Chapter 17
Solly paused for breath and shone his flashlight at the sign. "Good grief, have we only reached the fifteenth floor?"
"I was just thinkin' I don't remember it bein' so tough last time," Viv responded.
The rhythmic thudding of boots heralded the arrival of Scott Lee, who was followed by an aggravated-looking Kuchinsky.
"Come on, Scott!" he growled. "We're never gonna make it to the top at this rate."
Lee leaned back against the wall and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm exhausted."
"No more than we are," Kuchinsky responded. "And if we don't get a move on, we'll have the Lee goons on us before we can do what we came here to do."
"Maybe that's what he wants," Vivian said, shooting a venomous glance at the man.
Scott Lee shook his head slowly. "Why would I want that? They'll kill me on sight."
"Come on," Solly said. "Let's get it over with."
Little had changed in the stairwell since the last time they'd climbed to the top of the PNC Tower. The air was saturated with the aroma of fetid water and still, beyond the closed doors on each landing, lay the rotting remains of former workers. Would they ever be cleared away, let alone given the decent burial that was the least they deserved? Or would they remain there as, over the decades, the building crumbled around them until, finally, they would collapse together, and the Earth reclaimed all the works of man? A thousand years from now, would Louisville be nothing more than a series of gentle mounds beside a flowing river?
Whatever the fate of the poor devils behind the doors, Solly's mind lay firmly on what was at the top of the tower. Quite apart from the terrible risk they were taking, he was troubled by how easy it had been to get this far. He'd expected the Lee Corporation to have deepened its influence in the city and even to have taken control. That had been their pattern everywhere he'd seen so far—begin by offering help with no strings attached and then, step by step, bring the locals under the jackboot. And yet, here, as in Lexington, there was no evidence of this. He felt as though he was walking into a trap, and yet he continued because the game was in play and it was their part to see it through, even though they knew that the dice were loaded against them.
He patted his jacket pocket, feeling the warm metal of Alison's cylinder. This was to be her moment and the culmination of all the toiling that had seen him cross the country east to west and north to south over the months since the Long Night.
As he trudged up the stairs, focusing his gaze on the flashlight beam illuminating each step and accompanied by the sounds of echoing footsteps, his mind wandered back to the past, back to the time before the world had died.
He'd been a miserable, selfish, good-for-nothing with no job, no lover and no future. Well, perhaps that was a little unfair. The truth was that the Solly Masters of today—the version who was, it seemed, prepared to sacrifice himself for the greater good—had been hidden within the old Solly, waiting for something like a global apocalypse to present an opportunity for growth. So that was the silver lining. And scant comfort it was.
He knew he was a better man now. His world had expanded beyond the confines of his own mind so that he now genuinely thought of others before himself. He saw Bella, Maddie and Jake in his mind's eye. Then Ross. Would he ever see them again? No, it wasn't helpful to hope for a reunion. And Janice. Whatever happened in the next hour wouldn't bring her back. The best—the very best—that they could hope for was to prevent the worst from happening for those who'd survived so far. Nothing on Earth would heal the wounds caused by the Long Night.
They took a break at the thirtieth floor. As they sat on the steps eating rations by flashlight, Solly found himself missing Ross more than anyone. He so wanted to make a Moria reference, but he knew he'd get nothing more than blank stares from the others—except Scott who was as geeky as he was. But Solly had no desire to talk to him. He glanced across at Lee, who sat apart from the others, leaning against the bottom of the wall. No, this wasn't Mordor, it was the stairs to Cirith Ungol and there, in the shadows, sat Smeagol. From time to time, a drip hit the landing or plunged down the center of the stairwell to hit the bottom.
It was a long, exhausting climb to the top of the PNC Tower but finally they reached the outer door that Solly had forced. It had slammed back and gotten jammed at some point in the intervening weeks, and slick water pooled on the landing as Solly and Kuchinsky put their backs against the door and pushed. Suddenly, with a rush of fresh air, the door sprang outwards and slammed against the wall, opening onto darkness.
"Are you ready, Scott? We can't do this without you."
Lee nodded without looking up and followed Solly out onto the roof. Solly had hoped the darkness would cloak the fact that they were four hundred feet up, but it only made it all the more frightening. He kept his flashlight focused on the space immediately where he was putting his feet down, terrified he'd step out onto nothing.
"Not so windy, this time," Vivian said, showing no sign of nervousness.
"Doesn't this freak you out? Being up here in the dark?"
She laughed. She actually laughed. "I ain't gonna fall off the side, Sol, don't you worry. There's plenty of ways I might go, but that ain't gonna be one of them. You stick close to me. It's this way."
She guided them over the roof to where the three long sections of glass sat. Solly picked his way to where the transmitter he and Vivian had installed on their previous visit lay. He knelt beside it, checking the display, before wiping off the surface of the solar panel. "Doesn't look as though it's been touched."
"Nah. They haven't been up here," Vivian said. "Set it and forget it, that's their policy. Maybe there ain't enough of them to go around. Engineers, I mean."
Solly got up and led Scott to the Lee Corporation device.
"Right, it's your turn. You know what you have to do."
Scott knelt beside the panel and took the tool kit from his pack. He selected a screwdriver and began removing the screws from one of the protective panels.
"How long will it take?" Solly asked.
Lee looked up, the flashlight turning his face into a lunar surface of light and shade. "It'll take as long as it takes," he spat. "I couldn't work it all out from the schematics you brought back. I need to see it in situ. Now, leave me to it."
Solly was as shocked by Lee's animation as he was by his venomous tone. This was the first time he'd been any more than a liability since they'd left the farmhouse.
"Can we trust him?" Kuchinsky mumbled as he, Solly and Vivian took shelter against an air conditioning unit.
Solly shook his head. "No. But we don't have a choice. We're in this far too deep to change plans now. And, in any case, what can he do? If he gives us away, he's as dead as we are. They won't forgive him now. And there's his homicidal wife's digital identities to contend with. She controls the Lee Corporation. No, there's no escape for him."
"So, what's he doing?" Vivian asked.
"The transceiver connects to the Lee Corporation's cellular network. He's setting it up so we can inject Alison into the network."
Vivian shivered. "And then what?"
Solly shrugged. "Then we have to hope she can take control, cell by cell. And…"
"And what?"
"Well, it's not just whether she can do it. It's whether she will do it, when the time comes."
Kuchinsky, who'd been sipping a cup of coffee, almost choked on it. "What the f—"
"She's a thinking being, Joe," Solly said. "If you sent a human on a mission like this—quite possibly an impossible mission—you couldn't be certain they'd be able to make the right choice when faced with it. We're asking Alison to risk her existence for us, after all. What's in it for her?"
"She's attached to you, Sol," Vivian said.
"Yeah, that's true, and I feel bad enough asking her to do this. I couldn't honestly blame her if she bailed out. I mean, she's the artificial child of Annabel and Scott Lee. I used to think that the fact Scott had added his personality to her matrix was
a good thing, but I'm not so sure now."
Kuchinsky let out a grim chuckle. "So, the future of humanity rests on the shoulders of an AI based on a homicidal maniac and her lunatic husband. We're screwed, Solly. We're screwed."
Scott Lee worked for hours on the Lee Corporation transceiver. As soon as he'd seen it, he seemed to have revived a little. Solly suspected it was the comfort of having a specific job to do—a task that fascinated him. It was a challenge and he needed to know if he was up to it, whatever else might follow.
Lee called Solly over several times to ask questions, though it was obvious enough that Solly was simply functioning as a sounding board. So, he nodded his head at the appropriate points and tried to make sense of what Scott was doing. He recognized the EEPROM and flash memory programmers that Scott was using to replace the firmware with the slightly modified version he'd created. The version with the side door for Alison to walk through.
For most of the next hours, however, Solly sat huddled with Kuchinsky and Vivian trying not to think about how cold he was. Gradually, the horizon began to lighten and any chance of getting away under the cover of night vanished.
Lee became progressively more agitated as the morning approached but, finally, he sat back, looked across at them and said. "It's done."
Vivian poured him some coffee and held it to his lips. Scott Lee looked so exhausted and frail that he could have been blown from the roof and carried away on the wind.
After he'd drunk, he gestured to Solly. "We have to be quick now. They'll discover what I've done."
Solly reached into his pocket and slowly withdrew the cylinder. Lee snatched it, withdrew Alison from her sheath and stabbed down on the activation contact. The familiar cyan eye rolled into view.
"Hello, Creator. Is it time?"
"Yes, Alison. We must hurry. I will connect you, but please only probe, do not upload yet. We must be sure it will work."
"Is Father here?"
Lee didn't bother to hide his anger as he glanced across at Solly. "What does it matter? This is between you and I."
"Father says I must decide whether to do this."
Solly walked over and knelt beside Lee. "Yes. It's your choice, Alison. Only you can decide if you're prepared to risk everything for us."
"Don't be a fool!" Lee spat. "She is my child. She will do as she is told."
He put the cylinder down and connected a pair of patch wires between it and the transceiver as the cyan eye moved back and forth.
"Running diagnostics," Lee said as he watched the instrument panel. Suddenly, he laughed maniacally. "I've done it! Confirm, Alison, my dear. Confirm you have access."
"I have access, Creator," she said.
"Ha! I knew I could do it. I knew I could bypass everything Annabel and her cronies had built into the system."
"Well done, Scott," Solly said. "What happens now? Does Alison handle it from here?"
Lee looked up at him, his eyes gleaming. "You know the plan. When Alison is injected, she will travel through the cellular network until she reaches the Seattle node. There, she will meet her mother. If she overcomes her, she will then travel to New York and defeat her other mother. She will then work from the inside against the Lee Corporation and their allies. Did I get that right?"
Solly nodded. "Yes. Now, let's do it quickly. Alison, are you ready? Are you prepared to do this?"
In a blur of movement, Lee stood up and drew his sidearm. Gone was the exhausted shell of man they'd brought from the farmhouse and, in his place, stood a raving lunatic.
"Put down your weapons!" he yelled.
Solly dropped his and heard two further thuds behind him. "What are you doing?"
"It's a trap, you fool!" Lee cried. "They want Alison. She wants Alison. They made me build the way in, and now they're coming. As soon as she goes inside, Annabel will have her. And I will not let that happen."
"They made you?"
Lee nodded rapidly. "While you were hobnobbing with the mayor in Lexington, they upgraded me. Told me I had to follow the plan to the letter, and they'd let me live. Fools! I don't care about living. I had to show them I could do it! I could hack into their systems. I beat Shi Chin Ho! Ha! So much for my replacement!"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Doesn't matter!" Lee said, shaking his head as a huge smile broke out across it. "I won. But Alison is mine, my creation, and she's not having her. She wants everyone dead. She wants a world where the only two minds are her and Alison."
"Solly!"
With a roar, a black helicopter rose up behind them, framed against the brightening sky. It swung around so that its side-mounted machine gun was pointed directly at them.
"Scott, my darling."
The voice came from the helicopter. Despite the thunderous noise, Solly could hear that it was the voice of Annabel Lee.
"Bring our daughter home and we can be together."
Terror and rage fought for mastery over Scott Lee. He shook his head and stepped back, raising the cylinder above his head. "No! You don't love me. You haven't for years!"
"Don't be silly, Scott. Things can be as they were. Please, come aboard."
Solly felt like he was being forced to listen to a private conversation between two people bellowing at each other in the street. He might as well not have been there for all the attention they were paying to him.
"Scottie. Come on. Be with us and be at peace. We can be a family again. I am ready to be the wife you always deserved. Come with us and we will set things right. Come with us and you can call the shots. It's time to come out of the shadows and be the father you were made to be."
Solly was watching Alison. Her eye was moving left and right as if in a panic but, finally, it settled on him. Somehow, an understanding passed between them.
Scott pulled her to his chest, his eyes fixed firmly on the helicopter. Then, standing in front of Scott, with her back to Solly, was Annabel Lee. He knew she was a projection. Scott must have known it also, but she looked as real as Vivian, who was standing next to him, her hand in his.
"It is time to come home, Scott," the voice said as the projected Annabel Lee opened her arms.
Scott Lee hesitated for a moment, and then took a step forward.
With a roar, Solly ran at him. Vivian let out a cry of panic as Solly threw all his momentum into a charge that took him through the holographic body of Annabel Lee and into Scott. Caught by surprise, Scott fell backwards, Solly's arms around him as he propelled him across the roof.
Solly yelled as Lee's nails dug into his shoulder, but he continued to push and then, suddenly, the roof ran out and Scott's feet had nothing behind them but four hundred feet of air.
They hung there for a moment as Solly opened his arms and desperately tried to pull himself back.
"No!!" Scott yelled, clawing at Solly, overbalancing him, trying to rescue himself.
Solly gave one final heave and Scott fell, clutching Alison to his chest, screaming as he plunged.
Solly wavered on the brink and felt himself falling into the abyss when a strong hand closed around his wrist and he was yanked back onto the roof.
"Why did you do it?" Kuchinsky said, his face as pale as death.
"She mustn't have Alison," Solly said. "Not on her terms, anyway. It would be the end of everything."
The helicopter roared upwards and the machine gun swung around.
"Kill them all!" the voice of Annabel Lee screamed.
Chapter 18
They crouched behind the air con unit as the helicopter swung around, the roof surface exploding around them as the machine-gunner pinned them down.
"Are you insane?" Kuchinsky bellowed.
Solly could feel Vivian's body trembling alongside him. "You killed him," she said, simply. "And Alison. She's gone."
"I had no choice," Solly said, trying to keep his voice steady as he shouted over the staccato pings of gunfire and the roar of the helicopter. "I couldn't let him hand over Alison like that,
completely defenseless. I promised to protect her."
"Idiot," Kuchinsky snapped.
The helicopter came into view. It had dropped in height before moving around the building, so it appeared suddenly from their right and they were forced to scramble around their cover.
Annabel Lee's voice called out, "Land, you fools!"
Solly darted forward, keeping as low to the ground as his back would permit and dived for their weapons which lay on the gravel where they'd been dropped.
Rounds spat into the roof all around him and he rolled away, his legs kicking desperately as he spun himself behind a flue. The helicopter couldn't fire on both positions simultaneously, so, when it was attacking the others, Solly half-threw, half-slid weapons to Kuchinsky and Vivian before ducking down again.
He wasn't far from the exit door. If he ran for it, he might be able to get into the stairwell. But where then? They would be waiting for him on the ground, so there was no possibility of escape that way. He could break into one of the floors and hide among the dead, for a while at least. No one could blame him for trying to get away.
Yes, they could. He had killed Scott Lee when he'd been on the verge of betraying them and, in doing so, he'd sent Alison plunging fifty floors. There was no way her cylinder would survive the impact. In preventing the immediate disaster of the Lee family reunion, he'd condemned them all to death. That would be the accusation.
He'd known for a while now that he might be forced to deal with Scott. The man had become unhinged since the attack on the factory. He'd tried to disable Alison then, though that had been a half-hearted attempt designed to prevent Solly, presumably, from communicating with her. As he watched Viv and Joe crawling around the aircon unit to avoid the helicopter, he wondered whether Scott Lee had always been insane or whether, at one time, he'd truly been the visionary he claimed. Or was he simply the man behind the monster?
Right now, however, he wanted nothing more than to help the others escape from this rooftop. As the shock dissipated, he found that he couldn't entirely abandon hope. There was still a chance. He had to believe that.
Showdown: Book 6 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival series: (The Long Night - Book 6) Page 14
