Kill Switch

by Jonathan Maberry

  She suddenly froze and stared beyond the blood to where the big ironbound book lay. The sight of it tore a cry from her and the knives were back in her hands as if by magic. She whirled and kicked Harry in the stomach, knocking him backward into the wall, then she was on him, the one blade back at his throat and the other pressed to the underside of his crotch. Her eyes seemed to blaze with fire.

  “Did you open the book?” she demanded. “Lie to me and I will gut you like a pig.”

  “No! I didn’t open it. I swear.”

  She bent close to look deeply into his eyes and he could almost feel her pry open his head to look inside. The moment held, stretched …

  And then she sagged back, exhaling and removing the knives. She looked relieved but visibly shaken. “No, you did not look into that book.”

  “I…,” he began, but he had nowhere useful to go with that.

  The woman sheathed one of her knives but kept the other in her hand as she walked through the blood toward the book. She knelt and used the very tip of the knife to touch it. “Such an ugly thing,” she said. “You have no idea how many people have died because of it. We need to take this book out of here. The men who killed your friends are probably downstairs looking for it. They will be furious when they learn it’s gone.”

  “Furious?” Harry pointed to the corpses. “How much madder can they get?”

  She shook her head. “You have no idea. They are the Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum. The Fraternal Brothers of the Lock, sometimes known as the Brotherhood. A sacred order charged with finding and destroying books like that one.”

  “Personally not a fan of book burning,” he said. “But I’m considering amending that policy. That thing gives me the creeps.”

  “It should,” she said, nodding. “If you truly understood what this is you would run screaming from here.”

  “I might anyway.”

  The woman smiled at that.

  “Look,” said Harry, “will you at least tell me your name and who you work for? Are you with Terrorelhárítási Központ? No, you sound Italian. Are you with the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza, or maybe NATO?”

  “Hardly. You haven’t heard of my group, so don’t ask. For now you can call me Violin.”

  Harry grunted. “Violin? That your real name?”

  “Don’t be naïve.”

  “Well … can you at least tell me you’re one of the good guys?”

  She gave him a long, strange look. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”

  “I—,” he began, but this time it was another voice who cut him off.

  A man’s voice. A sharp growl of surprise and outrage.

  Harry and Violin turned as five strangers came crowding through the doorway to the inner library. They, too, were dressed in black. And they, too, carried knives. Lots of knives.

  Guns, too.

  The obvious leader of the group pointed to the book on the floor. Everyone looked at it. Even Harry. Then the men all raised their eyes and looked at the man and woman standing on the other side of the book. The leader pointed his knife at them. He said something in Italian that, once again, Harry couldn’t translate. But he knew what it meant.

  The five men howled in fury and came running forward to kill.

  INTERLUDE TWELVE

  BALLARD MILITARY BOARDING SCHOOL

  POLAND, MAINE

  WHEN PROSPERO WAS THIRTEEN

  “And all of this is for me?” asked Prospero without even trying to hide the skepticism in his voice. “This lab, all this equipment. All of it?”

  Commandant Stark smiled. Prospero always thought the man had a truly oily smile. He bet that if he put that face in a vise he could wring a gallon of grease from it.

  “Of course, Cadet,” said Stark, whose voice was icy and hard, quite at odds with his unctuous leer. “You know that your father loves you and wants only the very best for you.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Prospero. “Right, because my father adores me. It’s well known.”

  Stark’s smile flickered but the lights stayed on. “He has gone to great expense and trouble to make sure that everything in this lab is state-of-the-art. Your father is a great man, Cadet. He is a true American and a patriot. I am proud to call him a friend.”

  “And does he call you a friend? Do you go out on man dates? What’s it like to blow a man like dear old—”

  The blow knocked the rest of the words from Prospero’s mouth. Stark was old but he was not slow, and he had refined the techniques of punishment and brutality over many years. The back of the commandant’s hand caught Prospero in exactly the right way to knock Prospero in nearly a full circle and detonate bombs behind his eyes. As Prospero staggered, the commandant stepped forward and clamped one hand around the boy’s throat and locked the other around his scrotum. The pain was unbelievable and the force lifted Prospero onto his toes. Stark leaned so close that his lips brushed Prospero’s cheek as he spoke.

  “Listen to me, Cadet,” hissed Stark loud enough for only the two of them to hear, “and mark me. If it were up to me I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. I wouldn’t buy water from you if I was on fire. You are a useless, ungrateful, psychologically fractured piece of shit who isn’t worth the calorie burn it would take to stomp you to death.”

  Prospero could not speak. The pain stole his voice and left only a tiny squeak in his throat.

  “But your father is a great man and he is a patron of this academy,” continued Stark. “For some reason that I simply cannot fathom he seems to care about you. If you had any idea how much money he paid to repair the damage your little stunt caused you would shit your pants. And then he paid double that to have these computers and pieces of equipment flown in from companies all around the world. There is more money in this equipment than it takes to run this academy for five motherfucking years.” He gave the boy’s scrotum a squeeze that tore a scream from Prospero, which Stark stifled by increasing the pressure of his choke. “Now … I don’t know what kind of mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein bullshit he thinks you’ll get up to with this stuff, but he is paying the light bill around here and that’s enough for me.”

  Stark used his double grip to walk Prospero back and then slam him hard against the front of a massive mainframe computer. Prospero’s head banged hard off the metal and fresh fireworks burst in front of his eyes.

  “You will respect your father and you will goddamn well show respect for me, Cadet Bell. You can have all the access you want to this lab and these machines, and your father even secured positions for four research assistants who have advanced degrees in physics and engineering. Imagine that, responsible adults who are here to work with you and jump when you yell ‘frog.’ But let us be crystal clear, Cadet. You will never again speak ill of your father and you will never—ever—disrespect me again. Your father does not want you marked, boy, but believe me when I say that there are things I can do to you—things I would enjoy doing to you—that would leave no marks at all. Not a one.”

  Another squeeze, this time with a sideways twist. Prospero begged him to stop, but the words were again squeezed to silence by the stricture on his throat. The edges of the room began growing dark and indistinct.

  “This is my school, my house, Cadet,” said Stark, his spit flecking Prospero’s cheek, “and while you are here you belong to me. Body.”

  Squeeze.

  “And.”

  Squeeze.

  “Soul.”

  With a grunt of effort Stark rammed him backward once more and then stepped back to allow Prospero to fall. The boy thudded down hard on elbows and knees, gagging and weeping, his forehead pressed against the floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  NAVAL AUXILIARY LANDING FIELD

  SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND

  68 NAUTICAL MILES WEST OF SAN DIEGO

  AUGUST 20, 1:37 P.M.

  I didn’t know what to expect when we landed. I hoped we’d see the rest of Echo Team standing there. Lydia Ruiz, Montana Parker, Br
ian Brandon Botley, and Sam Imura. Instead we were greeted by a bunch of marshmallow men. A dozen techs and twice as many armed SPs in white hazmat suits. The shore patrol guys all had their guns in their hands. Not pointing at us, per se, but not pointing away, either. It was a statement.

  One of the marshmallow men stepped up and identified himself as the base commander. “Captain Ledger,” he said crisply, “we are glad to see that you and your team are back safe and sound.”

  It was an unfortunate choice of words and it hung like a bad smell in the salt air. Pretty sure none of us were either safe or sound.

  “Yeah,” I said, “we’re peachy. What’s the drill here? What are your orders?”

  “Sir,” he said, “we need to get you off of this airstrip and into the biohazard unit.” He held up a BAMS unit and the lights were flickering between red and orange.

  One of his men pushed up a cart on which a heavy steel drum was positioned, its lid tilted back. We knew this drill. Everything we had went into the drum. Weapons, tech, radios, and clothes. Everything. Then the SP closed and sealed the lid and it was wheeled off toward the back of the biohazard unit. Another tech hosed us down with some kind of chemical that smelled like ass and tasted like shit. We stood there buck naked in a hot breeze, shivering as if the Antarctic winds had followed us. They handed us blankets and we wrapped them around our shoulders, achieving neither modesty nor warmth.

  “Thank you for cooperating,” said the officer. “I know this is difficult.”

  Top mumbled something very foul about the man’s mother, but halfway through it his eyes rolled up and he fell. Bunny caught him and lifted Top’s limp body. Bunny is enormously strong, but he was also sick. I put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. His skin was as hot as a furnace. Doctors and orderlies in heavy-duty white rushed to help us. Accepting the burden of Top Sims, guiding Bunny and me into the chamber, catching us when we fell.

  INTERLUDE THIRTEEN

  BELL FAMILY ESTATE

  MONTAUK ISLAND, NEW YORK

  WHEN PROSPERO WAS THIRTEEN

  “Major Sails,” said Bell, smiling like a barracuda as his guest came striding across the carpet, hand extended. They shook and he waved her to a seat. “Scotch?”

  “Do you have bourbon?” said Sails.

  “No. Can’t stand the stuff. I have thirty-year-old single malt.”

  “That’s fine, thanks.”

  He filled two glasses and handed one to her, then he sat on the edge of the desk, choosing the position so that he was set higher than her, making Sails look up as they spoke. Bell was aware that she knew the trick, but knowing it and not being affected by it were worlds apart.

  “So, do we have something to toast?” he asked. “Or are you here to threaten me some more?”

  Sails raised her glass. “A toast, definitely.”

  They clinked and drank. “I like the sound of that. Tell me.”

  “Before I do,” she said, “I heard that your son had a bit of an accident at his boarding school. Something about an explosion?”

  “What of it?”

  “He’s been continuing to work on his God Machine?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” she said. “Was he hurt?”

  “No. He remote fired the machine from another room. Kid’s crazy but he’s not stupid.”

  “An expensive failure,” she said.

  “Is there a point to this? Do you want to use that to bust my balls on the dollar amount of my bid?”

  “I don’t, actually. I was just noting it.”

  “What I think you’re doing, Major,” he said bluntly, “is reminding me that you know where Prospero is and that you’re keeping an eye on him. And I’m okay with that as long as you keep your hands off of him.”

  “We have no intention of interfering with his research,” Sails assured him. “My concern, if you want to know, is that he remains safe during the, um … more turbulent stages of his research.”

  “Like I said, he’s not stupid.”

  Sails air-toasted him on that. “My superiors took particular notice of the power blackout that seemed to coincide with the incident at the school. All of Poland, Maine, went dark.”

  “Isn’t that interesting as hell?”

  “It is. Sadly, one of the local merchants passed away, did you hear that? It seems his pacemaker suddenly stopped working. It happened during the blackout, and local authorities are baffled. I heard they’re blaming it on sunspots.”

  Bell laughed. “Sunspots? Nice spin. Anyone buying it?”

  “We may have seeded that to the local press,” she said, making it sound offhand. “Sunspots are known to have unusually powerful effects on electrical conductivity.”

  “Yeah, how about that?”

  Sails set her glass down and reached into her purse to produce a crisp envelope with a sturdy seal. Bell inspected it, arching an eyebrow at the seal. It was a red circle with an infinity symbol. No eagle, no name, no wording. Bell felt his heart quicken. He had heard of this group but had never once come this close to it.

  “This isn’t what I expected,” he said.

  “Open it.”

  He did. The letter was on heavy stationery, the kind rarely used in this digital age. A single sheet. The text was brief and to the point. He was being officially advised that his proposal had been accepted pending his signing nondisclosure agreements and taking certain oaths. Upon completion of those steps half of the proposed and agreed-upon price would be transferred to his account. Upon delivery of a working machine the other half would be deposited. There were notes about bonuses based on early-delivery dates, and penalties for exceeding the deadline. That part was commonplace and there were usually workarounds and compromises to be made.

  What interested him most was the name at the bottom of the letter. It was neither a military nor bureaucratic name. The letter was signed by a scientist.

  Someone Bell already knew.

  Someone Bell used to be related to. He looked up.

  “What’s this bullshit?”

  “It’s not bullshit,” said Sails.

  “This is from Mark Erskine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this a joke? He’s my fucking ex-brother-in-law.”

  “Yes. And he’s Prospero’s uncle.”

  Bell looked at the name again. “How is he involved in this? He’s not in the Department of Defense and he’s not with DARPA. He didn’t even know what DARPA was when I mentioned it to him.”

  Sails smiled. “Believe me when I tell you that Dr. Erskine is very familiar with DARPA and with many aspects of advanced research for the Department of Defense. What you might call off-the-record departments.”

  “I don’t believe you.…” Bell stopped. “Wait. Are you telling me that Erskine is with Majestic?”

  Sails smiled. “We call our division Gateway.”

  “Son of a bitch!” swore Bell. He flung the letter at her but Sails plucked it out of the air and folded it neatly.

  “Mr. Bell,” she said, “do you honestly think we would not have eyes on children like Prospero?”

  “Children like him? What do you mean by that?”

  She spread her hands. “Prospero may have many unique and very attractive qualities—as we both know—but he is hardly as alone in the world as he thinks he is.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Sails stood up so that she was eye to eye with him. “Let’s stop the dance, Mr. Bell. May I call you Oscar?”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “I’m Corrine,” she said. “The truth is that we recognize that you have been able to find the formula for getting Prospero to work up to his greatest potential. ‘Tortured artist syndrome’? That’s amazing. That report from Dr. Greene started fires all through my department. And while I can’t say that I am comfortable with some of your methods, the results speak for themselves. I’m here to congratulate you and to present our offer. You made it. You’re in.” She paused. “You won, Mr. Bell. Be happy. Dr.
Erskine is very excited about the God Machine. He is already making plans to build a full-scale version of it at a secure location we have set aside. More on that after you’ve been sworn in. Erskine thinks that the meltdown problems can’t be solved when working on scale versions. It’s too hard to observe the electrodynamics. So he’ll build a fully functional device, and if—no, when—we solve the power sequencing problems and reach field implementation, you will very likely go down in history as the man who prevented the next world war. Together we could actually save the world. How would that feel, Mr. Bell?” She smiled and held out her glass. “Care to toast to that?”

  “Save the world?” he echoed. “Fuck the world.”

  But he clinked his glass with hers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  NAVAL AUXILIARY LANDING FIELD

  SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND

  68 NAUTICAL MILES WEST OF SAN DIEGO

  AUGUST 20, 11:26 P.M.

  They put me in a small medical bay that wasn’t much bigger than a porta-potty. Everything was white and sterile and scary as hell. Doctors and nurses came in wearing hazmat suits, trailing wires and hoses. They took every sample that it is possible to take from a human being, and they did it all very fast. Desperately fast, which was not at all reassuring. They asked me a lot of questions but the more I talked, the more truthfully I answered them, the stranger the looks they gave me. Soon they weren’t even meeting my eyes.

  My fever spiked and then dropped sharply. Did that a couple of times. Each time it spiked I saw the numbers on the machines. First time was 100 degrees. Second time was 101.4. My heart was racing. My joints hurt and my glands felt like hot rocks under my chin. Sweat poured down my body. They had me on IVs but I think all of it flowed out of my pores. The lights began getting brighter, sounds became tinny and shrill.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I asked, desperate for something to cling to.

  “We’re doing everything we can,” someone told me. Or maybe everyone told me that. Not an answer. Even a bad answer is less scary than that.

  Then another doctor entered the room. Same hazmat suit as the others, but the face behind the plastic was one that I absolutely wanted to see. Needed to see. It was the face of a man who always seemed to have answers for me.