Chrysalis

49

“Call me? Do you know who this infiltrator’s target was?”

“Yes. Benjamin Cardiff.”

Cardiff. He’d sent the latest message, different from the others. Whose name they’d risked the integrity of the Helix to discover.

Claire. Dead?

Now Logan forced himself to think very quickly. No matter what obstacles he’d come up against in his career — phantasm, fraud, conspiracy — the endgame always came down to logic. He set up a mental chessboard, and — as he asked Dafna to give him every detail, no matter how trivial — he set up the players, one by one. Peyton. Cardiff. The mysterious shooter. Prawn. Janelle Deston. Purchase. Kramer. Wrigley. Claire Asperton…

Claire. Dead?

Suddenly, the missing pieces in the narrative he’d been assembling came into focus.

Oh my God…

Now, as he mentally moved the chess pieces, a plan began coming into view. Not so much as a plan, really; more like an organized retreat. “Dafna? Are you still there?”

“Yes. I am awaiting your instructions.”

“How badly is Peyton hurt?”

“He’s lost blood, but I’ve stabilized the bleeding.”

“Can you move him to safety?”

A pause. “With an electric passenger cart, yes.”

“Good. Now, listen very carefully. I want you to bring him to Infinium.”

“Infinium? You mean, Arc E? Omega?”

“Yes. You must know the Torus well: take back passages an outsider wouldn’t know. Use Peyton’s security pass to get through any locked doors yours can’t open, but leave your ID badges where they are so they aren’t tracked. Try to get to Theater One, in the R&D division. You’ll be met there — ask for Roz.”

“But why—”

“I’ll explain when we meet up. And one other thing. Bring Karel Mossby with you.”

“The hacker? That I cannot do. He is locked in—”

“Dafna, I don’t have time to explain. If I’m right, Mossby isn’t safe from that intruder, either. You can’t leave him in a cell. And we need him.”

“But—”

“Peyton asked you to contact me. He was asking for help. Right?”

A longer pause. “Right.”

“Then trust me. Bring Mossby. Cuff him to the cart if you want. But I need all three of you safe inside Arc E within the hour. Okay?”

“Yes.”

Logan hung up. For a moment he sat in the chair, oblivious to the view outside, the faint alarm that was now beginning to sound even here, in the Tower — everything. He integrated what he’d just learned into the scenario he’d been piecing together. Scott Prawn, a supervisor on the fulfillment line: dead. Not fabrication… fulfillment. And there were the final words of the BioCertain programmer, Cardiff, as Dafna had just repeated: I built the key; I can use it to unlock all this. You’d better keep me safe. Without me, those clients of yours are going to die!

The trigger defaults to on, not off.

“Grace,” he said, “get me Dr. Purchase.”

His guardian angel seemed to understand the gravity of the situation, because she made the connection without persiflage. When Purchase answered, Logan spoke quickly, giving him instructions similar to those he’d given Dafna, and telling him to bring all the digital forensic tools he could carry.

Next, he reached out to Roz Madrigal in VR. As soon as she heard Logan’s voice, she bombarded him with questions: What was happening? Why the lockdown, why the sudden station-keeping alarm? He did his best to calm her; told her who to expect; and begged her to keep them safe in the labyrinth of VR studios and labs until he got there himself. He also told her he’d take care of alerting Wrigley.

After disconnecting with Madrigal, Logan took a second to compose himself. Now came the most difficult — and most critical — conversation of all.

He asked Grace to connect him once more. A feminine voice, faintly accented, answered his emergency summons. “Wing Kaupei.”

“Ms. Kaupei — Wing — this is Jeremy Logan. Please don’t hang up. Listen to what I have to say.”

Silence, rather than affirmation, came over the line.

“I don’t know everything. Not yet. But I know a lot. Cardiff’s dead — shot in the middle of being questioned. And the man in Fulfillment, Prawn… he’s dead too, although you may know that already. Much of what you intended to delete has resurfaced — enough to explain how your extortion was intended to operate.”

He thought he heard a catch of breath on the other end of the line.

“But I also know this. If somebody is killing the rest of your team, then you can’t be safe, either. Whatever the case, the plan has gone south, and you’re in danger. I can help you, Wing; I can help.”

When there was no answer, he continued, with all the reassurance he could muster. “I know from your perspective things are spinning out of control. That’s my perspective, too. But the most important thing is I can keep you alive. This assassin, or operative, or whoever is stalking your team, it seems to be just one person. Chrysalis has far greater assets at their disposal. This is their home ground, Wing.”

He paused. “We can still work this out. You won’t have the death of a thousand innocents on your conscience. In the end, isn’t that what matters? Wing?”

No response.

“Wing?”

And now he realized the line was dead, the connection terminated. Exactly when, he didn’t know… but somehow he dreaded the thought of asking Grace.