautiful dark terror-filled eyes looking on her to save their lives, their pleading voices begging her to hurry, hurry.
Ava tried—but movement came hard. Each step a battle, frustration mounting as she waded through a tangle of rain-soaked weeds toward a distant dock, the huge black hull of a submarine lying beside it like a sleeping whale.
Hurry!
One step ahead of panic. Reality now fluid, slippery, allowing impossible things: The submarine had gone.
No, she whispered. No, no, no.
But it was already too late. She had failed again to save the little girls and they knew it. They looked at her with accusation in their eyes, an instant before light exploded around them, ten thousand times brighter than the sun.
Ava’s eyes snapped open on the dull red glow of her flashlight, her heart racing, breath trembling. My God, my God.
Pressing her hands against a muddy plywood floor, she pushed herself to sit up. Was it already too late? Had Denali sailed?
Matt lay prone beside her, head turned in her direction, his smart glasses fogged and a thread of drool running from his half-open mouth as he breathed in uneasy rhythm. Ava shuddered and hugged herself. How much time had she just lost? Rain hammered on the shed’s roof and splattered through the open door. Still dark out there, but dawn came late this time of year.
Fatigue gripped her. Her head still ached and her mouth felt sour and dry—but her heart fluttered in caged panic. We need to move!
“Matt,” she croaked, her voice hoarse. She reached out and shook him. “Matt, come out of it.”
He stirred and groaned. Behind his fogged glasses, his eyes fluttered open. “Where?” he whispered without raising his head.
“A farm shed. I don’t know what time it is.”
His focus shifted. Checking his display?
“’s late,” he whispered, his voice still a little slurred. He rolled over onto his back. Drew in a deliberate deep breath, and then another.
She pressed her fingers to his neck, measuring the thready beat of his heart. “Still fast, but way better than before. I was afraid you were going to have a heart attack.”
Another deep breath, and then a cynical half smile. “Yeah, me too.”
Given what he’d been through over the past twenty-four hours, it was a miracle he could function.
He lifted his forearm to his mouth and sucked on the wet fabric of his sleeve. “God, ah’m thirsty.”
“Same.”
She crawled to the box of trash, dumped it out, and found a crushed soda cup, still sticky with syrup. She reshaped it and then put it outside, under the curtain of water running off the shed roof. After it collected a few swallows, she shared it with Matt.
“Has Lyric checked back in?” she asked, the terror of the dream still haunting her.
“Nah yet. Bu’ I messaged her.”
“She must have been taken out.”
“No. Nah true. She’s s’ill workin’ things.”
“You really believe that, don’t you? Well, damn it, Matt. She’s not magic.”
That half-smile again. “Yeah, she is.” He rolled to his side, then sat up, scooting to rest his back against the shed wall. He slipped his fogged-up glasses off. “Navy never showed, huh?”
“Guess not.” And how crazy was that? “They had us with those stingers. They could have walked right up and shot us. Why are we still here?”
He polished his glasses with a damp cleaning cloth from his waist pack. “Lyric’s magic.”
“Bull. Shit.”
He slipped his smart glasses back on. “Try dis, then: Navy security’s nah authorized to use stingers off base. Nah their jur-iss . . . dic-shun.”
“Come on. You’re saying someone got gung-ho, violated regs, and now they’re trying to avoid a reprimand?”
“I’ve heard crazier stories.”
Ava grimaced. “Right. I’ve heard crazier stories just tonight.”
He got his feet under him, and with one hand against the shed wall for balance, he stood up. “Less get going.”
Ava grabbed her flashlight, then stood too, so she could try to catch him when he fell. “What can you do, Matt? Look at you. You’re sick and exhausted.”
“No, I jus’ need to move. Work this shit out of my system. You with me?”
She shuddered, seeing again the accusing eyes of those little girls, nine years gone. “There’s not much time. You still think we can get over the wire?”
He froze, light glinting in his smart glasses. “Holy shit. I tol’ you she’s magic. Link up. Lyric’s back online.”
chapter
21
Ava grabbed her tactile mic from the pocket where she’d stashed it when they’d entered Gideon’s realm. She powered up her smart glasses and slipped them on. “Here’s hoping my gear’s not hacked.”
Of course, it had been hacked. Lyric had hacked it. Proof of that came when she was automatically linked into an ongoing explanation, Lyric’s voice saying, “. . . the blast door locked and I’ve got a Marine general with a contingent of volunteers standing guard. I’ve never seen anything like it, Matt. It’s blown up into a civil war in cyberspace, and here, in the halls and stairwells—all without the knowledge of the American people.”
“You’re not alone anymore?” Ava asked.
“I wouldn’t say I have a lot of allies.”
Matt made a fist. “You need to get me on that base. I don’t want to hear any reasons why not. I’ve still got the C-4. Just get me past perimeter security and I’ll disable the sub.”
“That is not going to work,” Lyric told him. “You’re a wanted man. HADAFA will tag you and throw an alarm as soon as a networked camera detects anyone who might be you—”
“So fix it. Clean my record.”
“I don’t have the reach anymore. There’s a lock on your profile and that means you aren’t going to get near the base. Even if you could, it’s on lockdown. High alert. Nothing goes in or out. They had an attempted terrorist incident. Averted, but too close for comfort.”
Matt turned to Ava, teeth gritted. She felt a blush stinging her rain-chilled cheeks. “That was us,” she volunteered. “Bad luck it didn’t work.”
“Ba
d luck it’s made our job even harder.”
“How much time do we have left?” Ava asked. She hadn’t meant it as an existential question, so she clarified: “I mean, before Denali sails?”
“Denali is scheduled to depart at oh-seven-hundred.”
Ava checked the time. Already 6:00 AM, despite the darkness. Less than an hour, and their fate would be decided.
Okay, maybe she had meant it as an existential question.
“Come on, Lyric,” she pleaded. “There has to be someone already on the inside you can use. Or something. A security drone—”
“I don’t have the reach! But I am working with the chain of command to get Denali’s departure delayed.”
Matt asked, “What good is a delay if we can’t get someone in there? Damn it, Lyric. Get me a car. Get me over there. Let me try.”
“Nothing goes in or out,” Ava murmured, thinking aloud. “But what if something happened? An incident that demanded Kaden’s presence off the base . . . would he have the authority to leave?”
“He’s not going to leave,” Matt snapped. “Not now. Conrad owns him.”
“Conrad?” Ava echoed, thinking about the leader of Sigrún. Daniel Conrad had still been in Honolulu as of late yesterday.
Matt said, “Yeah, this is Conrad’s scheme. He recruited Robicheaux—and Robicheaux is devoted to him. You must have heard him talk about Daniel Conrad.”
“No. Or, yes. But only yesterday afternoon.”
Even then, it had been Ava who brought up the topic of Conrad, because he’d been in the news, come to speak against the handover treaty. And when she’d made her contempt clear, Kaden had responded with a gentle accusation: You don’t like it that you agree with him.
Ava had never hidden her political opinions from Kaden, but he’d never wanted to talk politics—a silence she’d attributed to his station, assuming that as an officer, he felt obligated to remain neutral. Little did she know.
“Is it possible Daniel Conrad is still in Honolulu?” she asked.
“No way,” Matt said. “He’s got to be long gone.”
But Lyric grasped at the chance. “Checking.” Seconds passed. “Got him. He’s at the airport in a private lounge. I don’t see him scheduled on any commercial flight . . . okay, I’ve got an association with a chartered jet, business class. Yes. It’s being ferried over from Maui. It’ll need to top off its fuel tanks before departing from Honolulu. That gives you time. Forty-five minutes, maybe.”
“Get me a vehicle,” Matt insisted.
“You can’t be the one to go, Matt. HADAFA will initiate a lockdown the moment you try to enter an airport terminal.”
“I didn’t mean Matt should go after Conrad,” Ava objected, her words running together in her haste to get them out. “Even if you got past HADAFA, got past Conrad’s bodyguards, and forced him to order Kaden to stand down—do you think Kaden would listen? No. It’s gone too far. But you talked before about luring Kaden out. If he’s not aboard the sub, there’s no way the operation can go forward. Right?”
“His presence is required to launch,” Lyric confirmed. “But where are you going with this? You burned your relationship with him.”
“Right. I know. He won’t come for me, but what about Conrad? Lyric, could you fake a message from Conrad? And push it through to Kaden? Have Conrad demand to be taken aboard the sub, a ride-along because he wants to witness the historic action. I’m surprised that arrogant dick hasn’t already arranged it. Kaden would have to leave the base himself, pick up Conrad, escort him back through security—because no one else in his crew would have the authority to defy the lockdown and bring a civilian on base.”
Matt nodded. “This could work, Lyric. But we’ll need a deep fake. A really convincing video message. If you lure him out, I’ll ambush him on the road.”
◇
Lyric instructed Matt and Ava to make their way to Kamehameha Highway. “It’s not far. Once you’re there, wait out of sight. I’ll contact you again when the operation is good to go.”
Ava tallied her ammunition, thinking about Kaden, how he’d been her lover only yesterday. “I’ve got four rounds left,” she told Matt.
“Lyric will resupply you.”
He tore open the second foil packet of Overdrive.
“Matt,” she said disapprovingly. “You’re in no condition to handle another dose of that shit.”
A half-smile, an amused grunt, as he pushed up his sleeve, revealing an old medical patch. “You’re thinking long term. All I need is a couple more hours of clarity.” His smile faded as he swapped out the old patch, replacing it with the fresh one from the packet. “This is a no-fail mission. You know that.”
“Right.”
Deep breath.
He added, “And you’re here for backup, if I go down.”
She nodded, imbued with a sense of calm tension familiar from her time in the army.
They headed out through the banana plantation, the huge leaves of the banana trees rustling, rattling, and snapping as the wind shredded them to ribbons. After that, the road they followed crossed a section of abandoned land, overgrown with kiawe and weeds. The setting moon gleamed yellow past the fringes of rushing clouds—and Ava thought of her daughters.
They’d be awake now in their Spokane home, chided by their stepmother to hurry and get ready for school. She was a good woman, a good mom. They’d be all right. Ava’s heart ached all the same, for all that had been broken—in her, in the world.
Why did we choose this future?
It had been a choice. People had voted against their own long-term interests, returning to office corrupt politicians whose only goal was to sell them out, to sell their futures. Or people had failed to vote at all, too anesthetized by the grind of daily life to lift their heads and really see what was going on around them.
And so the seas rose, the winds raged, fire swept the forests, once-verdant fields turned to dust, and innocent children who’d never had the chance to choose, drowned in floods or were buried in mudslides.
Never ask, Who knew? We all knew.
She staggered as a gust of wind, stronger than any before it that night, roared through the brush, slamming against her back. Branches whipped around her and a confetti-swirl of plucked leaves took flight, shimmering with the sideways rain in the refracted glow of lights from the freeway—all of it blurred into unreality by the water sheeting across the lens of her smart glasses.
◇
They passed under the freeway, continuing on toward Kamehameha Highway as Lyric had instructed, stopping at the edge of the brush, outside the reach of the traffic cameras.
Ava looked out at the highway, the nearest lane some thirty feet away. The imposing edifice of the elevated rail track divided the highway, but no train was in sight, and not a single vehicle moved on the usually busy road. The streetlights still shone and rain danced on the pavement, but there were no cars, no bikes, and no one else on foot—an absence that felt surreal, like an apocalyptic movie set. Everyone but a few stragglers already gone from the world.
Not yet. Not if I can help it.
She glanced at Matt, standing motionless in the shadows. “You doing okay?” she whispered.
“I’m good.”
She imagined Lyric, merged in dark communion with HADAFA, setting up the operation. How long would it take?
To ease her nerves, she turned to the ritual, imagining a dancing flame, a lit cigarette, a burn in her throat as she inhaled soothing white smoke. When that exercise grew stale, she focused on the sound of the wind, the pattering rain, seeking to maintain a state of calm ahead of the coming mission.
Twenty-seven minutes after her last communication, Lyric checked back in. “It worked,” she said. “Robicheaux’s on the move. And I’ve hijacked Conrad’s phone number. If Robicheaux tries to confirm, he’ll only get voicemail.”
“I’m not in position,” Matt objected. “I’m still stuck here on the side of the road.”
“Veh
icle is on the way,” she assured him. “Ninety seconds out. Once you’re onboard, you and Arnette will have another ninety seconds to gear up and get in position.”
“No hurry, then.”
“I need you to take him alive,” Lyric said, ignoring his sarcasm. “I want to cauterize this infection. That means I need him as a witness, to testify to what he intended to do, and to name everyone who helped.”
“I’ll do what I can. No promises.”
“Matt—”
“I said I’ll try! What weapons have you got for me?”
“Since this is not a kill, you’re going in light—”
“Damn it!”
“You’ve got a Carousel shotgun, with slugs, light-weight shot, and webbing in the cartridge wheel. Ammo for your handgun, and for Arnette’s. A spike strip, and aerial kamikazes. Robicheaux is not alone. He’s got two armed sailors with him—”
“So he’s suspecting something,” Ava said.
Lyric answered, “The whole base is on edge after the attempted terrorist attack—”
“Right,” she conceded.
“—and Robicheaux has more reason to be on edge than most. He’s been instructed to meet Conrad on the upper level of the airport terminal, east end. Don’t let him get that far. Try to detain him on the road before he reaches the airport, but do not detain him in the vicinity of the base or you will not be able to control the situation.”
“That’s a narrow window,” Ava said. “The base entrance is only a couple of miles from the airport. You need to call for police backup. Get them to close all vehicular exits—”
“We’re outside the law on this one,” Lyric reminded her. “The only thing a heads-up to the police will achieve is advance warning for Robicheaux.”
“Vehicle incoming,” Matt said. “Is that us?”
“Affirmed. Matt, you will enter via the back door. Arnett, take the front.”
Matt turned to Ava, his fist raised. “No-fail mission. Do what’s necessary. Whatever is necessary.”