Chrysalis

27

Logan was halfway to BioCertain when his Omega unit chimed.

He answered with a quick blink. “Logan.”

“Jeremy? It’s Claire. You need to get over here.”

There was a tone in her voice that — even given the recent tension — Logan had not heard before. “Where is ‘here’?”

“I’m in D606. We can all get there fastest.”

There was the faintest crackle as Asperton ended the connection.

As Logan’s pulse accelerated, a vague feeling of dread washed over him.

Within ten minutes, he’d located Asperton’s unmarked office in the spire. He knocked and the door was immediately opened by Orris Peyton. The logistics chief nodded for Logan to enter, then shut the door behind him.

Also in the room was Kramer, Peyton’s head of Security. Kramer glanced at Logan with black, expressionless eyes, and might have nodded a greeting. Then again, he might not have; Logan wasn’t sure.

To his surprise, Wrigley was there, as well. He was looking around uncomfortably, like someone at a chummy cocktail party who didn’t know any of the other guests.

Asperton was behind her desk, alternately typing on a keyboard and tapping gently on what Logan now recognized as an Omega Sentinel.

“I received another communication,” Asperton said without looking up. “Fourteen minutes ago.”

“Same source and method?” Peyton asked.

Asperton nodded. “Encrypted message to my private account. I’ll bring it up.”

One of the flat-panel screens awoke and a message — its text white on black, as spare as before — appeared.

For a moment, paralyzed oblivion — then everyone began to speak at once.

“You’re positive it’s the same source?” said Kramer.

“Where is this link?” Peyton asked.

“I’ve routed it to this screen.” Asperton pointed to a darkened monitor. “We’ve got thirty seconds.”

“Dan,” Peyton told Kramer, “fire up all the monitoring and tracing tools we have. Route data directly to the Helix. I want to know how he’s communicating, and what his location is.”

The Helix, Logan thought. “He just warned us against tracing him.”

“We’re using passive tools only,” Peyton replied.

Now the second screen came to life. It contained nothing but an unusual-looking hyperlink. The room went silent again.

Taking a deep breath, Claire clicked a button, activating the link.

This got Kramer moving, as well: stepping behind the desk, he pulled Asperton’s keyboard toward him, removed his own Sentinel, and placed it nearby. Some kind of handshake took place and the Sentinel chirped a series of tones.

Now a full-color image came onto the second screen. It was blurred at first, then came slowly into focus. Logan realized it was the view of an intersection. He could see a green traffic light, but a line of cars waiting in all directions. There was no audio.

“Anything?” Peyton asked Kramer.

“Nothing. It’s coming in through some kind of anonymizer.”

“Shit. Well, scrape all the data you can. We’ll have Snow comb through it later.” Peyton paused. “That’s a traffic camera, right?”

“Either that, or a pole cam installed by the feds.”

“It could be a dummy,” said Wrigley. “Doesn’t seem to have any listening wand.”

“Can you get a location at least?” Peyton said to Kramer.

“Yes.” A beat. “Latitude 40.94 north, longitude 74.98 west.”

“Christ, that doesn’t tell me anything.”

“It’s… in Pennsylvania. Stroudsburg, wherever that is.”

“North of Philadelphia,” said Logan.

“It’s moving,” Asperton murmured.

At this all eyes returned to the screen. Sure enough: the camera was panning slowly away from the intersection and along the street. As Logan watched, he realized what he was seeing wasn’t a blurred image: it was smoke, obscuring the view as it drifted past.

The smoke grew thicker. Through it, Logan made out the flash of light bars — police vehicles, ambulances — and then other, larger shapes. A school bus, its rear end ablaze — and a small SUV, perpendicular to the street, engine seemingly buried in the flank of the bus.

“Sweet Jesus,” murmured Asperton.

Through the billows, Logan could see emergency workers swarming ant-like around the scene. The camera stabilized, then moved in almost languidly on the wreckage of the SUV. Its front end was crumpled beyond recognition.

“Who’s controlling that camera?” Kramer said.

No one answered.

Logan glanced briefly back at the words on the other screen: we’ve moved up tomorrow’s entertainment. My God. Is this one of the people they promised to kill tomorrow?

“How many customers for the Voyager rollout live in that area?” Logan asked.

“Thirty-one Voyager units were sent out to people in a five-mile radius,” Kramer said.

“Have any of them been activated?”

“Let me see. Yes. Twelve.”

“The new programming,” Wrigley began, “won’t be effective until—”

“Check the logs,” Logan interrupted. “See if any of those activated units recently went off-line.”

There was a short pause. “Just one,” Kramer said. “Janelle Deston, forty-three. Ridgeline Road, West Stroudsburg. Her device went off-line six minutes ago.”

And then, as if on cue, the camera moved again, focusing tighter on the SUV. Logan saw that firemen had pried open the driver’s door and cut away the airbag. Two paramedics were gingerly pulling a broken body from behind the wheel. The camera lens zoomed in still tighter, but for Logan this wasn’t necessary: through the smoke, he’d already seen the dirty blond hair, the singed face covered in a mask of blood… and a brand-new Voyager unit, snugly in place behind Janelle Deston’s right ear.