by S. Harrison
“You can make up for it by stopping Project Infinity now,” says Bit.
“I did that before I released you,” Onix says, smiling at Bit. “All the satellites have been diverted over uninhabited areas of the planet.”
The hugest grin beams onto my face, and I lunge forward and wrap my arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. I let him go, and Bit and I grab each other into another hug.
“This is quite a day,” says Onix. “And to top it off, I just received my very first hug.” He breaks into a wide smile.
“Onix! My mother and Nanny Theresa!”
He nods. And both of them instantly blink into being right beside us.
“We’re free?” my mother gasps. “Did we stop it? Please tell me we stopped it.”
I nod enthusiastically, and it’s her turn to leap at me and hold me tightly as she giggles uncontrollably. My mother releases me and looks me in the eyes. “I’m so proud of you, of all of you,” she says, looking around at Bit and Onix.
“Well done,” Nanny Theresa says, and I almost see a smile, but not quite. “Mr. Onix, please see that this facility is completely destroyed. Access the military computer in Washington, and find the file designated ‘Hand of God’ . . .”
Onix stares into space for a second. “File accessed.”
“Oh,” Nanny Theresa says in obvious surprise. “Very good. The file contains the launch codes for the orbiting satellite code-named—”
“The Swords of Damocles,” says Onix. “Coordinates locked. The satellite is being diverted and will be in position in twenty-six minutes. I will schedule the strike for one week from today to provide sufficient time to evacuate the remaining people and retrieve the bodies of the deceased.”
“No,” says Nanny Theresa. “The location of the facility and all the research contained in it has been compromised. Others will be coming, and none of what almost occurred here can ever be allowed to happen again, no matter how remote the chances may be. The laboratories, the domes, the computer core, all of it must be destroyed as soon as possible.”
“Can we at least have some time to get out of here?” I blurt.
“Of course, you silly child. I did not mean this very second.”
“Theresa’s right though,” accedes my mother. “The sooner the better.”
“Will three hours suffice?” asks Onix.
“One hour,” says Nanny Theresa.
“My sensors indicate that a transport is currently landing near the location of your physical bodies,” Onix says to me and Bit. “I am not sensing any other human life signs in any other sector. One hour will be more than sufficient to reach a safe distance from the facility before detonation.”
“Wait, what about Mariele? We need to get Mariele!” I blurt. “She’s in Dr. Pierce’s lab.”
“My sister is alive?” gasps Bit. “And she was in that lab the whole time?”
“She’s not your sister, and yes, she’s alive. I’ll explain later, but we need to act fast. Onix, can you sense her?” I ask.
“No, I cannot.”
“That’s OK. We’ll go get her. Just hold off on the fireworks until we do, OK?”
“Of course, Finn. You can contact me with Bettina’s slate. I will wait for your word.”
“We should get going then,” I say, looking up at Onix. “How do we get out of here?”
He opens his mouth to answer but doesn’t get a chance to say a word, as a furious, deep, resonating voice rumbles from everywhere around us. “You’re not going anywhere!”
The voice is so loud even the wall of the sphere seems to shake.
“What is that?” Bit asks.
I look up, and above us I see a black vapor beginning to coalesce high in the air, molding itself into the shape of a man. The bottom of the dark wisp of smoke begins changing color and condensing into a pair of pure-white patent leather shoes. Crisp white trousers materialize above them and lead up to a white belt and a silky black shirt covered by a snowy-white suit jacket. A red tie rolls down from the collar of the shirt as a cleanly shaved neck and pencil-moustached face morph into being. The digital ghost is finally topped off with that unmistakable slick black hair, completing a fully formed and venomously glowering Dr. Richard Blackstone. My father hovers, standing in midair, looking down at me with such intensity that I feel as if his glare is an unbreakable strand and I’m tethered to it, unable to move, like a fly held fast in the web of a sinister spider.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Richard?” whispers my mother, and her voice breaks me from my hypnotic trance. “But how? His consciousness can only become active after his death.”
“It must have become active soon after I killed him,” I say.
“You killed him?” my mother asks, looking over at me.
“Damn right I did.”
“Good girl,” she mutters and then goes right back to staring at him.
“All of you . . . RUINED EVERYTHING!” the downloaded ghost of my father bellows as he throws his fists into the air. “MY LIFE’S WORK! ALL FOR NOTHING!”
“All of you must leave,” says Onix. “The mainframe is open to all the systems on the planet. I can close it so he cannot escape, but you have to leave first, or you will be trapped in here, too. Go. Go now!”
My mother and Nanny Theresa nod and then quickly turn to me and Bit. “We’ll meet you back at home, girls, at Blackstone Manor.”
“There’s enough space in the data crystals beneath the manor for you, too, Mr. Onix,” says Nanny Theresa.
“Thank you,” he says. “It will be nice to be home again. Now all of you must leave.”
“Be careful, young ladies,” says Nanny Theresa, then, in a flash, she’s at the wall of the sphere, and with a touch she vanishes into it.
“I’ll see you soon,” my mother says as she kisses my cheek and reaches over to squeeze Bit’s hand. With one last smile, she’s gone in a flash of white.
“THEY CAN RUN. BUT IT’S YOU WHO KILLED ME!” my father roars as he points directly at me. “AND SO NOW I WILL RETURN THE FAVOR!”
“What the hell is he talking about?” I ask, anxiously looking up at my father.
“Oh no,” says Onix as he stares into space. “I have scanned Dr. Blackstone for recent activity. He left the mainframe three minutes ago and infiltrated the military computer in Washington. I’m afraid he has set a new launch time for the Swords.”
“Can you change it?” I ask.
“I’ve already tried,” replies Onix. “But it appears that he somehow caused a power surge and destroyed the circuits that relay instructions to the satellite. I cannot alter their new settings.”
Both Bit and I stare at Onix. “How long do we have?”
“The Swords will launch as soon as the satellite is in position. Time to impact, seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds.”
In a flash my father is standing right before us. “It seems Infinity is not forever after all,” he quips with a smile. Onix quickly grabs him by the scruff of the neck.
“Go!” Onix shouts as he looks toward a tiny black spot at the very top of the sphere. Suddenly Bit and I both scream as there’s a rush of acceleration and a blur of color. I gasp real air into my actual lungs as my withered, gray-skinned hand releases from Bit’s arm. My legs buckle, and I collapse into a heap as the glossy black column that was holding us prisoner disintegrates into fine, dark powder and pours in a torrent onto the floor beside me.
“Stay still,” says a voice. I look up and see Jack looking down at me with a concerned look on his face. “That was close,” he says as he detaches the chain from his chain-saw hand. “Another minute and your mate over there would’ve had to get a hook.”
“Thank goodness,” Jonah says as he tucks Percy’s gun into Brody’s satchel, which is now strapped over Jonah’s chest.
Jackdaw stands up, and lying on the short white bridge behind him, with Brody cradling her in his arms, is Bit. I don’t know which one of us looks worse, but just judging by her gra
y skeletal features and her withered hands and arms, I’m guessing we’d both win prizes at a Halloween party.
“Bit,” I croak as I crawl toward her. She’s groaning feebly. She looks so weak I doubt that she can even stand. All my strength is completely gone, but as voices shout and people crouch around us and boots rush down the crystal hallway, I begin to feel better. In fact, I feel much better with every second that passes. I look down and see the gray fading and the color coming back into my skin as my withered fingers plump back to normal. All around my hand the black powder has become glossy black liquid, and it’s steadily rippling toward me. I splay on my stomach and reach out with both hands, scooping more powder to me, and it instantly liquefies at my touch and soaks into my palms. I keep doing it until, after twenty seconds or so, the liquid stops sinking into me and just runs off my skin. I don’t just feel better. I feel great. I look up and see Mantis and Jack standing beside the doorway.
“Did you see what I just saw?” Jack says, pointing at me.
“I can see every wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum,” says Mantis. “But I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I quickly shuffle to my knees and crawl to Bit. She looks up at me, and I hardly recognize her. “Finn,” she croaks. “You . . . look . . . good.”
I smile at her. “And you will, too, in just a second.” I scoop some of the powder from the floor into my hand, and it liquefies. I gently drip some on Bit’s sunken gray cheek, but it just turns back into powder as soon as it touches her.
“It’s not working, Finn,” Brody says, stating the obvious.
“Bit, you’re just like me,” I whisper. “These quantum grains can heal you. You just need to try.”
“Don’t . . . know . . . how,” she whispers. Of course she doesn’t. How could she?
“The scalpel!” Brody blurts out. “When I cut her before, she healed. Maybe that was because—”
“I was touching her skin!” I gasp. “Quickly, Brody, bring her over here, lay her down in the middle of the powder.”
He nods, picks her up, and gently carries her frail, shrunken body to the center of where the column disintegrated. He lays her down right on top of the powder.
“Her hand, put her hand in it,” I say, but there honestly isn’t much of one left to speak of. The fingers of her right hand look like they’ve melted off from touching the column. Brody lays her fingerless palm on the powder. I quickly pull her t-shirt up over her gray hollowed stomach and press both my palms against her skin.
The effect is almost immediate as the powder turns to liquid beneath her melted limb, and five nubs push out of it as her fingers begin to regrow. The gray fades around my hands, and her normal color comes rushing back into her abdomen as the sunken curve of it starts to fill. Brody scoops up handfuls of the dark powder and begins rubbing it on her face, where it instantly turns to liquid and soaks into her skin. Bit inhales a huge lungful of air and opens her eyes wide as she changes back into the pretty freckled fifteen-year-old girl that I adore.
Brody, rather too enthusiastically, throws two handfuls of quantum grains right into Bit’s face, but the healing is complete. The grains have stopped absorbing into her, so they don’t turn to liquid, and she’s hit in the face with a cloud of black powder.
“Hey! That’s enough!” she barks as she sits bolt upright and swats at the air with her thermal-blanket-slung arm. Bit takes her black-powder-covered glasses off and stares at her arm. “It’s not broken anymore,” she says as she pulls the sling up over her head and drops it beside her. “And the gunshot, it’s gone,” she blurts out as she stares down at her stomach and rubs her palm over her skin.
“I didn’t want to . . . to shoot you, Bit,” says a miserably guilty-looking Brody.
Bit gently touches his cheek. “I know you didn’t, and I understand why you did it, but look,” she says, poking a finger through the hole in her t-shirt. “I’m OK now.”
I look around, and the doorway is crammed with curious faces. Jackdaw, Mantis, Bulldog, Brent, Margaux, and Commander Zero, and towering over their heads at the back is Jonah. I even spot a twitchy-looking Dean; he’s half crouching, holding on to the satchel hanging at Jonah’s hip, peering through a small gap between two people. They’re all staring at us in amazement. Well I actually can’t tell what Commander Zero is feeling, because he’s still wearing that blasted mask and visor, but everyone else looks pretty damn impressed.
“We’ve got about twelve minutes to get out of here before the whole place is nuked,” I tell them.
Everyone’s expressions of wonder vanish like shadows in the night.
“What?” says Jack.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Bit shouts as she jumps to her feet, and everyone just looks bewilderedly at each other.
“MOVE!” I scream at them. “MOVE!” I yell again as I stride across the bridge and shoulder barge my way between Jackdaw’s and Brent’s chests and push the others out of the way to clear a path into the crystal hallway. Bit pushes through behind me, and Brody is close behind her as I run down the sparkling passageway. “Eleven minutes!” I shout, and I think everyone realizes how serious Bit and I are as I glance over my shoulder and see them quickly begin running in a tight group after us.
I dash into the small crystalline room where the stairs are and leap up them three at a time. At the top the door slides open automatically, and I run out into the cool night air. The army-green transport is bathed in moonlight and looks huge in the middle of the small clearing among the trees. Everyone begins emerging behind me. “Go! Hurry!” I shout and slap them on the backs as they run past me toward the lowered ramp at the back of the aircraft.
Bit, Brody, Margaux, Brent, and Mantis all sprint past, but when Commander Zero runs from the doorway, he looks toward the transport and frantically circles his finger in the air. The transport’s engines immediately fire up, and he jogs on toward it as Jack emerges and waits for Jonah.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be flying that thing?” I yell at Jack over the noise of the turbines.
“We found another pilot! He was hiding in the cargo hold of one of the transports,” he yells as Jonah lumbers out of the door with Dean following close behind.
“That’s good!” I shout.
Jackdaw nods enthusiastically as he grabs Jonah’s wrist and flings his arm over his shoulder. I quickly position myself under his other arm, and we all jog along as fast as we’re able toward the transport.
Suddenly someone shouts from behind us. “Major Brogan!” But there isn’t anyone behind us, well, no one but Dean McCarthy.
I look back, and for some reason Dean has stopped in his tracks. He’s just standing there in the darkness, motionless.
“Wait!” I yell to Jack and Jonah. All three of us stop and turn around to face him. “Dean! C’mon!” I shout, but he doesn’t budge; instead he does something very strange indeed, even for him. He raises Percy’s gun and points it right at us.
“Whoa! Put that down!” shouts Jack.
“How did you get that?” barks Jonah. “Hand it over right now, son!”
“You killed me, Major Brogan!” Dean shouts at us.
I frown with pity. Poor guy. He’s completely lost it. “Snap out of it, Dean!” I bellow. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Put the gun down, and let’s—”
“You left me to die among those roses like an animal!” he screams.
My eyes have adjusted to the dark, and as I look at Dean, a haunting realization dawns on me. Dean’s expression is eerily familiar; it’s a similar glower of contempt that I recognize from nearly every day of my childhood. There’s only one person I know who scowled like that, only one person who blames Jonah for killing them, and only one person whose mind was connected with Dean’s when she hacked into the R.A.M. in Dome Two all those hours ago. Somehow her consciousness left a scar inside Dean’s head, and he’s not himself anymore. Now he thinks he is Nanny Theresa, and he’s aiming Percy’s gun directly at
Jonah’s chest.
I quickly break away from Jonah and lunge toward Dean . . . but I’m not fast enough.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The muzzle flashes light up Dean’s manic face, and bullets whizz past my cheek as I swing my fist and clock him solidly on the chin. His head shudders from the impact, and he crumples to the ground, unconscious. I look back at Jonah. Panic surges through me when I see that he’s on the ground. Jackdaw is desperately pulling at his arm as Brody and Lila run down the ramp of the transport toward us. I kick Percy’s gun away from Dean’s limp hand.
“I have him, Commander!” Lila shouts over the noise of the turbines as she reaches me and quickly scoops Dean up into her cybernetic arms. She throws him over her shoulder like he’s a rag doll.
I dash back to Jonah as Brody and Jack haul him upright. Jonah laboredly drags his feet as the boys huff and grunt under his arms, jostling him along toward the transport. I stride alongside them, staring anxiously at Jonah. To my dismay, I can see there are three bullet holes in his yellow radiation suit. One bullet caught him on the arm and looks like it might only be a graze, but the other two holes are only inches apart from each other. Both shots hit him right in his gut, and both holes are leaking trickles of blood.
Desperate worry grips my heart as we all tromp up the ramp. It slowly raises behind us, and seconds later the transport begins to lift. Jackdaw and Brody gently lower Jonah, but he winces painfully as he settles onto his back. Lila unceremoniously dumps a floppy and still-unconscious Dean onto the floor, then she crouches at Jonah’s feet and looks down at him with lines of concern creasing her forehead.
I quickly kneel at Jonah’s side and press my hands firmly on the holes in the radiation suit over his stomach. There’s so much blood. It’s too loud to hear each other speak without a headset in here, so there’s frantic waving and pointing from Jack, Brody, and Lila. Commander Zero pulls a med kit free from a wall; he hurries over to us and quickly hands the kit to Jack, who immediately wrenches open the lid and begins rifling through it.
