Down

29

It took longer than Ash would have liked, but it was important they had all the details worked out and the people in place.

He and Chloe had spent most of the previous day on the phone, consulting with Rachel and Pax and other Resistance contacts around the world. Another hour was taken up arguing with Dr. Gardiner after he’d arrived at Dream Sky and had a chance to assess the situation. The doctor had understood the importance of what Ash was asking, but he was extremely reluctant to sign on with what Ash wanted.

“They’ve been drugged for weeks,” Gardiner had said. “None of them are in any condition to do this.”

When the call ended, Chloe had said, “I’ll go up and make sure it happens. Don’t worry.”

First thing that morning, she had flown back to Dream Sky and, true to her word, worked things out.

Aided by Tamara and Wicks, Ash had spent most of the day preparing, practicing, and revising. And before he knew it, he was back in NB016’s control center, leaning against the workstation Bobby had picked out.

“You ready?” Bobby asked.

Ash looked up from his notes. “Is it time?”

“Ninety seconds.”

No, Ash thought. I’m not even close to ready. I could use another day or even a week. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one doing this at all. But what he said was, “I guess.”

“Can I get you to stand?”

Ash pushed up from the desk. “How’s this?”

Bobby looked through the viewfinder of his camera. “To your left a few inches. Want to make sure the big monitor is in the shot.”

Each screen on the monitor wall behind Ash was filled with shots from different Project Eden bases, with the largest currently showing the message they’d been broadcasting since the day before.

“Better?” Ash asked after scooting over.

“Perfect,” Bobby said. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “Sixty-five seconds.”

Ash took a deep breath.

“Relax,” Tamara told. “You’ll be fine. You’re a natural.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

“I do.”

Josie Ash, her brother Brandon, and Ginny Thorton sat front and center in the Ward Mountain cafeteria while the rest of those living at the base found spots behind them. All eyes were on the large television monitor.

For a couple weeks, the only thing coming in on any channel had been static. Thirty hours ago, that had changed. Worldwide, on nearly every satellite station and most major broadcast networks, a graphic had appeared that read:

Josie had been staring so intently at the monitor that she jerked when the graphic cut to a shot of their father.

For several seconds, he said nothing, and then he started to speak.

The Project Eden base in Helsinki was one of the smaller ones. Because of this, there was no corresponding survival station in the country. All Finnish survivors had been ferried over to the facility in Stockholm.

Esa Lahti, the base director, thought size was also the reason their base had not been attacked like many of the others. Still, he and the twenty-seven Project personnel working under him had spent many nervous hours expecting trouble, a fear that only increased when they discovered that the Project’s communications system had gone down.

So, it was with some relief that at seven p.m. local time the previous evening, they received a message from NB016 in New York telling them that the communication issues were being resolved and that a special announcement would be broadcast the following evening.

Lahti expected one of the directorate — probably Director Johnson, given where the notification had come from — would be reporting on recent events.

All twenty-eight members of the base were present fifteen minutes before the broadcast was to start. They filled the time speculating on the cause of the attacks and coming to a general consensus that whatever the problem had been, the directorate had dealt with it.

On the screen was a graphic very similar to the one being broadcast on civilian channels, though the inhabitants of NB953 had stopped monitoring public airwaves and satellite feeds a week after Implementation Day and were not aware of this.

As the seconds ticked down to the hour, conversation stopped and all eyes looked expectantly at the screen.

Throughout the base, monitors played the feed from NB016, the sound blaring from the speakers filling empty rooms and echoing down deserted halls. The only witnesses to the man on the screen were the bodies of the thirteen Project members who had died in the explosion that had ripped apart the entrance to the base.

The other fifty-one people who had been stationed there had fled into the city. Some were brought down by gunfire just steps from the base entrance, and some were captured as they tried to disappear down the streets. More than half escaped and never looked back.

Ice handed a bottle of water to the farang. He had told her his name but she couldn’t remember. Daniel or David or something like that.

“Thank you,” he said.

“How you feel?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess.”

Dane. That was it. Like what Danish people called themselves, he had said, but he wasn’t Danish. Canadian, in Thailand for the holidays with his wife. Ice had not asked what had happened to her. If she wasn’t here with him, the flu had most likely taken her, like it had taken Ice’s family and nearly everyone she knew.

She checked the bandage around the man’s leg. He’d sustained the injury when the survival station had been liberated, freeing Ice, Dane, and a hundred and forty-five other captives.

“Food ready in twenty minute,” she told him. “Rice. Egg. Is okay?”

“Sounds great.”

As she started to rise, the speakers that were spread throughout the survival station crackled to life, and the voice of a man speaking English blared out.

Ice caught a few words but the distortion made it difficult for her to understand. “You know what he say?”

Dane looked puzzled but said, “Yes.”

“You can say again for me?”

“Of course.”

As she sat down again, Dane began repeating the man’s words.

The number chosen for the base was supposed to be lucky, but as far as Gordon Belger, the base director, was concerned, it was far from it.

Sure, the base hadn’t actually fallen, but the fighting had lasted for nearly two days, and the strike team had been whittled down to only a handful of men. The attacks would come in waves, the base barraged by gunfire and homemade bombs for an hour or more, followed by a long enough lull that Belger would start to think it was finally over. But always the fighting began again.

Ms. Chen, his assistant, stepped into his office. “Sir, the broadcast is about to begin.”

Finally, he thought.

He switched on his monitor, hoping the directorate would be announcing an aggressive plan to help bases like his.

He was saved from the disappointment of learning the truth.

Most Project facilities were constructed underground, but for some locations that wasn’t feasible. Beijing, being the crowded capital of China, was one. So NB888 had been built largely aboveground, the director’s office on the uppermost floor.

When the image on his monitor switched from the graphic to the man standing in an operations room, Belger only had enough time to mutter, “Who’s that?” before his whole world exploded.

Li Huan lowered the rocket launcher to get a better look at his handiwork.

“Whoa!” Norman Andrews said. “Nice shot.”

Half of the building at the center of the Project Eden base had turned into a pile of rubble.

“Totally worth it,” Huan said.

Several hours earlier, he and Norman had been sent to find more ammunition. In addition to bullets and guns, they had found the launcher and five rockets. Having heard the success other Resistance teams had achieved with similar weapons, they had taken them.

Norman ran back to the truck and opened a case containing another rocket. “Let’s finish that place off.”

Huan smiled. “Load me up.”

30

“My name is Daniel Ash. And I have a story to tell you, one you need to know, because it is your story, too. The story of how our family members and friends were taken from us, and how those of us who remain will begin again.

“Before I start, I ask that you bear with me for a few moments while I address the organization known as Project Eden. Most of you don’t know who they are yet, but you will by the time I finish tonight.”

Ash paused, his previous sympathetic expression turning deadly serious.

“Members of the Project, your organization is no longer in business, and you are hereby ordered to vacate your bases. If you do not, the attacks that have already destroyed many of your locations will continue. There is no chance you will be allowed to finish what you started. If you think that your directorate will find a way to deal with us, that will not be the case.

A photo of a dead man lying on the ground replaced the shot of Ash.

“Directorate member Johannes Yeager,” Ash said. “His headquarters — you would refer to it as NB338—fell early this morning.”

The picture switched to one of a dazed-looking Asian man, blood splattered across his face.

“Directorate member Kim Woo-Jin of NB202. His base was eliminated less than half an hour after Mr. Yeager’s. Lucky for Mr. Kim, we were able to pull him from the wreckage.”

The next shot was not a picture, but a live image of a man strapped to a chair in a pool of light.

“Directorate member Parkash Mahajan of NB551 is our guest at an undisclosed location, and has been very helpful in providing information, much of which we have already put to use.”

Another live image, this one from just down the hall.

“Directorate member Celeste Johnson of NB016, the facility I am speaking to you from now.” The woman’s face and neck were cut and bruised, the look in her eyes hollow and resigned. “Ms. Johnson was kind enough to provide us with some highly sensitive Project data that has also proven very useful.” The shot switched back to Ash. He was holding up the portable drives they’d found in her bag. “The codes these contain mean we can defeat you without firing one more bullet. Of course, there’s no reason for you to believe me, so a demonstration should erase any doubts. ”

This can’t be happening, Director Lahti thought. It must be some sort of test.

The directorate either dead or captured? Impossible.

If not a test, it must be a ruse by the rebels to trick Project members into giving up.

Of course. That had to be it.

He shook his head in disgust. How transparent could they be? The membership would never set down its guns and give up.

Overhead, the lights began to pulse white and red, indicating an alarm of the highest order. Oddly, the siren that should be accompanying the display was silent.

“The air!” someone said. “He’s turned the circulators off!”

Lahti listened. The ever-present hum of the air circulators had stopped.

Everyone flew out of their seats and ran down the hall toward the elevators, but when the first few reached them, someone shouted, “They’re not working! There’s no power!”

NB953, unlike many of the other bases, also had a stairway to the surface, but the bio-scanner outside the door wouldn’t recognize anyone’s palm print.

This isn’t a ruse or a test, Lahti realized.

Dear God.

“That should be enough,” Ash said. “Those of you belowground should be noticing shortly that your air systems are coming back online. Your exits, though, will remain sealed until the end of my broadcast.

“Which brings me to my last point, as far as you are all concerned. There is no comparison in the history of man for the genocide you have committed. Every single death falls on each of your shoulders. We now possess a directory of all Project personnel that includes photos and more personal information than you probably thought the Project knew about you. Soon we will hunt you down, each and every one of you, and you will pay for what you have been a part of.

“If I were you, I would run as far and as fast as I could to the most secluded location I could find, and never come within a hundred miles of another living soul for the rest of my life. I doubt that will be enough for you to escape your fate, but there’s always a chance.”

Ash leaned back against the desk and smiled. “My apologies to the rest of you. I’m sure all of that was pretty confusing. But the story I promised you should clear it up.”

Even condensing things, it took Ash nearly two hours to tell the tale of Project Eden. He talked of the test outbreak in California the previous spring that had taken his wife’s life and sent him and his children underground. He described how the Project sent shipping containers full of the Sage Flu virus around the world, and how the plot was almost foiled before it could begin at Bluebird. He took personal responsibility for the failure to stop it.

He told of the Resistance, of Matt and Billy and all the others who had sacrificed their lives to stop the Project. He talked of Isabella Island and the survival stations that were anything but, and of the destruction of NB219 in New Mexico.

“There’s a base they called Dream Sky,” he said. “The Project filled it with survivors, but it’s not like the stations many of you probably went to for help.” A pause. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

The shot changed to one from inside a ward at Dream Sky. The camera panned across the room full of occupied beds. Unlike when Ash had first seen the wards, those lying there were now awake. The camera came to rest on a close shot of one of the patients, a prominent physician that many would recognize from her role as the former Danish prime minister.

“I am Dr. Nina Clausen,” the woman said, her voice surprisingly strong given her ordeal. “I and the twelve hundred other scientists, doctors, scholars, and engineers who have been held at Dream Sky against our will are like you. The only difference is that we have just learned what happened, and that most of the people we knew are dead.”

She described Dream Sky and its purpose. Chloe was nearby, ready to take over if Dr. Clausen didn’t have enough energy to finish, but the former prime minister showed no signs of getting tired until the end.

When she was done, Ash took over again, bringing the story up to date by telling of the coordinated effort across the world against the Project, and the taking of NB016.

“For most of you, this is the first time you’ve learned what’s really been going on. But there are even more out there who aren’t watching right now. I ask that you spread the word. Tell them what we have told you. If they can get to a working television, they can watch this message. We’ll be putting it on a loop and playing it for as long as necessary.

“So, where do we go from here?” He smiled. “It’s not a question for me alone to answer. We will all be a part of deciding our future.”

He paused for several seconds. “The one thing I do know is that if the human race is to continue, it will begin with all of us coming together.”