Maze Master

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  Anna saw the tracker in Micah’s hand, lurched forward, and seemed on the verge of striking him with her bound fists … then she flopped back against the wall as though in defeat.

  Gallia shoved the tracker in his pocket and squinted out at the newborn day visible through the cockpit. On the other side of the Plexiglas, a magnificent sunlit vista of Judgment Day spread before them. The sky was filled with bombers. From this distance, they were just black dots against the sky. Where had they come from?

  “Until yesterday, Hazor, we thought you’d been blown to pieces with the rest of your team.”

  “So you came all this way looking for the device?”

  “General Cozeba thought you might be attached to it, sir,” the man said absently, grimacing at the bombers, with good reason. Especially if they weren’t American bombers. If China or Russia had this many crews left, and the U.S. did not …

  The pilot suddenly swung right and sailed out over the ocean where he angled down and skimmed just above the water. Deep green waves rolled beneath them.

  Anna’s arm, where it pressed against Micah’s, quaked, then the muscles bulged as though she’d stiffened them to stop the tremor. Her gaze searched the faces of the men around them, and spent a few seconds studying Sergeant Gallia, who seemed to be preoccupied with the chaos in the cockpit. The pilot, Buckner, swerved wide to avoid something below.

  When Gallia slipped out of his harness and staggered forward to speak with the pilot, Anna leaned sideways to whisper, “Sorry I put you in that position. Could have gotten both of us killed. I…”

  The Sikorsky lurched and soared upward so fast that Gallia grabbed for the back of the pilot’s seat, lost his footing, and landed hard on his knees, still clinging to the chair. The rate of ascent was steep, maybe too steep.

  Gallia yelled, “Buckner, you’re going to stall!”

  Micah grabbed on to his harness to ride out the wild shuddering as the chopper continued to climb. The rotors labored, and slowed down. Just when he was certain the bird couldn’t take anymore, the pilot leveled out and an audible groan of relief rippled through the passengers.

  Gallia cried, “Now go, Buckner! Go!” and pounded the back of the man’s chair.

  The pilot shouted, “Hold on!” and pushed the helo for all it was worth.

  The scene that appeared through the cockpit was incomprehensible.

  Gallia choked out, “What the fuck is that?”

  The pilot kept shaking his head, as though he couldn’t stop.

  Micah stared. No living thing on earth had ever looked upon such a sight. He wasn’t sure the human brain could actually process it. From this altitude, the earth’s surface appeared to be boiling. But not a wild boil, not like an overflowing pot on the stove. As the dust clouds from the various sorties drifted toward each other, they began to churn. It looked like a brilliant demonic plan coming together.

  “Oh, dear God,” a deep voice quavered.

  When the clouds collided over Syria, a massive explosion of dust and debris gushed into the stratosphere.

  “What happens if we have to fly through that?” Gallia shouted at the pilot.

  “How should I know?” The Sikorsky jerked sideways with Buckner’s startled reflex, then steadied.

  Through the window to the pilot’s left, Micah glimpsed the gunship that carried Nadai speeding along like a wrathful guardian angel. Behind it, in the distance, waves splashed against the cliffs of an island, a splotch of gray tones banded with black. He tried to find a name for it, but in the end failed. The world’s oceans brimmed with rocky lifeless specks like that.

  Anna laughed. It was a low disbelieving laugh that startled the soldiers so much they pulled their gazes from the windows and fixed them on her.

  Anna just leaned back to brace her shoulders against the chopper’s cold metallic skin. Her eyes were filled with revelation. She reminded Micah of a madwoman suddenly freed of all earthly burdens because she was on her way to the gallows.

  When she realized Micah was looking at her, Anna turned. “Don’t worry. This isn’t the end. The Angels of Light still have to come for the Elect.”

  “You’re an optimist. How do you know we fall into that category?”

  Anna gave him a faint smile, lifted her bound hands, and extended one finger to tap the inoculation site on his wrist. “Not us, Micah. You. You’re the Russian experiment.”

  CHAPTER 39

  HYPOGEUM

  Like a foul miasma, the stink of bloating bodies seeped beneath the door of the bomb shelter. Ben Adam felt as though he were wading through it as he carefully moved between the chalked images, carrying the filled syringe toward Stephen.

  The young monk looked nervous. He kept licking his lips.

  “Brother, I’m not sure … I mean, what’s in that needle?”

  He lowered the syringe and gently replied, “This will protect you from death, Brother. I don’t know how long it takes to generate a genetic response, maybe days, or even weeks. The sooner I vaccinate you the sooner we will know. Please, trust me.”

  Stephen swallowed hard, then he rolled up his sleeve and extended his arm. “Of course, I trust you.”

  He injected the serum into Stephen’s bloodstream. “All right. Let’s hurry.”

  “Yes, Brother.”

  Stephen gathered the candle and the satellite dish, while Ben Adam set down the empty syringe and lifted the heavy battery into his arms. When the shoved open the door, a nauseating smell rolled over them, but it was the sight of the bodies outside that made his knees go weak.

  “Step around them, Stephen.”

  The candle in Stephen’s hand trembled, throwing odd reflections over the corpses that choked the tunnel.

  “But there are so many! Did they die from the same illness that was killing people in Valletta?”

  “Yes, Brother, and you mustn’t touch them. They all have the Mark of the Beast. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  Clutching the battery, he skirted the edge of the wall. When candlelight touched the faces of the dead, their translucent skin flickered like rainbows dreaming. One man sat propped against the stone wall, his head tilted to the right, as though asleep. But his eyes had shriveled and sunk far back into his skull. He must have been one of the first to die. The others looked more recent, a day or two old.

  It was the same all the way to the surface. Bodies scattered the Hypogeum. Had the man who’d helped to pack the bomb shelters led them down here for the food? Or had those not yet showing signs of the disease fled here to use the labyrinth as a fortification against the sick? At the mouth of the tunnel, rifles and pistols lay clutched in the dead hands of men who’d clearly been guarding the entrance.

  When he reached the surface, he drew in a deep breath of the sea-scented wind. Each time he sent Anna the message, God lifted some of the confusion from his soul. He felt better. Happier.

  He walked to the edge of the cliff, and lowered the heavy battery to the ground. Stephen set up the satellite dish and walked a short distance away to sit down on the edge of the cliff and weep.

  While he connected the solar panel to the battery to charge it, he listened to Stephen’s cries. Beneath them, strange sounds oscillated on the wind: metallic bangs and fragments of voices. Someone was still alive out there, and they had equipment. It was hard to believe.

  By the time he’d drawn his handheld computer from his pocket and connected it to the dish, Stephen was rising to his feet. For several moments, he frowned off to the east.

  The green light flared on his computer, affirming the link with the satellite. He typed:

  Encrypt.

  Waited.

  Hit send.

  He knew it should be a familiar routine by now, but each time felt like the first. Hope burst his chest while he waited for her to respond. And waited. When she didn’t, his shoulders slumped. He would need to leave the battery here for at least twenty-four hours to properly charge. Perhaps, for one night, he could als
o leave his handheld computer up here attached to the dish and set it to automatically repeat the message? As he input the commands, he saw Stephen get to his feet and wander down along the rim toward Valletta.

  “Brother?” Stephen called. “There are huge ships in Grand Harbour. I think they’re American.”

  “What?” Panic flooded his veins. He sprinted forward to look.

  Aircraft carriers, planes in the water, battleships, a submarine … The American flag crackling in the wind.

  “They … they’ve found me.” Staggering backward, a cry ripped from his throat. “They’ll k-kill God’s voice!”

  “No, Brother, no!” Stephen ran to him and wrapped his arms around Ben Adam. “Everything is all right. No one is going to hurt you. You’re safe!”

  Through the terror, he almost didn’t see the soldiers come up over the hill with their rifles aimed. Their camo clothing blended with the background of gray rocks and green grass.

  “Halt! Who are you?” one of the men yelled.

  Inside him, Ben Adam heard something like fabric ripping. It was unbearably shrill. He clamped his hands over his ears and screamed at the pain.

  The next instant, he found himself on the ground with his teeth gnashing, shaking so hard he knew every cell in his body was fracturing and falling apart.

  “Brother? Brother, are you having a seizure?” Stephen ran to him, dragged his body onto his lap, and held him tightly. “I’m here! I’m right here!”

  He managed to say, “Pr-protect the chamber. Protect my computer! For Anna. She’s here. She must be here.”

  “I will, Brother.”

  “Now run. Stephen, run!”

  Just as the soldiers closed in on them, Stephen leaped to his feet and charged off, heading back for the Hypogeum. If he made it inside the labyrinth, they’d never find him.

  Ben Adam squeezed his eyes closed. He couldn’t bear to watch the officers surround him. He had to find the place deep inside his mind—the place where the soldiers had not yet arrived. Home. He had to go home. He knew the way. Just cross over the brook of Kidron … then on to the garden.

  CHAPTER 40

  OCTOBER 20. MALTA.

  Past midnight, the only light in Zandra Bibi’s room came from the phosphorescent glow of the computer screen. She tucked blond hair behind her ears and heaved a sigh as she studied the random string of bits running across her monitor. Was it a distress signal? Some kind of last order from President Joseph Stein? She’d never felt so frustrated or frightened in her life. The sequence ran, then the cursor blinked, and it started over again.

  “Take a break, for God’s sake.”

  She pulled her eyes from the screen and took a few moments to listen to the storm. A torrent rumbled in the darkness just beyond the stone walls of Fort Saint Elmo. Identical to the chambers of the other scientists, her room was a perfect square, twelve feet across; it had almost no furniture—just a narrow bed, the table, and one chair. When Russia had held Malta, these rooms on the eastern side of the fort had served as prison cells. She felt sorry for the prisoners. During stormy weather, the gray stones wept continually, as they did tonight. Beads of moisture swelled in the cracks and eventually gravity took over; they streaked down the walls leaving black stripes. The scent of wet stone filled the cool air. She especially hated the uneven floor. One of the black stones always caught on her boot and tripped her. Worse, there was some dark emotion here, as though the stones themselves still held the cries of the imprisoned.

  She looked back at the glowing screen. Forty-eight hours ago, General Cozeba had presented her with a secret message to be dispatched to the president of the United States. Every two hours, Zandra sent the message. Then she waited for a response using the QKC, the prearranged emergency quantum key code that would signal to her that the response was indeed from the president. She had not yet received the QKC. Just this odd communication. Someone else was sending out a photonic message that she was picking up. Unfortunately, so far as Zandra could tell, the message was gibberish.

  Stacks of handwritten pages, all in disarray, filled every square inch of the tabletop—evidence of her failure to grasp even the most fundamental principles of the message. There had to be a pattern here. Right? She felt like cursing. But oaths, like complaints and tears, just wasted energy and only served to cloud the mind. She had an hour or so left to use her computer, and then she’d have to shut down. It was powered by solar panels and batteries, which, given the cloudy days they’d been having, meant she had limited battery time. However, as the only scientist in the fort to have a computer, she felt grateful for every second.

  She’d been sitting here staring at the screen for two days, trying to understand, which meant she hadn’t had a bath in a while, and felt like it. Her desert camo uniform stank.

  Zandra yawned and tipped her chair back on two legs to stare at the twelve-foot ceiling over her head. The exposed beams looked centuries old. Oak? Maybe walnut. They were dark, and the grain appeared dense.

  She tried to let her mind wander to relieve some of her stress.

  The fascinating thing about single photons was that despite all the uses human beings put them to, they were still a mystery. No one knew exactly what they were or what their quantum properties meant. As Einstein had said, photons really were spooky. Messages could be sent using photons in much the same way that ordinary computers transferred data, but the more information you encoded, the harder the message was to hack, and it could not be decrypted without the correct quantum key code.

  What she saw on the screen looked like someone sending a vast wealth of data, vastly larger than anything she’d ever seen before. In her world, laptops with 150 qubits were experimental, highly classified, and limited to military special operations engaged in national security. The complexity and quantity of data looked like it was coming from something far more advanced, maybe a 300-qubit computer, or larger. Because such computers could carry out many calculations at once, they were used primarily to solve encryption problems that could not be solved through conventional computing. Calculating prime numbers for security purposes was the basic function; that is, calculating numbers that are exactly divisible only by themselves and one, or numbers like 120, which could be factored into 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 5—all of which are only divisible by themselves and one. Conventional computers were so slow at this that they were impractical for code breaking. It would, for instance, take about two thousand years on an ordinary computer to factor a 232-digit number into its two primes. Whereas her advanced photonic computer, which used 150 qubits, could decipher it in less time than it took to blink. If the curious sequence was coming from a 300-qubit computer, the sender didn’t need to fear decryption by anyone in America.

  At the end of the strange sequence, the cursor flashed, as though waiting for something, then it started over again.

  Fear tingled in her veins again, as it had periodically for two days.

  Zandra propped her combat boots on the corner of the table …

  There was a knock at her door.

  She glanced at the figures that continued to scroll across her screen, then pulled her boots off the table. “Come in.”

  Maris Bowen stepped inside. She wore clean khakis, and had recently showered. Despite that, her face sagged with fatigue, and dark puffy flesh swelled beneath her eyes.

  “You look like hammered shit, Maris.”

  “Looked at yourself in the mirror recently?”

  Zandra chuckled. “God, no. I’m afraid to.”

  Maris smiled as she walked across the chamber and leaned a shoulder against the damp stone wall to Zandra’s right.

  “In case you didn’t notice, it’s past midnight. What are you doing up?”

  The dim light gave Maris’s skin a corpselike bluish tint. “I have a problem.”

  Zandra gestured to her laptop. “Join the club, my friend. I didn’t know you’d returned from the Mead.”

  “Yeah, hours ago.” Maris folded her arms over h
er chest and seemed to hug herself. “Did you hear? They found Anna Asher. They’re bringing her in. It’s going to take a while, I guess. The helos have to scavenge fuel somewhere to make the return trip.”

  “I heard. Everyone here has been far more obsessed with staying alive. You heard about the massive bombing campaign in the Middle East?”

  Maris’s legs trembled. She shoved a stack of papers to the side so she could sit on the corner of Zandra’s table. “They say we’re safe. The prevailing winds will blow the debris over Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, then eventually to Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

  Zandra stared into her dark eyes. “Who did the bombing? Has anyone said?”

  “Not the U.S. We don’t have enough pilots left.”

  Zandra massaged the tight muscles at the back of her neck. “You think it was the Russians? Doesn’t matter, of course, since none of us—”

  “Doesn’t matter? Jesus, Zandra. It means they have somehow managed to shield their military from the plague, and we haven’t.”

  “Yeah. They have.”

  Maris’s gaze slid to Zandra’s and remained there for a long time, before she said, “I don’t think I have much time left, so I’m just going to tell you everything, and leave you to sort it out.”

  Thunder crashed outside, and the walls seemed to shiver. Beads of moisture broke loose and painted new stripes on the stones as they trickled down to the puddle on the floor. As dread filled her, Zandra said, “Okay.”

  Maris exhaled the first sentence: “LucentB is a new variety of the HERV-K retrovirus. Human Endogenous Retrovirus K is a fossil virus. LucentB is specifically related to HERV-Kde27, a virus passed to us through interbreeding with Denisovans, close relatives of Neandertals. It reinfected humans several times until at least thirty-four thousand years ago, when it apparently caused the radical decline of both Denisovans and Neandertals, and may have even led to their extinctions.”

  Zandra had taken a few genetics courses, so she had a decent understanding of what Maris was talking about … but just decent. “What activated it?”