by A. G. Riddle
Lin turned to the research team. “Doctor Greene, inform the Alliance that the crew of the Arktika is unable to support our dive schedule, and thus we cannot complete our mission with the urgency they require.”
Nigel nodded and broke from the pack, but Vasiliev stopped him with a meaty outstretched hand. He turned to one of his own men and grumbled in Russian. The Russian officer said something to Nigel before striding off the deck.
When he was gone, Nigel said to Lin, “They’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
“Good.”
Peyton watched as the entire deck plunged into frenzied activity, the researchers and Russian naval personnel rushing, bumping into each other, and arguing.
Nigel stepped closer to Lin, his voice low, British accent thick. “Doctor Shaw, I must again press my request that you remain on the ship.”
“No.” Lin looked away, focusing on the preparations.
“You’re irreplaceable.” Nigel waited, then exhaled. “The risk is unnecessary.”
“No one knows the Beagle the way I do.”
“Perhaps. But we’ve mapped the vessel extensively. Our recovery personnel are trained—”
“Your objection is noted, Doctor Greene. I’ve made my decision.”
Nigel glanced at Peyton, who shrugged, silently saying, I’ve tried too.
Peyton had begun to wonder if there was something in the wreckage her mother didn’t want anyone else to find. She couldn’t shake the sense that her mother was hiding something—and Peyton didn’t want to miss it. For that reason, she had insisted on accompanying her mother on each dive. If there was something going on that would help save lives—or help her find Desmond—she wanted to know about it.
She also wondered if Nigel suspected something. If he did, he didn’t let on. He merely nodded and stepped away, leaving Peyton and Lin standing silently in the midst of the chaos, like statues amid a Mardi Gras procession.
Up here on the deck, Peyton got a better appreciation of the massive Russian ship’s size. At roughly a hundred feet wide and almost two football fields long, the Arktika was the world’s largest icebreaker. Its two nuclear reactors allowed it to cut through ice thirteen feet deep, also a world’s best. Its decks were painted a shade of green that reminded Peyton of a miniature golf course, and its exterior walls and hatches were a faded red. Perhaps the designers had thought that the red and green color scheme would stand out against the Arctic ice, but to Peyton, it was a reminder of Christmas, which was less than a week away. And she couldn’t think about Christmas without thinking about Desmond—about the night they spent at Half Moon Bay, and the moment he opened the box with the heart of glass. Unconsciously, her fingers touched the object in her pants.
She walked away from her mother, to the edge of the ship’s deck. The sheet of ice floating on the Arctic Ocean stretched into the darkness in every direction, seemingly with no end. The ship’s floodlights formed a bubble of illumination around the ship, making Peyton feel as though she were standing on the deck of a toy ship at the center of a snow globe, the world beyond shrouded.
From the ship’s rail, Peyton could see the US Navy helicopter perched on the helo pad above. Twice her mother had asked her if she wanted to board the helo and leave the expedition. Twice, Peyton had declined. She wasn’t leaving without answers.
Footsteps echoed on the deck behind her. Lin’s voice was quiet, less commanding now. “It’s time, Peyton.”
Minutes later, they were diving toward the wrecked submarine.
At the same time that Peyton and Lin’s research submersible was docking with the shipwrecked submarine on the ocean floor, a second submersible was moving closer to the Russian icebreaker Arktika. It carried a five-man team, all specially trained for the type of mission they were undertaking.
Instead of surfacing at the Arkika’s launch platform, the submersible slowly moved along the ship’s hull. It was searching for a break in the ice—one that was the right size, and hard to see from the aft and fore decks.
The submersible cut its forward thrust, reversed, and drifted toward the surface, stopping when it met the ice. A white tube extended vertically, rising above the water within feet of the hull. A pump at its base drained the water from the tube, the hatch at the top of the tube opened, and Lieutenant Stockton, the mission’s second in command, climbed the ladder inside.
At the top, he placed the rover against Arktika’s hull. He drew out a control device and activated the rover’s magnet. It clung to the Russian icebreaker and began climbing, its rubber tracks silent.
When the rover reached the deck, it extended two small arms and clamped against the metal lip. A finger-sized antenna with a glass tip rose, stopping just as it cleared the deck’s metal lip.
On the submersible, Captain Furst, the mission commander, glanced at his watch, mentally marking the time.
Stockton climbed back down, and the tube retracted. For the next twenty minutes, the five men inside the submersible sat in silence, watching the video footage for patrols and other details that would increase their mission’s chance of success.
Stockton turned to Furst and tapped his Luminox timepiece.
Furst nodded.
Stockton and a second man strapped on their body armor, then donned Russian naval uniforms. A high-tensile cable extended from the rover. The white tube once again rose from the submersible, the water drained, and the hatch opened. It took the two specialists less than a minute to scale Arktika’s hull.
Then they were standing on the deck, blending in with the other 140 crewmembers, ready to complete their mission: to sink the Arktika and capture or kill Lin and Peyton Shaw.
Chapter Four
At midnight, Conner exited the building and set out along the island path. Moonlight lit his way. Three camo-clad mercenaries followed behind him. Insects chanted out of sync, like an orchestra scoring their march.
At the holding pen, he stopped outside the fences. Desmond lay on the cot, eyes closed, his breathing shallow. Quietly, Conner opened the outer gate. He reached in his pocket, drew out the syringe, and removed the rubber cap. Speed was key.
He opened the inner gate and rushed toward his brother.
To Conner’s shock, Desmond rolled off of the cot, crouched low, and barreled forward. His shoulder connected just above Conner’s knees. He threw Conner over his back and came up swinging. His first haymaker hit the lead soldier in the face. The man flew back toward the fence, which buzzed as he convulsed.
The other two mercenaries dove for Desmond and wrestled him to the ground. They covered him like football players piling on a fumble. Desmond rolled, trying to throw them off, but Conner was on his feet, the syringe in his hand. He forced his brother’s head into the dirt and jabbed the needle into his neck.
I’m sorry, Des. You left me no choice.
The two mercenaries who had subdued Desmond carried him down the ridge, using the cot as a stretcher. Conner left the unconscious soldier behind and replaced him with another. Five more mercenaries waited by the jet in the camouflaged hangar. The team leader, Major Goins, informed Conner that the cargo was loaded and that they were prepped for departure.
The runway was a grass path that curved slightly. The jet bumped along as it gained speed, then lifted off.
Conner settled into the seat next to Desmond, who was sedated and intubated. The final member of Conner’s team, an anesthesiologist named Dr. Simon Park, sat in the seat on the other side of Desmond, monitoring his vitals. The physician had protested at length about the plan and had brought along enough equipment and medical supplies to stock a small hospital. He wore a constant look of worry.
Conner counted this as a good sign. People who didn’t care made more mistakes. That was why he had made sure Park knew that Desmond’s fate would be his own if anything happened.
Six hours later, Conner stood in the cockpit, peering out the jet’s windshield at the rising sun over the mountains of the Mexican state of Baja California. Soon the ridg
es turned to desert, then the desert met the sea. The Mexican town of San Felipe looked tiny next to the mountains and the Gulf of California.
A few miles inland lay a single-runway airport. Their satellite footage of the potential landing strip was a week old, but the first flyover confirmed that the regional airport was still deserted. Or looked to be.
The plane kicked up a large dust cloud as it landed. Conner and his team waited inside while the dust wandered down the runway, flowing over the white plane like a sandstorm. The soldiers unloaded two dirt bikes first, and four of the mercenaries set off, kicking up new, milky-tan dust clouds as they rode into the sun, toward town.
Dr. Park injected something into Desmond’s IV.
“How is he?” Conner asked.
“Stable.” Park didn’t look up. He was a man of few words. Conner liked that.
As planned, the soldiers returned with four stolen vans, all windowless and slightly beat-up.
They loaded the bikes into the back of one vehicle, along with most of the rest of the cargo. They placed the medical equipment and Desmond in a second van that carried Dr. Park, Conner, and his three best men. The remaining two vans were filled with troops and other cargo, including large containers of gasoline. Each van carried food, water, and ammo—just in case they got separated.
They locked the plane, threw a tan tarp over it, then drove north, through San Felipe. The tourist town showed no signs of habitation. Conner wondered if the residents had died or sought refuge in the shelter of a larger city.
There was no way to know how long the drive to Sand Hill Road would take. Under normal circumstances, twelve hours was a good estimate—but that assumed the roads were passable. Also, they wouldn’t be taking the most direct route, choosing instead to travel back roads and avoid major cities. It would probably take twice as long, but it would allow them to avoid bandits and government checkpoints—both of which could end their mission.
Near the US-Mexican border, they turned the vans off the road and drove through the desert. They crossed the unmarked international border somewhere between Mexicali and Tijuana. The region might as well have been the Sahara—there were no people, or life of any kind save for a few cacti and shrubs. The vans barreled north, four wide, so that the dust trails didn’t blind the van behind.
They got back onto pavement at California Highway 98 and drove west, looking for abandoned cars. They found none, just a long flat stretch of blacktop highway baking in the midday sun.
They pulled off the highway at the small community of Coyote Wells, which was no more than a truck stop. But it had what they needed: California license plates. The vehicle descriptions wouldn’t match the vans if run through a DMV database, but the tags would do until they found ones from vehicles of a closer match.
They traveled east, driving away from the coast, where there would be more people—and troops. Desert turned to green, irrigated farmlands. Turning north shortly after that, they drove past Salton Sea, Joshua Tree National Park, and Yucca Valley.
The van with the most soldiers drove a few miles ahead now, serving as a scout, looking for checkpoints or trouble. They found neither, only a few fallen trees and a rock slide, both of which they dealt with.
And with each passing hour, Conner started to relax.
A mile outside Barstow, California, they found tags on vans that were near matches to the makes and models they drove. Near Mariposa they cut toward the sea. Conner didn’t want to take a major interstate into the bay area, so they took the scenic roads that wound through the many parks, preserves, and national forests that stretched between San Jose and Santa Cruz.
Somewhere along the way, hours after the sun went down, Conner drifted off to sleep. The soft, rhythmic beeping of his brother’s heartbeat monitor was the last thing he heard.
A hand gripped his shoulder. Conner reached for the gun in his holster, then opened his eyes. Major Goins’s face was lit by the van’s dome light.
“Report,” Conner snapped.
“Scout van is on Portola Road. It just turned into Sand Hill.”
“Pull over.” Conner sat up. “Have the scout van wait.”
He activated the sat phone and dialed Yuri.
“Status?” the Russian said.
“We’re in position.”
“Resistance?”
“None.”
“Good. We’ll begin our attack. I hope it will give you some cover.”
“Copy.”
“Don’t forget why you’re out there, Conner.”
Conner glanced at his brother, lying in a coma just feet away. “I won’t.”
Yuri disconnected the call and strode to the situation room. To the head of watch, he said, “Pearl Harbor?”
“We’re ready, sir.”
“Commence.”
The large screen at the end of the room displayed a world map covered in green dots. Slowly, the green dots turned to red—an indication of routers shutting down. The Citium had hacked the devices’ firmware years ago, embedding the Trojan Horse, all in preparation for this moment. Now the devices were nothing more than bricks of plastic, silicon, and metal—until the Citium chose to reactivate them.
Satellites that transmitted data traffic across the internet also went dark. The only satellites left functioning were the Citium’s, along with a few others owned by private companies.
The world had come to rely on the internet.
And now it was gone.
Conner waited until a message appeared on his laptop:
Global Internet Disabled
He switched to the video feed from the scout van and activated his radio.
“Proceed.”
The vehicle pulled back onto the road, moving just under the speed limit. The driver wore civilian clothes, as did the others in the van, but Conner knew they would raise concern at any checkpoint. Their buzz cuts, rugged, chiseled faces, and hard eyes marked them as anything but civilians.
The road was deserted. Desmond’s office building—and the location of the memory—was just beyond the Sand Hill Road exit on Interstate 280. There was no movement—cars, pedestrians, or otherwise.
“Take us in,” Conner said. “And have the vans spread out.” Four vans together in a parking lot, belching white smoke into the December morning, would draw attention. Still, he wanted them close enough to help if trouble arose. “Have all units stay within visual range though.”
When his van pulled into the office building’s parking lot, Conner drew the cell phone from his pocket and opened the Labyrinth Reality app.
To the doctor, he said, “Do we need to be in Des’s office for this to work?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to move him as little as possible.”
“Fine. We’ll try it here.”
The app asked Conner how he would like to enter the Labyrinth: as the Minotaur or the hero. Conner smirked. He was the hero of the great game playing out around the world, but to the uninformed he was the Minotaur—a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. With his mangled face, he certainly looked the part.
Still, he clicked “hero” because he knew that’s what his misguided older brother considered himself to be. He would have programmed it that way, as a reminder to himself after he had lost his memories. Did Desmond put the prompt in the application to help renew his own faith in his cause? There was so much Conner still didn’t understand about his older brother.
Another dialog appeared:
Searching for Entrance…
A few seconds later, it read:
1 Entrance Located.
Conner tapped the screen again, and a progress bar appeared with the word Downloading… below it.
Ten minutes later, the phone buzzed.
Download Complete
At the same moment, Desmond arched his back and held the pose as if the makeshift hospital bed were on fire. Then he collapsed back to the stretcher and shook. The heartbeat monitor changed from a steady beat to a pounding al
arm. Desmond strained against the padded hand restraints tied to the bedside rails.
“What’s happening?” Conner asked.
Dr. Park ignored Conner. He pulled one of Desmond’s eyelids open and ran a penlight across it.
Conner grabbed the doctor’s shoulder. “Hey.”
Park threw his hand off. “I don’t know.”
Conner felt suddenly helpless. He’s dying. And I killed him.
Chapter Five
Peyton followed her mother and two Navy SEALs through the sunken submarine, careful not to tear her suit. They had tested the air for toxins and found none, but Lin Shaw had reminded them that strange experiments had been conducted on the Beagle, and with every lab and office they opened, there was a risk of toxic exposure. The suits stayed on.
As the CDC’s leading field epidemiologist, Peyton was used to operating in a suit—a biohazard suit. The hot zones she operated in were mostly near the equator: the Caribbean, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The Beagle was the opposite, a frozen tomb, and around every turn lay a new mystery: a laboratory with an experiment, an office with notes, scenes of the aftermath of the explosion that had sunk the sub thirty years ago.
During their first dive, the team had placed tiny LEDs in the passageways. They now glowed up from the floor, illuminating the glittering ice crystals on the walls. Peyton’s helmet lights pushed away the rest of the darkness. Floating dust motes rushed past as she walked, as if she were flying through the dark of space and stars were passing by.
This section of corridor had bunks on the left and right. About half of them were occupied by bodies, well preserved by the cold. Some of the Beagle’s crew had died with a book on their chest, while others embraced a lover or friend. For Peyton, it was strangely like seeing a village during an outbreak—a tableau of the final hours of people in a hopeless situation.
