She came up to Greg. ‘Only real comms gear in the place,’ she said tersely. ‘Found it on the body of the first target out of the prefab. Other than this, no laptops, no cellphones, no radios except a crude civilian model in each truck, without much range. Not completely off the grid, but close enough – which makes this even stranger.’ She held up the device for Greg to examine. ‘Phone has scramblers built in – professional work, military or government, beyond anything this cell could put together with what they’ve got, or likely steal given their reach. Their one sure means of communicating with any group beyond this site, basically – and they shouldn’t have it, with their isolation and available tech.’
‘Understood,’ Greg replied. One more unknown, to add to the list. Keeping this to himself, he finished: ‘Make a last sweep of the camp’s eastern side, and I’ll send the evac signal. Jorge should be able to break the scramblers, once we’re back.’ Yelena nodded and trotted off, sticking the satellite phone to her belt. Greg watched until she was out of the weak light, then called up the holo-screen on his arm. Two sharp taps brought up a red button symbol: the evac call. He let his finger hover above it, contemplating everything from the mission, then pressed it, firmly.
Samir and Leah came up to him as he closed the screen. ‘Last targets accounted for,’ the other male Golem said. He was nearly Greg’s height, making him among the taller men in the Project, with black-brown hair a couple shades lighter than Yelena’s and a swarthy, Mediterranean-Middle Eastern cast to his face. He didn’t ask about Barsamin; he could tell there was no point. ‘Four of them had mild burns and other evidence of irradiation, though not severe enough to be fatal. They must’ve handled the package more than the rest, or been in closer proximity to it; we’ve tagged them for special examination.’
‘That’s about ten minutes out, as of now,’ Greg said, indicating his arm. ‘Facility chopper will bring us out; clean-up team’s right behind it. They’ll tell us how long this bunch had the package, which’ll point to where and when they stashed or sold it. After that—’
‘Hold it,’ Leah interrupted. Her head was tilted toward the west, listening. ‘Something’s coming in.’ At first Greg didn’t follow her – then he heard it himself. The humming whine of jet engines: F-35s, by the pitch, and approaching fast. Low-flying, too, like they were avoiding radar, or –
The whine swelled to a hissing roar. Three aircraft streaked by over the northern end of the campsite, almost too fast to see. Greg yanked his hood on; the lenses could track them better than the unaided eye, even a Golem’s. In the greenish night vision, he saw the three fighters – now many miles away, by the clinger’s automatic measurement – bank and turn, bringing them back around towards the campsite. Two of them split off from the centre craft, on almost diametrically opposite courses; the third kept boring in. There was a flash of something at its underbelly, and an object fell away. Greg could see what it was, no matter the distance and without the lenses. A JSOW – Joint Standoff Weapon, among the most powerful surface-to-ground bombs.
His legs were already breaking into a sprint as he registered this. Samir and Leah were hardly half a step behind him. Even as he ran for the trees and brush ahead, though, he knew it was close – too close for a sure escape from the blast radius. But they had to try –
The JSOW detonated. At first, there was no heat, or shockwave; just a total smothering of all sound. Then a surge of fire and energy slammed into his back, propelling him off the ground like he’d suddenly grown wings and spinning him crazily about. He caught a glimpse – almost a snapshot – of Yelena, both legs gone, spiralling back down into the explosion’s inferno. Then he struck one tree with a snap of breaking ribs and arm, bounced off another, then ricocheted again to the ground, rolled and buffeted about. His other arm and both legs broke in this; by then he was almost too far gone from the pain to notice. Flames danced across his clinger; this kept them from his body, yet the heat was still strong enough to make his skin bubble and blister beneath it.
Abruptly, he crashed into a boulder, breaking several more bones – but he stopped rolling, smothering the fires on him. Fighting through the agony, he propped himself against it. The once-quiet forest was now engulfed in flames, from root to branch. His breath tore out of him in ragged bursts, knives digging in his lungs with each one. The clinger’s filter barely kept out any of the smoke and stench. The ARC was already kicking in, thankfully; he could feel his arms and legs resetting, and the chest pain grew less, second by second. The burns would take longer; he’d seen it before – and, now, was again.
At that moment, though, he contemplated this only in a very distant, clinical way. Had he been even a second slower… A heavy object crashed through the blazing branches, landing with a jarring thud several yards away: a human’s upper body, one arm gone, the waist a torn, smouldering edge. Greg didn’t need to see the face – charred beyond identification – to recognise Akande’s build. Him, and Yelena: both gone. And Samir, and Leah –
A new shape loomed out of the smoke and fire in front of him. He reached painfully for his knife, or his sidearm. Both were gone, along with his rifle. The shape came closer, finally resolving into two figures, one carrying the other draped over their shoulder – and both dressed in clingers. He slumped against the boulder, too weary and dazed to try to get up. His two teammates. One had their hood still back, showing a head scorched completely bald, crimson white burns over the entire face, healing by inches. Even through this, however, he could make out Samir’s eyes, glazed with agony. His helper – Leah, he realised laboriously – halted a few feet from Greg, and let him slide gently to a patch of clear earth. The wounded Golem moaned – stronger, this time – and lay still, chest slowly rising and falling. Leah gingerly pulled his hood on, and sealed it, then looked Greg’s way. Her eyes didn’t quite have the thousand-yard sheen to them, but they were close. What now? they asked him, or maybe no one. And for the first time in his life, Greg didn’t know…
*
Greg paused. Cayden said nothing, showing only professional interest. Greg’s voice became flatter. ‘Samir made it, though it took a while. After we’d healed enough, we holed up in an old mineshaft not far from the campsite, to wait out the blaze – and any follow-up strikes. Soon as the fires were low enough, we got to a town about fifty miles south, and found transport. It was then we heard the reports on the Army net of the cloud over Seattle, and the expected fallout. At that moment, we knew the assignment had been a set-up… and that the Doctor and the Project were dead. So we went underground, to wait out whatever came next.’
‘Until now,’ Cayden finished. There was a strong edge of doubt in his voice. ‘So, if I’ve got this right… you think whoever was running the Project – D.C., the Pentagon, whoever – was behind the Bomb, along with the attacks on you, then and now? Why would they take out their best? And during the Turmoil?’
‘We don’t know, not for sure,’ Leah answered. ‘All we do know, or suspect, is that even with the safeguards in place, the Doctor was so afraid of losing the Project’s data that he moved it to some external storage unit before the lab was destroyed, and that he had some kind of connection to Advent. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it stands to reason that he found some way of getting his info to a place or person he believed was safe. Once we dug up enough info about the Project’s early dependence on Advent, it was easy work to find their old offices in D.C., and determine which ones had the most security – and drew the least attention.’
The other man still looked sceptical. ‘Sounds like a lot of guesswork and hunches.’ He held up the canister again. ‘Plus none of it explains why you came here – or what this has to do with me.’
Greg opened his mouth, but faltered. Looking Leah’s way, he saw her staring calmly back at him. He tilted his head. Should we?
Her chin dipped, infinitesimally. No choice. If he didn’tknowbefore, he has to now– no matterwhat comes of it.
Drawing in a breath, he looked Cayden’s
way again. ‘When we were digging for the records, we weren’t just looking for technology or contacts. We wanted to know where we came from: who gave us up for adoption or put us in foster care before the Project picked us up, like the Doc and everybody else told us. We sure as hell don’t remember; either we were infants when it happened, or we lost the memories somehow, thanks to the ARC or some other way.’ His voice tightened a bit. ‘We didn’t find anything on that – but we did come across a fragment of an older file, buried in an online storage site used by the Pentagon that had been almost totally fried by the Pulse – almost. It was a list of the original five-person team of Golems the Doc presented to Snyder and the Pentagon brass. At that time, he’d adopted the serial number set-up, so there weren’t names for all of them – except for one.’ He paused. Cayden just stared back at him, unmoving and silent. ‘Yours was that one – as team leader. You, and the other four, you were the first of us… and yet he picked you as the prime example.’
‘So?’ Cayden asked. His voice was hard and suspicious now. ‘If you’re wondering why that was, join the club. I never learned the reason, and the Doctor wasn’t exactly the sharing type.’
Greg shared another look with Leah. ‘After we found that list, we kept digging. It took a while, but we finally found a reference to the Advent archives, in an old Langley communique right before the Bomb. A snippet about a “sensitive item” being brought in from Washington State, to be stored off-site and marked “Eyes Only”, for the sender. There was also a phrase about “personalised security measures”: a lock system designed by the sender himself, supposedly with a very specific type of biometrics – one that had only been on drawing boards at the time, for the government and probably the whole private sector.’ He pointed to the small aperture on the device. ‘It was the kind that only one person, presumably the sender, could open – or somebody with a bio-signature like his. We’re still not sure – but there’s only one way to come close.’
Cayden looked the canister over again. His scruffy features showed only confusion. ‘What are you saying? If the Doctor did code this thing to him, then why’d you—’
He stopped. His eyes went wide; the light green irises almost seemed to disappear. Both hands clenched around the canister, vibrating with the effort. Greg stepped back, keeping his hands in the clear; Leah did the same. If the other man’s shock was strong enough, he could tear down the entire room in seconds, and them with it.
Instead, after two agonising minutes, Cayden moved away from the fire. He sat in the armchair, canister in one hand. He stared at it, eyes narrowed in surprise, anger, disgust, horror – or all four. When he spoke at last, his voice was the harsh, rough tone from earlier. ‘You’re sure?’
Greg moved to his side. ‘You tell us.’ He pointed to the canister.
After a long pause, Cayden laid the canister on his lap. Extending his right index finger, he pressed it to the aperture. A faint click, and he drew his hand back. A tiny drop of blood beaded at the tip of his finger. There was a snap of separating metal, and a puff of depressurised air, as the top seal came undone. Still silent, Cayden took hold of the cap, and twisted it free. Lifting the canister to the light now, he peered inside. Delicately, he reached into it, fingers bent into tweezers. Greg realised he was holding his breath, and let it out in a soft rush. One bit of proof, at last. And if it was for real, that had to mean all the rest – their origins, the source of their amnesia, the reasons for both – was out there to be found, at long last.
Cayden withdrew his hand. Clasped between his thumb and forefinger was a slim, touch-connect flash drive, roughly the size of a human pinky finger. Strands of tensile fibre hung limply from it – adhesive suspension webbing, preventing it from rattling around the interior and risking damage to the data. Cayden held the device up to the light, not saying a word. Greg stepped closer and extended a hand. The other man looked his way, his face a solemn mask. Finally, he handed the drive over.
Peeling off the webbing, Greg extended his left arm, and pressed the wrist activator with his other hand. The holo-screen sprang into existence, covering half his forearm. He touched the drive’s connect surface to the suit’s interface, just below the screen itself. Immediately, row upon row of random text, numbers and symbols began to cascade across the screen. After several seconds, the image froze. Four empty spaces appeared, and a single word flashed above them: PASSWORD. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, without much anger. Figures there’d be another wall overwhatever’s on this thing. He held out his arm to Leah. She said nothing, but the disappointment was plain. Cayden just stared at the now-empty canister in his hands, not moving a muscle.
In a whisper, Leah asked, ‘What now?’
Greg didn’t answer, not at first. He looked at the screen once more, then at Cayden. Carefully, he shut off the interface, and peeled away the drive. Stepping to Cayden’s side again, he wrapped his hand around the canister, tugging it free of the other man’s hands. Cayden didn’t even seem to register his presence. With similar care, he dropped the drive back into the canister, and closed the cap.
Drawing himself to his full height, he looked to Leah again. He held the canister out to her. ‘Our suit systems don’t have enough processing power to break encryption like this,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But if we get him back out West, the Sanctuary will have the right people and equipment, and then we’ll be ready for the last part of the plan.’
She nodded. Greg turned back to Cayden, who was sitting ramrod straight, still staring blankly. As quietly as possible, he moved in front of the armchair. ‘Cayden?’
The other man didn’t appear to notice him. His face was blank and passive, like a wax dummy. Slowly, he stood up, joints cracking. Even with the poor light, the new, growing determination in his eyes was clear and strong. Stepping up to the mantle, he took down the photo, cupping it in one massive palm. He stared at it for a long time. At last, he lifted his head, and met their gazes. When he spoke, his tone was firm. ‘All right.’
*
The last of the sun’s rays were stealing through the trees, casting a soft grey-gold light over the clearing. Looking up from a last once-over of the pickup’s engine, Greg saw Cayden emerge from the cabin. He’d changed into a heavy leather jacket, green and blue plain flannel, dark jeans and work boots. The black gleam of his clinger was just visible beneath the shirt collar, and extended over his hands. His beard was gone, and his face was scrubbed clean, courtesy of the creek a mile away. A minor bulge at his chest showed where his own knife was sheathed; another, larger one at his waist outlined a 9mm. In one hand he held a small green canvas bag, with US Army still stamped in faded grey letters. The other held a sealed tinfoil package – or, at least, looked like tinfoil. Standing in the door, the taller man looked intently all around him, plainly trying to soak everything in one last time.
Leah came up beside him. She’d scrubbed all the dye and styling out of her hair, as he’d done. ‘No sign of any other visitors,’ she murmured. ‘We keep on the back roads, we’ll skirt the reservation, and hit the main highways to the Twin Cities without leaving any signs. We’ll have to head north for a while, and jink around to throw off any obvious possible pursuit, but it should be clear driving. After that… it depends on him.’ She looked Cayden’s way. ‘You sure he’s ready for the saddle?’
‘No,’ Greg said. Leah looked at him, surprised. Watching the other man, he finished, ‘But as long as he’s with us, we’ve got both halves of the answer. Right now, we need to get back home, and he’s our best bet of getting there.’
From her expression, Leah wanted to disagree. Nonetheless, she held her peace. A loud ripping sound drew their attention back to the cabin. Cayden had torn off the top of the packet. With a dispassionate air he flung his hand out, sending a clump of great sand-like material flying into the air. It spread in a fine mist over the cabin’s walls and roof. He did the same three more times, from the rear and both sides of the cabin, then crumpled the packet up, and stowed it in his j
acket.
He hadn’t gone more than half a dozen steps toward the duo before a loud crack! ripped through the clearing. Another followed, then a steady staccato of cracking wood and crumbling plaster and dirt. The roof of the cabin sagged, and then dropped into the cabin in a cloud of tiles and dust. The walls and windows collapsed inward not two seconds later, crumbling away like a sandcastle in high tide as the deconstruction compound did its work. Within two minutes, all that remained of the cabin was an irregular, grey-stained rectangle. That would disappear soon, too, leaving just a large patch of dirt and disturbed snow.
Never could get used to how fast ‘Tacitus’works, Greg mused. He slung his duffel over one shoulder. Better than risking a forest fire by torchingit, though. Plus the compound self-destructs fast enough to not leave any real trace, or so we’ve been able to guesstimate.
Aloud, he said, ‘Let’s go.’
Chapter 8
Volk Field and ANG Base, Wisconsin
The Following Morning (8:00)
The ops centre was packed and busy: aides running in and out with computer printouts or holo-tablets, techs seated or standing before radios and satellite connections, and the individual officers or group of them standing before digital maps, outlining the day’s actions for their units. Hargrove stood near the centre of the room, over a darkened 3-D table map display. Two of his bodyguards stood not too far away, dressed in dark green coveralls devoid of insignia. On the opposite side of the table stood a tall man with silver-streaked dark blonde hair, dressed in plain woodland fatigues, with a colonel’s eagle insignia and a tiny nametag: Patrick. Costa observed from a nearby screen. There were dark shadows under the agent’s eyes; he probably hadn’t slept since Hargrove had left D.C., only catnapping here and there. By contrast, Hargrove felt perfectly fine – energised, in fact.
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