by A. G. Riddle
Avery shook her head. “I’m not good at waiting.”
“Then do what you can—try to get yourself in a position to help. Avery, this is the only way. Those are my terms.”
They stood silently for a moment, the wind blowing their hair, the moon shining down, like two people standing in the calm before a storm.
“All right.”
“Good.”
“There’s something else, Des.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“We found it. The Beagle.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s true. At Phaethon, I accessed Lin Shaw’s hidden files. She had the ship’s travel logs. We used them to organize a search grid. We employed a new sea floor mapping technology to look for wreckage.”
“What’s down there? What’s on board the Beagle?”
“We don’t know. Lin’s notes are cryptic, but she’s obsessed with finding the Beagle. She talks about there being some alternative to the Looking Glass. Or a device that would neutralize it. A revelation that would change our understanding of the human species.”
“An alternative to the Looking Glass?”
“So it would seem.”
Desmond considered that.
Avery looked toward the bay. “Lin is an X factor here. We don’t know why she survived the purge. Or what her goal is.”
“She had me recruited to the Citium.”
Avery’s mouth fell open.
“For her daughter’s sake.”
Avery stared in disbelief.
“But I think we can trust her. And Conner—if we can break Yuri’s mental hold on him.”
“Des, we’re playing a very dangerous game here. If you’re wrong about any of these people…”
“If I am, we’ll figure it out. If this is a game, then it’s one we’re playing together.” He walked closer to her, their faces inches apart. “And we play very well together.”
She smiled. “So we’re partners now?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, the thing about partners is, they look out for each other. Cover each other.” She studied his face. “Tell each other everything.”
She waited. When he didn’t respond, she said, “Is there anything else I need to know?”
He debated telling her about his backup plan. But if it came to that, he needed her to be just as surprised as everyone else. That could save her life on the Kentaro Maru. It would also infuriate her. An angry, living Avery was better than a dead happy one.
“No,” he said. “We’re good, partner.”
Chapter 52
Inside the hangar, Desmond sat at the long table, listening. Avery was shouting and pointing at her boss and peers as she defended him, like a lawyer who was sure her client was innocent—and that the judge was in the prosecution’s pocket.
Finally she looked them all in the eyes and said, “All right, bottom line: this guy is inside the Citium. He’s got unlimited access. He’s willing to try to stop them—if we turn him loose. And he’s willing to put me in the middle of the action—undercover. You have nothing to lose. Even if he fails—even if we fail—you can still kick in doors and zip-tie the suspects. All we have—after thirty years—is a bunch of names and addresses and theories. Without Hughes, we’ve really got nothing.”
“Incorrect, Agent,” Ward said. “We have the ship in the harbor.” He glanced down at the table. “The Kentaro Maru. We take it down, and we pull the thread and it all unravels.”
Desmond spoke for the first time. “No, it won’t. You pull the thread and you’ll get a ball of yarn in your hand and a criminal in the wind. These people are prepared for you. And for people like you around the world. The Citium has firewalls. They compartmentalize everything. It’s true, you can take the Kentaro Maru, but there are other ships, in other harbors, in cities around the world. You take the freighter, and the responsibilities will simply shift—and the timeline will accelerate. You will set off whatever they’re planning. This whole thing will go off like a powder keg.”
Ultimately, they relented.
Desmond had one final request. When he told them, Ward shook his head.
“Ridiculous. We’re not a construction company.”
“So hire one. This is non-negotiable.”
“Why?”
“It’s part of my backup plan.”
“And the personnel?”
“Consider it an extended stakeout.”
Ward didn’t like it, but he agreed.
Desmond got up and walked to the bathroom in the hangar’s small office. Ward and Avery followed. Desmond pointed at the far wall. “It needs to be here. Inconspicuous.”
“All right.”
“How long?” Desmond asked.
Ward threw up his hands. “Again, I’m not a construction—”
“I need it done in two weeks, max. Can you get it done?”
Avery stared at Ward, silently taking Desmond’s side.
“We’ll get it done,” he muttered.
Avery and Ward filed out of the bathroom, leaving Desmond alone. He looked into the mirror over the small vanity.
“This is the end of the road.”
It took him a moment to realize that he was talking to himself—that this was a message, sent from the past, from him to the future version of himself who would relive the memories.
“I can’t show you anymore,” he said. “I can’t tell you where Rendition is. If I did, they might find it.”
He paused.
“You have to figure out what to do. How to stop Yuri.” He looked down. “If you should stop Yuri. How to save Conner. What Lin’s goal is.” He stared into the mirror again. “I don’t know the right answers. It’s part of why I did what I did. I needed to buy myself some time. I needed distance—to try to see all the pieces objectively. You’ve seen them now. I know it’s a hell of a burden to lay at your feet. I don’t envy you. But you’re the best person, the only person who can change what’s happening.”
Conner awoke to voices talking excitedly. He sat up and let his sleeping bag fall down. The electric lanterns glowed in the dark hangar, the corkboard like a bizarre art show.
“I’ve checked twice…” Dr. Park was saying.
“Doctor,” he called.
The slender man scurried over to him. “He’s out of the memory.”
“Location?”
Park’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “We don’t have one. The app—”
“It’s offline?”
“No. It’s working. But it says, ‘You’ve reached the center of the Labyrinth.’ It won’t give another location.”
Conner thought about that. In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was built by Daedalus to house the Minotaur—a half-man, half-beast. Daedalus had created the Labyrinth so intricately, so cleverly, that even he himself could barely escape it. The tale was a cautionary one—about geniuses creating devices with unintended consequences.
That Desmond had wrapped this silly mythology around his app didn’t surprise Conner. Desmond had always been fascinated by ancient mythology. He’d even named his fund, Icarus Capital, for Daedalus’s son, Icarus. Desmond loved old stories of all types, classic literature, dog-eared novels he found at used bookstores. Conner never saw the point. Looking in the past offered no help with the problems of the day. The present was what mattered, seeing the world and all its complexities as new, thinking fresh, solving the problems at hand without the blinders of history. There were no shortcuts, no ready-made templates and solutions to complex problems.
“Is that all, Doctor?”
Park looked down. “No. There’s a button. It says, ‘Open the Labyrinth.’”
Conner smiled. “Open it then.”
Park clicked the button.
Nothing happened.
He realized his error a second later. “He’s still under sedation.”
“Turn the machine off,” Conner said.
Desmond opened his eyes. The light was blinding. He clo
sed them again, mentally taking stock. His body was sore and weak. He felt groggy, like he’d been shot with an elephant dart.
He turned his head and cracked his eyes again, avoiding the buzzing lights overhead. He lay on a narrow table in an open space. A warehouse. No—as it came into focus he realized what it really was: a hangar. He knew this place.
He was splayed out on the same table where Avery had defended him, where the FBI agents had crowded around, working feverishly. They were gone now, the building deserted. But the corkboards and the pages were still there, displaying Yuri’s web of deceit.
A face came into Desmond’s field of vision. Scarred, mottled flesh. Someone he knew so well. Or so he’d thought.
Conner took Desmond’s hand and pulled him up. He steadied him, his hands on both of Desmond’s shoulders, and smiled, stretching the scars. “Welcome back, brother.”
Chapter 53
Peyton awoke to the sensation of the plane losing altitude. The others were all awake except for Nigel, who was snoring intermittently.
She felt much better, more rested, though the sleeping bag had provided too little padding for her back’s liking. She walked to the cockpit, where her mother and Adams were leaning through the doorway, and Avery was speaking into the radio.
“Confirmed, DFW ATC, proceeding to runway two.”
Peyton knew the three-letter airport code: DFW was Dallas–Fort Worth. Apparently while Peyton had been sleeping Avery had cleared their entrance to US airspace and connected with her handler at the Rubicon Group. But why had they come here? Lin had no connections in the Dallas area that Peyton knew of.
On the ground, they were met by a contingent of X1 troops—mostly US Army with a few Marines. They offloaded the crates from the Cave of Altamira into a van with a FEMA logo on the side.
Lin took Peyton aside and spoke quietly. “I need you to deliver the cases. Alone.”
“Deliver them where? To whom?”
“My colleagues. It has to be you, Peyton. You’re the only one I trust. Please hurry.”
Peyton exhaled. “We need to talk about what happened back there. One of the others let Yuri go.”
“We’ll worry about that later.” She gave Peyton a folded piece of paper and an envelope. “Directions. Give the envelope to the gatekeeper.”
Peyton hesitated, then asked a question she was scared to hear the answer to. But she had to know—just in case.
“Mom, back in the cave—what you said…” Peyton considered repeating her mother’s words: Take care of my daughter, Chief. She is more important to me than anything in this room. But she couldn’t. And it didn’t matter. She knew from her mother’s expression that the woman knew exactly what she was referring to. “That was for show, right? So that the Citium operatives would tell Yuri?”
“Yes.”
The word hit Peyton hard.
“Taking Yuri was the only possible way out for us, Peyton. I had to get alone with him—I needed him to believe I was ready to negotiate.”
Every word was a nail through Peyton’s heart. The joy she had felt hours ago turned to pain.
Her mother grabbed her shoulders. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.”
Peyton blinked. She opened her mouth to speak, but Lin ushered her toward the van. “Go, Peyton. Time is of the essence.”
Behind the wheel, Peyton unfolded the page. It was a map with only a few roads marked. She really missed the internet—and GPS.
DFW seemed to be one of the nerve centers of the government’s post-pandemic relief efforts. Flights came and went every few minutes, and the airport was swarming with troops and cargo transports. It took Peyton ten minutes just to leave, and her papers were checked twice.
She took International Parkway south out of the airport, then 183 East to Highway 161 South, which turned into the George Bush Turnpike. The tolls were all electronic, but Peyton doubted anyone would get a bill.
The highway was nearly deserted save for military vehicles and transfer trucks. It was eerie, unnerving even. She took Interstate 20 East, then I-35E. The cityscape soon turned to countryside, skyscrapers replaced by barbed-wire fences around vast pastures.
She had been driving about an hour when she saw the signs for Waxahachie. She turned off the interstate at exit 399A, onto Cantrell Street, which turned into Buena Vista Road. A mobile home park lay on her left. Swings on the children’s play sets swayed in the Texas prairie wind, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. She passed barns, farms, and houses set back off the road.
She took the next turn, onto Perimeter Road. Six massive buildings stretched out before her, like a manufacturing plant set in the middle of a green field. The road was crumbling, neglected, left to bake in the Texas sun, its peeling pieces carried away by the wind. A chain link gate ahead was manned. Peyton stopped, rolled down the window, and handed the man the envelope her mother had given her.
The logo on the man’s uniform read “MedioSol”—Latin for “center of the sun.” Peyton had never heard of it, but she knew it was her mother’s work, a reference to the Invisible Sun her father had spent his life trying to find.
The guard grabbed the clip-on speaker microphone attached to his radio. “She’s here to see Ferguson—on Shaw’s orders.”
The gate creaked as it rolled aside. Peyton was about to put the van in drive when an idea occurred to her. She held out her hand.
“I’m going to need that back.”
The guard handed her the envelope, and she gunned the van along the uneven road.
When he was firmly in her rear view, she took the single page out of the envelope. Her mother’s handwriting was neat and small.
She has the research from the Beagle. Hurry. She’s my daughter. Protect her at all costs.
Another uniformed guard motioned her to the nearest building, where a wide roll-up door was opening. She pulled the van into the building, and the door closed behind her. The room looked like some sort of loading dock; forklifts and hand trucks lined the walls. Several workers in coveralls bearing the MedioSol logo entered from a side door and began unloading the van.
“Where are you taking that?” Peyton asked.
“Intake,” one of the workers answered. He motioned to a door at the end of the room. “Doctor Ferguson’s waiting for you.”
Peyton didn’t know the name.
The door led to a small, empty chamber with a door at the opposite end. As she entered, the door closed behind her. A blast of cold air ran over her, and she realized she was in a decontamination chamber.
The exit door clicked open, and Peyton walked through it. What she saw on the other side took her breath away.
Avery had spent the last hour debriefing, and she was sick of it. Finally, she walked out of the conference room, over the objections of the Rubicon-assigned FBI agent.
“Agent Price,” the woman called, standing up.
“Be right back,” Avery lied.
She found Lin Shaw standing in the X1 situation room, which was a repurposed air traffic control center.
“What’s next?”
Lin turned to her. “Miss Price. I thought you were being debriefed.”
“I’m briefless. So. What’s the plan?”
“We wait.”
“For Peyton to get back?”
“No.”
Avery ground her teeth. Lin Shaw was as transparent as a cinderblock wall.
“No what?”
“Peyton’s not coming back.”
Chapter 54
Peyton’s footsteps echoed on the concrete floor. The room was cold and dark and reminded her of Altamira, though this place was its technological opposite: a marvel of science and technology, not of ancient art. The room was tall, three stories, and the walls were glass. Beyond the glass, rows of server racks stretched out as far as she could see, their lights blinking green, red, and yellow. The place was massive, perhaps the size of twenty football fields put together. This datacenter had to be one of the largest in the world
.
“Welcome.”
The voice caught Peyton off guard. She turned to find a slender man with close-cut hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a white lab coat.
“Sorry if I startled you.” Based on the accent, Peyton guessed he was from Boston. “I’m Richard Ferguson. A colleague of your mother’s.”
“Colleague in what?”
He frowned. “You don’t know?”
“I know she’s looking for a code in the human genome. But she’s never mentioned this place.”
“Ah. That was probably prudent.” He turned his back to her and headed toward another door. “I’m sure you’d like to shower and rest a bit. I imagine you’ve been through an ordeal.”
Peyton didn’t feel that “an ordeal” quite covered what she had been through. But she didn’t want to shower, or rest. She wanted answers.
Beyond the door was a corridor that was more cramped than she expected. Colored wires, some thick, others as thin as Ethernet, hung in the ceiling like the veins of a mechanical beast. Large pipes, painted white, ran along the walls just above the door frames. Three letters were emblazoned every few feet: SSC.
“I’d rather talk,” Peyton said, catching up to Ferguson.
“About?”
“What you’re doing here. I want some answers.”
“Certainly. I have some work to attend to first.”
“You’re going to work on the samples.”
“Yes. They’re very old. And delicate. I want to extract the DNA myself. And it needs to be done now—time is running out.”
“Why?” Then Peyton realized the answer to her question. “Yuri. You’re running out of time to stop him.”
Ferguson stopped at a door and swiped his key card. It opened, revealing a room with a bed and a couch, about the size of a hotel room, with a window that looked out on a retention pond. “Correct. Now Miss Shaw, you’ll have to excuse me.”
“Sixty seconds. Please. Then I’ll let you work.” She looked through the doorway. “I won’t go inside unless you talk to me.”
