And they did.
A ghost back from the dead.
“And now you live? For what?”
“To stop them.”
“Who is them?”
“I don’t know, not yet.”
“And what do you want to stop them from doing?”
“Destroying the world.”
Salman couldn’t help laughing. “If you haven’t noticed—”
“There is still a lot worth saving.”
This gave the old Italian a pause. “Run with us,” he said, his voice gaining a note of sympathy. “Hide with us. Whatever you want with your father’s things, maybe—”
“No more running.”
“You want to restore your family honor? Is that it?” It was something Salman would understand, but his tone was sarcastic.
“I want to save them.”
“Your parents are dead.”
“Giovanni, Hector, they are still alive. Out on the ice.”
Rita took her arm. “Raffa. Is he with them?”
Jess nodded, noticed the way her eyes lit up. “I think he’s alive.”
Rita’s father’s face softened. “But there is nothing we can—”
“You cannot escape, Salman. Do you want to die here? Do you want them to die here?” Jess flicked her chin at Rita and the boy. “Give me the bag, right now.”
She’d tracked them using the signet ring. It tapped hard against her index finger—in front, in front—the beacon was in that bag.
Salman had been halfway to bolting, but now stood firm. “How could you save us? If you’re not dead anymore, you look more than half dead right now.”
She hobbled forward, wincing in pain. “I prefer to think of myself as half alive. Do you think I came here for no reason? Trust me.” She held out her hand.
The Italian hesitated, glanced at Rita, but shrugged and handed over the bag. “It is hard to argue with someone who has come back from the dead.”
“Then we are together.”
He nodded. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
She pulled a roll of duct tape from her pocket. “Hold this.”
The whirring noises in the dark sky intensified to a deafening rush. A massive dark shape loomed gray overhead. The Englishman’s ears rang, his senses still numb from the grenade blast. With a shaking hand, he picked a fragment of shrapnel from his leg and struggled to his feet. Outside the tent, a burst of gunfire, but something else, like fast beating wings.
The gunfire stopped.
A man stepped in through the tent’s opening. The guard beside the Englishman opened fire, straight at the man’s exposed head, but the bullets bounced off some kind of transparent helmet. The man held up his hand. “Once more, and you die.” He turned to the Englishman. “Mr. Radcliff?”
Iain nodded.
“I am Maxim, head of Sanctuary security. Do you have Dr. Rollins laptop and data?”
“It’s underground, in Vivas.”
The man checked something, a ring on his finger, and nodded. “We will be back.” He pointed a finger at Iain. “Stay.”
“Let’s move.” Jess shouldered the backpack.
Rita led the way, her rifle out. Jess gave her one of her spare headlamps. Salman brought up the rear, with Jess and the boy in the middle. They wound their way through the shantytown of rubble and metal, frozen dirt showing through the ice and snow underfoot. Jess did her best to keep up, but her prosthetic had almost torn free in her crash landing, and her other, real foot, exploded in pain on each step.
The chaos Jess had incited with the plane crash had calmed down. No more yelling voices echoed overhead, no more bursts of gunfire.
“We’re going to meet Roger and Massarra at the southern edge of the camp,” Jess whispered.
“What about the Englishman?”
“He shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
They reached an opening, a flat square between the buildings a hundred feet across, lit by orange sodium lights on posts at each corner.
“They should be a few hundred feet on the opposite side,” Jess whispered, crouching low. “We’ll go as a group.”
Tapping Rita on the shoulder, she hobbled out into the snowy opening as quick as she could. Bits of debris blew away in front of her in sudden breeze.
Except that it wasn’t a breeze.
A violent downdraft of rushing air pinned them in place. Shapes dropped from the sky. Men on ropes slid down into the snow and crouched. The cyclone from above evaporated almost as quick as it had started.
“Don’t move,” Jess whispered without needing to.
A dozen men clad in gleaming black stood, weapons out, but not weapons Jess recognized. Something else. Something different.
“Give us the bag, Miss Rollins.” A man stepped between the warriors, his head covered in a translucent dome that reflected the orange sodium lights. In the dim light, she couldn’t quite make out the face.
Two more of his men came behind, each of them dragging a body.
It was Roger and Massarra. Jess swore quietly.
“I’ll kill them,” the man said. “Just give me the bag.”
“Shoot them, for all I care.”
“Don’t test me.”
“But what about Giovanni?” said another voice, from the shadows behind them. A voice with a thick German accent. “And what about Hector?”
Jess lowered her rifle.
A pot-belled, older man with a tangle of gray hair and spectacles stepped out from behind the men. “I can help. But you need to give me that bag.”
Jess squinted in the dim light. She’d seen this man before, many years ago. At the university with her father, when she was a child. “Dr. Müller?”
33
A BLACK-CLAD SANCTUARY soldier patted Jess down. He slid a hand under her ragged clothing.
“Hey!” she yelped and tried to squirm away, but another held her arms behind her back while a third bound her feet together.
Her arms were covered in taped-on bandages, with more of the tape wrapped around her midsection where she’d attempted a fix for the ribs she cracked in her abortive parachute landing.
“She’s clean,” the soldier said, forcing her to sit on a wooden bench at the back of the cell.
Back in this stinking jail. That’s where she’d ended up. Back where she’d been detained when she first entered Vivas.
The world seemed a more innocent place, back then, when all that had happened was a natural disaster. Now the evil of men had cast its ugly shadow over the events. So much of the death and carnage wasn’t a consequence of nature.
Now there were people to blame.
Roger and Massarra were similarly bound and searched in the cell across from her, while Salman, Rita and their boy were in the cell to her right. Through the window bars, the sky wasn’t black anymore. The darkest shade of gray colored it.
They were quick-marched here. No time to waste, apparently. The men, the Sanctuary forces, were dressed head-to-foot in gleaming black body armor, even their faces covered.
“Transparent aluminum,” said their leader, Maxim, the only one who had introduced himself. He stood at the base of the stairs leading up and watched Jess as she observed his men. “Very tough. Your weapons wouldn’t penetrate it. You made the right decision to stand down.”
The door behind him opened.
Iain Radcliff entered, now a shadow of his usually well-composed self. Black smudges covered fresh crimson scars on his cheeks. His left eye was swollen, and he limped, a bloody red bandage around his right leg.
“Are you okay?” asked a voice in a thick German accent.
Dr. Müller entered the room behind the Englishman.
“I am fine,” Iain insisted. “But these people attacked us.”
“It was very good work recovering Dr. Rollins data,” Müller said. “Would not have been possible without you.”
Iain stopped at the base of the stairs. “I only ask that my family and I be granted asylum within Sanc
tuary.”
Müller smiled. “Of course.” The smile dissipated as he switched his gaze to looking around the room. “First, we need to deal with this mess. Another terror attack against Vivas. It is too much. It is why I came. We have to stop this madness.” He held up a tablet. A video played on it.
Jess leaned forward. It was her. In the airplane earlier. The video tracked her, then followed the spinning aircraft as it exploded into the ground. It was very clear.
“You were following us?”
“When you arrived here, yes, our drones picked you up.” He pointed at Massarra. “And this woman, the Queen of Spades, one of the highest terrorists on our watch list. She masterminded the bombing of the Vatican.”
“A lie,” Massarra spat. “But your kind tell many lies.”
“And Roger Hargate, one of our own,” continued Müller. “One of Maxim’s own men. A traitor.” He turned to Salman. “And a convicted mafioso. What a motley gathering. The Rollins family never ceases to amaze me.” He turned to Jess.
“I don’t care what you’re doing,” she said breathlessly. “Just find Giovanni and Hector, and Lucca and Raffa. They’re on a patch of ice, in the sea. Maybe a hundred and fifty kilometers—”
“I’m sorry, but even with the technology at our disposal, and even if I wanted to, that wouldn’t be possible. We have no jets, no turbine engines can survive the ash floating everywhere in the skies. The entire Earth is coated in it. No, we have to limit ourselves to internal combustion or electrics—propeller driven aircraft—and even these degrade quickly. It is very expensive to maintain anything that flies, at least for now. And there are very limited resources, you understand.”
“But they’re only a hundred kilometers—”
“More like two hundred kilometers, straight off Naples, if our radio signal triangulation is correct. We did intercept your latest transmissions.”
“So you know where they are.” Her voice rose in pitch. “A helicopter. A ship…?”
“A helicopter big enough to make that distance and pick up survivors would require turbine engines, my dear, and ships…” He laughed. “The Mediterranean is an iceberg infested deathtrap, swamped almost daily by massive tsunamis. All the Earth’s oceans are, and will be, for some time. There are no ships.”
“Please, they’ll be dead in a day.”
“I’m afraid you must consider them already dead.” Müller affected a pained smile. “Was this your gamble? As much as I revile you, I am sorry.” He turned back to Iain. “And enough of this. Please, escort them to the troop carriers. We will bring them to Sanctuary for interrogation.” He turned back to Jess. “Except her. Leave her with me for a moment.”
Maxim nodded and the black-clad men grabbed the prisoners.
Müller waited for them to leave, keeping just the Englishman with him. “Such a shame, all of this.”
Iain nodded. “I agree.”
“But catching a terrible criminal mastermind like Jessica Rollins, you must be proud,” Müller said. “Soon the whole world, or at least what is left of it, will find out. You will be famous.”
“So what do we do with her?” Iain smiled an greasy grin at Jessica.
“She’s going to try and escape.”
“She is?”
“And it’s such a terrible shame, that you, the hero, will be killed in the struggle.”
He turned to Müller. “Wha—”
Müller had a pistol pointed directly at his chest. He pulled the trigger, a muted thwap the only noise. It was silenced. The Englishman stared at his chest, a pool of red spreading across it. He crumpled to the floor.
“Do you know, that is the first time I’ve ever killed anyone?” Müller said, staring at the body.
Jess retreated on her wooden bench and squirmed against the ropes binding her hands and feet. “I doubt that.”
“When you put it like that, I see what you mean. I must have killed thousands. Hundreds of thousands. But I take no pleasure in it. Before Nomad hit, we had to…highlight…the divisions in our society. Bring them into sharp relief, so people could see more clearly.”
“See what more clearly?”
“How we must rebuild. Don’t you see? This is a chance for humanity to start with a clean slate, to be rebuilt better and stronger.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Genius is often described as such.” He walked into Jess’s cell. “You are a remarkable woman, do you know that?”
Jess flinched and pushed her back against the wall. “What do you want? Is it my father’s data?”
“You just don’t seem to want to die,” Müller continued, ignoring her questions. “When Roger was with Nico, at the castle, they assured me you would not survive.”
Staring into his eyes, her skin crawled. “So you arranged that? Dragging my family into that castle, into the middle of that mess?”
The German pursed his lips. “Sometimes it is necessary to come up with a myth that people can blame, rather than the cold hand of unfeeling fate.”
“So you blamed all this on my father?” As terrified as she was, anger rose up in her. “Blamed him hiding the existence of Nomad, tied him to the terrorists?”
“And you inspire such devotion, Jessica.” Müller stood in front of her, his face radiating mock admiration. “Roger, who betrayed your father, even led him to his death, and yet you forgave him. And here he is, working for you. And Salman, uncle to Nico, who terrorized your family—”
“They were all just pawns in your sick game,” Jess spat. “Not their fault.”
“This is no game.” He stopped laughing. “But it does need to end. I’m only sorry that you had to see this. You should have been dead a long time ago. My agents assured me your family was dead after Nomad, and yet you popped up in Vivas and on radio transmissions. We tried to find you, but it was Salman and Iain who reported you dead, again. Yet here you are.”
Jess needed more time. “‘The Organization’ that Roger said he worked for—”
“My organization.”
“And the Vatican, that was…”
“You are a clever girl. Destroying Rome was a necessary precursor to justifying military control of Sanctuary. They would be dead anyway, at least this way their deaths served a purpose. I am not a monster, but practical, you see?”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing and leaned closer.
“Such a shame that I can’t let you live.” Müller held his pistol up. “And you know, I get the feeling that even if I put a bullet in your head, somehow you will pop up tomorrow somewhere, taunting me. And I can’t have that. So you know what I think I will do?” He leaned close to Jess’s face. “I will take your body back to Sanctuary with me, and take you apart, piece by little piece. An autopsy, I’ll tell them, to search for microchips, something you might have swallowed. But I will take the bits of you, and scatter them to the four corners of the Earth, just to—”
Jess started to laugh, right in his face. Not just a giggle, but a full blown snickering laugh.
“You find that funny?” Müller’s eyes widened, the look on his face incredulous.
“Too little, too late,” Jess managed to get out between snorts.
The man waited in anticipation.
“You might have tried searching me better earlier,” she laughed.
His look of confused mirth darkened. He grabbed Jess’s shirt and ripped it open. Her skeletal frame was crisscrossed with duct tape and bandages, and convulsed violently with each painful sob of laughter. He felt around her body, her hair, and then grabbed her breasts. His jaw fell open, and he ripped her bra off, shredding the fabric apart.
In his hand he held the beacon, Roger’s beacon. With Roger’s severed thumb duct taped on top of it. The device glowed blue. It was on.
Outside, the loud whirring in the sky had started again, and beams of light stabbed down from the brightening cloud cover.
“It’s in broadcast mode,” Jess screamed over the rising noise, her face some
where between a snarl and a grin. “You just told the entire world, all frequencies, everyone back at Sanctuary—even your men outside—you just explained the monster that you are—”
The door at the top of the stairs flew open. “Sir, you must come with us.” screamed Maxim. “Now!” Debris swirled around him.
Gunfire erupted again outside.
Müller looked at him, back at Jess, then at the pistol in his hand. He raised it.
“…and that you blamed my father,” Jess screeched, throwing herself from the bench, using her head as a missile launched straight into the old man’s chest.
He fired, but it grazed her left shoulder as she barreled into him, knocking them both hard to the concrete floor. She landed on top of him, knocking his wind out. The pistol clattered across the stone floor. But she was tied at her feet, her hands tied behind her back. He pushed her off and she squirmed to turn around.
“Now! We must leave!” Maxim yelled from the top of the stairs again. He strained to see into the swirl of debris kicked up into the air behind him.
Jess rolled onto her side while Müller got to his feet. He glanced at Max at the top of the stairs, then at the pistol ten feet away inside the cell, and finally at Jess squirming to get upright. A seething frustration boiled in his eyes, his face creased in anger, but there was no time.
He turned to follow Max.
Jess screamed and ripped the stump of her leg free from the duct taped prosthetic. She jammed her stump into the concrete, using it as leverage, and leapt upward with everything she had. Müller flinched away, held out a hand to block her.
And Jess used the only weapon she had left to use.
Her teeth.
She sunk them deep into the side of Müller’s hand. He roared in pain and slammed her head with his right fist, but she held on, tasting his blood in her mouth. She bit down, feeling bone and sinew crunch between her teeth.
The man yelped in pain. He punched her face. Blood poured from his hand. She was dragged along the concrete after him, a bloody slug, but Maxim had already disappeared from the top of the stairs.
The last thing Jess saw was more men, rushing through the open door, running down the stairs. Müller roared in frustration and slammed his fist into her head again.
Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2) Page 24
