“How many you have in here?” one of the men asked Juliana.
“Forty-eight,” she replied.
“Here,” the man closest to Pax handed him the items in his arms. “We need to get a few more.”
Coats, Pax realized. The subzero type skiers used.
The second man set his pile at Pax’s feet, then he and his partner headed back out. As more cold air rushed in, Pax started passing out the jackets.
“I’m going to wish I stayed on the island, aren’t I?” Robert said when Pax reached his seat.
“Don’t worry,” Pax said. “It’ll probably hit thirty degrees here in a day or two.”
“Celsius or Fahrenheit?”
Pax tossed him a coat and moved on.
After he passed everything out, he returned to Robert and said, “Can I borrow you for a second?”
“Sure.” Robert looked over at his seatmate, Estella. “Be right back.”
Pax led him outside and explained the lowdown on the living situation.
When he was through, Robert asked, “What about the ones with the flu?”
“Medical team on site.”
“Are you staying?”
“Wish I could, but I’ve got work to do. Our facility is just over the hill, not more than twenty minutes away. If you need to talk to me, grab one of our people and they’ll get me on the line.”
Robert seemed disappointed, but said, “Okay.”
“I realize this isn’t the perfect situation, but—”
“No, it’s all right. Really. We’re all just glad we’re still alive. Someday it would be nice to go somewhere warm again, but for now this will do fine.”
“Glad to hear that.”
From down the street came the rumble of a powerful engine. Pax turned toward the noise and saw it belonged to a dark-colored Mustang. As it neared the buses, the vehicle slowed to a crawl.
The window rolled down.
“I thought you might need a ride.”
Pax smiled and rushed over to the car, giving Chloe a hug through the opening.
“I do, indeed,” he said. As he stood back up, he looked over at Robert. “I’d like to introduce you to Chloe White. She’s, uh, one of our frontline people.”
Robert walked over and held out his hand.
“Chloe, this is Robert Adams.”
Her eyebrow shot up as she grabbed his palm. “The savior of Isabella Island. Nice to meet you.”
“Uh, I’m not…no…there was a lot of…”
Chloe laughed. “Hold on to that modesty. It’s attractive.”
Robert’s mouth opened a couple of times, but nothing came out.
Pax slapped him on the back. “I gotta go. But I’ll see you again soon. I promise.”
“Okay,” Robert managed. “Be safe.”
WARD MOUNTAIN NORTH, NEVADA
ASH HAD INTENTIONALLY fallen asleep on top of his covers, fully clothed.
He had argued a bit with Chloe about who should pick up Pax, but in the end she won. Thankfully.
He’d stretched out after dinner, thinking he’d sleep for only an hour or two, but when he looked over at his clock again, it was nearly two a.m.
A jolt of adrenaline shot him out of bed and into the public corridor outside his family’s rooms. He made a beeline for the comm center, where he found three women he didn’t know by name manning the stations.
“Does anyone know if Chloe or Pax is back?” he asked.
The closest comm tech turned toward the door, her eyes widening when she saw who he was. “Captain Ash,” she said. “Um, no. They’re on their way. Should be here any minute.”
“Thanks,” he said.
He hurried to the main entrance, grabbed a coat off one of the pegs, and stepped outside.
The moon was low on the western horizon, the stars packing the rest of the sky, leaving only small pockets of black unfilled. At first there didn’t appear to be anyone on the road leading to the highway, then twin beams of light popped up from a dip about two miles out.
Ash stomped around, trying to keep warm. He knew he should go back inside but he was too keyed up. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency about figuring out the meaning of Matt’s message. Add to that the potential of striking another blow at the Project Eden directorate and it was a wonder he wasn’t running down the road to meet the car halfway.
Finally, the dark Mustang pulled under the camouflage netting that covered the base’s parking area, and stopped. As Ash jogged over, the doors opened and Chloe and Pax climbed out.
This was the first time the two men had seen each other since the hunt to find Bluebird to stop the Project from releasing the virus, so they threw their arms around each other in a bear hug.
“So good to see you, Captain,” Pax said.
“Likewise,” Ash told him.
As soon as they parted, they started walking toward the base entrance.
“Chloe filled me in on what’s going on in Mumbai,” Pax said. “She also said Rachel’s basically removed herself from things.”
“Only temporarily, I’m sure,” Ash said. “You might be able to bring her out of it better than any of us.”
“I don’t know about that, but I’ll give it a try when I get a moment.” Pax glanced at Chloe then back at Ash. “So the one thing Chloe and I didn’t discuss is this issue you asked me about on the phone.”
“DS,” Ash said.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think the letters mean?”
Pax grimaced. “There’s no easy answer.”
“So we’ve gathered.”
Pax rubbed the arms of his coat. “Do you mind if we get inside first? I’ve been down in the tropics for a few days. Think my blood’s gone thin.”
They entered the base and went straight to Chloe’s room. It had been crowded when it contained only Ash and Chloe. With Pax there, they barely had enough room to breathe. Ash let the other two have the bed, and he took the chair by the door.
Pax spoke first. “Augustine dream sky. You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“One hundred percent,” Ash said.
Pax frowned, thinking for a moment before shaking his head. “Like I told you on the phone, I’d never heard that phrase until you said it to me.”
“But DS means something to you,” Chloe said.
“It does.”
When he didn’t go on, Ash said, “Are you going to make us drag it out of you?”
“Sorry. Was just…remembering,” Pax said. “The truth is, I don’t know what the letters specifically stand for, and as far as I know, Matt didn’t, either. What I do know is that Matt was obsessed with those two letters for several years, and was sure they referred to a secret Project Eden program.”
“What kind of program?” Chloe asked.
“I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know. There were times when it seemed Matt thought finding out about DS was almost as important as figuring out how to stop Implementation Day. He told me once if the Project was able to release the virus, DS might be the key to their ultimate success.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ash asked.
Pax shrugged. “He kept this one pretty tight. I think Billy and I might have been the only ones he ever talked to about it. I knew he grew frustrated when his contacts couldn’t come up with anything more solid. After a while, he seemed to give it up, or maybe he just stopped talking about it, I don’t know. Felt to me like he was chasing a ghost.”
“Do you think DS stands for Dream Sky?”
Pax grunted a humorless laugh. “Who knows? Seems kind of a stretch to me. But it was the last thing he said, so I guess you have to give that theory some weight.”
“Maybe even more than you think,” Ash said. “Right before he said those words, he’d been with one of his inside contacts. That’s how he got into the Las Cruces base.”
Pax’s eyebrows furrowed. “I didn’t know that. Do you know which one?”
“C8.”
“C8? Are you sure?”
“That’s what he told us,” Ash said.
Pax blew out a breath.
“Why?” Chloe asked. “What’s the significance?”
“C8 was one of Matt’s oldest contacts, one of his deepest. He was someone Matt had been close to when he was still in the Project.” He paused and looked at Ash and Chloe. “And he was the one Matt got the original info from about DS.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“That’s a pretty strong connection,” Chloe said.
“Still might be nothing,” Pax cautioned.
More silence.
“What about Augustine?” Ash asked.
“Doesn’t mean anything specific to me,” Pax said.
“There was an Emperor Augustine, wasn’t there?”
“Augustus,” Chloe corrected.
“Right. Augustus,” Ash said. “Another form of the same name, though. Let me see, there was a St. Augustine. A city in Florida named after him. Isn’t it the oldest European-founded city in the US? Maybe that’s important.”
“There’s got to be hundreds of things the names could point to,” Chloe said. “I’d kill for Google right now.”
Pax tilted his head. “How many letters long is it? Nine?”
Ash ran the word through his mind again. “Yeah. Nine.”
“I need paper and something to write with,” Pax said in a burst of energy.
Chloe pulled a pad and a pen from inside the top drawer of her dresser, and handed them to him. He created a square three-by-three grid and wrote letters in each space—A-U-G in the top row, U-S-T in the middle, and I-N-E along the bottom. He then made several more grids, using different combinations of the letters in each. When he was through, he stared down at the paper.
“I’m not as good at this as Matt was,” he said.
“Is that a code?” Ash asked.
“A key. I think.” He patted the air above the pad with both hands. “It’s here somewhere. I’m just not seeing it.”
“May I?” Chloe asked.
Pax passed her the pad. “Have at it.”
While she examined it, Ash asked, “How do you know it’s a code?”
“Matt kept things with his Project Eden contacts to himself most of the time. I think he was afraid one of us might get captured with the info. Felt the best way to protect those inside was to share only when absolutely necessary. I can probably count on one hand the number of times he showed me a communication he received.”
“You said you knew how to get ahold of them, though.”
“No. I said I knew where the information was that would tell us how. Unfortunately, it’s at the Ranch, in the Bunker. I’m the only one who knows the combination to the safe, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to give it to you over the radio.”
Ash couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Retrieving the information would mean a trip back to Montana, something none of them could afford to do right now.
“Tell me about the messages you did see,” he said.
Pax closed his eyes for a second. “On the surface, each seemed like a note or letter you might receive from an old aunt or someone like that. Nothing really there. But every single one of them would begin with a nine-letter word, a decoder. Once you figured it out, you could use the result to pull the real message from the note.”
“So how do you decode the word?”
Pax looked pained. “That’s the problem. I saw Matt do this once, and that was years ago. I’m not the dumbest guy around by any means, but when it comes to this kind of thing, I just might be. I remember the squares. I remember him putting the letters in. I don’t remember how he figured it out, though. Or how the code then unlocks the message. I missed something.”
“But if we do figure it out, this…key will show us what dream sky really means, right?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Chloe looked up from the pad, frowning. “I got nothing.”
Ash took the pad and gave it a quick examination. He didn’t expect anything to jump out at him, and he was right.
“Is there anyone here who might be good at this kind of thing?” he asked.
Chloe said, “Yeah. There is.”
CALEB FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that he and his team were not superhuman and could not stay awake indefinitely. So a shift system was put in place that would allow each of them a generous six hours of sleep in the sectioned-off portion at the front of the trailer, always leaving three of them awake and working.
Caleb was about as deep into the unconscious world as one could get when Mya shook his shoulder.
“Hey, Caleb. Wake up.”
Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. “What?”
“Get up. We’ve got company.”
He looked at his watch and realized it hadn’t been six hours yet. It had barely been two and a half.
“Why did you wake me up?”
“I told you. We’ve got company.”
He angrily pushed himself up on an elbow. “What company?”
“Higher-up type of company. They want to talk to you.”
“Did you tell them I was asleep?”
“I sure did.”
He started to throw off his blanket, but halted and looked at Mya. “A little privacy?”
She rolled her eyes as she walked back around the partition.
Alone now, he hopped out of bed and pulled on his CAL TECH sweat pants and HAN SHOT FIRST T-shirt. He then headed into the main area like a bull entering the ring,, intending to give these higher-ups a piece of his mind. He figured it was probably someone from communications, or, more likely, the engineering department. The latter was ticked off at him for all the resources he’d been using since the India project had begun.
“Whatever the hell it is you want, it could have—”
His guests were not from engineering.
“Sorry to get you up so early, Caleb,” Pax said. “I understand you’ve been working very hard.”
Pax wasn’t the only one who was there. Chloe and Captain Ash were with him.
“Mr. Paxton, Captain Ash, Ms. White, I’m, uh, sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.” Caleb shot a quick glare at Mya.
She gave him an exaggerated shrug, like she had no idea why he’d be upset.
Forcing a smile, he said, “What can I do for you?”
“We have a puzzle we were hoping you and your team could solve for us.”
“What kind of puzzle?”
Chloe set a pad of paper she’d brought with her on a desk. “Easier if we show you.”
Twenty-One
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
5:51 AM PST
“GABRIEL, ARE YOU up?”
As he always did before he went to sleep, Gabriel had turned the volume down on his radio and tucked it in next to the pillow. He was not asleep, however, when Nyla’s voice trickled out of the earpiece. He was simply lying there, eyes closed, performing his morning meditation.
“Gabriel?”
With a sigh, he grabbed the radio, stuck the receiver in his ear, and clicked on the mic. “Morning, L-One.”
“Time to get up, big boy. L-Seven spotted someone heading down Sunset Boulevard but lost them in Silver Lake.”
“Copy, L-One. Should be able to get to the Alvarado intersection in five.”
“Copy that.”
So much for a shower, Gabriel thought as he rolled out bed and pulled on his clothes.
He’d stayed at the same house on Scott Street for the last three days. It was near the middle of his assigned area and met his basic requirement of being dead-body free. The bonus was the bed. It had one of those mattresses made out of a material that conformed to his body. The damn things were so expensive, he’d wondered why anyone would spend money on them, but not anymore. He was sold. Good thing the prices had dropped.
He grabbed a couple energy bars from his pack before he slung it on and headed out the door into the still-dark morning.
Jogging most of th
e way, he reached the corner of Alvarado Street and Sunset Boulevard ahead of his promised time, and moved over to a small building housing a takeout place called Burrito King on the northwest corner. Standing at the front edge, he stopped and listened for footsteps.
All was quiet.
He thought about radioing Nyla and asking how long ago L-Seven had spotted the survivor, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. If the person was heading toward Dodger Stadium, Sunset Boulevard would be the logical route from Silver Lake. All Gabriel needed to do was wait.
He was starting in on his second energy bar when he heard the faint echo of a step. He put the bar away and leaned around the building to look west on Sunset. No one there, but the road bent to the right about seventy-five yards away so he couldn’t see that far. He could hear more steps, though—rhythmic, unhurried, and definitely heading his way.
He considered moving down the road so he could get a better look, but his encounter with the runner the day before was still fresh in his mind, so he didn’t want to be seen until he was ready to be. Besides, his position at Burrito King was about as good as he could get. It would hide him from the approaching person, even as the person passed by.
He stared down the road, his mind registering all the unmoving shapes, waiting to see one in motion. When the human silhouette finally moved into view, he ever so slowly eased his head back around the corner of the restaurant.
There was no change in the sound of the steps, only the continuous thud-thud-thud of rubber meeting asphalt.
As the person came abreast of Burrito King, Gabriel tensed, his eyes on the road. The moon had already dipped below the horizon, so the stars provided the only light. That was more than enough for him to get a good sense of the walker.
It was a guy, medium height, wearing a light jacket and baseball cap. No backpack, though, which was kind of odd. Most of the people Gabriel and the rest of the team had come across had been carrying things.
He was concerned that maybe this wasn’t a regular survivor, but one of Project Eden’s people on patrol. But the unease lasted only a second because he had never seen one of them out alone, and he’d certainly never seen any of them unarmed, like this guy appeared to be.
The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 2: Books 4 - 6 (Ashes, Eden Rising, & Dream Sky) Page 71
