“Long story,” said Reed as a rush of nanites streamed over him, everywhere at once, stitching themselves into the ultimate body armor in the blink of an eye. He felt like Tony Stark from the movies, moving freely while an advanced Iron Man suit raced to his aid and assembled around him. The nanites enveloped Reed from head to toe in an invisible spandex-like suit that was light, formfitting, and flexible. Only his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth were left uncovered.
“I need you to do exactly what I tell you,” he said urgently to Allie. “Lie down! Quickly. I need you to close your eyes and play dead until I come back.”
Allie’s eyes were unfocused, and she seemed temporarily paralyzed.
“Now!” he screamed at her to break her from her trance.
She shook her head to clear it, and then sprawled out on the ground next to the two dead Chinese operatives without a word. Reed pressed his left hand into a growing pool of blood and brain matter that had exploded from Chen’s head and wiped a copious swatch of red onto Allie’s forehead. He dipped into the pool again and decorated her stomach in the same way, the red popping against the white casual blouse she was wearing.
“No matter what happens,” he ordered, “don’t move! And if anyone enters this room, don’t breathe.”
He sprang to his feet, not waiting for a reply, and pressed himself against the wall near the door. Seconds later the door shot open and three Chinese soldiers burst through, each carrying the Chinese equivalent of an M-52 assault rifle. Reed gunned them down from behind, killing the second before he could finish spinning around to face his assailant, and the third an instant before he could get off a shot. All three joined their comrades and the brilliant physicist on the floor.
“I’m so sorry you had to see that, Allie,” said the American commander earnestly. “But I have to go. I’ll return as soon as I can. Hang in there, and remember to continue playing dead.”
Reed shoved the Glock into his waistband and relieved the nearest fallen soldier of his assault rifle and handgun, tucking the latter next to the weapon made of nanites. He exited the room and entered a short corridor while two additional armed men charged at him, one scoring a direct hit on Reed’s forehead before he put them both down. The high-caliber round ricocheted off his body suit, snapping his head back slightly, and stinging, but no more so than if he had been hit by a fired paintball.
He quickly stepped over the bodies that now blocked his way and entered a main hall, and was instantly attacked by three more soldiers, all of whom he put down with ruthless efficiency. His mind raced as he frantically tried to find options that didn’t involve more death.
But there were none for him to find.
If he had gas, and a mask, he could knock them all out. But he didn’t have gas, and there was no room he could use as a makeshift prison cell, other than the room he had just vacated, which was too far away. Even if it were close, too many soldiers were gunning for him. If he paused to attempt to imprison them, they’d soon realize he was bulletproof and tackle him to the ground, pile on, and restrain him.
If only Allie had a suit of her own, it wouldn’t matter. But the Chinese personnel knew the facility better than he did, and if he spared even one combatant there was no telling what countermeasures this combatant could activate, from ironclad lockdowns, electrified floors, to the release of offensive drones. And just like the captain in the woods, his adversaries would now be desperate to kill Allie rather than let the US have her. A show of mercy on Reed’s part would likely backfire on her, with lethal consequences.
As much as it sickened him to kill helpless men with lives, dreams, and families of their own, he couldn’t see any way out.
Reed clutched at his ears as a piercing shriek threatened to blow out his eardrums. Three more soldiers had come into view, and one of them, having witnessed the futility of firing on the escapee, had thought to deploy a sonic generator, a tiny device that could topple a roomful of hostiles like bowling pins, knocking them out instantly.
Reed’s comms had been designed to counter this type of attack using military-level noise-canceling technology, so the man wielding the device only succeeded in felling his two comrades. Still, the Chinese version of the tech was so advanced, Reed thought his brain would explode, and he quickly put the attacker down, wondering what the man had put in his ears to protect him. There were rumors about this device, so powerful that the first time it was used it could deliver a killing blow. Even depleted, it could be used a second time to deliver a knock-out blow, before finally running out of juice entirely.
The tiny device fell to the floor, and Reed scooped it up and slipped it into his pocket. It had been designed to look like a pack of gum, and was something US intelligence needed to study. Reed put bullets into the heads of the two men on the ground, just to be sure they were dead, and continued his sweep of the premises.
He made his way from room to room as men came out of the woodwork to kill him, firing on him and occasionally hitting him before he returned fire. He picked up additional firearms from the ground when his ammunition ran dry, and continued onward, a human wood chipper leaving a swath of blood, intestines, and the smell of human feces in his wake.
The incoming fire he took bounced off him every time, delivering pain and unpleasant stings, but shielding him from death and even injury.
Despite its fortifications, the buried structure rocked slightly every ten to fifteen seconds, and Reed could only imagine the kind of explosive power being unleashed on the surface. The kind that only octa-nitro-cubane could deliver. Hoyer and his men must be leaving nothing to chance up above.
A ruthlessness that he was forced to emulate down below.
For almost six minutes, while the muffled explosions topside continued, Zachary Reed shot up anything within the facility that moved, until nothing but death remained. After taking several additional minutes to satisfy himself that no one was in hiding, he began working his way back to Allie.
The carnage that now surrounded him was at least as epic, at least as horrific, as anything he had seen as a member of SEAL Team Six. It was utterly sickening. Guilt continued to claw at him, and he continued to fight it off. There was no time for self-recrimination. He had done the analysis, and Hoyer was right. This was a hostile base on US soil, and they had been prisoners here against their will.
Still, this had been a choice that no one should ever be forced to make.
Reed sprayed additional rounds into the smallest of cabinets and other possible hiding places as he backtracked, just to be sure he hadn’t missed a diminutive solider concealing himself. He also dragged bodies hastily into rooms and shut doors behind them, wasting precious time on a housekeeping mission, wanting to shield Allie from a gruesome, hideous display that could make the most hardened soldier spill his lunch on the ground.
But he couldn’t shield her entirely. Pools of blood remained on the floors, turning them slick or sticky, depending on how quickly they had dried, and most walls were now painted with streaks and spatters of red.
Bile rose in Reed’s throat. Not from the grisly deaths he had brought, but from the way he had brought them. It had been the least fair fight he had ever been involved in, and he had never felt more like a butcher.
Reed finally made it back to the room from where he’d started. He rushed through the door, only to find one last Chinese operative, his back to the far wall, holding Allie Keane in front of him like a shield. The man held a gun at the scientist’s temple, keeping everything but his eyes and forehead protected by her body.
“Drop weapon or girl dies!” the Chinese soldier yelled in Pidgin English.
“I’m so sorry, Zach,” croaked Allie, who looked utterly terrified. “He was in here too long. I had to breathe.”
“Drop weapon!” screamed the man again, this time pressing the barrel of his gun so tightly into Allie’s temple that he drew blood.
Reed dropped his assault rifle without hesitation.
The Chinese operative s
aw it falling to the ground and pulled the gun away from the side of Allie’s head and swung it toward Reed. But he was too late. The moment Reed had released the weapon, he moved with the speed of a gunslinger in the Old West, snatching a handgun from his waistband and planting a bullet in the man’s forehead, just inches above Allie’s shoulder.
Reed managed to get off the shot a fraction of a second before the man finished squeezing his own trigger. Which was satisfying to him on a professional level, but irrelevant. With his nanite body armor, the outcome would have been the same even if he had been outdrawn.
Allie’s knees buckled, and she collapsed to the ground. Reed rushed to her and knelt down beside her. She was dry-heaving, but she somehow managed to keep the contents of her stomach on the inside, not adding to the already gruesome scene.
Reed helped her to her feet and held her while she shuddered against his body.
“You’re safe now,” he whispered. “But I’m so sorry you had to see that. I didn’t want anyone to die. But there was no other way.”
He waited almost ten additional seconds before gently separating from her. “We need to go,” he said softly, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible. “We’re not in China. We’re in Utah, in an underground Chinese base. Long story. But there’s an elevator to the surface we have to get to.”
He could see in her eyes that her agile mind was returning, despite the abusive trauma she continued to have to endure. “Won’t the elevator be guarded?” she asked.
The answer was yes. It had been heavily guarded. But he had changed that.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “This will sound strange, but I want you to jump up on my back, put your arms around my shoulders, and close your eyes. I’ll be giving you a piggyback ride out of here, but I want to keep my hands free. Okay? I promise that you’re perfectly safe. I just need you to close your eyes and trust me until we’re topside. Can you do that?”
She glanced around the room, at the six ravaged bodies soaking in their own blood, and then back at Reed, who didn’t seem to have a scratch on him. “Who are you?” she said warily. “And don’t tell me you’re wearing carbyne boxer shorts, because I’m not buying it.”
Reed sighed. “I’m still just an ordinary human,” he said. “But extraordinary things are happening. I don’t know much more than you do.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
“Come on,” he said, turning his back so she could climb on. “The man with all the answers is above us right now. Let’s find out together.”
24
The two Americans emerged from the elevator into an empty steel storage shed, one that Major Hoyer had spared, knowing it was their point of egress.
They stepped out of the small structure and into a burning hell. Fires and smoke blocked out the sun, and ash rained from the sky. Automatic fire could still be heard in the distance, but it was sporadic and almost half-hearted, and all coming from the same few guns.
Reed had heard fire like this before. He had no doubt this was from Hoyer and his men putting extra rounds into corpses, just to be certain they weren’t playing dead.
Allie opened her eyes when she felt the smoke-filled air on her face and gasped.
Reed quickly ushered her to a side wall of the shed, taking no chance that a combatant that he might have missed below would emerge from the elevator behind them.
“We’re holding here for now,” he said. “Stay behind me, with your back to the wall. We have a benefactor responsible for what you’re seeing topside. A major named Hoyer. I need to talk to him.”
Silos burned in the distance, and fields and farmhouses had become smoldering craters. Reed was just thankful that the smoke and fires hid most of the dead bodies that he knew now littered the battlefield. They were also more spread out than they had been down below, and since Allie was behind him now, her field of vision was restricted. He just hoped she had kept her eyes closed on their way out as he had asked.
He issued subvocal instructions to Eve before remembering that she was no longer accessible. His link to the AI ran through his smart lenses, not his comms, and he already felt naked without them.
He activated his comms, hoping that Hoyer had switched over to the proper frequency as promised. “Major Hoyer, it’s Zachary Reed. Do you copy?”
“Yes, Commander. Loud and clear.”
“We just got topside. Allie is uninjured. Repeat, Allie is uninjured.”
There was a brief pause. “Copy that, Commander,” said the voice of Hoyer through his comm. “Now that you’re out, I’ll be transferring your nanite suit to her immediately.”
“Outstanding,” replied Reed. He and Hoyer were definitely on the same page when it came to protecting Allie, but he didn’t want her to panic when she first felt the nanites streaming. “But give me five minutes to prep her for it,” he added. “She’s had enough surprises the past few days to last ten lifetimes.”
“Prep me for what?” mumbled Allie behind him, but he was forced to ignore her.
“Understood,” replied Hoyer. “Hold your position. We’re in the final mop-up phase. Sensors and drones indicate it’s all clear. Given we’re in the middle of Utah, they won’t be sending reinforcements. Still, stay where you are and we’ll pick you up in an armored vehicle in about eight minutes and drive you to the chopper we came in. It’s three miles to the south.”
“Roger that,” replied Reed, grateful that this plan would take Allie away from the battlefield quickly, while giving her little chance to witness more mangled bodies.
“You have five minutes to prep Dr. Keane for the nanites,” said Hoyer, who then signed off.
Reed glanced behind him. “Okay, Allie,” he said out loud. “I’m done talking to Hoyer. Let me fill you in. Everything up here is looking safe. They’ll be picking us up in an armored vehicle shortly and taking us to a nearby chopper for exfiltration. In the meanwhile, how are you holding up?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to be a prisoner, but I didn’t want this. Did you kill them all?”
“I didn’t want to kill anyone,” said Reed miserably. “But they forced my hand. I tried to think of another way, but there wasn’t one. I’ll walk you through my analysis later.”
The fact that Allie was now likely to view him as an inhuman monster—the very opposite of how he hoped she would see him—just rubbed salt in the wound. Or maybe acid.
“I care what you think of me, Allie,” he said. “A lot. So please tell me you believe me when I say there was no other choice.”
She held his gaze for several long seconds, and he felt the weight of a skyscraper bearing down on his chest.
“I do,” she said finally. “I believe you’re a good man, despite what you do for a living.”
“I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
“I’ll still want a detailed explanation later.”
“Of course.”
“Regardless,” said Allie, “why you were forced to kill them is one thing. How you managed to do it is another thing entirely. No one is that good. Not even you.”
Reed quickly explained how Hoyer had managed to get a mass of nanites into their holding cell. Nanites that could configure themselves in a way to reproduce Hoyer’s voice, and camouflage themselves to the point of invisibility, among other things.
“Nanites?” said Allie dubiously when he had finished. “Programmable matter? I’ve followed the field on occasion, from a distance, but it’s in its infancy. I’ve seen demonstrations of magnetized non-Newtonian fluid being coaxed by an electric field to form stable structural elements. And robots the size of Legos working in concert to form various shapes.”
She shook her head. “But trust me, what you’ve described sounds crazy advanced. Comparing this to current tech is like comparing a modern cell phone to the first telegraph machine. Or maybe even the Pony Express.”
“No doubt about it. And I haven’t even finished describing what they can do. In about twenty s
econds, these impossible nanites will be streaming over your clothing, knitting together an impenetrable suit of armor. Think Iron Man. It will make you bulletproof. It’s how I was able to do what I did down there. So brace yourself.”
“It can’t be,” said Allie emphatically. “Something like this is fifty years away, at minimum.”
Reed felt the suit dissolving around him and gliding off his body. “Apparently not,” he said.
Allie gasped as the nanites completed their migration to her and began sweeping across her clothing and skin.
“Incredible,” she whispered in awe as the suit formed around her. “Just incredible.”
“Tell me about it. Tech Ops funds a few far-out experimental programs in the field, but these nanites are beyond their wildest fantasies.”
Allie nodded, a wild look on her face. “This Major Hoyer has a lot of explaining to do,” she said emphatically.
“I can hardly wait,” said Reed, trying to sound upbeat and conceal the panic he was feeling just below the surface.
What were they dealing with here? It was his job to know about leading-edge technology, and he hadn’t even heard rumors about something like these nanites.
He was grateful that Hoyer had freed them from their captors.
But an old saying kept flashing into his mind. An old saying suggesting that when you took a leap from a frying pan, you had to be very careful of where you landed.
PART 5
25
Allie Keane sat cocooned in silence inside Hoyer’s luxury chopper, her ears covered entirely by padded, noise-canceling headphones, which neutralized the loud thwapping of the aircraft’s blades. A small mic was attached to the headphones and now hung in front of her mouth, but she hadn’t made use of it for some time.
The Immortality Code Page 15
