Dream Sky

by Brett Battles

  DREAM SKY

  Praise for the Project Eden Thrillers

  “Sick didn’t just hook me. It hit me with a devastating uppercut on every primal level—as a parent, a father, and a human being.”—Blake Crouch, author of Run

  “A gem of an outbreak story that unfolds like a thriller movie and never lets up, all the way to the last page. Absolutely my favorite kind of story!”—John Maberry, New York Times bestselling author

  “Not only grabs you by the throat, but by the heart and gut as well, and by the time you finish you feel as if you've just taken a runaway train through dangerous territory. Buy these books now. You won't regret it.”—Robert Browne, author of The Paradise Prophecy

  “Like a fever, Sick makes you sweat and keeps you up all night, wondering what the hell is happening. It’ll make your heart race like someone shot you with an EpiPen. You think Battles was badass before? He just cranked it up to 500 joules. CLEAR!”—PopCultureNerd.com

  “Brett Battles at his best, a thriller that also chills, with a secret at its core that’s almost too scary to be contained within the covers of a book.”—Tim Hallinan, author of the Edgar-nominated The Queen of Patpong

  ALSO BY BRETT BATTLES

  THE JONATHAN QUINN THRILLERS

  Novels

  THE CLEANER

  THE DECEIVED

  SHADOW OF BETRAYAL (US)/THE UNWANTED (UK)

  THE SILENCED

  BECOMING QUINN

  THE DESTROYED

  THE COLLECTED

  THE ENRAGED

  Short Stories

  “Just Another Job”—A Jonathan Quinn Story

  “Off the Clock—A Jonathan Quinn Story

  “The Assignment”—An Orlando Story

  THE LOGAN HARPER THRILLERS

  LITTLE GIRL GONE

  EVERY PRECIOUS THING

  THE PROJECT EDEN THRILLERS

  SICK

  EXIT 9

  PALE HORSE

  ASHES

  EDEN RISING

  DREAM SKY

  THE ALEXANDRA POE THRILLERS

  (With Robert Gregory Browne)

  POE

  TAKEDOWN

  STANDALONES

  Novels

  THE PULL OF GRAVITY

  NO RETURN

  Short Stories

  “Perfect Gentleman”

  For Younger Readers

  THE TROUBLE FAMILY CHRONICLES

  HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE

  DREAM SKY

  Brett Battles

  A PROJECT EDEN THRILLER

  Book 6

  DREAM SKY Copyright © 2014 by Brett Battles

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Jeroen ten Berge

  DREAM SKY is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about the author, please visit www.brettbattles.com.

  What Came Before

  THOSE WHO HAD survived the initial outbreak of the Sage Flu were relieved when they saw and heard the message from the secretary general of the United Nations telling them a vaccine was available. But the message was merely a means to lure the living to Project Eden’s holding facilities, where individual judgments could be made on whether or not the survivors were valuable enough to keep alive.

  After Ben Bowerman buried his family in a San Mateo, California, cemetery, he headed south to find his girlfriend Martina. He stopped first in Santa Cruz, where he’d been attending college, to pick up a present he’d purchased for Martina. While there, he discovered Iris Carlson locked in a basement, unaware of what had been going on. He took her with him, but when he woke the next morning, he discovered she’d stolen his Jeep and most of his things.

  In Ridgecrest, California, Martina Gable’s band of friends decided to leave their hometown and travel to the survival station in Los Angeles. Martina had different plans. Three of her friends stayed with her, and together they went in search of Martina’s boyfriend, Ben. What Martina found was Ben’s Jeep being driven by someone she didn’t know, someone who told her Ben was dead.

  In Mumbai, Sanjay and Kusum investigated the survival station, suspecting it wasn’t what it claimed to be. Their observations confirmed their suspicions, but in the process, Kusum and a few of the couple’s colleagues were taken prisoner by Project Eden. Sanjay mounted a rescue operation, not only for his friends but also the others being held. He and Kusum then went back in to steal as much vaccine as they could find.

  The survivors on Isabella Island anxiously awaited the return of the UN. When a plane carrying medical personnel finally landed, the island occupants received their inoculations. Afterward, Robert and a few others met with the people from the plane and learned they weren’t from the UN, that the UN message was a lie. The plane then left, but Rich “Pax” Paxton stayed behind to help convince the rest of the island residents that the trouble was not over. He was proven right when another plane approached and sprayed the island with Sage Flu instead of landing. Through Pax’s quick action, everyone took cover inside the resort.

  Outside Washington DC, Tamara Costello and Bobby Lion located an NSA communications facility, and set to work finding a way to use the equipment to replace the fake UN message, which continued to play over the airwaves, with one of their own. After several obstacles, Bobby was able to get the system to work, but they couldn’t play their prerecorded message and Tamara had to convey it live, over and over.

  The Resistance had split into two groups. The larger group traveled from the Ranch in Montana to the Resistance’s alternate base at Ward Mountain North, Nevada. The smaller group, led by Matt Hamilton, the leader of the Resistance, waited a few days for Daniel Ash to recover from his wounds, until a storm forced them to leave. But Matt did not lead his band of people directly to Nevada. Instead, they headed south to New Mexico. Matt had received a message from a contact, known as C8, inside Project Eden, informing him that the Project’s principal director was at the Project Eden base outside Las Cruces, New Mexico. When his team arrived in the southern New Mexican town, Matt headed to the base alone, rendezvousing with C8. Inside the base, Matt and C8 placed sarin gas dispensers throughout the facility. Matt also set up remote-controlled explosives near the central elevator. The plan was to wait for a meeting the principal director was scheduled to attend, but before the meeting happened, Tamara Costello’s live broadcasts appeared, replacing the fake UN message. Realizing he couldn’t wait any longer, Matt set off the explosives and the gas. Once the way was clear, he headed to the principal director’s office, where he found the man and his assistant still alive. Matt killed the principal director and left. But before he could reach the stairs that would take him outside, he was shot by the principal director’s dying assistant.

  Ash rushed toward the burning Project Eden facility, hoping Matt had been able to escape. When he saw his friend standing outside the building, he was momentarily relieved. But then Matt fell to the ground. Kneeling at his side, Ash saw his friend’s wounds were grave, but the leader of the Resistance was determined to pass on some information.

  “Augustine…green…sky,” Matt whispered.

  “What?” Ash asked.

  “You…need to…know…”

  “Augustine green sky?”

  “Dream,” Matt corrected him. “Dream sky.”

  Ash asked what the message meant, but Matt Hamilton was dead.

  January 3rd

  World Population

  918,992,056

  1

  “THE TIME IS four p.m., GMT. Shall we begin?”

  As expected, there was no dissent.

  “It has
now been over ten hours since our last communication with NB219 or Principal Director Perez,” Celeste Johnson told the others partaking in the video conference. “Due to this silence, and per Project guidelines, this emergency meeting of the directorate has been called.”

  The irony that this was the first meeting of the directorate since Perez had taken charge of the Project was not lost on them. He had turned the group into merely an advisory council—one he had yet to call on—and the members had little doubt he had been planning on disbanding them completely.

  The current group was actually the second incarnation of the directorate, since the members of the pre-pandemic board had all been killed at Bluebird on Implementation Day. Out of that initial post-KV-27a-release directorate, only two members remained: Dr. Henry Lassiter, stationed at NB772 in southern France; and Erik Halversen at NB405 on the outskirts of Hamburg, Germany. The rest had all been appointed to their positions by Director Perez: Johannes Yeager at NB338 outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Kim Woo-Jin at NB202 near Seoul, Korea; Parkash Mahajan at NB551 in Jaipur, India; and Celeste at NB016 in New York City, USA.

  “If I may,” Dr. Lassiter said from his monitor.

  “Go ahead, Doctor,” Celeste said.

  “As ranking Project member, I believe the role of principal director falls to me. I suggest we all agree to that immediately so we can move on to more important matters.”

  Celeste looked at the different screens in front of her. Yeager, Kim, and Mahajan were all trying very hard to keep their faces neutral. Halversen, on the other hand, was nodding in agreement.

  “I understand your thoughts on the manner,” Celeste said. “As we all do.”

  “Excellent. Then we’re agreed.”

  “No,” Kim said. “We are not.”

  The doctor looked surprised. “Mr. Kim, we can work out a solution to whatever problem you’re—”

  “Dr. Lassiter,” Celeste said. “Mr. Kim is not the only one who has an issue with your suggestion. I believe you will find that Mr. Yeager and Mr. Mahajan share a similar point of view.”

  “For God’s sake,” Lassiter said, “this is not the time for infighting. We are at a critical point in the plan, yet for the second time in two weeks we have lost our leader. We need a smooth transition to someone familiar with how things work at the top. What we don’t need is a split vote.”

  “Split vote?” Celeste said. “I think you’ve misunderstood. I would not vote for your ascension to principal director, either.”

  “No. Absolutely not. You four are only on the directorate because Perez needed bodies in seats so that the membership felt everything was fine. You wouldn’t even be on this call otherwise.”

  “The fact is, we are on this call,” Yeager said. “Whether we should be here or not is no longer an issue.”

  “Doctor,” Celeste said, “we may not have been on this board very long, but, if I may remind you, that means we were not part of the directorate that allowed Perez to take full control.”

  “You’re saying that like Erik and I had a choice,” Lassiter said.

  “There is always a choice,” she said. “And you two made the wrong one. You went against the best interests of the membership and allowed Perez to become the dictator. If he hadn’t been eliminated, I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened to the Project.”

  “I think you are being a little premature there,” Halversen said. “We do not even know what happened. It is very possible he is still in charge. We should all remember that.”

  “Principal Director Perez is dead,” Celeste said.

  “And how could you possibly know that?” Lassiter asked. “We have not heard back from the investigation team yet.”

  “Actually, we have. I spoke to them thirty minutes ago.”

  “We’ve received no report of this,” Lassiter said, waving his arm to indicate the other directorate members. “Any information should be shared immediately.”

  “It was shared,” she said. “Mr. Yeager, Mr. Kim, and Mr. Mahajan have all received a full briefing.”

  Lassiter’s face turned red. “This is out—”

  “Principal Director Perez and all those stationed at NB219 are dead. Not only were the central elevators destroyed, and everything up to and including the ground-level warehouse completely burned, it appears that some kind of poisonous gas was released within the base itself.” She pushed a button on her keyboard, and the feed from her camera was replaced by a picture of Perez lying on the floor of his office, surrounded by a pool of blood. “As you can see, in addition to whatever effects the gas may have had on him, he was shot.”

  Lassiter remained silent as he watched the footage. When it was over, he said, “I can’t say I’m not glad he’s dead, but this is something you should have shared with Erik and me immediately.”

  “You clearly don’t understand what’s going on here, Dr. Lassiter.” She leaned back. “I’d like to vote on the first motion.”

  “What motion?” Lassiter said.

  “What are you talking about?” Halversen said.

  “Item A: the removal of Dr. Henry Lassiter and Erik Halversen from the directorate. All in favor?”

  A chorus of four yeas.

  “What the hell is this? You can’t remove us!”

  “I believe we just did.”

  “For what cause?” Halversen asked.

  “Dereliction of duty. Endangering the Project. Inaction resulting in the deaths of the personnel assigned to NB219. Shall I go on?”

  “This is absurd,” Lassiter said. “You are all to confine yourself to your quarters. You are relieved of your duties and no longer a part of the directorate.”

  “We’re not the ones who let the Project down,” Celeste said. “And I think you’ll find that the membership agrees with me.”

  “The membership doesn’t care. They will follow what I say.” He reached forward to disconnect the call.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  He snickered but pulled his hand back a few inches. “Oh, really? You think anything you say is going to change my opinion?”

  “We don’t care about your opinion. We just want to watch what’s going to happen.”

  Lassiter’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?” As he finished asking the question, he turned toward a noise off camera. “I’m in the middle of something right now. Whatever you need can wait.”

  Someone out of sight said something the microphone didn’t pick up.

  “Get out!” Lassiter said. “All of you!”

  “Dr. Lassiter,” Celeste said calmly. “There’s something I probably should have mentioned right at the beginning of our meeting. I took the liberty of broadcasting our discussion live to all Project facilities. I believe you’ll find that those there at NB772 will be more than happy to escort you to your quarters, where you will await trial.”

  Several people moved into the picture behind Lassiter.

  “Get out of here! Leave me alone! You don’t understand!”

  Men on either side grabbed his arms. He tried unsuccessfully to shake them free as they lifted him out of the chair and carried him out of the frame. In the feed from NB405, Halversen had been joined by his own group of self-appointed deputies, but, in contrast to the doctor, he went quietly.

  Celeste killed the two feeds, looked directly into her camera, and said, “Members of Project Eden, we have all been through some unexpected bumps since Implementation Day. To keep that from happening again, Mr. Yeager, Mr. Kim, Mr. Mahajan, and I have agreed to split the responsibility of principal director, so that no one person will have ultimate power. Project Eden has never been about that. We are about creating a sustainable, successful human society free of the old world’s problems. Thanks to your support, we are back on track.”

  2

  CENTRAL TEXAS

  CURTIS WICKS HAD watched his friend die from the cover of the arroyo as the blaze lit up the night and consumed NB219.

  Though he
didn’t know it, there was nothing he could have done. Matt Hamilton had been fatally shot before he stumbled out of the emergency tunnel doorway. Wicks could tell his friend was hurt, though, and knew he should have left his hiding place to see if he could’ve helped in some way. But no, he had stayed in the arroyo even as Matt fell to the ground. Others— members of the Resistance—moved in quickly, but their efforts had been for naught.

  Wicks could have gone over to them then, could have grieved at his friend’s side—should have done both—but instead he watched as Matt was carried to a vehicle and driven away.

  The flames burned for hours, working their way through the thousands of tons of supplies that had been stored at the base. Finally, as the sun rose and dissolved the shadows, Wicks crawled out of the crease in the land and forced himself to walk over to what was left of the facility.

  The warehouse was gone, piles of burnt wreckage surrounding a gaping hole in the center, where the elevator shaft had been. Scattered outside were the bodies of security personnel killed by the Resistance, and a few Project personnel who’d apparently been close enough to one of the exits to get outside, but not close enough to avoid breathing in smoke or the poison gas. Though Wicks didn’t want to, he checked each for a pulse and found none.

  He, Curtis Wicks—Project Eden member and Resistance informant known as C8—was the sole survivor of the destruction of NB219.

  There was no question of reporting to another Project facility. Given his still-healthy status, he would forever—and rightly—be suspected of participating in the assassination of Principal Director Perez and the murders of hundreds of Project members.