by Brian Nelson
In the morning they broke camp and headed northeast.
“It is four days to an area called Valley of the Bones,” Khamko said. “Perhaps we can hunt there; if not, we must keep going.”
Chapter Forty
Space Food
December 7, 2026
Washington, DC
Jane ran up the stairs to the fifth-floor landing, a sudden nervous excitement running through her as she thought of Bill’s last words. I’ve got something. They had been meeting every evening to hunt for the Inventor, but this was the first real news.
She rushed down the corridor toward Lab #9. “Make way!” she called, knocking against several lab techs who didn’t move fast enough. “Hey!” one called as he slurped spilled coffee off his wrist. Jane didn’t stop to apologize.
When she turned into Lab #9 she stopped cold in her tracks. What in the world? Hundreds of cheap wooden crates filled the huge lab, some stacked all the way to the twenty-foot ceilings. Chiquita. Dole. Producto de Costa Rica. Importada de Ecuador. She didn’t need to look inside the crates to know what they held. Her nose picked up the sickly sweet smell of fermenting bananas.
Fifty yards away, Bill was at the lab’s opposite entrance, directing some workers who were delivering another pallet. “Yes, right there is fine.”
“What’s going on?” she called out.
He waved. “Oh, Jane, good. I’m glad you’re here.”
He met her halfway across the floor and spread his iSheet out on the bench. “It’s so fascinating. Take a look.”
Jane read the headline:
Mysterious Banana Blight
Now Extends to Ecuador
A strange malady affecting millions of banana trees in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama has emerged for the first time on the South American continent. Scientists are mystified by the ailment, which doesn’t appear to be any known disease or fungus. The strange blight has banana growers worried because virtually all banana plants are clones, meaning that a single ailment could potentially wipe out every Cavendish banana tree in the world. Luckily, the blight does not appear to kill the entire banana tree, and a tree whose bananas are affected is able to grow healthy bananas later. “It is a very strange phenomenon,” said Ernesto Nava, Ecuador’s Agricultural Minister, “it affects one group of trees then seems to hop to another group while leaving others unscathed, almost like a geometric pattern.” While the blight has now hit four countries, it has only affected 20 percent of the trees there, which means there should still be plenty of bananas for your smoothies and banana splits.
Jane furrowed her forehead. “Sorry, but I’m not seeing the connection.”
“Well, I was thinking about what we talked about: how the Inventor might be exploring space. So I began looking at the materials he might need to do that, rare earth elements and such, keeping an eye out for anything strange. That’s when I came across the article.”
Jane raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Bananas are important for space travel?”
“No . . . and yes. Remember how I said that faster-than-light travel might be possible with antimatter?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, antimatter is extremely hard to come by. In fact, if you could gather all the antimatter that humans have ever created, it would be no more than thirty nanograms. That’s not even enough to boil a pot of water. Are you with me?”
“Antimatter. Scarce. Got it.”
“But it does exist in tiny amounts on—and around—the earth, and it could, in theory, be harvested. For example, it sometimes bombards the atmosphere as cosmic rays. Occasionally it is created in thunderstorms. And, believe it or not . . .” He held up a banana.
“You’re kidding.”
Bill shook his head. “You are looking at one of earth’s few antimatter generators.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You are free to verify this using your search engine of choice,” he said, “but whether you believe it or not, it is, in fact, the truth.”
Jane pulled her iSheet out of her pocket. “Do bananas create antimatter?”
The electronic voice replied. “Bananas emit positrons, a type of antimatter.”
Bill gave her a smug look. “Do you want to know how?”
She nodded, her lips still squeezed together in doubt.
“Your tasty yellow friend here contains trace amounts of an isotope called potassium-40. As potassium-40 decays, it emits a steady amount of positrons. In fact, every banana on the planet produces a positron every seventy-five minutes. When I saw the article on the news, I thought, of course! If someone had access to very advanced swarm technology, like the Inventor surely does, he could harvest those positrons as a fuel source.”
“And is he?”
Bill grinned in way that took forty years off his age. Jane couldn’t help but smile, remembering how much he’d said he missed working in a lab.
He continued, his eyes bright with excitement. “The blight isn’t a disease at all, it’s a by-product of positron harvesting. I found evidence of assemblers on thousands of these bananas. And they were the most beautiful nanosites I’ve ever seen.”
“So it’s really him?” Jane said. She needed to hear him say it.
Bill nodded. “It has to be. These nanosites were efficient in a way that I’m not even sure I understand.” He showed her an image that looked like an insect drawn with a Spirograph. She could immediately see how it was lighter and more streamlined then the nanosites they had made. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
She laughed. “Yeah.”
“You see, the trick with antimatter isn’t just finding it. Once you have it, you have to keep it away from matter. If it touches normal matter, it’s annihilated. But the Inventor’s nanosites are essentially Penning traps, microscopic particle accelerators that can hold the antimatter in a magnetic field. That means the Inventor’s nanosites can collect antimatter just as easily as a bee collects pollen. It’s amazing!”
Jane found herself blinking as she tried to imagine it. That meant the Inventor was working on a global scale, his legions of nanosites spreading all over the earth to do his bidding. She imagined massive swarms, microscopic but large enough to alight on every banana on hundreds and hundreds of miles of tropical forest, harvesting an energy source that humankind’s current state of technology couldn’t touch. If he’s doing this, what else is he doing? After all, this was just the power source for one of his inventions. How many more trillions of nanosites were out there, autonomously working for him?
“Wait, if he’s collecting antimatter like a bee collects honey, then where’s the hive?”
“Ah, yes, I thought of that, too. So I attached tracking markers to dozens of the nanosites. They were rising in the air, about ten thousand feet, when I lost them.”
“Lost them?”
“Yes,” Bill shook his head sadly. “It appears he realized what I was doing. You may have also noticed that I referred to the nanosites in the past tense.”
“You mean they’re gone?”
He nodded. “I’ll keep looking in the new banana shipments I get, but I think he’s clearly on to us.”
Jane’s shoulders sagged and her chin dropped in defeat. “So we aren’t any closer than we were before.”
“Oh, I think we are a lot closer. We have verified our initial theory that he is a scientist, first and foremost—one who is primarily interested in discovery. I think that’s very important. His interest in antimatter confirms that he is likely exploring space. Also very important. And now that I have seen the sophistication of his nanosites, I’m even more convinced he’s sending them into space as probes, perhaps at faster-than-light speeds. That’s all very good information.”
“Yeah, but that’s not getting me any closer to finding Eric.”
He moved closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “I
’m sorry. I know it’s frustrating, especially when it’s clear that he has the power to easily help us. Unfortunately, there’s one more lesson from all this. The way he recalled his nanosites as soon as I tried to track them shows us that he definitely wants to be left alone.”
Chapter Forty-One
Caller ID
December 7, 2026
The forests of West Virginia, near Big Moses
Riona Finley jumped when she felt the phone vibrate against her leg. She had been on edge since yesterday, since she had realized that someone had found her.
She looked at the number.
<
Had the government found her? Were they trying to use the phone to pinpoint her? It wouldn’t work, of course. Her cell phone only used Wi-Fi, all her calls were encrypted, and she used a VPN that gave her location in the South Pacific. If she answered, all they would know was that someone in Tahiti had made an encrypted call.
She waited until the vibrating stopped. She was walking in the woods, about two miles from her cabin, trying to clear her head.
A minute passed. The phone began to ring again. Again, a private number.
She summoned her courage and pressed Talk, but she didn’t say anything.
“Hello, Riona.” It was man’s voice. Confident and strong.
“Who is this?”
“A friend and admirer.”
She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t in the mood. “How did you get this number?”
“I am a very resourceful man, Miss Finley. In fact, I’m the kind of man who can help you.”
She let out a sardonic laugh. “I’m not exactly in the line of work that allows me to collaborate with strangers.”
“I understand completely, which is why I made two deposits to your crowdfunding account yesterday.”
Riona felt her pulse quicken. She had been up half the night because of those deposits, one for $39,458.73, the other for $80,714.58. They were not particularly large sums—she had received donations for as much as two million—but the lack of rounding had caught her eye, making her suspect someone was trying to tell her something. There was another thing: the two sums had been sent at exactly the same instant—0600.00—from two different locations, so that only she, the recipient, could put them together.
It had taken her only a few minutes to figure it out. The numbers were coordinates. When she’d entered them into her computer and made the second figure negative, she’d been shocked: it was the exact location of her cabin.
“Are you trying to blackmail me?”
“On the contrary. I want to help you. I made the deposits so that you would know up front that if I meant to do any harm, I would have done it already.” The voice was soothing, lyrical, and oddly arresting. She felt herself taken in by it. She sensed that he was very intelligent; she could sense it in his voice.
“I’m prepared to donate five million more, if you’ll consider my offer.”
“I’m listening.”
“I was very interested in your recent blog posts about trying to stop some technologies, while promoting others. I completely agree with you. In fact, you could say that I work in advanced technology myself.”
“You could say?” she probed. There was a playfulness to him that intrigued her.
“I’ll put it this way: The information I can feed you about which technologies should be hindered and which should be helped can only come if I stay anonymous.” Riona found herself nodding. Whatever technology he was involved in, it had obviously helped him find her, which was better than anything at the disposal of the FBI or the rest of the US government. Such a person could be useful in many ways.
“Okay,” she said, “but what if I disagree with your, um, recommendations?”
“That’s fine. All I’m asking is that you take them into consideration. But I’m quite confident you will reach the same conclusions as I have. Your recent writings already prove it. And I think you will find my advice most helpful. There are things happening that will both amaze and shock you.” There was a pause, then he said, “But I have already taken up enough of your time.”
He seemed to enjoy teasing her, but she didn’t feel like playing along. He had already given her plenty to think about. “Then let me thank you for your generous donations,” she said.
“Not at all. I have been waiting for someone like you for a very long time, Riona.”
He seemed about to hang up then he spoke again. “Ah, there is one last thing.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a man I know who might be able to assist you.”
“Oh, really?” He was audacious and overassuming, but she had to admit he was starting to grow on her.
“Yes, he’s sort of polymath . . . but in your line of work.”
“You mean terrorism?”
“Precisely.”
Chapter Forty-Two
New World Tracker
December 7, 2026
Namibia
Master Chief Nathan Sawyer stared at the smoldering wreckage of the two pickup trucks and rubbed his beard. Five of his fellow Navy SEALs and an Air Force combat controller were rummaging around the site, searching for clues. Their Bell Valor sat in a clearing forty yards back, her rotors flexed and relaxed as if wilting under the hot African sun.
It had been thirty-three days since Hill had gone MIA, and while Sawyer didn’t like to be a pessimist, common sense told him that they were unlikely to find him alive. He had probably died near the crash site, and while that area had been meticulously searched by both the Chinese and his men, the fact they hadn’t found a body wasn’t surprising considering all the things that could have devoured it or carried it off. The only oddity was his boots. Why were the boots sitting there like that? It didn’t make any sense.
Regardless, Sawyer wasn’t going to give up until they either found him or lost all hope. That was the credo he had lived by for the last twenty-five years: you never leave a man behind. And that went double for a man he considered a friend.
Yet it was clear that he was growing desperate. What was he even doing here? They were 120 miles from the crash site and almost 160 miles from the Chinese mining camp. It made no sense that Hill would be here. But this morning when he’d seen the satellite images of the black smoke, it had piqued his interest. He didn’t know if it meant anything. But it was at least something. So he had brought the team to check it out.
He looked again at the burned-out trucks: their melted interiors reminded him of dried lava. He examined the pockmarked roof and doors from the bullets that had cooked off in the fire.
What the hell happened here?
Part of the story was clear. They had passed the watering hole on the way in. Fucking apocalyptic, he thought. An area the size of ten football fields covered with nothing but rotting carcasses. Even the vultures and hyenas were dead. The stench rose up like a cloud and had engulfed everyone in the aircraft. It was obvious that these four assholes had poisoned the water, killing all those animals for a dozen ivory tusks. Sawyer shook his head in disgust. And just because they were too fucking lazy to stalk and shoot the elephants with their assault rifles.
He knew there were four poachers because of the skeletons. And he liked that story. It had the ending he wanted. But then things got weird. They had been gutted like deer and most of their entrails had been left in a pile near the fire. Most of their entrails. There were no hearts or livers. And there wasn’t much meat left on the bones, just about the amount you’d find on a turkey after Thanksgiving dinner. Whoever had taken these guys out, had cooked and eaten them. Okay, that was kind of cool. The hunter in him could respect that. But then they had torched the trucks and the rifles. That was odd because those were expensive and could be sold. So whoever did this did not value those things . . . which suggested they were Sān tribesmen. But the Sān were renowned for being non
violent. Even their name meant “the harmless ones.” Certainly not cannibals.
And there were more mysteries.
Where was the ivory? He could find no sign of it. And he wasn’t the only one who wanted to know. Someone else had been here looking for it. There was another set of tracks from a pickup truck that had come and gone very recently, perhaps in the past few hours. The tire tracks ran this way and that and told of the driver’s mounting frustration as he searched in vain for the coveted prize.
But who had done this? And how had they arrived and how had they left? He could find no other tracks coming in or out. It was as if death had descended on the poachers from the heavens.
Sawyer was determined to find the trail. It was a point of honor. He was an excellent tracker, thanks to a rather unusual childhood. His father had been a brilliant MD. With his mind he could have made millions treating rich people in a prestigious hospital. Instead, he’d felt it was his duty to help the poor. So he’d gone looking for the most impoverished people in the most god-forsaken parts of the grand United States. The bright side of that was that his son lived on or near Indian reservations in North Dakota, New Mexico, and Alaska. From his Native American friends and their families, Sawyer had learned to hunt and survive for months in some of the most extreme environments on earth—the Badlands, the Chihuahuan Desert, and the Gates of the Arctic National Park. He credited the hardship he endured as a kid (and the resourcefulness it ingrained in him) with helping him to become a SEAL. And now, it was a matter of personal pride that he find the trail. It was there; he just had to find it.
