“Either she jumped off the building or we missed her somewhere,” Ash said to Chloe. They were standing at the back of the control center.
“I don’t think she jumped. We’re not that lucky.”
“I don’t think she did, either,” he said. “We need to tear this place apart until we find her. How many can help us?”
“We need to leave four on the rooms we’ve got the captives in,” she said. “And, of course, there’s Bobby and Curtis in here. The rest are free.”
While she gathered them together, Ash went over to check in with Bobby and Wicks. With the help of Caleb and his team back at Ward Mountain, they’d been assigned the task of figuring out the control center. “What have we got?”
Bobby looked up from the computer he’d been using, and smiled. “A lot.”
“Meaning…?”
“Give us a little time and we can give you a better answer. Twenty minutes should be enough.”
“Twenty minutes. Then we talk.”
__________
ASH HAD BEEN sure they’d find the director hiding somewhere either in her office or her apartment, but their search turned up nothing. They continued through the floor, but room after room provided no more answers than the woman’s apartment had.
“What’s that doing there?” Chloe asked.
She and Ash had just entered a storage room on the west side of the building.
“That bag?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” She walked over to it and picked it up. “Was it here when you checked this room before?”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was.”
“Kind of an odd place to leave a Versace bag, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t even know it was Versace. Expensive?”
“Uh, yeah.” She set it on the desk and looked inside. “I can tell you one thing—I don’t think the person who owns this works in maintenance.” She pulled out an elegant box covered in dark red leather and opened it. “See?”
Inside was a diamond-earrings-and-necklace set that would have set someone in the old world back tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Chloe pulled out a couple more boxes of expensive jewelry and some clothes and then said, “What do we have here?”
She reached in and pulled out three computer drives and a framed photograph.
In the picture were three of the men Ash and Chloe had seen at Bluebird when Olivia Silva had activated the release of the virus. All three men had been members of the Project Eden directorate and had died when the base was destroyed. There was a fourth person in the picture who hadn’t been at Bluebird. The only woman.
Director Johnson.
“She’s here somewhere,” he whispered.
Both he and Chloe scanned the room. Shelves lined the walls to the left and right, but while the desk took up half of the back wall, the rest of the back wall was clear of any obstruction.
Ash pointed at it and looked at Chloe.
She nodded.
He placed his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear anything. If there was some sort of hiding place on the other side, it had been soundproofed.
He looked around for the switch or lock that would open the wall, but spotted nothing.
“Maybe we’re overthinking,” he whispered. “Could be just a wall.”
“One way to find out,” Chloe said.
__________
CELESTE PLACED HER elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. She was so exhausted she couldn’t even think straight anymore. She knew she should be planning what she needed to do once she got out of there, but she couldn’t concentrate. She should sleep, she thought. Just a few hours. Then she could think about—
Celeste slammed into the wall behind her and fell to the floor, her forehead whacking against her toppled chair.
Dazed, she tried to sit up, but her body screamed at her from everywhere so she stayed where she was, her eyelids half opened.
She didn’t notice the hole in the wall until someone stepped through it, but even then she couldn’t understand how it got there.
The chair silently lifted off her and passed through the hole. No, not silently. She could hear ringing. In fact, all she could hear was ringing.
Hands grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her out of the safe room. She could see now there were two of them—a man and a woman. Their lips were moving but she had no idea what they were saying.
She wanted to ask what had happened. She wanted to know why she hurt so much. She tried to speak but her mouth felt like it was full of rocks.
Her eyes closed for what she thought was a second, but when she opened them again, she was surrounded by four new men who seemed to be carrying her. It was surprisingly comfortable, almost better than lying in bed. And she was…
…so…
…tired...
__________
ASH AND CHLOE returned to the control center and let Omar, Sealy, Ramirez, and Langenberg deal with Johnson.
“Tell me something good, Bobby,” Ash said as they entered the room.
Bobby looked up, surprised. “Has it been twenty minutes already?”
“A little more.”
“Oh. Um, well, I think it would be fair to say this is the nerve center of the Project.” He looked at Wicks. “Right?”
“Definitely,” Wicks said. “This place has access to priority channels that can reach all the bases. No one else has that. Even better, this place has the capability to shut down the whole communications system.”
“You mean for the entire Project?” Chloe asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“And it’s not just communications that can be cut,” Bobby said. “I’m pretty sure all essential services to any base can be turned off from here. We’d have to find our way around their security codes first but Caleb’s working on that right now.”
“Check these out,” Ash said, handing the flash drives to Bobby. “There might be something here that can help.”
“What are those?” Wicks asked.
“A few items Director Johnson felt important enough not to leave behind.”
“You found her?”
“We found her,” Chloe said.
A silence fell over the four of them.
After a few stunned seconds, Bobby said, “Did we, I mean, is it possible we just, you know…”
“Matt should be here for this,” Wicks said. “He deserved to be here.”
“He is here,” Ash said. “And no, Bobby. We haven’t finished yet.” He pointed at the desk. “Toss me the sat phone.”
January 9th
World Population
700,893,221
29
NB016
5:58 PM EST
IT TOOK LONGER than Ash would have liked, but it was important they had all the details worked out and the people in place.
He and Chloe had spent most of the previous day on the phone, consulting with Rachel and Pax and other Resistance contacts around the world. Another hour was taken up arguing with Dr. Gardiner after he’d arrived at Dream Sky and had a chance to assess the situation. The doctor had understood the importance of what Ash was asking, but he was extremely reluctant to sign on with what Ash wanted.
“They’ve been drugged for weeks,” Gardiner had said. “None of them are in any condition to do this.”
When the call ended, Chloe had said, “I’ll go up and make sure it happens. Don’t worry.”
First thing that morning, she had flown back to Dream Sky and, true to her word, worked things out.
Aided by Tamara and Wicks, Ash had spent most of the day preparing, practicing, and revising. And before he knew it, he was back in NB016’s control center, leaning against the workstation Bobby had picked out.
“You ready?” Bobby asked.
Ash looked up from his notes. “Is it time?”
“Ninety seconds.”
No, Ash thought. I’m not even close to ready
. I could use another day or even a week. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one doing this at all. But what he said was, “I guess.”
“Can I get you to stand?”
Ash pushed up from the desk. “How’s this?”
Bobby looked through the viewfinder of his camera. “To your left a few inches. Want to make sure the big monitor is in the shot.”
Each screen on the monitor wall behind Ash was filled with shots from different Project Eden bases, with the largest currently showing the message they’d been broadcasting since the day before.
“Better?” Ash asked after scooting over.
“Perfect,” Bobby said. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “Sixty-five seconds.”
Ash took a deep breath.
“Relax,” Tamara told. “You’ll be fine. You’re a natural.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said.
“I do.”
WARD MOUNTAIN
2:59 PM PST
JOSIE ASH, HER brother Brandon, and Ginny Thorton sat front and center in the Ward Mountain cafeteria while the rest of those living at the base found spots behind them. All eyes were on the large television monitor.
For a couple weeks, the only thing coming in on any channel had been static. Thirty hours ago, that had changed. Worldwide, on nearly every satellite station and most major broadcast networks, a graphic had appeared that read:
A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
CONCERNING THE OUTBREAK
WILL AIR
JANUARY 9
AT 2300 UTC/GMT
Josie had been staring so intently at the monitor that she jerked when the graphic cut to a shot of their father.
For several seconds, he said nothing, and then he started to speak.
NB953
HELSINKI, FINLAND
1:00 AM EET (EASTERN EUROPEAN TIME)
JANUARY 10th
THE PROJECT EDEN base in Helsinki was one of the smaller ones. Because of this, there was no corresponding survival station in the country. All Finnish survivors had been ferried over to the facility in Stockholm.
Esa Lahti, the base director, thought size was also the reason their base had not been attacked like many of the others. Still, he and the twenty-seven Project personnel working under him had spent many nervous hours expecting trouble, a fear that only increased when they discovered that the Project’s communications system had gone down.
So, it was with some relief that at seven p.m. local time the previous evening, they received a message from NB016 in New York telling them that the communication issues were being resolved and that a special announcement would be broadcast the following evening.
Lahti expected one of the directorate—probably Director Johnson, given where the notification had come from—would be reporting on recent events.
All twenty-eight members of the base were present fifteen minutes before the broadcast was to start. They filled the time speculating on the cause of the attacks and coming to a general consensus that whatever the problem had been, the directorate had dealt with it.
On the screen was a graphic very similar to the one being broadcast on civilian channels, though the inhabitants of NB953 had stopped monitoring public airwaves and satellite feeds a week after Implementation Day and were not aware of this.
As the seconds ticked down to the hour, conversation stopped and all eyes looked expectantly at the screen.
NB369
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
3:00 AM MSK (MOSCOW STANDARD TIME)
JANUARY 10th
THROUGHOUT THE BASE, monitors played the feed from NB016, the sound blaring from the speakers filling empty rooms and echoing down deserted halls. The only witnesses to the man on the screen were the bodies of the thirteen Project members who had died in the explosion that had ripped apart the entrance to the base.
The other fifty-one people who had been stationed there had fled into the city. Some were brought down by gunfire just steps from the base entrance, and some were captured as they tried to disappear down the streets. More than half escaped and never looked back.
SURVIVAL STATION
BANGKOK, THAILAND
6:00 AM ICT (INDOCHINA TIME)
JANUARY 10th
ICE HANDED A bottle of water to the farang. He had told her his name but she couldn’t remember. Daniel or David or something like that.
“Thank you,” he said.
“How you feel?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess.”
Dane. That was it. Like what Danish people called themselves, he had said, but he wasn’t Danish. Canadian, in Thailand for the holidays with his wife. Ice had not asked what had happened to her. If she wasn’t here with him, the flu had most likely taken her, like it had taken Ice’s family and nearly everyone she knew.
She checked the bandage around the man’s leg. He’d sustained the injury when the survival station had been liberated, freeing Ice, Dane, and a hundred and forty-five other captives.
“Food ready in twenty minute,” she told him. “Rice. Egg. Is okay?”
“Sounds great.”
As she started to rise, the speakers that were spread throughout the survival station crackled to life, and the voice of a man speaking English blared out.
Ice caught a few words but the distortion made it difficult for her to understand. “You know what he say?”
Dane looked puzzled but said, “Yes.”
“You can say again for me?”
“Of course.”
As she sat down again, Dane began repeating the man’s words.
NB888
BEIJING, CHINA
7:00 AM CST (CHINA STANDARD TIME)
THE NUMBER CHOSEN for the base was supposed to be lucky, but as far as Gordon Belger, the base director, was concerned, it was far from it.
Sure, the base hadn’t actually fallen, but the fighting had lasted for nearly two days, and the strike team had been whittled down to only a handful of men. The attacks would come in waves, the base barraged by gunfire and homemade bombs for an hour or more, followed by a long enough lull that Belger would start to think it was finally over. But always the fighting began again.
Ms. Chen, his assistant, stepped into his office. “Sir, the broadcast is about to begin.”
Finally, he thought.
He switched on his monitor, hoping the directorate would be announcing an aggressive plan to help bases like his.
He was saved from the disappointment of learning the truth.
Most Project facilities were constructed underground, but for some locations that wasn’t feasible. Beijing, being the crowded capital of China, was one. So NB888 had been built largely aboveground, the director’s office on the uppermost floor.
When the image on his monitor switched from the graphic to the man standing in an operations room, Belger only had enough time to mutter, “Who’s that?” before his whole world exploded.
__________
LI HUAN LOWERED the rocket launcher to get a better look at his handiwork.
“Whoa!” Norman Andrews said. “Nice shot.”
Half of the building at the center of the Project Eden base had turned into a pile of rubble.
“Totally worth it,” Huan said.
Several hours earlier, he and Norman had been sent to find more ammunition. In addition to bullets and guns, they had found the launcher and five rockets. Having heard the success other Resistance teams had achieved with similar weapons, they had taken them.
Norman ran back to the truck and opened a case containing another rocket. “Let’s finish that place off.”
Huan smiled. “Load me up.”
30
NB016
6:00 PM EST
“MY NAME IS Daniel Ash. And I have a story to tell you, one you need to know, because it is your story, too. The story of how our family members and friends were taken from us, and how those of us who remain will begin again.
“Before I start, I ask that you bear with me for a few moments whil
e I address the organization known as Project Eden. Most of you don’t know who they are yet, but you will by the time I finish tonight.”
Ash paused, his previous sympathetic expression turning deadly serious.
“Members of the Project, your organization is no longer in business, and you are hereby ordered to vacate your bases. If you do not, the attacks that have already destroyed many of your locations will continue. There is no chance you will be allowed to finish what you started. If you think that your directorate will find a way to deal with us, that will not be the case.
A photo of a dead man lying on the ground replaced the shot of Ash.
“Directorate member Johannes Yeager,” Ash said. “His headquarters—you would refer to it as NB338—fell early this morning.”
The picture switched to one of a dazed-looking Asian man, blood splattered across his face.
“Directorate member Kim Woo-Jin of NB202. His base was eliminated less than half an hour after Mr. Yeager’s. Lucky for Mr. Kim, we were able to pull him from the wreckage.”
The next shot was not a picture, but a live image of a man strapped to a chair in a pool of light.
“Directorate member Parkash Mahajan of NB551 is our guest at an undisclosed location, and has been very helpful in providing information, much of which we have already put to use.”
Another live image, this one from just down the hall.
“Directorate member Celeste Johnson of NB016, the facility I am speaking to you from now.” The woman’s face and neck were cut and bruised, the look in her eyes hollow and resigned. “Ms. Johnson was kind enough to provide us with some highly sensitive Project data that has also proven very useful.” The shot switched back to Ash. He was holding up the portable drives they’d found in her bag. “The codes these contain mean we can defeat you without firing one more bullet. Of course, there’s no reason for you to believe me, so a demonstration should erase any doubts. ”
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