by Jack Soren
Dedication
For Tasha
Epigraph
No one longs to live more than someone growing old.
SOPHOCLES
Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.
BOB DYLAN
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Dead Lights
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
All Aboard
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Abandon Ship!
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Ashita
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
An Excerpt from The Monarch
About the Author
Also By Jack Soren
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Houston
July
IT WAS THE strangest kidnap and recovery mission Hoyt Randall had ever accepted.
Hoyt peered through the binoculars down at the cookie-cutter industrial plaza, a place that looked like it had been designed by an architect with a Lego obsession. Five businesses resided within the repetitive tan stucco frontages, accented by a burgundy sawtooth pattern and identical bushes in front of smoked glass doors. The lights in the empty parking lot provided just enough illumination to discourage amateur thieves but not enough to dissuade a professional. Nothing moved. All was still.
Dressed all in black and wearing latex gloves, Hoyt fingered some notes into his forearm-mounted computing device before he put the binoculars away and pulled a black balaclava down over his face. He double-timed it down the hill, coming to rest behind the sign that said “Crystasis Foundation.”
Arlo Perez, the man who’d hired Hoyt to retrieve his daughter, said Crystasis specialized in freezing the recently dead. Hoyt had heard of cryonics, of course, and most people knew the stories of Ted Williams and Walt Disney supposedly having their heads frozen after death so they could be thawed out in the future.
Hoyt found it all creepy as hell. Personally, he couldn’t think of anything worse than waking up in a world where all of your friends and loved ones had been dead for a hundred years. Or worse, waking up inside a robotic body.
Linda Perez, Arlo’s daughter, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year ago. The prognosis gave her a year to live, at best, with the final few months holding incredible pain and suffering. Six months ago, Linda committed suicide. Or, more to the point, a team from Crystasis had assisted her in their facility. Immediately after death, the team prepared her body and froze her, with the goal of waking her sometime in the future when her condition could be treated. Her parents, who had been vehemently against the procedure, wanted her back. They had plans for her body more in line with their religious tenets than the tiny hope of more life in the future. Hoyt was pretty sure he believed that. He also believed Mr. Perez was interested in the $200,000 that Linda had stolen from him to give to Crystasis.
He checked the area one last time, then jogged across the parking lot continuing around the back of the plaza. Hoyt bypassed the alarm system, then picked the lock on a service door. Inside, Hoyt let his eyes adjust to the minimal lighting before checking the floor plan on his forearm device. The entranceway was unmonitored, but his notes said there was video surveillance. He eased up to the corner and took out a small mirror on a telescoping metal antenna. He extended it and had a look around the corner. His notes were right; there were video cameras mounted high on the wall, but he could also see that the network cable wasn’t connected to the unit. Hoyt figured the unit was under repair, and he’d just lucked out. He moved to the next room—the video surveillance there was disconnected as well. Now cooking inside his mask, Hoyt pulled it off and wiped his eyes before stuffing it into his waistband. A few corridor turns later—each with another disconnected video camera—he arrived at his target, two large metal doors which gleamed even in the low light.
Hoyt pushed through the doors and felt like he’d walked into a science fiction movie. The room, about the size of a small basketball court, had a dozen large, shiny, chrome tanks lining its perimeter. A weird hiss and hum throbbed from the ten-foot-tall cylinders.
“Jee-zus.” Checking his forearm computer for the serial number he was looking for, he walked down the line and found a match near the back on one of the shiny cylinders. Linda—or what used to be Linda—was inside.
“And how the hell do I get you out of there?” Hoyt said, rapping his knuckles on the cylinder. A solid thud-thud-thud sounded. The pressure gauges on the outside of the tank, along with the cabling and tubing, were far more complicated than expected. The temperature gauge read -320 F.
Then Hoyt noticed an extra device on the canister. And the cylinder next to it. And the one next to that. Unlike the cryonic hardware, these he recognized from experience—magnetic, timed charges. And with the amount of C-4 packed inside each, someone was trying to put this place on the moon. The red digits on each device were synchronized and counting down.
8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . .
Hoyt turned and ran. He was only ten feet away when the rockets launched. The blast wave slammed him through the doors, metal shards from the destroyed canisters slicing him to ribbons before what was left of his body slapped into the far cinder-block wall with a wet crunch.
SHE HAD NOT stopped him from going to his death.
Death was a necessary part of life. Stopping someone from dying would be the greatest irony for her.
Once the explosions subsided, and flames began to lick out of the windows broken from the blast, she stepped from the shadows dressed not unlike the late Hoyt, save for the bright red hair that peeked out from her black hoodie. She hurried to the front of the building, pulling a can of orange spray paint from her pack and shaking it in her gloved hand, the sound like a rattlesnake’s warning. When she was done—sirens just starting to sound in the distance—she tossed the can aside, took out her phone, and dialed.
“It’s done,” she said in Japanese. “Moving on to the next.”
She put her phone away as she ran back into the bushes. She wheeled her black Ducati motorcycle out of its hiding place. Straddling it, she lowered her hood and shook her flaming hair free before pulling on her gleaming black helmet. She revved the motorcycle’s engine a few times and sped off into the night. Behind her, the flames illuminated what she had written:
“Dead Lights.”
North Pacific Ocean
August
DR. ERIC NORRIS, head of the Dead Lights Proj
ect, edged out farther along the massive ship’s railing. He wanted to get as far from the door leading back inside as possible, at least far enough to ensure he was out of earshot, but he knew he only had so much time before they came looking for him. Staring into the night sky, he pressed his cell phone against his ear and waited for a voice to come back on the line and break the silence. The ocean spray was cold and felt good on his face. It had been a long time since he’d been topside. He licked salty drips from his mouth and looked down into the black ocean forty feet below him, not at the surface but past it, at something far below.
He was on the line with the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service—known to insiders as the SIS, but better known to the world as MI6. He’d already told his story—or as much of it as he was willing to tell without guarantees—three times. Everyone he spoke to had started off apathetic, but either his story or the angst in his voice managed to convince them he was on the level, and they’d tell him to hold before passing him up the chain. Small successes, yes, but each new voice asked him to tell the story from the beginning again. He didn’t have time for this. If the old woman, or worse, that black limey bastard heard him revealing their secrets to a government agency, things would get real hairy, real fast.
“Come on, come on,” he urged.
“Something I can help you with, Dr. Norris?” A British accent not unlike Norris’s own said from behind him. He spun around, hiding his phone behind him like a child caught with a cookie.
Oh no.
“Just . . . just getting some air. You know, it can get kind of stuffy down there,” Norris said, proud of his quick thinking. He slipped the phone into his back pocket.
The man was dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit and trench coat, the collar pulled up against the ocean mist, his dark-skinned face almost invisible. Norris didn’t know his name and didn’t want to. He had seen the man with the old woman on several occasions, and there was just something about his bearing, his presence, that made Norris’s colon tighten up. The man lit a cigarette, momentarily illuminating his features. Norris thought his expression was one of—bemusement.
“Sure, darling,” the man said. He eyed Norris quietly as he took a long drag from his cigarette before sending a wide plume of smoke into the world. After what seemed like minutes: “Well, don’t dawdle. You wouldn’t want to miss your ride.” Without waiting for an answer, the man flicked his cigarette into the black water before turning and walking silently away.
When the man had disappeared around the corner, Norris exhaled, turned back to the railing, and took the phone out of his pocket. He saw that in hiding it, he’d inadvertently hung up. He had to start all over again.
“Damn i—” Before Norris could finish cursing, a hand gripped his throat from behind as another stripped the phone from him. He fought for breath, but the assailant pinned him against the railing.
“Who are we calling, darling?” the man said.
“Just . . . just some friends on the mainland. Nobody—”
The man had hit the redial button and put it on speakerphone. “SIS. How may I direct your call?”
“MI6, Dr. Norris? Now why would you do that?” the man hissed into his ear.
“It . . . it’s too dangerous,” Norris said.
He was trying to convince the man that he was talking about the project and what it could mean for the general public, but if he’d really cared about any of that, he never would have signed on to the project in the first place. No, what Dr. Norris was really worried about was what would happen to him now that his work was complete. Norris had lost touch with half his team already after they went ashore and never came back, and he was scared he was next. Or worse, they’d start doing to him what they were doing to Dr. Reese, someone who had been stupid enough to fail the old woman.
“Well, darling, I guess you should have thought of that before you took all that lovely money.”
The knife blade shoved up through his neck only hurt for a moment, then Norris felt nothing even though he was still fully aware. Suddenly, he was flying, the spray blinding his unblinking eyes. He hit the water like a sack of dirt, the slap echoing across the waves. Panic spiked through him, but not for long. Soon his thoughts were as black as the water. And then they were gone.
Dead Lights
Chapter One
London
Thursday
12:15 P.M. Local Time
JONATHAN HALL HADN’T been home in almost two years. Not that he hadn’t had a place to live during that time. As a matter of fact, Jonathan had lived in some extravagantly opulent locales—a penthouse in New York, a yacht on the Aegean Sea anchored off Mykonos Island, even an abandoned palace in Thailand. But none of those were home. The last home he’d known was a tiny, run-down house in Tallahassee, Florida. But it hadn’t been the building that had made it home. It had been the company.
Now, as he sat in a café in London, watching the crowds pass by outside in the midday September sunshine, oblivious to the magnificence of the Thames and London Bridge, Jonathan thought of his daughter, Natalie. Not that his thoughts were ever far from her. He hadn’t seen her in person in almost a year. And the year before that he’d only managed to see her a few fleeting times. These were important years for her, and he was missing them. The same way he’d missed the first five years of her life. He hadn’t even known Natalie existed back then, but it still bothered him.
He wished Natalie’s mother was still alive. That’s what a thirteen-year-old girl needed, a woman to explain all those things she was feeling and experiencing as she became a teenager. Not a father who, when he was around, put her life in danger. A father who had no idea what he was doing. A father who had been an art thief for the past eighteen years.
Jonathan squeezed a napkin to ease his tension as the waiter drifted by. He ordered another chai tea. The waiter nodded and took the old cup away. It was Jonathan’s second.
He checked his watch. Their contact was over half an hour late. But he wasn’t giving up just yet; Fahd was skittish as hell and in all likelihood was pacing back and forth up the street trying to decide what to do. In the end, Jonathan knew he’d show. It wasn’t hubris speaking, it was pragmatism. Fahd needed the money that was weighing down Jonathan’s black leather jacket, making it hang on the back of his chair at an odd angle.
Jonathan had found Fahd the same way he found all their jobs these days: through the Dark Web. Using a special Web browser that protected his identity, Jonathan could access Web sites and discussion forums where normal search engines couldn’t go, with no fear of being tracked. He still had to vet his contacts carefully before actually meeting them—law enforcement agencies around the world were well aware of the Dark Web, and stings were becoming more and more common—but after all these years, Jonathan had become quite skilled at knowing who was and wasn’t on the level.
As the waiter brought his beverage, Jonathan took the opportunity to scan the room again. He avoided direct eye contact—especially with the hulking man sitting by the window, hunched over a plate of pastries and a giant, ridiculously sweet coffee, his long duster coat hanging over the back of his stool. The man was Lew Katchbrow, Jonathan’s longtime partner and about the only person in the world he trusted. Jonathan nodded thanks as the waiter left again, confident that the scattering of patrons were oblivious to him.
He sipped his tea as his thoughts drifted back to Natalie. She’d just started high school last week, and he hated that he couldn’t be there. But it was for her own good. Because of him, her life had been in jeopardy twice in the past two years. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. No matter how difficult it was.
The first year Natalie was away at boarding school in British Columbia, Jonathan had tried to stay away, but he’d given in to his emotions and slowly started visiting her every few months. Then it became every few weeks. She’d been mad at him for se
nding her away at first, but she soon came around.
Then the unthinkable had happened. They’d found her. He didn’t have any proof, but he was sure it was because of his visits. Canton George, an industrialist with a score to settle, had sent men to take her and to find Jonathan and Lew any way they could. It was only by sheer dumb luck that Lew had been with Jonathan on that visit to her campus when Canton George and his men came. Several tense hours later, George was blind in one eye, his men were dead, and Natalie had been forced to once again abandon her life. Sadly, George had managed to get away.
A new identity and a few months later, Natalie was enrolled in another boarding school. This one in Switzerland. And that was the last time Jonathan had seen his daughter in person. Even their encrypted Skype calls had started to make him nervous. As painful as it was, he’d stopped taking her calls and instead paid the school’s headmaster to keep Jonathan updated on his daughter’s activities through a series of back channels, again on the Dark Web.
The bell over the café door rang, shaking Jonathan from his memories. It was Fahd, his contact, a guard at a local museum. Jonathan waited for a small crowd of patrons to finish leaving before he motioned to Fahd. The caramel-skinned, slight, black-haired man nodded and moved toward the table, furtively scanning the room as he approached. As he did, Jonathan’s phone, resting on the table, buzzed. He looked down and saw Natalie’s picture displayed on the screen.
