Dream Sky

20

The closest airport to Ward Mountain large enough to accommodate the Boeing 757 carrying the survivors from Isabella Island was in Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, with no one working maintenance, the runways at SLC were buried under several feet of snow, rendering them unusable. The next closest airport was in Las Vegas.

The plane was met there an hour after it landed by three tour buses driven by Resistance members. The first stop was a restaurant on the edge of town, where other Resistance members had been dropped off earlier to prepare dinner for everyone.

There was little talk as the island’s survivors ate and then climbed back on the buses. Within a few miles after hitting the road again, most were asleep.

Pax wasn’t one of them. As the bus headed north, he rose from his seat and moved to the front. There, he took a spot on the exit stairs, leaned against the wide dash, and stared at the road ahead.

His was the first of the three buses, so the headlights lit up only asphalt and dirt and brush. He wasn’t looking at any of it, though. No longer needing to worry about keeping Robert and his people alive, he was finally facing something he’d been trying hard to ignore.

Matt was dead.

That didn’t seem possible. He desperately wanted someone to tell him Matt’s death had been a trick, that when he reached Ward Mountain, Matt would limp out to the bus to greet Pax, a stupid grin on his face.

Pax couldn’t picture how they would move forward now. Matt had not only been the brains of the Resistance, but also the soul. How could that void ever be filled?

And then there was Billy, too, the Ranch’s former doctor. It had been less than three weeks since he’d died in the explosion in Cleveland.

Pax’s two best friends in the world — gone. Both died because of the Sage Flu, but neither from it.

Memories of conversations and trips and projects they had all been a part of spun through his mind, until he forced himself to stop. He started to think about the future, about what they were going to do, but that just circled him back to the loss of Matt and Billy and so many others.

What finally saved him was focusing on what Captain Ash had asked him about.

What about the letters DS together? They sound familiar?

Pax had never heard the phrase Augustine dream sky before, but the letters DS? Definitely. From Matt himself, years ago.

Could what Matt had thought they represented be true?

As the bus suddenly came to a stop, Pax blinked and looked around. They appeared to be in a town.

He turned to the driver — Juliana Herbert — and said, “Is something wrong?”

“We’re here,” she told him.

“Here where?” This wasn’t Ward Mountain.

“Ely,” she said. “We cleared out a couple of hotels. There’s a La Quinta right over there.” She pointed to her left and then gestured to the right. “And a Motel 6 half a block that way. There’ll be some sharing, but there are more than enough beds.”

Of course.

If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d have realized there wasn’t enough room for everyone at Ward Mountain. The facility could accommodate less than half the personnel the Ranch had been able to house.

“We’re not leaving them alone, are we?” he asked.

She shook her head. “We’ve got people to help with logistics, and a couple of medical folks to tend to the sick and anyone who needs attention. Ward Mountain will also be in constant touch, so if need be, we can get people over here in a hurry.”

Pax could hear some of the people stirring behind him. He was about to go back and wake Robert when a van pulled to a stop next to the bus. The two occupants jumped out, opened the side cargo door, and started pulling out armfuls of what looked like cloth bags.

After each man was loaded up, the newcomers approached the bus door.

“You’re going to want to get back,” Juliana said.

Pax moved into the central aisle but stayed near the front.

When the doors opened, a blast of frigid air rushed inside. The two men from the van hurried in, and Juliana quickly closed the door again. The damage was already done, though. The temperature — at least at the front of the van — had dropped a good fifteen degrees.

“How many you have in here?” one of the men asked Juliana.

“Forty-eight,” she replied.

“Here,” the man closest to Pax handed him the items in his arms. “We need to get a few more.”

Coats, Pax realized. The subzero type skiers used.

The second man set his pile at Pax’s feet, then he and his partner headed back out. As more cold air rushed in, Pax started passing out the jackets.

“I’m going to wish I stayed on the island, aren’t I?” Robert said when Pax reached his seat.

“Don’t worry,” Pax said. “It’ll probably hit thirty degrees here in a day or two.”

“Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

Pax tossed him a coat and moved on.

After he passed everything out, he returned to Robert and said, “Can I borrow you for a second?”

“Sure.” Robert looked over at his seatmate, Estella. “Be right back.”

Pax led him outside and explained the lowdown on the living situation.

When he was through, Robert asked, “What about the ones with the flu?”

“Medical team on site.”

“Are you staying?”

“Wish I could, but I’ve got work to do. Our facility is just over the hill, not more than twenty minutes away. If you need to talk to me, grab one of our people and they’ll get me on the line.”

Robert seemed disappointed, but said, “Okay.”

“I realize this isn’t the perfect situation, but—”

“No, it’s all right. Really. We’re all just glad we’re still alive. Someday it would be nice to go somewhere warm again, but for now this will do fine.”

“Glad to hear that.”

From down the street came the rumble of a powerful engine. Pax turned toward the noise and saw it belonged to a dark-colored Mustang. As it neared the buses, the vehicle slowed to a crawl.

The window rolled down.

“I thought you might need a ride.”

Pax smiled and rushed over to the car, giving Chloe a hug through the opening.

“I do, indeed,” he said. As he stood back up, he looked over at Robert. “I’d like to introduce you to Chloe White. She’s, uh, one of our frontline people.”

Robert walked over and held out his hand.

“Chloe, this is Robert Adams.”

Her eyebrow shot up as she grabbed his palm. “The savior of Isabella Island. Nice to meet you.”

“Uh, I’m not…no…there was a lot of…”

Chloe laughed. “Hold on to that modesty. It’s attractive.”

Robert’s mouth opened a couple of times, but nothing came out.

Pax slapped him on the back. “I gotta go. But I’ll see you again soon. I promise.”

“Okay,” Robert managed. “Be safe.”

Ash had intentionally fallen asleep on top of his covers, fully clothed.

He had argued a bit with Chloe about who should pick up Pax, but in the end she won. Thankfully.

He’d stretched out after dinner, thinking he’d sleep for only an hour or two, but when he looked over at his clock again, it was nearly two a.m.

A jolt of adrenaline shot him out of bed and into the public corridor outside his family’s rooms. He made a beeline for the comm center, where he found three women he didn’t know by name manning the stations.

“Does anyone know if Chloe or Pax is back?” he asked.

The closest comm tech turned toward the door, her eyes widening when she saw who he was. “Captain Ash,” she said. “Um, no. They’re on their way. Should be here any minute.”

“Thanks,” he said.

He hurried to the main entrance, grabbed a coat off one of the pegs, and stepped outside.

The moon was low on the western horizon, the stars packing the rest of the sky, leaving only small pockets of black unfilled. At first there didn’t appear to be anyone on the road leading to the highway, then twin beams of light popped up from a dip about two miles out.

Ash stomped around, trying to keep warm. He knew he should go back inside but he was too keyed up. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency about figuring out the meaning of Matt’s message. Add to that the potential of striking another blow at the Project Eden directorate and it was a wonder he wasn’t running down the road to meet the car halfway.

Finally, the dark Mustang pulled under the camouflage netting that covered the base’s parking area, and stopped. As Ash jogged over, the doors opened and Chloe and Pax climbed out.

This was the first time the two men had seen each other since the hunt to find Bluebird to stop the Project from releasing the virus, so they threw their arms around each other in a bear hug.

“So good to see you, Captain,” Pax said.

“Likewise,” Ash told him.

As soon as they parted, they started walking toward the base entrance.

“Chloe filled me in on what’s going on in Mumbai,” Pax said. “She also said Rachel’s basically removed herself from things.”

“Only temporarily, I’m sure,” Ash said. “You might be able to bring her out of it better than any of us.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’ll give it a try when I get a moment.” Pax glanced at Chloe then back at Ash. “So the one thing Chloe and I didn’t discuss is this issue you asked me about on the phone.”

“DS,” Ash said.

“Yeah.”

“What do you think the letters mean?”

Pax grimaced. “There’s no easy answer.”

“So we’ve gathered.”

Pax rubbed the arms of his coat. “Do you mind if we get inside first? I’ve been down in the tropics for a few days. Think my blood’s gone thin.”

They entered the base and went straight to Chloe’s room. It had been crowded when it contained only Ash and Chloe. With Pax there, they barely had enough room to breathe. Ash let the other two have the bed, and he took the chair by the door.

Pax spoke first. “Augustine dream sky. You’re sure that’s what he said?”

“One hundred percent,” Ash said.

Pax frowned, thinking for a moment before shaking his head. “Like I told you on the phone, I’d never heard that phrase until you said it to me.”

“But DS means something to you,” Chloe said.

“It does.”

When he didn’t go on, Ash said, “Are you going to make us drag it out of you?”

“Sorry. Was just…remembering,” Pax said. “The truth is, I don’t know what the letters specifically stand for, and as far as I know, Matt didn’t, either. What I do know is that Matt was obsessed with those two letters for several years, and was sure they referred to a secret Project Eden program.”

“What kind of program?” Chloe asked.

“I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know. There were times when it seemed Matt thought finding out about DS was almost as important as figuring out how to stop Implementation Day. He told me once if the Project was able to release the virus, DS might be the key to their ultimate success.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ash asked.

Pax shrugged. “He kept this one pretty tight. I think Billy and I might have been the only ones he ever talked to about it. I knew he grew frustrated when his contacts couldn’t come up with anything more solid. After a while, he seemed to give it up, or maybe he just stopped talking about it, I don’t know. Felt to me like he was chasing a ghost.”

“Do you think DS stands for Dream Sky?”

Pax grunted a humorless laugh. “Who knows? Seems kind of a stretch to me. But it was the last thing he said, so I guess you have to give that theory some weight.”

“Maybe even more than you think,” Ash said. “Right before he said those words, he’d been with one of his inside contacts. That’s how he got into the Las Cruces base.”

Pax’s eyebrows furrowed. “I didn’t know that. Do you know which one?”

“C8.”

“C8? Are you sure?”

“That’s what he told us,” Ash said.

Pax blew out a breath.

“Why?” Chloe asked. “What’s the significance?”

“C8 was one of Matt’s oldest contacts, one of his deepest. He was someone Matt had been close to when he was still in the Project.” He paused and looked at Ash and Chloe. “And he was the one Matt got the original info from about DS.”

No one said anything for a moment.

“That’s a pretty strong connection,” Chloe said.

“Still might be nothing,” Pax cautioned.

More silence.

“What about Augustine?” Ash asked.

“Doesn’t mean anything specific to me,” Pax said.

“There was an Emperor Augustine, wasn’t there?”

“Augustus,” Chloe corrected.

“Right. Augustus,” Ash said. “Another form of the same name, though. Let me see, there was a St. Augustine. A city in Florida named after him. Isn’t it the oldest European-founded city in the US? Maybe that’s important.”

“There’s got to be hundreds of things the names could point to,” Chloe said. “I’d kill for Google right now.”

Pax tilted his head. “How many letters long is it? Nine?”

Ash ran the word through his mind again. “Yeah. Nine.”

“I need paper and something to write with,” Pax said in a burst of energy.

Chloe pulled a pad and a pen from inside the top drawer of her dresser, and handed them to him. He created a square three-by-three grid and wrote letters in each space — A-U-G in the top row, U-S-T in the middle, and I-N-E along the bottom. He then made several more grids, using different combinations of the letters in each. When he was through, he stared down at the paper.

“I’m not as good at this as Matt was,” he said.

“Is that a code?” Ash asked.

“A key. I think.” He patted the air above the pad with both hands. “It’s here somewhere. I’m just not seeing it.”

“May I?” Chloe asked.

Pax passed her the pad. “Have at it.”

While she examined it, Ash asked, “How do you know it’s a code?”

“Matt kept things with his Project Eden contacts to himself most of the time. I think he was afraid one of us might get captured with the info. Felt the best way to protect those inside was to share only when absolutely necessary. I can probably count on one hand the number of times he showed me a communication he received.”

“You said you knew how to get ahold of them, though.”

“No. I said I knew where the information was that would tell us how. Unfortunately, it’s at the Ranch, in the Bunker. I’m the only one who knows the combination to the safe, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to give it to you over the radio.”

Ash couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Retrieving the information would mean a trip back to Montana, something none of them could afford to do right now.

“Tell me about the messages you did see,” he said.

Pax closed his eyes for a second. “On the surface, each seemed like a note or letter you might receive from an old aunt or someone like that. Nothing really there. But every single one of them would begin with a nine-letter word, a decoder. Once you figured it out, you could use the result to pull the real message from the note.”

“So how do you decode the word?”

Pax looked pained. “That’s the problem. I saw Matt do this once, and that was years ago. I’m not the dumbest guy around by any means, but when it comes to this kind of thing, I just might be. I remember the squares. I remember him putting the letters in. I don’t remember how he figured it out, though. Or how the code then unlocks the message. I missed something.”

“But if we do figure it out, this…key will show us what dream sky really means, right?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Chloe looked up from the pad, frowning. “I got nothing.”

Ash took the pad and gave it a quick examination. He didn’t expect anything to jump out at him, and he was right.

“Is there anyone here who might be good at this kind of thing?” he asked.

Chloe said, “Yeah. There is.”

Caleb finally acknowledged that he and his team were not superhuman and could not stay awake indefinitely. So a shift system was put in place that would allow each of them a generous six hours of sleep in the sectioned-off portion at the front of the trailer, always leaving three of them awake and working.

Caleb was about as deep into the unconscious world as one could get when Mya shook his shoulder.

“Hey, Caleb. Wake up.”

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. “What?”

“Get up. We’ve got company.”

He looked at his watch and realized it hadn’t been six hours yet. It had barely been two and a half.

“Why did you wake me up?”

“I told you. We’ve got company.”

He angrily pushed himself up on an elbow. “What company?”

“Higher-up type of company. They want to talk to you.”

“Did you tell them I was asleep?”

“I sure did.”

He started to throw off his blanket, but halted and looked at Mya. “A little privacy?”

She rolled her eyes as she walked back around the partition.

Alone now, he hopped out of bed and pulled on his CAL TECH sweat pants and HAN SHOT FIRST T-shirt. He then headed into the main area like a bull entering the ring, intending to give these higher-ups a piece of his mind. He figured it was probably someone from communications, or, more likely, the engineering department. The latter was ticked off at him for all the resources he’d been using since the India project had begun.

“Whatever the hell it is you want, it could have—”

His guests were not from engineering.

“Sorry to get you up so early, Caleb,” Pax said. “I understand you’ve been working very hard.”

Pax wasn’t the only one who was there. Chloe and Captain Ash were with him.

“Mr. Paxton, Captain Ash, Ms. White, I’m, uh, sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.” Caleb shot a quick glare at Mya.

She gave him an exaggerated shrug, like she had no idea why he’d be upset.

Forcing a smile, he said, “What can I do for you?”

“We have a puzzle we were hoping you and your team could solve for us.”

“What kind of puzzle?”

Chloe set a pad of paper she’d brought with her on a desk. “Easier if we show you.”

21

“Gabriel, are you up?”

As he always did before he went to sleep, Gabriel had turned the volume down on his radio and tucked it in next to the pillow. He was not asleep, however, when Nyla’s voice trickled out of the earpiece. He was simply lying there, eyes closed, performing his morning meditation.

“Gabriel?”

With a sigh, he grabbed the radio, stuck the receiver in his ear, and clicked on the mic. “Morning, L-One.”

“Time to get up, big boy. L-Seven spotted someone heading down Sunset Boulevard but lost them in Silver Lake.”

“Copy, L-One. Should be able to get to the Alvarado intersection in five.”

“Copy that.”

So much for a shower, Gabriel thought as he rolled out bed and pulled on his clothes.

He’d stayed at the same house on Scott Street for the last three days. It was near the middle of his assigned area and met his basic requirement of being dead-body free. The bonus was the bed. It had one of those mattresses made out of a material that conformed to his body. The damn things were so expensive, he’d wondered why anyone would spend money on them, but not anymore. He was sold. Good thing the prices had dropped.

He grabbed a couple energy bars from his pack before he slung it on and headed out the door into the still-dark morning.

Jogging most of the way, he reached the corner of Alvarado Street and Sunset Boulevard ahead of his promised time, and moved over to a small building housing a takeout place called Burrito King on the northwest corner. Standing at the front edge, he stopped and listened for footsteps.

All was quiet.

He thought about radioing Nyla and asking how long ago L-Seven had spotted the survivor, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. If the person was heading toward Dodger Stadium, Sunset Boulevard would be the logical route from Silver Lake. All Gabriel needed to do was wait.

He was starting in on his second energy bar when he heard the faint echo of a step. He put the bar away and leaned around the building to look west on Sunset. No one there, but the road bent to the right about seventy-five yards away so he couldn’t see that far. He could hear more steps, though — rhythmic, unhurried, and definitely heading his way.

He considered moving down the road so he could get a better look, but his encounter with the runner the day before was still fresh in his mind, so he didn’t want to be seen until he was ready to be. Besides, his position at Burrito King was about as good as he could get. It would hide him from the approaching person, even as the person passed by.

He stared down the road, his mind registering all the unmoving shapes, waiting to see one in motion. When the human silhouette finally moved into view, he ever so slowly eased his head back around the corner of the restaurant.

There was no change in the sound of the steps, only the continuous thud-thud-thud of rubber meeting asphalt.

As the person came abreast of Burrito King, Gabriel tensed, his eyes on the road. The moon had already dipped below the horizon, so the stars provided the only light. That was more than enough for him to get a good sense of the walker.

It was a guy, medium height, wearing a light jacket and baseball cap. No backpack, though, which was kind of odd. Most of the people Gabriel and the rest of the team had come across had been carrying things.

He was concerned that maybe this wasn’t a regular survivor, but one of Project Eden’s people on patrol. But the unease lasted only a second because he had never seen one of them out alone, and he’d certainly never seen any of them unarmed, like this guy appeared to be.

So how are we going to handle this?

Get over to the guy before he realized what was going on?

Call out to him?

Or follow him for a bit and make sure he wasn’t Project Eden?

The last seemed the most prudent. The guy was heading toward Nyla’s position anyway. Worst case, she and Gabriel could close in together.

He let the survivor cross the Alvarado intersection, then he followed.

A block down, Sunset took a slight southeast turn, so Gabriel cut the gap between them to prevent losing sight of the guy. As he started to slow back down, the toe of his shoe tapped a discarded screw and sent it skittering across the road.

The man whipped around. “Who’s there?”

Dammit!

“Sorry,” Gabriel said, holding his hands out to show they were empty. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Wh…why are you here? Are you following me?” the guy was clearly scared, his voice raised.

“Yes, I mean, it’s not what you think. I’m here to help.”

The guy started to back away from him. “I don’t need your help. Thank you. Now leave me alone. Please.”

There was a click over the receiver in Gabriel’s ear. His eyes flicked past the man, down the street. Though he saw no one there, he knew the click meant Nyla was somewhere nearby.

He took a step forward. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Good!” The man started to turn away.

“But if you’re headed for the survival station, the people there will.”

As the man looked back, Gabriel realized the survivor wasn’t a man at all, but a young woman.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“They aren’t who they claim to be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The UN doesn’t exist anymore. The people at the stadium are only taking in survivors so they can get rid of them.”

“Get rid of them?” A look of total disbelief flooded her face. “You mean kill?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re…you’re just saying that because…because…”

She turned and began running down Sunset.

“I’m not lying,” Gabriel said as he took off after her. “I just want to talk to you.”

His thighs ached, still remembering the chase from the day before. The runner had gotten away then, but Gabriel had no intention of letting it happen two days in a row. It wasn’t easy, but he was starting to gain on the woman.

As the road took another bend to the right, Nyla rushed out from behind a car, reaching the middle of the road moments before the survivor got there.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, holding out her arms.

The woman tried to alter her course to go around Nyla, but she reacted too late and Nyla was able to grab her waist and hold on tight.

“Let me go!” the woman yelled, squirming.

She almost broke free, but Gabriel arrived in time to grab one of her arms.

“Calm down,” he said. “I told you, we’re not going to hurt you.”

The woman continued to struggle.

“Relax,” Gabriel said.

“We’re trying to save your life,” Nyla told her.

Whether it was Nyla’s words or because the woman was losing strength, she finally stopped struggling. Eyes narrowing, she said, “I don’t believe you.”

“We’re telling the truth,” Gabriel said. “The survival stations are really death traps. If you go in, you don’t come out again.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because the people who are running them are the same ones who planted the shipping containers full of Sage Flu around the world. This is their way to finish what they started.”

The woman looked stunned. “How can you know this?”

“We’ve been trying to stop them for a long time,” Nyla said.

“You didn’t do a very good job, then.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“You want me to believe you,” the survivor said, “prove it.”

This was not the first time someone had said this, so Gabriel and Nyla were prepared.

“I’m going to pull my phone out of my pocket,” Nyla said. “Okay?”

The woman nodded.

Nyla retrieved her phone, pulled up the video shot a few days before on a scouting trip to the stadium, and turned the screen so the man could see. On the trip, the closest she and Gabriel had been able to get was a hill right beyond the parking area, straight out from the back end of the stadium. This was the only part of the structure where there was no double-deck seating, just two sets of much smaller bleachers, one behind left field and one behind right.

Though the angle of the video was a bit acute, it clearly showed two large fenced-in areas on the playing field, with several people in each.

Nyla said, “We know from information gained about other survival stations that those are detention areas. They place people who are obviously sick in one, and those who are not in the other.”

“But isn’t that what they should do?” the survivor asked.

“Hold on.” Nyla sped up the image until it zoomed in on a portion of the grandstands, and then she let the video play again. The picture moved around some because the zoom was so extreme, but there was no mistaking the man holding the rifle, facing the field. “Separating the ill and the non-ill does make sense, but putting them behind locked fences with razor wire on top and surrounding them with well-armed guards doesn’t. The survivors go to these stations of their own free will. They want the help. They’re not going to put up a fight, so why treat them like they would?”

“I…I don’t know. But they must have their reasons.”

“Then how about this? No survivors have left the stadium, and yet the amount of people in each detention area has dropped dramatically.”

“That’s not proof,” the woman said. “You could be making that up.”

“True,” Nyla replied. “And there are other things I could tell you that you may or may not believe.”

“Did you see the video on TV?” Gabriel asked.

“Why do you think I’m here?” the woman responded.

“I don’t mean the video that claims to be a message from the UN. I’m talking about the one that went up several days go from that reporter who used to be with PCN.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nyla was already shuffling through her phone. She found Tamara Costello’s video and hit PLAY.

The woman watched, rapt, as Tamara explained what was really going on.

When the video ended, she stared at the screen for several seconds before saying, “I don’t know. I don’t…”

Nyla watched her for a moment, then glanced at Gabriel and nodded. They both took a few steps back, giving the woman space.

“If you want to continue on, we won’t stop you,” Nyla said.

The woman shifted her gaze between the two of them.

“My…my friends are there,” she said. “We were supposed to meet there. I…I…”

Gabriel’s chest tightened. “When did they go there?”

“New Year’s Eve.”

A week before.

Gabriel wanted to say something comforting, but he thought the woman’s friends were likely dead.

She stared at the ground, and when she looked up again, her eyes were hard and determined. “Can you show me?”

“That’s probably not a good idea.”

“You want me to believe you? Show me.”

Nyla considered the request. “Gabriel can take you.”

“Thank you.”

“If it saves your life, we’re happy to do it.” Nyla held out her hand. “I’m Nyla.”

The woman shook it. “Martina.”

Martina Gable didn’t know what to think. Were Nyla and Gabriel telling her the truth? Was it possible the UN message had been a fake? That its purpose had been to take even more lives? Only a few short weeks ago, that would have sounded like conspiracy-theory bullshit. But a few short weeks ago, there hadn’t been survival stations and the release of a virus that had killed who knew how much of the human race.

And then there was the video from that Tamara Costello. Martina had seen the reports the woman did during the spring outbreak. The news said the woman had died during the mini-epidemic, but clearly she had not. Her words, more than anything else, were what kept Martina from marching up to the front door of Dodger Stadium right then.

Until she had more proof, she’d keep her guard up, something she’d stopped doing the last few days.

When she had finally caught up to the woman driving Ben’s Jeep, and been told Ben was dead, Martina had slipped into a state of despair. She still couldn’t remember where she had gone or what she had done in the forty-eight hours that followed. Her family, most of the people she knew, and then Ben. It was too much.

After she finally began to pull out of her funk the day before, she’d found herself near the ocean in Santa Monica. She had wandered out onto the pier, passed the arcade games and amusement-park rides, to the very end, where she leaned against the railing and stared out at the vast, empty sea.

She knew she had a choice: she could either give up or take control again and live. In the face of all the loss caused by the pandemic, could giving up be considered a weak decision? She vacillated on the answer for a while, but as more of the fog lifted from her brain, she saw the truth. Giving up would be weak. She had to live. If not for herself then for those she knew who had died. Besides, she still had friends who were alive. Friends, she realized, who were not far from where she was at that very moment.

Her first thought, of course, had been of Noreen and Riley and Craig, but she didn’t know where they were. What she did know, though, was where they would eventually go, if they hadn’t already — the survival station at Dodger Stadium.

She figured the stadium couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen miles away at most, so that afternoon she had walked off the pier and headed east, deciding to go on foot and use the time to fully clear her mind. She grew tired not long after sunset, so she found an apartment free of the smell of death and collapsed onto a couch in the living room.

It was as dark when she woke as it had been when she’d lain down. She checked her watch and saw it was about ten minutes to one in the morning. There was no question of going back to sleep, though. The anticipation of seeing her friends again would not allow it.

She hit the road and walked alone through the darkened streets. Alone, that was, until she’d heard Gabriel behind her.

Now here she was walking beside him into a hilly neighborhood north of Sunset Boulevard.

“I thought I was closer to the stadium than this,” she said after they’d been hiking for a while.

“You were, well, are. It’s over there.” He pointed to the right. “We’re going around to the backside. Same place we shot the video. Best view.”

The sun began to rise as they headed up a ridge road. The left side was lined with homes, and the right with a narrow valley filled mostly with trees and grass.

They continued until the valley began to close.

“Going off road now, so watch your step,” Gabriel said.

He led her down the slope, staying under the trees to avoid the open grass areas. At the bottom, they came to a four-lane street.

Gabriel paused under the trees and scanned the road before whispering, “Quick across.”

In a sprint, he led her to the other side and up the eastern slope. At the top, they crossed a smaller road and moved rapidly through a cluster of buildings. A sign identified the area as the Los Angeles Police Academy. Unlike most of the other places Martina had seen, the parking lot was jam-packed with cars gathering dust. She guessed they belonged to recruits and active officers who had been called to a duty they never completed.

She and Gabriel moved down the edge of a clearing, then along a trail that paralleled the main road, and passed another building complex before finally stopping.

“We’ll cross here and go up that hill,” he whispered, pointing at the land on the other side of the road. “Follow exactly where I go, and if I motion for you to get down, don’t hesitate.”

“I won’t.”

He checked the road in both directions, and then sprinted across. Martina followed right behind, matching Gabriel step for step. Once more under the cover of trees, they climbed the small slope and headed south until the hill began to descend again. Through the branches, she could see glimpses of the large parking area and the stadium, but her view was too obstructed for her to make out many details.

Gabriel knelt and removed his pack. From inside, he pulled out a pair of binoculars and motioned for Martina to follow him. Staying in a crouch, they worked their way to the right until most of the foliage in front of them cleared away, and then stretched out on the ground.

There it was. Dodger Stadium, the banks of seats brightly lit by the morning sun.

Gabriel looked through the binoculars, adjusted the magnification, and handed them to Martina.

She raised the glasses to her eyes.

“Concentrate on the center,” he instructed. “Over that black barrier separating the two outfield bleachers. Like I said before, the angle isn’t perfect, but…well, just look.”

The eye line he suggested allowed her to see a portion of the outfield area and all of the infield, or at least where they used to be. Now, like she’d seen on the video, there were fences cutting across the grass and dirt, with posts hammered into the field.

“They look empty,” she said, taking in the two larger areas.

“What do?”

“The…detention areas? Is that what you called them?”

“The first few days they were pretty full, but after Tamara’s video knocked that phony UN message off the air, the number of new arrivals decreased considerably. Out of those who still came, we’ve been able to get to most of them first.” He paused. “Now look around the grandstands. Lower deck, top end, right before it disappears.”

Martina focused in on the seats and slowly began to pan across the stadium. “What am I looking—” She froze.

“You see them?”

“Yeah.”

Dead center in her binoculars, facing the playing field, was a soldier with a rifle. She searched some more and found others, all facing the field. It was all exactly as Nyla and Gabriel had said. Granted, none of it proved this wasn’t a UN operation, but her doubt was beginning to fade.

She refocused back on the field and noticed something she’d missed before. “There’s another fenced-in area in the outfield.”

“As far as we can tell, it’s a special holding area. It went up a few days after the survival station opened.”

“Why is it covered like that?”

“We’re not sure. Maybe so people in the other enclosures can’t see inside.”

“Maybe my friends are in there,” she said.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” he said. “It’s more likely they were put in one of the other two. If any of them were sick, they would have been in the one to the left, the rest in the other.”

“They’re immune so they wouldn’t have been put in the sick one,” she said.

He silently cursed Nyla for putting him in the position of dealing with this. “Most of those who have survived are simply lucky, not immune.”

“I realize that. But we’re all immune. We had the flu.”

His eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“We were all sick, you know, during the outbreak last spring. I’m pretty sure it made us all immune.”

“How many friends are we talking about?” he asked.

“Well, there were nine of us, but me and three of the others headed north to look for my boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“He had the flu, too.”

“And you know for a fact he’s still alive?”

Water glistened in her eyes. “He was. He’d left messages for me on my phone. But…” She fell silent, remembering what the woman on the road had told her.

“These five other friends of yours,” Gabriel said after a moment. “They’re the ones who went to the survival station on New Year’s Eve.”

“Yes.”

He stared out at the stadium, then whispered, “Is that what it’s for?”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at her as if he hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. “The special enclosure. I was just…well…see, none of the other survivor stations have reported a similar space. But that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Los Angeles is the closest station to the spring outbreak. If those who had survived the spring outbreak are actually immune, this would be the station they would come to. So once Project Eden realized it, I would think they’d want to separate them from the other survivors.”

“Who is Project Eden?”

“That’s the people running the stations.”

“So you’re saying you think my friends could be in there.”

He hesitated, and then nodded. “I think it’s a possibility.”

She lowered the binoculars, but kept her eyes on the stadium. “We have to get them out.”

“I might be wrong. There’s a good chance they aren’t there. Besides, there are only eight of us here. That means those guys with the rifles outnumber us more than two to one.”

“Not eight. Nine. You’re forgetting about me.”

22

23

Neither Sanjay nor Kusum had ever been so far outside Mumbai. In fact, until the outbreak, neither had ever ventured more than a few miles from the city. That had changed when they moved to their new home at the former boarding school. As for Darshana, she had been to Goa several times to visit family, but nowhere else.

The thing that felt the strangest was being so far from the ocean. It had always been there, a constant in their lives even if they didn’t see it every day. Now it was growing farther and farther behind them, the distance feeling somehow suffocating.

They took the expressway, most of the time surrounded by kilometers and kilometers of untended fields, some barren and waiting to be planted, some fully grown and waiting for a harvest that would never come. There were few cars on the road, so for the majority of the trip, they were able to maintain a steady pace.

The tense moments came as they skirted around larger cities like Akota and Ahmedabad and Udaipur. At least Mumbai was a city they had known. These others were masses of unfamiliar buildings and homes where millions had once lived. Ahmedabad was the worst. The wind was blowing in such a way that even with their windows rolled up, they could smell the death.

It was almost a blessing when night fell and all they could see was the road in front of them. But that brought its own sense of eeriness. A land of over a billion people being so dark and unpopulated seemed impossible, as if someone had built giant blinders along the sides of the road to keep the normal life beyond out of view.

A sign ahead announced Jaipur was only fifty-four kilometers away. Forty minutes and they would be there.

“Would you like me to drive now?” Sanjay asked Darshana. He had taken the first shift that morning, driving for nearly six hours before turning over the duty to Kusum. Five hours after that, Darshana had assumed the driver’s seat.

“I’m okay,” she said. “But thank you.”

Sanjay glanced into the back to check on his wife. She was lying across the backseat, but her eyes were open.

“We are almost there,” he said.

“Finally.” She stretched her arms and sat up. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

He held out his hand and she put hers in it.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Do I look like I slept well?”

“You always look beautiful to me.”

She frowned, but squeezed his hand.

“What is that?” Darshana said.

As Sanjay turned around, Darshana flipped off the headlights and took her foot off the accelerator.

The white glow of bright lights rose like a halo beyond a rise in the road ahead.

“Is that the city?” Kusum asked, peeking between the seats.

“No,” Sanjay. “I do not think so.”

The glow seemed to be coming from just beyond the crest, far too close to be from Jaipur. It was also too concentrated to be coming from something more than a single building, and unless the highway curved drastically on the other side of the hill, it appeared to be right in the middle of the road.

About a hundred and fifty meters from the top of the rise, Darshana let the car come to a stop without her touching the brakes. She moved the transmission into PARK and killed the engine.

“Shall we take a look?” she asked.

When they opened their doors, the interior dome light came on. All three reached up quickly to turn it off, but it was Kusum who got there first. They had to allow their eyes to readjust to the darkness before climbing out.

There was a thin, shoulder-high barrier running along either side of the expressway, and down the middle a shorter metal railing dividing the two directions. They moved along the side barrier until they reached a break and were able to hop down off the expressway onto the local road that paralleled it.

They crossed the blacktop to a row of dark shops and stands, and used them to conceal their presence as they continued up the rise.

Nearing the top, the glow grew considerably brighter, making Sanjay sure its source wasn’t much farther beyond the crest. He noticed something else, too — the light seemed to be accompanied by two distinct noises, a low hum and even lower rumble.

Ten meters from the apex, he tapped the two women’s shoulders and motioned for them to follow him around behind the roadside restaurant they were about to pass. From there they were able to get over the crest unobserved, and then found a gap between the next two buildings wide enough for them to take it back to the other side. At the end of this alley, they peeked across the road at the expressway.

Sanjay had been right. The source of the lights was nearby.

Perhaps another fifty meters down the highway was a set of portable lights raised at least five meters into the sky. They were so intense that the road below them was lit up like day. Right in front of the lights, several cars had been moved into the lanes to prevent passage. There was a gap wide enough for only one vehicle to pass through. Parked in the gap was a military truck, and standing guard on either side were soldiers in all-too-familiar UN uniforms.

A roadblock. Similar to the ones they’d seen in Mumbai. The only difference being that this one was several kilometers outside the city. Could that have had anything to do with this Director Mahajan? Did he need extra protection?

The three spies retreated to the back of the building.

“How are we going to get into the city?” Darshana asked.

“They will only be guarding the major roads,” Sanjay said. He looked around at the back of the buildings. “Somewhere around here there must be a map. We find one and pick out the least likely route to be guarded.”

They decided to hunt for one back on the other side of the rise, and found a whole stack of maps in a little market. They were able to identify four routes not too far away that they thought would give them the best chance of avoiding Project Eden soldiers.

With the Land Cruiser’s engine off, Sanjay and Darshana pushed on the back as Kusum steered the vehicle in a U-turn. The downhill slope of the road was enough that the SUV started to gain a little speed as it came out of the turn, forcing Sanjay and Darshana to hop in on the run.

The first turnoff came to quickly for them to take, but the second was far enough away that they thought they could use the brakes without the brake lights being seen. After they were off the expressway, they started the engine and, keeping their headlights off, worked their way past fields and small villages until they found the road they were looking for.

The gamble paid off, and soon they entered Jaipur.

As much as they all would have liked to get a look at the survival station, the tension of the last fifty minutes had added to their exhaustion. They found a small hotel down a dark, narrow street and, at Kusum’s suggestion, used one of the rooms with two beds so that Darshana would not be alone.

As Sanjay emptied his pockets onto the tiny round table by the bed, he pulled out the phone Arjun had given him. He had totally forgotten about it during the journey. Curious, he touched the button that brought it to life, but never having had a smartphone himself, he was unsure how to access the picture his friend had put on there.

“Problem?” Darshana asked. She was sitting on her bed while Kusum was down the hall using the toilet.

“The picture from the Americans is on here. I don’t…” He paused, embarrassed. “I don’t know how to look at it.”

She stood up. “May I try?” He tossed her the phone, and within seconds she said, “Here we go.”

A moment after she handed it back, Kusum returned, but Sanjay barely noticed. He stared at the phone.

“Sanjay?” Kusum said. “Is something wrong?”

It took a moment for him to realize she was talking to him. He turned the screen so she could see.

“The man they want us to watch for, he was Director Dettling’s assistant in Mumbai,” he said. “It is van Assen.”

Willem van Assen finished the last of his coffee and carried his empty cup to the galley. Though he had his pick of first-class seats, there were no flight attendants.

A shame, really. There was nothing like having all your needs taken care of while you were whisked across the globe.

He peeked through the closed curtain into the business-class section. The plane, an Airbus A330-300 with a capacity of carrying 295 people, had only fourteen other passengers on this flight. Thankfully, they were all security team members. By Project regulations, this meant they were assigned to the economy section or, if available, business class, but never first.

Technically, van Assen wasn’t supposed to be using first class either, but no one was more senior than he on the flight, so he had taken the liberty and assigned himself to the foremost cabin. As he’d expected, no one had questioned him.

Most of the security team appeared to be asleep, though a few people were either reading or watching a movie on the video system. No one had told van Assen why the others were on the plane, but it was easy to guess. Director Mahajan’s status within the Project had just been elevated to the very top. Increasing the security around him would be a natural consequence.

Van Assen let the curtain fall back into place and returned to his seat, hoping to get a few hours of rest before they arrived.

As he closed his eyes, he thought once more about his situation within the Project. His new position was definitely a step in the right direction, so why was he feeling uneasy?

The simple answer would have been because he was heading back to India, where things hadn’t gone so well on his last assignment. But that wasn’t it.

The truth was harder to pinpoint. It was more a sense, really, a feeling that something was off within the Project itself. Not the goals or the steps being taken to achieve them — those were rock solid, as far as he was concerned — but more with the actual membership.

He had noticed it first with Senior Manager Dettling in Mumbai after the prisoners had escaped. It was a loss of confidence, as if the faith Dettling had had in the Project was crumbling.

After van Assen realized this, he began to see the signs in others. Little things — missed details, far-off looks, drifting attention spans, and perhaps not verbal but visual signs of second-guessing.

Was he reading too much into things? And if he wasn’t, did any of it really matter?

Probably not. The Project was on the proverbial rails and could not be stopped now.

Still, the unease wouldn’t go away.

He’d have to keep an eye on things, and if need be, act decisively.

For the Project.

And, maybe a little bit, to help his own rise to the top.

It was this last thought, this comforting vision of a future where he had a say in decisions, that finally relaxed his mind enough for him to fall asleep.

24

“I don’t care, Dad. You’ve still got a long way to go before you’re better, and getting only a few hours of sleep every night isn’t helping. You’re going to lie down now.”

Josie had given Ash that little speech right after they finished breakfast. She and Brandon had then escorted him back to their quarters and waited until he climbed into bed.

“We’re going to be standing outside the door to make sure no one bothers you,” Brandon told him. “So don’t even think about sneaking out.”

“Wait,” Ash said. “If something comes up, I need to—”

“Dad, you need to sleep,” Josie said. As if she could read his mind, she grabbed the stack of Matt’s journals on the shelf by the bed and added, “There’ll be no pretending to sleep, either. We’ll be checking.”

He lay back on his pillow. “Okay, fine. Whatever you say, warden.”

He had thought he’d rest his eyes for maybe twenty minutes, a show of good faith, then he’d get up and they would let him out. But, like his nap the night before, when he opened his eyes again, hours had passed.

Apparently, his honor guards had decided they were no longer necessary because they were gone when he exited the room.

Anxious to find out if Caleb had made any progress, Ash made his way back to the comm trailer. As he entered, Mya and Devin looked over from the terminals they were using.

“For God’s sake, shut it,” Devin said, shivering.

Ash stepped inside and closed the door.

“Oh, sorry, Captain. I didn’t realize it was you.”

“Yeah, he’s a dick to most other people,” Mya said to Ash.

“How’s it going?” Ash asked, walking over to them.

“We’ve recorded forty-seven video conversations and nearly three times as many audio,” Mya said.

“Anything of interest?”

“You’ll have to ask Crystal. She’s set up some people to go through them all. It’s taking all our effort just to keep up with the volume. No time to listen in.”

“I’ll check with her, then.”

“That’s not the best part, though,” Mya said.

“Is that right? Then what is?”

She looked at Devin. “It’s your thing.”

Devin grinned but said nothing.

“You’re not getting a drumroll, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” Mya said. “Just tell him.”

Devin shot her a quick, dirty look before saying to Ash, “I’ve been able to tap into their computer system.”

Ash stared at him. “Are you serious?”

Before Devin could answer, Mya said, “Not to take all the wind out of his sails, but some of the credit goes to Arjun and Prabal.”

“They only did what I told them,” Devin argued.

“And if they didn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten in.”

“True. I’ll admit that. They do deserve some credit for helping.”

“Look,” Ash said sharply.

Mya and Devin turned to him, startled.

“No one’s handing out medals at the moment, so for now it doesn’t matter who gets credit. What I want to know is what kind of access we’re talking about. Just basic or can you dig through everything?”

Devin looked a bit uncomfortable. “I’m still in the middle of mapping the system, but given what I’ve seen so far, I’m confident we’ll have access to whatever we want.”

This was more than Ash could have hoped for. Being able to peruse the Project Eden database would be a huge game changer.

“You’re sure they don’t know we’re inside?”

“Positive. It’s not the first system I’ve hacked.”

A sound from beyond the racks at the other end of the trailer reminded Ash why he was there. “Is that Caleb back there?”

“No,” Mya said. “Jesse. Caleb’s inside the base.”

“Communications?”

Mya shrugged. “He’s been working on that code of yours all morning.” She nodded at a counter space covered with sheets of crumpled paper. “Chloe came in a while ago. They talked for a few minutes, then all of a sudden Caleb jumped up and the two of them ran out.”

“Do you know what they were talking about?”

She shrugged. “No clue.”

Devin shook his head.

Ash spotted a handheld radio and snapped it up.

After tuning in to the band Chloe would be on, he pushed the talk button and said, “Ash for Chloe. Come in.”

Static.

“Chloe, where the hell are you?”

Still no reply.

He switched to the comm room’s band.

“Comm, this is Ash,” he said. “I’m looking for Chloe White. Have any of you seen her?”

A pause, then—

“Leon here. I saw Chloe about thirty minutes ago, heading toward residential section A.”

“Was she with Caleb?”

“Didn’t see him.”

“Okay. Thanks, Leon.”

Ash thought for a moment. Chloe could have only been passing through that area on the way to engineering or medical or one of the storerooms. But he had a pretty good feeling none of those was her destination.

He set the radio down. “Get ahold of me the moment you’ve finished your assessment,” he told Devin as he headed for the door.

Residential section A was beyond the weapons training room in the northeastern portion of the base.

As he headed down the hallway toward it, a voice called out behind him, “What are you doing up?”

Josie.

Turning, he said, “It’s okay. Only woke up a few minutes ago.”

She stared at him as if wondering whether to believe him or not.

“You were right. I needed it. I feel better now. Thanks for making me do that.”

“You shouldn’t be running around.”

“Honey, I have work to do. You know that.”

A quiet second. “Have you eaten lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll get you something. Where are you going?”

“Um, I’m looking for Chloe. I’ll, uh, stop by the cafeteria in a bit.”

“Dad…”

“I promise.” Before she could say anything else, he said, “I’ll see you later,” and continued on his way.

When he reached Matt’s room, he stopped and listened at the door. Voices inside, Chloe’s and Caleb’s. As soon as he knocked, they went quiet.

“Chloe, it’s Ash. Let me in,” he said after knocking again.

The door jerked open.

“Finally,” Chloe said. “Do you have them?”

“Have what?”

“The journals. I sent Brandon to tell you we needed them ten minutes ago.”

“I must have missed him. I went out looking for you guys.”

“Then how did…never mind.” She grabbed Ash’s arm and pulled him inside.

Caleb was sitting on Matt’s never-used bed, several of the journals spread out around him, open. Among them were a laptop, several wadded up pieces of paper, and a small stack of paperback books.

As Chloe shut the door, she whispered, “He’s cracked it.”

“Augustine?” Ash asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“So does that mean we also know what dream sky means?”

Without looking up from the pad of paper in his lap, Caleb said, “Dream sky means Dream Sky.”

Ash said, “But I thought the key word translated the message.”

“It does,” Caleb said. “But Dream Sky wasn’t the message it was intended to be used on.”

“Then what message does it translate? And what the hell is dream sky?”

“Okay, question two, I’m almost positive Dream Sky is a place,” Caleb said. “And, question one, that’s why I need those other journals.”

“So you don’t know for sure the code works?” Ash asked.

“When did I say that? I never said that.”

“You just said you need the other journals to see what it translates.”

“What I need the other journals for is to get the full picture of the message.”

“It’s spread out,” Chloe said. “It appears to be an ongoing conversation.”

“We both read the journals,” Ash said. “We didn’t see any kind of conversation.”

Chloe picked up one of Matt’s notebooks. “The numbers at the end of the entries,” she said, opening the book and pointing at a page. “That’s the conversation.”

Ash took the book from her and stared at the number. After a moment he said, “So Augustine translates all of these?”

“Not Augustine per se,” she told him. “It’s kind of—”

“A mind blower if you really think about it,” Caleb said, unable to contain his excitement. “They used a combination of methods. I have no idea how Matt received the numbers, but at some point he would also receive a key word of nine letters.” He flipped through some pages on his pad, found what he wanted, and turned it so Ash could see. It was a table with the letters of the alphabet across the top, and below, the numbers 0–9 repeated until each slot was filled. “With the key word they used a modified Vigenère cipher.”

Caleb turned to the next page. Here there were dozens more tables, each with the alphabet across the top, but with the numbers in various different arrangements. The number one was circled several times.

He tapped the circled one. “This is it.”

“How do you know?”

“I didn’t at first,” Caleb said as he set the pad down and pulled one of the paperback books from the stack. “There was a lot of hit and miss. Hell, I wasn’t even sure it was numbers at first, but…” He turned the book over and held it out to Ash. “Here. Read that back to me.” He tapped the white box near the bottom of the cover.

“US six dollars and ninety-nine—”

“No, no, no. That!” Caleb pointed again.

Ash read the number aloud.

“Now look at this,” Caleb said as he picked up the pad again and turned to the next page.

Here there was a single, nine-letter string, A-U-G-U-S-T-I-N-E, and underneath, numbers in a seemingly random order.

It wasn’t random.

Ash looked back at the book and then at the number. “It’s the same except for the first digit.”

“First digit doesn’t matter. For book ISBN numbers, the first just indicates what language it’s in. Since they were dealing with English, which would either be a zero or a one, they didn’t worry about that.” He took the book from Ash. “Now this is the real key. Get it? The nine-letter word would point Matt at which book he needed, then he’d use that to decipher the previous message.”

“What if he didn’t have the book already?” Ash asked. “That might take a day or two or more to track it down.”

“It would also depend on how quickly he received the key word after getting the original message,” Caleb pointed out. “The thing is, we know from Matt’s journals that he was receiving other messages from his contacts inside Project Eden, ones he could read right away. This special number method”—he held up the book—“was limited to a very specific topic.”

“Which was?” Ash asked.

“DS,” Chloe said.

He looked at the back of the paperback again. “I don’t understand how—”

“Aha!” Caleb said. “You’re wondering where that book came from, aren’t you?”

“I am.” If Matt had been passed the code word in Las Cruces, he shouldn’t have had the book that matched up to Augustine since he had died right after.

“I found it,” Chloe said. “Used bookstore in Ely, while you were sleeping.”

There was a knock at the door.

Chloe answered it, then looked back and said, “Ash.”

His kids were standing in the doorway, Josie carrying a sandwich on a plate, and Brandon holding the requested journals.

Caleb rose from the bed. “Are those what I think they are?”

Ash put a hand on Caleb’s chest, stopping him. “I’ll get them.”

“I thought you said you were going to stop in the cafeteria,” Josie said.

“I was. I just haven’t had time yet.”

She grunted and shoved the plate toward him. “Here.”

Ash had no choice but to take it. “Thanks. I’ll eat it all.”

“I know you will. I’m going to watch.”

“Uh, no, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

She tried to enter the room, but Ash moved into her way.

“I’ll make sure he eats,” Chloe said, moving up behind Ash. “I promise.”

Josie didn’t look happy but she stopped protesting.

“Are those the books?” Chloe asked Brandon.

“Yeah,” he said, and handed them over.

“All right,” Ash said. “We need to get back to work. I’ll check in with you both later.”

As he closed the door, Josie said, “Every crumb.”

Caleb took the journals from Chloe, carried them over to the bed, and began rifling through them.

“How long will it take?” Ash asked.

“Depends. If all the books are here, forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.”

“More than enough time for you to finish that sandwich,” Chloe said.

“If you want to know the truth, I’m not hungry.”

He’d barely gotten the words out when there was another knock. His immediate thought was that Josie had been listening at the door and was not pleased with what he’d just said. Only it wasn’t his daughter, but one of the women who usually worked the nightshift in the comm room.

“Captain,” she said. “Sorry to intrude, but you’re needed in communications.”

25

Martina had been so desperate to know if anyone in the third detention area was one of her friends that Gabriel allowed her to stay in their lookout spot for over an hour, but when he heard the snap of a branch, he regretted the decision.

The sound had come from about fifty yards away, down a dip that led to a private parking area.

He motioned for Martina to stay quiet as he grabbed the binoculars from her.

From observations that he and his team members had made, Gabriel knew that in addition to the jeeps that patrolled the parking lot and streets around the stadium, there were also the occasional guards on foot. These patrols averaged two a day but, as far as he could tell, had no set times.

He wondered if the sound came from one of those sweeps, or had he and Martina been spotted and a patrol sent out specifically to capture them?

A crunch of leaves, a bit closer than before.

Gabriel scanned the area around their position. They were under the trees but there was little ground cover. The closest was a dense patch of brush ten feet behind them.

He pointed at it, making it clear they had to move silently.

In a crouch, they circled to the backside of the group of bushes and discovered a spot where the branches rose off the ground about two feet, creating a tunnel to what looked like a larger clear area in the middle of the brush. If they could get in there, they might be all right.

Gabriel put his mouth right up next to Martina’s ear. “Crawl through. I’ll hand you my pack and then follow.”

After Martina snaked under the bushes, Gabriel passed the bag to her and began to crawl through himself.

Before he reached halfway, he heard the footsteps, two pairs at least. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-five feet away. He stopped where he was, pulled his knees to his chest, and hoped to God his feet were far enough in.

For over a minute the footsteps moved through the area, coming very close to the clump of brush multiple times but never stopping.

“Must have been bullshit,” a male voice said. “Probably just testing us.”

“Rodney was sure he saw a glint off something,” another guy said.

“Probably an old beer bottle or something. I’m telling you, there’s no one here.”

More moving around.

“I’ve got footprints over here,” the second voice said.

“So what? There are footprints all over the place. They could be from weeks ago.”

“They look fresh.”

“It’s dirt. They’ll look the same until it gets windy or rains.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well, do you see anyone around?”

A long pause.

“No. I guess you’re right.”

“I’m always right, you know that.”

There was a snort. “Only in your head.”

The steps started to move away.

“Oh, like you’re right all the time.”

“Not that we’re keeping score, but more than you.”

“Oh, really. What kind of faulty calculations are you…”

The voices and steps began to fade.

Gabriel held his position for several more minutes before pulling himself all the way into the center of the bushes with Martina. Silently, they waited there another hour before he decided it was safe to move again.

Fearing the patrols would still be out, Gabriel plotted a course that avoided all but the most necessary open areas. This took them on a wide loop that went all the way to the edge of the I-5 then over to the 2 Freeway, where they finally headed southwest again.

When they reached Sunset Boulevard, Gabriel led Martina into Mohawk Bend, a restaurant half a block down from Alvarado, and radioed Nyla.

“I was beginning to worry about you guys,” Nyla said.

“Sorry, we were…delayed. Listen, can you come over here?”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “There’s something we need to talk about. Better in person, I think.”

When Nyla arrived forty minutes later, Gabriel and Martina were sitting at the long central table between the bar and the kitchen, eating a lunch of crackers and cheese and dried salami from the supplies Gabriel had in his pack. They were washing it down in style. The restaurant had a large selection of beers, and days ago Gabriel had taught himself how to tap into the kegs. Right now they were enjoying a lukewarm Racer 5 IPA.

“Can I pour you a pint?” he asked as Nyla walked in.

For a second it looked like she was going to chastise him for drinking, but then her frown faded and she said, “Sure.”

Nyla took a seat across from them. Gabriel filled a glass and put it in front of her.

“So you’re going to tell me why I’m here,” she asked.

“We need to get those people out,” Martina said.

“What people?”

“The ones in the third enclosure,” Gabriel said.

Nyla frowned. “You know we don’t have the resources for that.”

Gabriel glanced at Martina and then back at Nyla. “Then we need to get them.”

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“I think I know why this is the only station that has a third enclosure.”

Nyla raised an eyebrow. “Really? Okay, then. What’s your theory?”

“Immunity.”

Dr. Lawrence could not believe how lucky she was. Initially, she had been assigned to the station in St. Louis. But for whatever reason — the rumor was the suicide of another Project doctor, though she had yet to confirm it — the rosters were shuffled, and her name was moved onto the personnel sheet for Los Angeles.

How boring would St. Louis have been? Sure, they would have probably found one or two people with a natural immunity to KV-27a, but for the most part, they would’ve been dealing with people who had either been lucky or had strong enough immune systems to keep them alive to that point but no true immunity. There, the decision on the life or death of a survivor would be made by other departments, who would base it on whether or not the individual was someone the Project could use.

But here in Los Angeles, she and Dr. Rivera had been presented with a surprise treasure trove. Of course, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Someone in research should have anticipated this exact event happening, but maybe it was good the ball had been dropped. Perhaps if it hadn’t been, a more senior doctor would have received the L.A. assignment, and she would have been stuck in St. Louis or God only knew where else.

Twenty-three immune survivors.

Twenty-three.

And not one of them had inherited the resistance to Sage Flu. They had developed it because they’d been among the final wave of infected during the test outbreak, the wave that had survived. When she and Dr. Rivera had realized that, they knew if there were twenty-three at the station here in Los Angeles, there had to be hundreds more scattered throughout the high-desert region of southern California. Which was why, come the next morning, she would be part of an exploratory group heading out to look for them.

Until then, she and Dr. Rivera had time for a little experimentation. It was important to know exactly how strong the immune systems of these special survivors had grown.

“How about him?” Dr. Rivera said, pointing at one of the twenty-three photographs laid out on the table.

She studied the image, then shrugged. Really, what was the difference? “Works for me,” she said.

Dr. Rivera picked up the photo and handed it to the guard who had been waiting patiently to the side. “This one. As quickly as you can.”

While Martina’s friends were all in favor of trying to get out, most of the others being held with them did not seem as open to the idea. Ben had been careful about what he said as he spoke to them, trying to gauge their thoughts on the situation without going into any details. The only people he shared more information with were a man named Preston Campbell from Barstow, who was in his mid-thirties, and a woman named Ivy Morse, who was probably closer to sixty and from Sage Springs.

As Ben had pointed out from the beginning, getting out of their detention area would be the easy part. All they would have to do was scrap enough grass and topsoil away to slip under the gate. It wouldn’t be easy but very doable, especially if they waited until night. The trick was getting the center-field wall open.

Ben was huddled with Jilly, Ruby, and Preston, going over ideas on how to do just that, when the compound gate opened and five guards entered. All conversation ceased as the guard in front looked at a piece of paper in his hand and then scanned the survivors.

When his gaze landed on Ben’s group, he pointed. “You. Come here.”

No one moved.

“Blue shirt, let’s go,” the guard said.

Ruby was the one in blue. “Go where?” she asked.

“The doctors want to see you.”

“What for?”

“You’ll have to ask them. Come on.”

Ruby glanced nervously back at the others. “What do I do?” she whispered.

“Let’s move it!” the guard yelled.

“It’ll be okay,” Jilly said.

None of them believed that.

The guards started walking toward them. Ruby said to her friends, “Don’t leave me,” then turned and walked toward the gate.

“How long will she be gone?” Ben asked.

Without answering, the guards formed a circle around Ruby and led her out of the detention area.

As soon as the gate was closed, Jilly said, “What the hell?”

“The sooner we get out of here, the better,” Preston said.

“But not without Ruby.” Jilly looked at Ben. “We can’t leave her.”

“We won’t,” he said, with no idea how he’d keep that promise.

The door to the lab opened and the test subject was escorted in.

“Have a seat…” Dr. Rivera looked down at the file. “Ruby.”

With a wary glance back at her guards, the girl sat down. The subject’s apparent agitation surprised Dr. Lawrence.

She looked at the lead guard. “Was there a problem?”

“No. Why?” the guard asked.

Instead of answering him, she switched her attention to the survivor. “You appear upset. Is something wrong?”

“I just…I want to know why I’m here.”

For a brief second, she thought maybe the girl had realized what they were going to do, but that wasn’t possible. Her nerves must have been on edge from being locked up for so many days.

She gave the survivor a disarming smile and said, “We realize this has been an ordeal for you and the others. Know that we’re only doing what’s necessary to keep people alive.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rivera preparing the syringe.

She looked over at the lead guard again. “Thank you. That will be all.” After the guards retreated and shut the door, she said, “Due to the nature of the…emergency, we haven’t always been able to get the best help. The men on sentry duty are good men, just a little rough around the edges at times, so I apologize if their behavior’s disturbed you.”

When the test subject relaxed a little, she knew she had guessed right, that the guards had somehow spooked her. Lawrence made a mental note to have a discussion with their boss later. Things would go much more smoothly, especially when the exploratory group went out in the field, if everyone projected an aura of understanding and sympathy. Flies to honey and all that.

Rivera stepped next to the girl and said, “Please roll up your sleeve.”

The survivor looked at the syringe. “What’s that?”

Rivera looked a bit confused, so Lawrence jumped in. “The vaccine. You’ve passed the incubation period, so it’s time.”

Rivera gave her an admiring nod.

“Vaccine?” The girl looked surprised.

“Yes. It’s why you came here in the first place, isn’t it?”

The subject looked as if she were having some kind of internal debate. Finally, she started to roll up her sleeve. When her bicep was clear, Rivera stuck her with the needle and pushed down on the plunger, sending a mega dose of active KV-27a virus into the girl’s arm.

As soon as the needle was removed and a small bandage applied, the survivor reached over to roll her sleeve back down. “Hold on,” the doctor said. “One more.”

“One more?”

“Yes. As you can imagine, this is a very special virus,” Lawrence said, improvising again. “We’ve developed a, um, two-injection method to combat it.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

“We had to work in a hurry,” she told the girl, her confidence building with every word. “Two separate teams have come up with different variations. Both methods work, but some people react better to one than the other. So by injecting both, we’re giving you a much better chance at survival.”

The survivor considered her explanation, and then nodded. Rivera, on the other hand, was staring at Lawrence with what appeared to be a new level of respect.

“You may give her the second vaccine now, Doctor,” she said to nudge Rivera out of his trance.

Rivera blinked, then, somewhat embarrassed, grabbed the syringe containing the sedative. After he had given the injection and applied another bandage, he said, “You can pull your sleeve down now.”

“It will be a full day before the vaccine is truly effective,” Lawrence said, enjoying playing the part of the kind doctor. “So we’re going to put you someplace where you can rest and wait. It’s only a few doors down. After twenty-four hours have passed, you will be free to leave.”

The girl blinked a few times. “Or…or…go to the safe…zone.”

“I’m sorry?” Lawrence said, momentarily confused. Then she realized what the girl had meant. “Right. Of course. If you so choose, you can join the next group heading for the safe zone. It’s definitely the choice we recommend.”

The survivor blinked again, her lids closing for a second before popping back open. Lawrence could tell she was confused by the response, but the drug was hindering her thought process.

“How…long…does…does…”

Her head drooped forward before she could finish the question, the sedative knocking her out even faster than the doctor had hoped.

Together, Lawrence and Rivera moved their test subject into the small office just off the lab. They had earlier removed all the furniture and replaced it with a single metal cot. They had covered the walls and ceiling with plastic and made sure the seams were sealed tight. Next up had been replacing the door with one from down the hall. It had a window taking up the top half and a square vent on the bottom. It had taken a little work, but they had created a space in the vent through which they could pump in whatever they wanted.

A tidy and safe observation room.

Once they had the girl on the cot, they closed the door and sealed off the joints along the frame with more plastic. Rivera walked over to the set of valves they’d mounted to the wall and activated the oxygen tank. He then skipped the middle two valves, neither of which was connected to a tank, and turned on number four, sending a fine mist of concentrated Sage Flu virus into Ruby’s room.

Perhaps it was overkill to inject KV-27a into the subject and the air she would breathe, but the first thing they wanted to know was if the acquired immunity was a hundred percent or not. If the girl caught the disease, they could then use the other subjects to find the borderline of where the immunity stopped working. If the girl didn’t, well, then, that would be something else, wouldn’t it?

Dr. Lawrence tingled with anticipation of the outcome, wondering which would prevail. She didn’t have a preference, of course. She never did.

It’s what made her such a good researcher.

26

Since leaving Texas, Curtis Wicks slept only when he absolutely had to. Otherwise he kept heading northeast.

The route was nowhere near as straight as he would have liked. Avoiding permanent Project facilities and locations where survival stations had been set up was a priority, so that meant detouring onto smaller highways that were often littered with accidents and abandoned vehicles.

And then there were the blockages like he encountered on the Kentucky side of a bridge over the Ohio River. He was on one of his detours at the time, avoiding the survival station in Cincinnati. The accident was in Maysville at the mouth of the two-lane suspension bridge that he’d planned on using to enter Ohio.

Even on his motorcycle he couldn’t get around the problem. Several cars had been deliberately jammed between two concrete columns to bar any vehicles from passing.

Deciding to walk across and find another motorbike on the Ohio side, he climbed over the cars and hopped down on the other side. More cars were strung out on the bridge, sitting sideways to the lane markers. It looked like there had also been a car fire or someone had tried to burn down the bridge near the center; the metal railings and concrete sidewalk were scorched black. Why someone thought they could burn down the bridge, he didn’t know. What he did know was that with all the obstacles, it would take him forever to get to the other side. There had to be a better way.

He decided to see if there was another bridge close by he could try. When he turned to climb back over the main roadblock, he stopped in his tracks.

Painted on each concrete pillar was a message that clued him in to what had happened here.

A last stand. The police or desperate locals trying to keep the outbreak from crossing the river. And perhaps they had succeeded, but unfortunately for them, the Sage Flu had been coming from all directions, not only the north.

He located another bridge a few miles north, but it too turned out to be a bust. While the side railings were still there, someone had blown a twenty-foot hole in it near the center. Perhaps that explained the burn marks on the other bridge. Maybe someone had tried to blow it, too, but failed.

Wicks did finally find his way across, one that allowed him to keep his ride, but it was only after traveling more than fifty miles east to South Portsmouth. That had been the previous evening, and since it was already dark by the time he crossed and he was bone tired, he stopped not far north of the border and slept dreamlessly until that morning.

When he sat down to plan that day’s route, he realized he needed to take several factors into consideration. The first was NB191, the Project Eden facility right outside Columbus, Ohio. Like the majority of other facilities, its main function was that of a warehouse and would have only a small staff. Still, he wanted to keep away from it. The second issue would be the survival station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Again, avoiding the city altogether would be the best course.

If not for the third item, he would have passed Pittsburgh to the south and cut north through the center of the state into New York and then on to his final destination. But the third item necessitated turning north prior to Pittsburgh, then heading east through the middle of the state. Unlike the others, it was a stop he had to make.

Heading out, he saw patches of snow here and there that spoke of severe weather sometime in the not too distant past. Though it had warmed at bit since then, Wicks was freezing, even with his jacket zipped all the way up and his scarf wrapped tight around his neck.

He couldn’t help but smile when he reached the I-80 north of Pittsburgh. It had been years since he was last in this part of the country. When he was a kid, he used to visit often. It had been a magical place of trees and farms and streams and secret paths through the woods. The people who had lived there were all gone now, many dying naturally as they grew older, but the majority taken by the flu.

That thought forced him to the side of the road, the bike skidding a bit on a patch of ice as he stopped. He pushed out the stand and was barely able to get off before the tears flooded his cheeks.

Safe inside Project Eden’s facilities, he’d been able to distance himself from what was happening to the world around him. He’d even told himself, because he passed on information to Matt and the Resistance, that he was on the side of good.

But for the last few days, he had driven through the silent towns, passed over the deserted roads, smelled the rotting corpses. And now here he was, a few miles away from a town where he’d known people.

He could distance himself no longer, nor could he disavow his part in the horror.

He fell to his knees, his hand covering his face, and sobbed.

There was nothing he could do to make up for what had happened.

Nothing.

He had killed them.

Killed them all.

Even after his tears ran out, he knelt there, staring at the ground.

His soul was not lost. He knew exactly where it was — in the lowest pit of hell, irredeemable.

When he rose to his feet, he was no longer shaking. Since leaving Texas, he had feared what might happen to him on the mission he was undertaking, but no more.

The damned have nothing to fear, he realized.

He took the Allegheny Boulevard exit in Brookville ten minutes later, and soon was turning off Jenks Street onto Cemetery Road. He slowed as he passed between the two columns that had flanked the entrance since long before he was born. Carved in relief in the capstone on the left was BROOKVILLE and the one on the right CEMETERY. No fancy names here, just telling it like it was.

He had no problem finding the headstone he was looking for. It wasn’t ornate or as high as many of the others, but even if a hundred years had passed, he would have found it just the same. It was his grandfather’s, a humble monument Wicks had helped his mother pick out.

The gravestone was a five-inch-thick slab of granite that rose a foot into the air from a wide base flush to the ground. He squatted next to it and brushed away a crusty chunk of snow from the bottom.

He’d always loved his family’s trips here to visit his grandfather, had loved playing in the sweet old man’s barn, and walking with him through the fields. Wicks had been fourteen when his grandfather died, and — until he’d come back seven years earlier for a short, purposeful visit — the man’s funeral had been the last time Wicks was there.

He ran his palm across the front of the stone, outlining his grandfather’s name before moving his hand to the very top of the monument. As much as he would have liked to spend hours cloaked in the good memories, that was time he did not have.

He gripped the stone with the other hand and yanked it forward. The first jerk barely moved it, but with each back and forth motion, the marker tilted more and more until finally it tipped over onto the grass and snow.

Moving around behind it, he reached into the hole where the base had been. After clearing away some clumps of dirt, he found the box and pulled it up. The container was made from a hard, durable polymer that was guaranteed to last a hundred years. It probably did not gain the favor of the ecologically minded but was exactly what Wicks had wanted. With the exception of being a little dirty, the box looked like new.

He twisted the top counterclockwise and looked inside. It was still there, like he knew it would be. He closed the top, set the box to the side, and tilted the marker back into place.

“Thank you,” he said, looking down at the grave.

His grandfather would be shocked at what Wicks had been a part of, but he hoped the old man would at least be supportive of what he was trying to do now.

He picked up the box as he stood. The container felt so light for something so important.

Please still work, he thought. Dear God. Please.

27

“Here,” Crystal said, handing a headset to Ash. She then donned the second set and clicked CONNECT.

The line rang only once before it was answered. “Nyla.”

“It’s Crystal. I have Captain Ash here.”

“Afternoon, Nyla.” Ash had met her in passing, but had never really talked to her.

“Hello, Captain,” she said. “We have a situation here we need some guidance on.”

On the way to the communications room, Crystal had briefed Ash on Nyla’s assignment in Los Angeles, but had no details on why the woman wanted to talk to him.

“All right. I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“I think it’s probable we have a unique group of survivors here.”

“Unique in what way?”

“Sir, we believe they are immune.”

“You mean they’ve been vaccinated?” It had happened in India, so it wouldn’t be completely surprising if the same situation had occurred here.

“No. Not vaccinated. Immune.”

Ash knew a few people with a natural immunity were to be expected. He and his kids were examples of that. “How many are we talking? Two? Three?”

“At least twenty. And, if I’m right, there’s probably many times more than that.”

“Start at the beginning,” he said.

She had barely begun when Pax entered the room.

“Nyla, hold for a moment,” Ash said. He motioned for Pax to join them and then touched Crystal on the shoulder. “Put her on speaker.”

“What’s going on?” Pax asked.

Instead of answering, Ash said, “Nyla, Rich Paxton is here with me now. Do you mind starting over?”

“No problem.”

She told them about Martina Gable and her friends, all of whom were survivors, and all of whom had been stricken with the flu the previous spring. She described the special holding area at the Los Angeles survival station, and that a head count of the people inside was larger than the group Martina had been with.

“The other holding areas have been pretty much emptied out,” she said. Though the pattern was sporadic at the moment, teams had reported similar purges at other stations. They all knew this meant Project Eden had begun eliminating the survivors they’d collected. “Thankfully, we’ve had a drastic reduction in the number of new arrivals here since Tamara’s message started playing, and out of those, we’ve been able to get to most before they reached the station. What I’m concerned about is what the Project’s going to do about this immune group.” She paused. “Sir, I’m tired of watching people die. We need to get them out.”

“How large is your team?” he asked.

“Eight.”

There was a voice in the background. Ash couldn’t understand what was being said, but it was clearly defiant.

Nyla said into the phone, “Nine, if we count Martina.”

“And how many people does the Project have there?”

“Rough estimate, twenty-five to thirty guards and a couple dozen ancillary personnel.”

“Give us a moment here, okay?” Ash said.

“Sure,” Nyla replied.

Crystal muted the call.

“Do we have anyone we can send out there to help them?” Ash asked.

As Crystal thought about it, her face was already projecting the answer. “We’re stretched thin. We’ve got teams at only ten percent of the survival stations as it is. We could maybe break one of them free, but that would compromise the location where they’re working.”

“No. I don’t want to do that. What about here at the base?”

“We’re already operating at bare bones,” she said. “I’m sorry. We don’t have anyone left.”

“Actually, we do,” Pax said.

They both looked at him.

“We have a hundred twenty-nine people just sitting around over in Ely.”

“The Isabella Island group? But they’re just…tourists,” Ash said. “They’re not trained to do anything like this.”

“None of us are really trained for this,” Pax said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, but what choice do we have? Besides, they might have been tourists when they went to the island, but they had lives before that. Who knows? Some might even have a military background.” He shrugged. “It’s the end of the world, Captain. All hands on deck.”

Ash considered it for a moment and then nodded. “All right. We can at least ask them.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

“Put her back on,” Ash said to Crystal. He glanced at Pax and grinned. “If you recall, I was army, not navy. So next time I’d prefer a more appropriate metaphor.”

Caleb stared at the pad of paper.

“I got it. I…got it!” He looked up. “I got…”

His words cut out as he realized he was alone in Matt’s room. Last he remembered, Chloe had been there, too. He had no idea if that had been ten minutes ago or two hours.

He looked down at the pad again and rechecked his final bit of decryption. Those extra numbers in several of the sets had been the biggest trouble, but everything had finally clicked, making him feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Of course, he still needed to check it on a computer, but as far as he was concerned, that was only a formality.

He grinned at his handiwork. Breaking into Project Eden’s communications network by night, solving encrypted messages by day. Damn, he was good.

Chloe. I need to find Chloe.

As he shot off the bed, several of Matt’s journals and dozens of pieces of paper tumbled to the floor. Ignoring them, he crossed the room and yanked the door open.

“Chloe!” he yelled as he entered the hallway. “Chloe!”

He heard a door behind him open. He swung around.

“What’s going on?” Not Chloe, Rachel.

“Oh, um, I’m sorry, ma’am,” Caleb said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m, uh, looking for Chloe.”

Rachel stepped into the hall. “Why would Chloe be—” She stopped as her gaze fell on the open door to her brother’s suite. “Were you in Matt’s room?” She walked quickly to the doorway.

“I was just…I…I gotta find Chloe.” He whipped back around and started jogging down the hall.

“Caleb! I want to talk to you!” Rachel called after him.

He kept going, not allowing himself to breathe until he turned down the hallway to the main portion of the base.

He found three people in the cafeteria.

“I’m looking for Chloe. Have you seen her?”

Head shakes.

He was about to ask the same question when he reached the comm room, but a quick look through the door told him everyone was busy.

He almost ran past the gym without stopping, but the rhythmic bass throbbing from inside made him stutter step and return to the door. As he opened it, he winced at the music blasting from inside. Chloe was the only one there, keeping pace with the drumbeat on a stair-step machine in the corner.

Afraid his eardrums would burst if he took a step inside, he yelled her name. He might as well have been running around naked in a pitch-black room for all the good it did. Bracing himself, he took a step over the threshold and yelled again, this time waving the pad of paper in the air. That did the trick.

She hopped off the machine, picked a remote off the ground, and hit a button. The music cut out.

“Are you done?” she asked, using a towel to wipe the sweat off her face as she walked over.

“Uh-huh.”

She motioned at the pad of paper. “That it?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Holding out a hand, she said, “Let me see it.”

“There’s, um, something you might want to deal with first.”

They found Rachel kneeling on the floor of Matt’s room, picking up the journals. All the wads of paper had already been tossed in the trash.

“Rachel?” Chloe said.

Rachel turned. “What the hell is going on here? These are Matt’s personal journals. Who gave you permission to go through them?”

Chloe stepped toward her. “Rachel, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Rachel said, slamming the journal she’d been holding onto the bed. “These are my brother’s things! This is his room! You have no right to be in here!”

It took all of Chloe’s will to maintain her cool. These were not the kind of situations she’d ever been very good at. “We had no choice. We had to come—”

Pushing herself to her feet, Rachel said, “You what? Coming in here was not a choice! You didn’t even think to ask me?”

“You needed your rest.”

Rachel looked between the two of them. “I want you and Caleb to confine yourselves to your quarters. You will—”

“Caleb had nothing to do with this. He was doing what Ash and I asked him to.”

“Captain Ash is in on this, too? What has happened to all of you?”

“What has happened,” Chloe said, her jaw tensing, “is that Matt left us a message and we’ve been trying to figure out what it means. I realize that his death has been very difficult for you, but we couldn’t just stop doing anything until you were ready. We are in the middle of a war we are losing badly. We need every advantage we can get, and if your brother’s message points us toward something that will help, then we need to know what he meant.” A brief pause. “I’m sorry we did not ask your permission, but we didn’t do anything wrong. Matt is dead. There is nothing that will change that. But there are people out there who need our help to stay alive. So, no, we will not detain ourselves in our rooms. And, no, we will not stop looking at your brother’s journals.”

Rachel stared at Chloe, stunned.

“Actually,” Caleb said, “I don’t think we need the journals anymore. I’ve figure out the—”

“Shut up,” Chloe said, her words meant for Caleb but her gaze still on Rachel.

Rachel’s lips parted. After a few false starts, she said, “What message?”

Pax had called ahead, so when he and Ash arrived at the hotel, Robert had already gathered everyone in the largest meeting room available. There were some handshakes, a lot of hellos, and a few inevitable grumbles of dissatisfaction with the living arrangements. As the others took their seats, Pax and Ash moved to the front of the room.

“Well, as I warned you on the plane, the weather here’s only slightly cooler than what you’d been experiencing back on the island,” Pax said.

A smattering of laughter.

“Can’t say it’ll be getting much warmer anytime soon,” he said. “But the good news is, you are all safe.”

A few people clapped.

“How long are we going to have to stay here?” someone shouted.

Several others said, “Shhh.”

“It’s all right,” Pax said. “A natural question. First off, you can leave anytime you want. There are cars on every street. All you have to do is get in one and drive away. No one will stop you, but if something happens to you, no one will be around to help you, either. For those who choose to stay, I’m not going to lie to you and give you any kind of time frame. Truth is, we have no idea when you’ll be able to get out of here. We do plan on finding someplace more permanent, but other matters are taking precedence right now.”

He looked around the room before launching into what he’d really come to say. “Without outside help, none of you would be alive today. I’m not saying that to gain a cheap pat on the back. I’m saying it because it is a fact. It’s also a fact that others like you are out there. We have people scattered around the globe trying to help them, but we can’t be everywhere.” He could see he had everyone’s full attention now. “I’d like to tell you about one of the survival stations and what’s been happening there…”

Pax’s story about Los Angeles was greeted with shocked stares and more than a few tears. Even though Robert and his fellow Isabella Island survivors had seen firsthand what Project Eden could do, it still seemed so incredible, so unbelievably horrible.

Robert could barely hold in his own emotions upon hearing about people who had voluntarily gone to the station, thinking they were going to get help, only to have their lives taken. Estella was a wreck, leaning against him, her wet cheeks pressed against his arm.

When Pax finished the story, he said, “I tell you all this because we have an opportunity here to do something right. At least twenty people are still being held there that we can get out. We have some people on the ground keeping an eye on things, but there are too few of them to make a move. What we need is help, and that’s why I’ve come to you.”

“Wait, are you — what do you call it? — forcing us into your army?” The question came from Bertrand Tailler, the same asshole who had almost made Robert miss the plane. He was sitting alone in the back corner.

“No, not at all,” Pax told him in a much calmer voice than Robert would have used. “What I’m saying is, we need volunteers. Military training is a plus, but it’s not necessary. If you don’t want to volunteer, that’s completely fine. No judgment. Any questions?”

There were a few, mostly about the danger involved.

“Yes, there’s a chance someone will get hurt.” Pax said. “Will anyone die? It’s a distinct possibility. This isn’t the old world anymore. Our lives will never be as comfortable as they used to be.”

“You expect people to volunteer to die?” Bertrand said. “Good luck with that.”

“Thank you,” Pax said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Anyone else have something they want to say?”

A few indistinct whispers, but no more questions.

“All right, then. We’ll do this the simple way. If you’re willing to volunteer, raise your hand.”

No hands shot up.

Robert looked around, wondering what was wrong with these people. Pax and his friends had saved them. If the Resistance needed help, they should get it.

That’s when he realized he had yet to raise his own hand. He lifted it into the air. He didn’t know how much help he could be — he’d been scared to death when he went after the hijackers on the Albino Mer—but he figured he could do something.

Estella sat up straight and raised her own hand.

Ash watched as hands rose like a reverse game of tumbling dominoes. Even two of the people who’d become sick after receiving the vaccine, but had improved enough to come to the meeting, volunteered. Pax thanked them but excused them from service.

Ash and Pax had been hoping for fifteen people. The final tally was thirty-seven.

They gave everyone time to gather their things, then loaded the volunteers onto one of the buses that had ferried the group up from Las Vegas. With Pax behind the wheel, they headed for Ward Mountain, where everyone would be equipped as best as possible before heading for the airplanes that would take them to Los Angeles.

A few miles out of Ely, Pax reached under his seat and pulled out the bag he’d brought along. “Sat phone’s ringing,” he said, tossing the pack over to where Ash was standing.

Ash pulled the phone out and hit ACCEPT.

“This is Ash.”

“What the hell happened to you?” Chloe did not sound happy. “I’ve been trying to call you for like an hour.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Not wrong,” she said. “Caleb’s decoded the entire message.”

“Fantastic. What’s it—”

“Do you want to know the best part?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“Fine, I’ll wait until you get back. You are coming back, aren’t you?”

“What’s the best part?”

It wasn’t hard to imagine the sly smile on her face as she said, “I said when you get back.”

“Chloe!”

“Okay, okay. We know where Dream Sky is.”

While ash had expected Chloe to be with Caleb when he and Pax entered the conference room, Rachel’s presence was a surprise.

He almost asked if she was all right but stopped himself. Instead, he said, “I’m glad to see you.”

She nodded, a quick, humorless smile gracing her lips.

Pax walked up to her and put his arms around her, whispering something Ash couldn’t hear.

When they parted, she said, “Thank you.” In a louder voice, “We should start.”

Chloe looked at Caleb. “Tell them.”

“Right. Okay, so some of the messages were confusing the hell out of me,” Caleb said as he grabbed one of the journals on the table. He flipped through a few pages, then turned the book so everyone could see. It was one of entries that had a sequence of numbers at the end. He pointed at the numbers. “Every once in a while when I decrypted one of these, there would still be a few numbers left. Anywhere from one to three digits. At first I figured they were placeholders and concentrated on the bigger messages.”

“And?” Ash asked.

Caleb traded the journal for a well-used legal pad. “I’ve got all the messages right here.” He tossed it into the center of the table. “It’s one sided, though. Just the responses Matt received. As far as I can tell, he didn’t keep a record of his side of things. Still, you can pretty much figure out what they were talking about.

“The earlier messages all concern the what and where of DS. And before you ask, he never says Dream Sky, only uses the initials and sometimes not even that. At one point, C8 says he thinks it might be a secret supply dump. Later he suggests it’s a weapon of some kind. He throws out a bunch of other possibilities, too. Apparently Matt had an idea of what it was, but C8 didn’t agree. He kept saying things like there was no way Matt was right, and he could find no proof of Matt’s theory, and even went so far as to tell Matt that he had to be wrong and they were wasting time pursuing the idea. They did agree that from the secrecy surrounding it, it seems to be a key to the Project’s success. They don’t mention why they believe this, but if you read between the lines, it’s pretty clear it’s based on something Matt had known when he was still on the inside. Which, by the way, still blows my mind that he was part of them. How could he hide it from—”

“Stick to the subject,” Chloe told him before Ash could say something similar.

“Oh, right.” Caleb glanced at Rachel. “Sorry.” He took a moment to regain his composure before restarting. “Several years ago, C8 changed his tune, and began saying that they’d been wrong. That DS didn’t exist. I mean, he really tried to sell Matt on it. It was like something spooked him and he didn’t want any part of it.” He smiled. “Interestingly, it was around this time he started including the odd stray numbers in his messages.” Caleb gestured at the pad. “Matt asked him about the extras and why they didn’t work into the code. C8 played them off as nothing important, which, as I was first going through them, was exactly what I was thinking.”

“But they weren’t filler,” Rachel said.

Caleb grinned again. “No, they were not. But I wouldn’t have figured it out if it weren’t for the message Matt passed on to Captain Ash. Well, the Augustine part, anyway. It unlocked that last set, where I discovered four more strays. That really bothered me. That was more than any of the previous messages had had. So why were there so many now? I was having a hard time continuing to think they were simply filler. I was missing something. So I put all the strays on a single piece of paper.”

He pulled a sheet out of his pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the table. On it were two rows of eight numbers each. The first started with 43 and the second with 73.

Caleb smiled at everyone expectantly, but after no one responded, he said, “Don’t you see it?”

“See what?” Pax asked.

Caleb rolled his eyes and groaned. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and inked a period after both the 43 and the 73. He then drew a minus sign in front of the seven.

“How about now?” he asked.

“GPS coordinates,” Ash said, surprised. He’d seen plenty of similar numbers while in the army. “Are you sure?”

“Am I sure?” Caleb scoffed.

He grabbed a shoulder bag off the chair closest to him and pulled out a laptop. After placing it on the table, he typed something in and turned the screen toward them. On it was a mapping application showing a wide view of the planet. In the text box at the top, Caleb had input the two sets of numbers. He gave them all a second to look at the screen and then pressed ENTER.

The map zoomed in until a blue arrow appeared, pointing at the center of what looked like a very small town. In a floating box above the arrow were the coordinates.

“Where the hell is that?” Pax asked.

Caleb widened the shot back one step and the name of the town appeared.

“Everton?” Ash said. “Everton where?

Caleb zoomed out until state lines began to show. “This one’s in Vermont.”

Ash studied the map for a moment. “Okay. I’ll give you that C8 was pointing Matt here for some reason, but it doesn’t meant that place is Dream Sky or whatever DS stands for.”

“That’s the same thing I told him,” Chloe said. “As strong as it was circumstantially, it could still mean anything.”

“Which pissed me off,” Caleb said. “I mean, it’s obvious. But I get it. God forbid we assume anything, right?

Chloe and Caleb shared a conspiratorial smile.

“What?” Ash asked.

“Devin used the link into Project Eden’s computer network to confirm that there is a Project base at the coordinates,” Chloe said.

“Again, not proof,” Ash said.

“No,” she agreed. “But what he was unable to find probably says the most.”

“What do you mean?”

“She means,” Caleb said, sounding like he felt he should be the one driving the conversation, “that he checked dozens of other facilities in the system, all of which had abundant, accessible information. The base at these coordinates”—he pointed at the map—“had nothing. Not even encrypted info.”

“Then how did you find anything on the base in the first place?” Ash asked.

“Devin was able to locate a map in an old archive that had the base marked. But it’s not on later editions of the same map. Okay, so maybe it’s not Dream Sky, but whatever it is, it seems pretty damn important.”

“Or maybe it’s not there at all,” Ash said.

“C8 was pointing at something,” Chloe said. “Something he felt was important enough to tell Matt about. And Matt felt it was important enough to tell you before he died. We need to check it out and see for ourselves.”

As Ash opened his mouth to respond, Pax said, “Captain, maybe it is something else entirely, but if there’s a chance this place is Dream Sky, and taking it out would severely cripple the Project, how can we pass up the opportunity to at least check it out?”

The room fell quiet.

“He’s right,” Rachel said. “We have to check. We have to check now.”

Again there was silence.

Ash finally broke it. “Caleb, thank you. If we have more questions, we’ll come and find you.”

Caleb looked confused for a moment before his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, okay. Sure. Um, they probably need me back at the trailer anyway.”

After he was gone, Ash said, “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right.”

“We can’t afford to waste time,” Chloe said. “The longer we wait, the more entrenched the Project will become. At some point we won’t be able to topple them.”

“I’m not talking about waiting. If this is as important as we think it might be, then I’m talking about being ready so we can take advantage of the situation right now.”

28

Terrell Fisher shoved his hands into his jacket pockets so Diaz wouldn’t see them shaking. Not that Diaz would have noticed anyway. Terrell was pretty sure the guy was dealing with his own internal repercussions for what they were doing.

“Think we can fit the last two in,” Diaz said, stepping off the back of the truck onto the loading dock. “You get the gurney.”

“Sure,” Terrell said. “Right behind you.”

He waited until Diaz started walking toward the warehouse door before pulling his hands out again. The empty gurney made an awful racket over the uneven concrete floor, but he definitely preferred it to the muted clackity-clack it made when it was loaded.

The warehouse was on the eastern edge of Project Eden’s Chicago survival station. All of the offices — medical, processing, security — were located in the building. The holding areas had been constructed in the large parking area that separated the warehouse from a twin building a few hundred yards away. When the Project had first arrived at the facility to begin the conversion, the lot had been full of semis and trailers. Terrell’s first assignment here had been to help move the vehicles out.

Diaz held the door open and allowed Terrell and the gurney to pass through first. They were basically on autopilot as they headed down the hallway. Someone — a Project psychologist, probably — had labeled their destination as the Reassignment Room. This wasn’t the name by which Terrell thought of it. In his mind it was the Kill Room.

The room was large enough to hold up to fifty people at one time. Five rows of ten chairs faced a wall where a video projector would play a message from Gustavo Di Sarsina, supposed Secretary General of the UN, talking about what survivors should expect when they arrived at the safe zone.

This was also the product of the head doctors, telling Terrell and the others that feeding into the survivors’ sense of hope as the gases were introduced made everything humane. The doctors even pointed out that the survivors were really the luck ones. In place of a painful death at the hands of the flu, they would be drugged to sleep before a second, toxic gas was added to the room to ensure they would never wake again.

People were going to die. That was basic knowledge if you were a part of the Project. What Terrell had not thought through before Implementation Day was how it would truly feel to be alive with so many dead filling the world. When he’d begun seeing the bodies on TV, knowing it was real, he’d gone numb. But what was infinitely worse, what had never ever crossed his mind, was that he would have an active hand in eliminating those who had survived the flu but did not fill a need within the Project.

For days they had been killing survivors. Hundreds, thousands — he wasn’t sure anymore how many. He and Diaz and the others escorted people into the airtight room, waited for the cycle to pass, then transported the bodies to the mass grave outside of town.

Despite what the doctors said, it wasn’t humane. The humane thing would have been to let people know what was going on, give them a chance to fight for their lives. The stories, the double dose of gas — that was for the psyche of Project Eden personnel, Terrell had finally realized.

Grasping this allowed him to see the truth.

He was a killer.

“Hey, watch out,” Diaz said.

Terrell looked up and straightened the gurney right before it would have hit the wall. “Sorry.”

A few minutes later they reached the Kill Room. Quickly they loaded up one of the two remaining bodies and headed back into the hallway.

They hadn’t gone far when a voice called out behind them. “Are you almost done?”

They stopped and looked back. Walking toward them was Theo Gates, head of processing.

“One more after this,” Diaz said.

“Is there a problem?” Ward asked.

Diaz looked confused.

“No, sir,” Diaz said.

“Then do you want to tell me why you aren’t already at the dump site?”

Dump site, Terrell thought. The words hammered home the utter disgust he was feeling, but he appreciated that Ward wasn’t covering it up by calling it the safe zone like they were suppose to.

“We should be on the road in ten minutes,” Diaz said.

“You’re behind schedule. We’ll be bringing in another group in four hours, so I expect you to be back and everything ready by then.”

“Won’t be a problem,” Diaz said. He looked at Terrell. “Let’s move.”

As they headed down the hallway, faster than before, all Terrell could think was, Another group.

29

Bobby could hear the sat phone ringing as he exited the bathroom. He figured Tamara would answer it, so he made no effort to hurry back to the surveillance room. Then he heard the toilet flush in the women’s bathroom.

In a burst of speed, he ran down the corridor, his shoes squeaking loudly as he skidded around the corner into the big room. He paused inside the doorway, unsure where he’d left the phone. Another ring solved his dilemma.

“Hello?” he said, even before he had it pressed against his ear.

“Bobby? It’s Leon.”

By the time Bobby hung up the phone, Tamara had returned.

“Pack up,” he said. “We leave in ten minutes.”

“Leave? Where are we going?”

He smiled. “We have an assignment.”

Sanjay sat up with a start. He blinked as he looked around.

Kusum was still asleep beside him, and while the room was still dark, he could see the unmoving lump of Darshana on the other bed.

Had a dream woken him? He could feel his heart racing so he assumed the dream had been a pretty wild one. As he took a deep breath to calm down, he heard a buzz behind him. Looking back, all he saw was the dark form of his pillow. And then he remembered.

The phone.

He had switched it to vibrate and put it under his pillow to prevent anyone outside the building from hearing it ring. He pulled it out and hit CONNECT.

“Yes?” he whispered.

“Is this Sanjay?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Crystal. I know it’s early for you, but do you have a moment?”

“Hold on.”

He carefully climbed out of bed and exited the room into the nearly pitch-black hallway. “Okay,” he said. “We can talk now.”

He returned to the room four minutes later.

“Kusum, Darshana, you need to wake up.”

The women stirred but neither opened her eyes.

Sanjay walked over to his wife and kissed her on the forehead. “Wake up, my love.”

A low grunt escaped before her eyes finally fluttered open. “Sanjay? What’s going on?”

“Time to get up.”

She looked confused. “It is still dark.”

“There are things we need to do.”

He straightened up and turned to wake Darshana, but saw her eyes were already open.

“Are you going to kiss me, too?” she asked.

“Don’t count on it.”

The runways at the Ely Airport had not been long enough for the plane that had flown north from Isabella Island, but the largest was long enough for the Gulfstream G550 executive jet that was on its final approach from San Francisco. This was the first of four such aircraft that had been called in from Resistance locations on the West Coast. The other three would be arriving within the hour.

Ash, pensive, looked at the jet’s lights.

“Now would be a hell of a time to second-guess yourself,” Pax said.

“Tell me this is going to work and I’ll stop,” Ash said.

“Whether it works or not doesn’t matter,” Chloe threw in. “If we wait we’ll definitely fail.”

“I’m pretty sure whether it works or not is going to matter,” Ash said.

“You know what I mean.”

He gave her a half smile. “I do.”

A screech of rubber announced the jet’s touchdown.

“I believe your ride is here,” Pax said.

Ash watched the plane for a moment longer, then turned to his friends. “Call us as soon as you have a feel for the situation,” he said to Pax. “Crystal should have everything set by then, but if you need to act, don’t wait.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Pax said. “We’ll handle our end.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

Pax looked over at Chloe. “Watch out for him. He’s liable to forget he’s still injured.”

She hugged him. “I’ll do my best.”

The two men shook hands.

“Good luck,” Ash said.

“You, too, Captain.”

Robert and the other volunteers were waiting in the small terminal building. If any of them was regretting raising his or her hand, no one was saying anything.

“Freshen up your coffee?” he asked Estella.

“No, thank you,” she said, setting down her nearly full cup.

“How about you?” he said to Renee.

“I’m with Estella,” she replied. “I think if I actually drink any of this, I’m going to throw up.” She put her cup down next to Estella’s.

Robert was having the exact opposite reaction. Drinking the coffee was keeping his nerves settled. He was about to go for a refill when the outer door opened and Pax, Captain Ash, and Chloe came in.

“My group up and ready,” Ash said. “Our plane just landed.”

Robert felt Estella slip her hand into his and squeeze tight. They, along with Renee, were three of the eight who would be accompanying Ash and Chloe east. The rest would take the later planes and head to Los Angeles with Pax.

“If anyone needs to hit the toilet, now is the time,” Chloe said.

It was as if all the coffee he’d been drinking had suddenly made it through his system at once. Clenching, he whispered to Estella, “I’ll be right back.”

Several others made the trip to the bathroom with him, and by the time he returned, the jet had pulled up next to the building.

“Come on,” Estella said, taking his hand again.

They picked up the duffel bags they’d been assigned and headed outside. Each bag contained winter gear, two handguns, ammunition, and, in Robert’s case, four stun grenades. Ash and Chloe were waiting outside the plane’s door.

“You’re in 2A and B,” Chloe said to Robert and Estella.

After all the volunteers were inside, Ash and Chloe climbed in and closed the door.

Standing at the front, leaning a bit forward so that his head didn’t hit the roof, Ash said, “If any of you would rather stay, this is your last chance to back out.”

Robert turned in his seat to see if anyone would take the captain up on his offer, and was pleased to see no one did.

“All right, then,” Ash said. “You should try to get some rest. It might be a while before you get another chance. If you need a sleeping pill, talk to Chloe.” He swiveled around and said to the pilots, “Let’s go.”

“You ask me, looks like they’re planning some kind of trip,” Gabriel said, his eyes tight to his binoculars.

He, Nyla, and Martina had carefully worked their way around to a tree-covered hill east of Dodger Stadium. Parked in the lot closest to the entrance Project Eden used the most were three trucks and two Humvees. Two of the trucks were troop carriers, while the third was a red delivery truck with a logo on the side for La Brea Bakery. It was into this last vehicle that supplies were being loaded.

“Yeah,” Nyla said. “But where?”

“Maybe they’re closing up shop,” he suggested.

“Why would they do that?” Martina said, concerned.

“It’s happened at a few other stations already. Probably because they’re not getting the intakes they expected.”

“But if they leave, what happens to my friends?”

It took all of Gabriel’s effort not to cringe. There was still no proof her friends were in the special area. “The plan is to get everyone out before that happens.”

“Maybe…maybe we should do something now.”

Nyla set her glasses down and looked over at Martina. “The only things that would be accomplished by going in now would be to get us killed and tip them off that something was up. They’d likely kill all the prisoners, too.”

“But if we do nothing, and they kill them before the others get—”

“What?” Nyla asked. “Should we just die with them?”

“Yes! It’s better than sitting here and watching!”

Gabriel put a hand on Martina’s back. She flinched but he didn’t move it away. “It’s not, and you know it. Look, we realize there might be people you care about in there. We want nothing more than to get them out, but until we’re ready, anything we do would be suicide. And that’s not going to help anyone.”

Before Martina had a chance to argue again, the sat phone buzzed. Nyla answered it.

“Yes…uh-huh…okay…okay…great, thanks.” When she hung up, she looked over at the other two. “Time to go. The planes are on the way.”

Wicks was really flying now. The only place he’d had to be careful about since leaving his grandfather’s grave was Scranton, where there was supposedly a satellite survival station tasked with sending survivors to the three much larger ones in the New York City area.

Other than that, he’d been able to drive at a pretty constant eighty miles per hour and had already blown past Binghamton, New York. If he kept up this pace, he’d get there before midnight.

The sooner the better, he thought.

“That was Berlin,” Crystal said as soon as she disconnected the call. “They’re ready.”

“How many is that now?” Rachel asked.

She had been in the comm room since Pax and Ash left with their teams for the Ely Airport. The emptiness she’d been feeling since the death of her brother was still there, but she was no longer ceding control to it. With Pax and Ash and Chloe all away, someone needed to run things here. There was no time for a spiral into despair.

“Seventeen,” Crystal said.

“Eighteen,” Leon shouted. “Just confirmed with Johannesburg. Said it won’t be that much, but I told them whatever they can do will help.”

Eighteen. That was good, Rachel thought, but would it be enough?

She gave Leon a nod and said, “We need more.”

30

The Van Nuys Airport was located in the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles. While there were landing strips closer to Dodger Stadium, those would increase the likelihood of the jet being seen as it descended. Van Nuys was hidden by the hills and just far enough away that the plane would hopefully touch down unnoticed.

Still, Pax couldn’t help consider the possibility of a rocket knocking them out of the air as they headed toward the runway. When they were finally on the ground, he relaxed enough to unbuckle his seatbelt and push himself up.

“All right,” he said, looking at everyone as the plane taxied across the tarmac. “We’re going to be met by some of my people here. It is very important that you all follow any directions we give you from this point forward. Not doing so could result in serious injury or…or worse.” He caught the eye of a man two rows back. “Duncan, you’re going to be squad leader of the people on this plane.” Duncan was one of the volunteers who had served in the military, a four-year stint with the British army.

“Yes, sir,” Duncan said.

“Anyone have any questions?”

A hand belonging to a dusty blonde woman near the back went up.

“Yes?” Pax said, pointing.

“Well, um, I’ve never even hit anyone before. How am I supposed to shoot at someone?”

A few others mumbled the same concern.

“It’s not an easy thing to do, but if you’re looking for motivation, then let me remind you that the people holding the survivors are the same people responsible for killing nearly every person you know. Your acquaintances, your friends, your family—these are the people who took their lives.”

The whole plane stared back at him, unmoving.

He gave it a few seconds before he said, “Any other questions?”

There were none.

The moment the plane pulled to a stop, Pax opened the door, allowing the outside air in. It had a long way to go to match the balmy, tropical heat he’d experienced on Isabella Island, but the temperature was at least fifty degrees warmer than Ely had been when they left.

He lowered the steps and climbed out to find six people standing next to several vans a few dozen yards away.

“Nyla,” he said, smiling broadly as the group approached.

“Good to see you, Pax.”

After they shook hands, she presented the rest of her team to him, most of whom he’d already met.

“We have three more who are keeping eyes on the station,” she said, and then turned to the only person she had yet to introduce. “This is Martina Gable.”

Pax held his hand out toward her. “The immune girl,” he said.

She looked a bit self-conscious as she shook his hand. “Good to meet you.” She glanced at Nyla. “Can we go now?”

“You’re anxious about your friends, aren’t you?” Pax said.

Martina nodded. “If we wait too long—”

Pax held up a hand. “I understand.” He thought for a moment and then said to Nyla, “The other planes should be only a few minutes behind us, but there’s no reason to hang out until they get here. We’ll take this first group now and see what we can figure out.”

“Of course,” Nyla said. She pointed. “We’ll take that van.” She turned to the man next to her. “Gabriel, you drive, and I’ll fill Pax in on the latest. The rest of you will bring the others the moment they’re on the ground, got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the rest of her team said.

Pax looked back at the volunteers, all of whom were off the plane now, and motioned at the van. “Load up. Time to go.”

As he turned back around, Martina was looking at him.

“Thank you,” she mouthed.

He dipped his head slightly and put a hand on her back. “Let’s see what we can do.”

They took the 101 Freeway from the Valley into Hollywood and approached the stadium from the basin side. Gabriel, clearly knowing where all the jams were, exited at Gower and turned down Hollywood Boulevard, heading east.

“Any theories on where this convoy might be going?” Pax asked when Nyla finished her brief.

“No idea,” she said. “Unless they’re all leaving.”

Pax frowned. “The reports I heard said the other places that have bugged out usually had a stream of trucks moving from the station to whatever airport they were using.”

“Could be they’re getting ready to do that.”

“Could be,” he said. “But from the way you described it, it sounds a little bit different.”

“If it’s not that, I don’t know what it is.”

Eastern Hollywood gave way to Los Feliz and then Silver Lake.

“We’re getting close,” Nyla said. “We’ll stop about a mile and a half out and hike in from there. Any closer and they might see us.”

When they reached Alvarado Street, Gabriel pulled the van into the gas station on the northeast corner.

“The hike’s a little hilly,” Gabriel explained as they climbed out. “But the good thing is that so far we haven’t seen any patrols at night. Hopefully that pattern will hold.”

Duncan organized everyone into two parallel lines, and told them to keep their pace steady while watching out for the person in front of them.

Pax noticed a few of them pulling their guns out of their bags. “Hold on,” he said. “Best if you keep those stowed for now. Nobody’s got holsters so you’d have to hold them, which means you might accidently pull the trigger. I’ve done it myself and let me tell you, it’s the last thing we need right now.”

There was reluctance from a couple of people, but in the end they all put their weapons back in their bags.

“Everyone ready?” Pax asked.

There was no dissent.

Looking at Nyla and Gabriel, he said, “Lead the way.”

Dr. Lawrence was looking through the window when the subject regained consciousness. The girl lay there for several seconds, staring up at the ceiling before she finally sat up.

Immediately, she placed her hands over her eyes and winced.

Lawrence pushed the intercom button. “Ruby, are you all right?”

The girl moved her palms far enough apart to squint at the door. “What happened? Why am I in here?”

Lawrence clicked the button again. “You had a reaction to the vaccine that caused you to lose consciousness. How are you feeling now? Are you ill?”

The girl looked around. “What is this place?”

“Isolation chamber. Merely a precaution.”

Turning back to the door, the survivor said, “Precaution for what?”

“As I told you, you had a reaction to the vaccine. It’s standard procedure in such circumstances to isolate the patient until we are sure everything is okay. Now, please answer my question. Are you feeling sick?”

The girl blinked a few times. “My head hurts.”

That symptom could have been as easily caused by the sedative as the virus.

“Anything else?” Lawrence asked. “Do you feel…congested? Any difficulty breathing? Aches? Pains?”

“Just the headache.”

Interesting. The doctor noted it on her tablet.

“How long do I have to stay in here?” the girl asked.

“Overnight, at least. You will hopefully be able to leave tomorrow.”

The answer didn’t seem to please her. “Can you at least turn up the air conditioner in here? It’s hot and…” She touched her arms. “I’m sticky.”

“Why don’t you try to rest more and I’ll see what I can do.”

As Lawrence stepped away from the door, Rivera asked, “So?”

She grinned. “Nothing yet.”

Ben waited until twenty minutes after the kitchen crew collected the dishes before he headed for the dormitory door. He only went a few steps, though, before Jilly ran up behind him and grabbed his arm.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“You know where,” he said.

“But we can’t leave Ruby.”

Ben had known since Ruby had been led away that this discussion was coming. Jilly had pretty much spent the rest of the day sitting in the yard, watching the fence in hopes her friend would come back. Any attempt to discuss the escape plan had been shut down. Ben and the others knew, however, they couldn’t wait.

“No one said anything about leaving her,” he said, “but we can’t do anything for her from in here. After we get out, we’ll figure something out.”

“Like what?”

“I promise. We’re not going to just disappear. We’ll get her.”

“What if they bring her back right after we leave?”

He grabbed her by the arms and locked eyes with her. “Jilly. We will get her out. But we need to get out of here first. Do you understand?”

She blinked several times, fighting back tears. “We can’t leave,” she whispered.

“You can stay here if you want, but if you choose to come, you have to do everything I tell you.”

“I’ll…I’ll come.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled as he gave her arms a squeeze. “You’ll be number one behind me, okay?”

“Okay. But don’t forget your promise.”

“I won’t.”

When he let go of her, he glanced at Preston, who was standing only a few feet behind them. Preston gave him a shallow nod, indicating he’d heard the conversation and would keep tabs on Jilly when Ben couldn’t.

Ben made his way outside, strolled over to the fence, and dropped down. Crawling along the narrow shadow at the barrier, he worked his way around to the gate.

Close up now, he examined the grass. What was amazing to him was how uniform and tightly woven it all was. His father had always prided himself on the grass in their yard but it was nothing like this. This was a work of art.

He almost felt guilty as he dug his fingers through the blades, grabbed the roots, and pulled. As he’d hoped, a large chunk of grass came free in a single piece. He set it aside and began removing more and more grass, creating a lane about two feet wide and three long all the way to the gate. Once the grass was out of the way, he began digging through a layer of sand that came out a lot easier than he’d expected.

“How’s it going?” The half-whispered question came from behind him.

He looked back and spotted Preston standing a dozen feet away, facing the side so he wasn’t looking at him.

“Faster than I thought,” he replied.

“It’s going to work?”

“I think so.”

A foot down would probably be enough, but he went farther just in case. They certainly didn’t want anyone getting stuck trying to get out. After about two feet, he hit a layer of black plastic that he realized must be part of the irrigation system. That was fine. The trench was more than deep enough.

After he had it cleared all the way to the gate, he stopped. They would dig out the other side when it was time to go.

Though the sand he’d removed was all in the shadows, he covered it with the pieces of grass to cut down any chance the lighter colored material would be noticed. After examining his handiwork and determining there was nothing else he needed to do, he retraced his path along the fence and returned to the dorm.

Those who were with Ben on trying to escape were gathered around one of the bunks near the door. The others were in the seating area, unaware what Ben had been doing.

“So?” Jilly asked.

“All done. Five minutes to clear the other side and we’re out.”

“Except for the center-field fence, and the guards, and who knows what else,” Valerie said. She had reluctantly joined their escape plan, but still wasn’t above pointing out at every opportunity why it wouldn’t work.

“Yeah, except for that,” Ben replied, choosing not to engage.

“How long should we wait?” Preston asked.

Ben shot a look toward the back of the building. “Until the others fall asleep, and then we go.”

“What the hell is he doing?” Nyla said.

“Who?” Pax asked.

“In the special holding area.”

Pax had been studying the guards in the stadium bleachers. He refocused his binoculars on the area within the tarp-covered fence. “I don’t see anyone.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “He came out of the building and walked over to the fence, then I lost him.”

“You sure he didn’t go back inside?”

“Yes, sir. One hundred percent.”

Pax scanned the fence all the way to the gate, searching for a tear in the tarp that might give him a view inside, but found none.

“Could be he just needed some time away from the others,” he suggested.

“I guess.”

“Keep an eye out for him. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He crawled backward from the crest of the hill and made his way to where the others were waiting.

When Martina saw him, she stood up. “Are they still there? Please tell me they’re still there.”

“The lights are on in the building, and Nyla saw at least one guy,” Pax said. “So someone is.”

She frowned. “A guy? Not any of the girls?”

Gabriel stepped over. “They usually stay inside after dinner, so that’s probably where they are.”

“‘Probably’ doesn’t mean they are.”

“Martina,” Pax said. “I understand what you—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t understand. I should be—”

“We have all lost people. Many, many people. So when there’s someone close to us still here, still breathing, we want to do anything we can to keep them alive. I get it. More than you can ever comprehend.” He paused. “My aim here isn’t to sound mean, but if you want to help us free your friends or whoever it is being held over there, then you need to get your head on straight and focus. If you can’t, if you’ll run off on your own and not follow directions, then I can’t have you coming along. And worse, I’ll have to task someone to stay here with you to make sure you don’t do anything rash.”

She hugged her arms across her chest and looked away. After a moment, she nodded. “I get it. You’re right.”

“So are you in or out?”

“I’m in,” she said, looking at him again. “Definitely.”

“And I can trust you won’t do anything stupid?”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

He held her gaze for a second before he smiled. “Never doubted you would. Wanted to make sure you didn’t doubt, either.” He turned to Gabriel. “The others?”

“Second team’s in place,” Gabriel said. “Team three’s hiking in, but should be in position within thirty minutes.”

“Good.”

“Do we have a plan yet?”

“I got an inkling of something. It’ll be a little risky.”

“At this point, what wouldn’t be?”

“You’re right about that.” He glanced sideways at Martina, who was still standing nearby. To Gabriel, he said, “Walk me back.”

They headed up the slope toward the lookout point.

After they were out of range of the others, Pax said, “I’m going to need two people. Preferably a man and a woman. Gotta be people who are willing to act without hesitating. You got anybody like that in your squad?”

“Sure. Nyla and I.”

The same as Pax had been thinking, but no way would he risk them both on what he had in mind. “I’ll give it a little more thought and let you know what I decide.”

“I’ll be ready for whatever you need.”

“Thanks.”

Gabriel turned back when they reached the point where Pax had to drop to a crawl.

After Pax rejoined Nyla, he whispered, “Your guy show up again?”

Still looking through her binoculars, she nodded. “A moment ago. Popped up same place where he disappeared, then walked inside the building.”

“Just getting air, I guess.”

“Not sure about that. Take a look at the gate.”

He raised his binoculars. “What am I looking for?”

“On the ground right outside.”

He adjusted his angle.

“You looking?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Just off center to the right.”

He looked where she directed. “What the hell is that?”

“I’m not sure. But it slid out from under the fence a few minutes before I saw him again.”

“Is that…dirt?”

“Could be.”

“So he scooted a handful of dirt under the fence? Why?”

“No idea.”

Pax searched the area around the dirt, but there was nothing else to see but grass. Whatever the kid was doing, they couldn’t figure it out from where they were.

Putting it out of his mind, he refocused on the bleachers. “Let’s take another count of the guards to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.”

31

Ash looked out the Gulfstream’s window at the world below. During the flight, he had seen lights on the ground in a few places, small pockets of false hope where the electricity had yet to fail. But as they descended toward Albany, New York, all lights were off.

Behind him, Ash could hear the others stirring in their seats, everyone awake and nervous about the unknown barreling toward them.

As the plane continued downward, Ash tried to get a sense of how much farther they had to go, but the darkness made it nearly impossible to judge. An exclamation of triumph from one of the pilots drew his attention to the cockpit. He leaned into the aisle to get a better look, and smiled when he saw what all the excitement was about. Out the front window were two rows of dim lights marking the runway.

Ash looked out the side window as the wheels touched down, and noted the landing lights weren’t the ones affixed to the runway, but portable lamps with wires running between them.

The plane slowed and then taxied toward a hangar, where someone was waving more lights. When the G550 pulled to a stop, three people jogged toward it from a large helicopter parked nearby.

Ash unbuckled his belt and stood up. “Everyone hang where you are for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

He motioned for Chloe to follow him, and headed over and opened the door. By the time he hopped off the steps, the three people were there.

A big man with a wide smile stepped forward. “Are you Captain Ash?”

“Ash is fine.”

He held out his hand and the man took it.

“Edward Powell,” the guy said. “Philadelphia team.”

He turned to his two companions. “This is Omar Gamin, also Philadelphia.”

“Omar,” Ash said, shaking.

“And this is Tamara Costello.”

As Ash shook her hand, he said, “We all enjoy your work.”

“Thank you,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed. “Really, all I do is stand there and talk. It’s my partner Bobby who does the real work.”

“The cameraman.”

“Among other things.”

Ash looked past them toward the helicopter. “Is he here?”

Powell shook his head. “He’s on the recon team.”

It had been Ash’s idea to send an advance team to the coordinates so it could report back if something was there or not. He didn’t know why Bobby was on it, though. The cameraman and Tamara had been brought into the mission so they could get some footage that, if there was a chance to broadcast it, would show people what was really going on.

Tamara apparently sensed his confusion. “Trust me, you’ll be glad he went. Let me show you.”

They walked quickly to the helicopter, where Tamara grabbed a laptop sitting inside and woke up the screen. She worked the keyboard and cursor for a moment, then said, “Bobby?”

A whisper came back. “Here.”

“Captain Ash has arrived. Can you show him?”

“Hold on. Repositioning.”

Tamara turned the computer around so they could all see the screen. Filling it was a green-tinted moving image. When it settled a few seconds later, Ash could make out three men crouching behind some trees. Beyond them was a black void.

The image zoomed into the darkness. As it passed the last of the trees, the area beyond began to take shape. It was a shallow valley with several buildings sitting squarely in the middle, lit only by moonlight.

A dead town.

“Everton, Vermont,” Tamara told Ash.

“Changing lenses,” Bobby whispered.

The picture went blurry for a moment before sharpening again and focusing on a brick building, large for the area, probably three stories high.

“On the roof,” Bobby said. “Give it a second.”

Scattered across the roof were several exhaust vents and a small, hut-like structure that Ash figured provided access to the inside of the building. Nothing unusual.

For several seconds the scene remained unchanged, and then, in a flash of brighter green, something moved out from behind the hut. Not something. Someone.

The person was carrying an M16A4 rifle, and decked out in the same military-style winter gear Ash had seen Project Eden soldiers wear that night in Las Cruces. He watched as the guard moved deliberately along the retaining wall at the edge of the roof.

No question. He was a lookout.

“Are there more?” he asked.

“We’ve ID’d two more guards so far, but the guys with me figure there’s probably more.”

“What about ones not obviously on watch?”

“No. Town’s quiet otherwise.”

“Do you know what they’re guarding?”

“Haven’t found it yet. But we haven’t completed our loop. There has to be something.”

Powell said, “I told them to do a full circuit of the town without getting too close.”

Ash nodded, then said to Bobby, “When you finish, return to whatever you deem the best spot for observation and hold there.”

“Will do.”

“And try not to get caught.”

A low, nervous laugh from the other end, then, “Yeah, that’s pretty high on my priority list.”

As Tamara ended the communication, Ash glanced at Chloe. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

“The uniform.”

He nodded and turned to Powell. “How long will it take to get there?”

“I can fit your whole team in the helicopter. We can go as far as Rutland. Made the trip already when we dropped the others off. That’s about twenty miles from Everton. Flight time just over thirty minutes.”

“All right. Let’s move.”

As the team transferred to the helicopter, Ash called Ward Mountain.

“This is Leon.”

“I need to talk to Rachel,” Ash said.

“Hold on.”

The delay was brief.

“Captain?” she said.

“There’s definitely something there,” he said.

A beat. “So we’re on.”

“Yes. Expect the go from me in the next few hours.”

Bobby Lion and the team from Philadelphia walked as silently as possible through the woods and around to the east side of the village. All this activity was a huge change over Bobby’s past few days of lounging around the NSA facility.

First he and Tamara had raced up the highway from DC to right outside Philly, where they hooked up with Powell and his men at a private airfield. From there, they had flown north to Rutland in a surprisingly luxurious Sikorsky S-92 helicopter. The initial intention had been for only Powell’s people to head up to Everton, but during the flight, Bobby had opened his big, fat mouth and mentioned the specialized gear he had in his bag, and how it might be a good idea if he went with them.

He didn’t regret suggesting it, but there had been moments since they arrived on scene when he questioned his sanity. So far, though, the worst part was the cold.

They were walking across the side of the hills surrounding the valley, right around the midway point to the summit. For the most part, the walking was easy, but occasionally a slope forced them to lean to the side so they wouldn’t lose balance.

After several more minutes, Marcos, the head of the team, motioned ahead at an opening in the dense forest, and made the signal Bobby had learned meant it was time to take another look around.

They stopped just inside the tree line at the top edge of the clearing and took a preliminary look at the town. Bobby was surprised by how close they were now. One of the homes on the outskirts of the village was maybe a hundred yards away, at the base of the hill. He had a sudden urge to turn and run but he held it together.

Marcos caught his eye and nodded, indicating Bobby was up.

With the help of one of the other men, Bobby removed his pack and pulled out the camera. As before, he started off with the small zoom lens and did a sweep of the valley. The man on top of the three-story building was still doing his slow rounds of the roof. One of the others Bobby had spotted earlier was also still in position, standing on a lower roof to the south.

He turned the lens to the north, and stopped. There was a third man, but not the one he’d seen earlier. That man was out of sight on the other side of town.

“Another one,” he whispered.

“Where?” Marcos asked.

Bobby handed him the camera. “Two blocks this side from center. On the roof of the gas station.”

Marcos searched for a moment, then nodded. “That’s four.”

He handed the camera back to Bobby, who continued his check. He spotted no more men, only a few additional buildings he hadn’t been able to see before, and a nearly empty field just north of Everton, with what looked like a small pump house or storage hut in the middle.

He switched to the bulkier lens, once more needing assistance to hold the camera steady. He hit RECORD and repeated his sweep, spending a few extra seconds on the newly discovered guard before continuing north and ending when he reached the field.

He clicked the camera off and lowered it. “All set.”

Less than a minute later, they were on the move again.

Wicks barely had time to drop to the ground before the patrol in the woods came into view. He froze, hoping they weren’t wearing night-vision goggles. If they were, he was dead for sure.

Where the hell had they come from? He’d been watching Dream Sky for over an hour, and not once had there been any patrols this far out of town. Had he tripped some sort of sensor? There had been no mention of any in the information he’d culled about the place over the past few years.

He tilted his chin up enough so he could watch the patrol as it snaked through the trees and passed by less than thirty feet away. Five people in all — three men and two women, though he could have been wrong about that. Four of them were carrying rifles, while the fifth — definitely a man — carried a large pack on his back, but no obvious weapon.

That was strange enough, but what was even odder was that none of them were dressed in the typical Project Eden security outfits. The guard Wicks had seen in town was properly dressed, so why wasn’t this patrol?

Once they passed out of sight, he rose to his knees and looked out at the field and the utility hut that was not a utility hut, then back in the direction the patrol had gone.

“Dammit,” he whispered.

He climbed to his feet and headed after them.

32

Pax decided he and Nyla would execute his little ruse, while Gabriel remained with the others to take charge if something went wrong.

“You ready?” Pax asked her.

With a wicked smile, she said, “You bet I am.”

He clicked the radio. “Everyone stand by. We’re moving.”

As he put his arm over Nyla’s shoulder, she threw hers around his back.

“Lean into me,” she said.

He did. “How’s that?”

“Fine.”

They moved along the edge of the stadium parking lot, Pax practicing his limp.

When he felt like he had it, he said, “Let’s do this.”

They turned onto the asphalt and headed straight for the stadium. The lot was largely dark, only the lights nearest the ballpark were on, so it wasn’t until they’d stepped into the illuminated area that they earned the reaction they’d wanted.

“Car,” Nyla whispered.

The sedan appeared around the corner to the right, coming fast. Pax and Nyla kept walking toward the stadium as if they hadn’t seen it.

“Here we go,” she said a few seconds later.

The car slowed to a stop directly in their path. Pax and Nyla halted, looking appropriately dazed. The two people inside climbed out and clicked on flashlights, shining them in Pax’s and Nyla’s faces.

Pax raised his free arm in front of his eyes and said in a weak voice, “Can you lower that, please?”

The beam tilted downward.

“Thank you.”

“Evening,” the driver said. “You two look like you’ve been through hell.”

“Have you been out there?” Nyla said, a tremble in her voice. “It is hell.”

“Of course,” the other man said, his voice more soothing than his partner’s. “But you’ve made it, and you’re going to be fine now.”

“So, this is the survival station?” Pax asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank God.”

“I do need to ask,” the nice one said, “are either of you sick?”

“No,” Nyla said.

“You, sir?”

“I don’t feel great,” Pax said. “But it’s because of my ankle. Think it might be busted.”

The man smiled. “Not to worry. Our doctors can take care of that. Hop into the car. We’ll give you a lift the rest of the way.”

“That would be great,” Nyla said.

With a nudge from his friend, the driver helped Nyla guide Pax to the vehicle.

“Best if we put your backpacks in the trunk,” the nicer man said. “It’ll be a tight squeeze otherwise.”

“Oh, um, sure.” Nyla peeled off her pack. “Here, Mr. Paxton, let me help you with yours.”

After the bags were loaded up and Nyla and Pax were sitting in the backseat, the two men climbed in.

“You two know each other from before?” the nicer man asked as the driver started the car.

He never received his answer. Before the driver could drop the car in gear, Pax and Nyla placed guns — previously strapped to their legs — against the backs of the two chairs and pulled the triggers. They had chosen smaller-caliber pistols so the sound would be minimal. The choice also meant the Project Eden men had a higher chance of survival, but with the guns pressed against their backs, neither had a chance.

As soon as Pax and Nyla were sure the men were out of commission, they reached up front and hauled the driver into the back. Nyla slipped behind the wheel, while Pax ran his hand across the top of the backseat until he found the latch that allowed him access to the trunk.

Seat lowered, he pulled their bags through, dug out his radio, and clicked the talk button.

“Go!”

Ben tiptoed through the building, checking the other bunks. On his last pass, two of the others had been awake, but now they too had drifted off. When he reached the girls and Preston, he nodded, put a finger to his lips, and headed over to the door.

As soon as they’d joined him, he pointed at each of them in the order they would follow him, starting with Jilly. He slipped out the door and along the building to the shadow by the fence. He was already on his way toward the gate when he heard the faint sound of the door opening again as Jilly came out, followed immediately by Preston.

At the gate, he crawled into the short ditch and began scraping away at the dirt on the other side, temporarily leaving the grass above it. He only had to clear away enough so they could scoot under and up, maybe two feet out at most.

Every third or fourth time he pulled the dirt under the gate, he glanced up to check on the others. Like they had discussed earlier, they were lining up in the shadow along the fence, waiting until the hole was done.

The farther he went, the more the layer of grass drooped. Once he felt he’d gone far enough, he moved back inside the enclosure and whispered, “Get ready.”

Going under the gate on his back this time, he worked his fingers up through the grass and began pulling it down until the playing field tore loose at the edges. He ripped most of it out in a single large section and cleared away the rest, then pushed all the grass under the gate, knocking it out of the hole with a flick of his feet.

He stared up at the night sky. Things had gone well so far, but from this point forward everything would be improvisation. He lifted his head above the level of the grass and looked both ways. No one in sight.

He could feel his heart thumping, knowing the next step would put his life in serious danger.

It’s better than staying here, he told himself. You stay and you will die.

He counted to three and pulled himself the rest of the way under the gate and out of the hole. He got up into a crouch and took another look around. No sign of any movement.

Something scraped below him, then the chain link on the gate rattled momentarily. He shot a look down. Ruby was part of the way through, her hand holding the gate in an attempt to stop it from moving.

“Quiet,” he mouthed.

Her eyes were wide and scared, but she nodded. Slowly she let go of the fence, and relaxed when there was no more rattle.

Ben held out his hand, telling her to wait in the hole. He crept over to the outfield wall, which was covered by large blue sections of padding. Between the two mats at the very center was a crack through which he could see beyond the wall. He’d been right. It did open.

The problem was, how?

He ran his finger along the crack but found no release. He would have to go over, which meant he’d be in sight of every guard in the place. Maybe if he went quickly, he could—

A double pop.

He dropped to the ground.

The sound hadn’t been loud, but it had been unusual. He looked back toward the stands and realized he had just enough of an angle to see part of one guard. The man was leaning against a pole as if nothing had happened.

Had he not heard the noise? Or was it a normal sound around here that Ben hadn’t noticed before?

“What’s going on?” Jilly whispered, her voice barely drifting out of the hole.

He crawled over. “Did you hear that noise?”

“I heard something. Thought you made it.”

“Uh-uh.”

“What was it?”

“Don’t know.”

He looked back at the fence.

“Are we going to go or not?” she asked.

“Hold on. Let me—”

The sound of running steps stopped him. Not on the field, but farther away in the stands, and…receding.

He cautiously rose back to his feet and inched out until he could see the guard he’d noticed before, but no one was there. He inched out a little farther, checking to see if the guy had repositioned. He found that not only was the guard missing, but the next guard down was gone, too.

Emboldened, he continued pushing the boundaries until he was standing free of the holding area’s cover.

All the guards in the stands were gone.

For a full two seconds, he didn’t move.

Then he turned toward the center-field wall and ran.

Martina was not happy.

Gabriel had decided she would be on lookout, meaning she had to stay on the hill and report what was going on instead of being with everyone else headed to the stadium.

“You promised you would do what we told you,” he reminded her when she protested the assignment.

She hated him in that moment for reminding her, but she had taken the binoculars and remained behind.

From her vantage point, she was able to watch while Pax and Nyla were stopped in the parking lot and put in the car. Moments later, there was a bright flash from the interior, followed by the soft echo of the bullets.

Then Pax’s voice came over the radio. “Go!”

Martina moved the lenses from the car to the trees where group one was gathered. Seconds after Pax’s command, the group moved into the parking lot in a loose line. Though she couldn’t see them from here, she knew the other two groups were also making their way toward the stadium.

She switched her view to the interior of the stadium, focusing on the detention area she was sure her friends were in. Her brow furrowed.

What the…?

Someone was outside the gate, kneeling next to…a hole in the ground? Not only that, apparently someone was in the hole.

Oh, my God, she thought. They’re breaking out.

The person who’d been kneeling suddenly shot up and looked inward at the stadium. She raised her glasses, trying to see what had drawn his attention. For a moment she couldn’t figure out what it was, then she realized the guards were gone.

She trained the glasses back on the guy on the field. He had moved away from the hole and was stepping slowly from the shadows into the lit open area to the right of the fence.

It wasn’t very long before he seemed to realized what she’d already discovered, because he turned and started running toward the back of the field.

Martina gasped.

As the man turned, his face had come into view.

Ben.

He was alive!

Without another thought, she jumped up and began running down the hill.

Bleep-bleep.

Bleep-bleep.

Dr. Lawrence looked up from her desk, unsure where the noise was coming from.

Bleep-bleep.

Bleep-bleep.

Dr. Rivera grabbed the radio off the central table. He twisted a dial on top and the sound decreased.

The general alarm, Lawrence realized. It had been tested once when they first arrived but hadn’t been used since.

Suddenly the bleeping was replaced by the voice of Brooks, station director. “All security personnel report to entrances one, two, and four. Multiple individuals approaching.”

“Multiple?” Lawrence said.

“I repeat,” Brooks said. “All security personnel report to entrances one, two, and four. Multiple individuals approaching. Intake officers report to your stations.”

“That’s us,” Lawrence said, standing.

Rivera looked annoyed. “The others can handle this.”

“I’ll let you explain that to the director when she comes asking where you were.”

“Fine.” He pushed up.

On the way to the door, Lawrence swung by the observation room. The subject was stretched out on the cot, staring at the ceiling. Lawrence activated the intercom. “Ruby, how’s your headache?”

“Gone.”

“Excellent news.”

“I take it you are still feeling no other symptoms?”

“You take it right,” the girl said, not hiding her displeasure.

“Don’t worry. In the morning this will all be over,” Lawrence said with a smile before heading for the door where Rivera was waiting.

“Still no sign of infection?” he asked.

“None.”

While the teams drew the attention of the security personnel, Pax and Nyla drove over to the back of the stadium and hopped out of the car.

“Martina,” Pax said into his radio. “Have they pulled the guards from inside the stadium?”

No answer.

“Martina? Do you read me?”

He turned and looked toward the hill where she was supposed to be stationed.

“Martina?”

He saw someone enter the parking area from the base of the hill, running.

“Who the hell is that?” he said.

Nyla followed his gaze. “I’m not sure.”

“Is it Martina?”

“Could be.”

Two armed men ran out from the east side of the stadium, on an intercept course for the person Pax had spotted.

“Son of a bitch,” Pax said.

If it was Martina, there was no one around to help her.

“Come on,” he told Nyla as he headed back out into the parking lot.

“Steady,” Gabriel said just loudly enough for the others in his group to hear.

They were walking at a normal pace, hopefully projecting a sense they were not a threat. Their weapons, though, were all close at hand.

Ahead, five Project Eden soldiers were approaching. They, of course, were not even attempting to conceal their firepower. Each carried a rifle, the barrels angled at the sky.

When there were only about fifty feet between the guards and Gabriel’s group, one of the guards shouted, “Please hold right there.”

“Are we in the wrong place?” Gabriel said. “Isn’t this the survival station?”

“Yes, sir, it is, but we need you and the others to stop so we can talk with you.”

“Oh, sure. Everyone, it’s okay.”

The group came to a staggered halt, while the guards continued forward until they were only a few yards away.

The guard who’d spoken said something softly into a mic attached to his jacket. When he looked back at Gabriel, he said, “You’re a pretty big group.”

“Picked up people here and there on the way,” Gabriel said.

“What about the others?”

“What others?” Gabriel asked, feigning confusion.

“Got a couple other groups about the same size as yours coming in on the other side of the stadium.”

Gabriel made a big show of sighing in relief. “I’m so glad to hear that. I thought we’d lost them.”

“They’re with you?”

“Yes. We got separated once we reached the city. I’m glad to hear they’re okay.” Gabriel stuck his hand out and stepped forward. “I’m Gabriel.”

The move took the man off guard. He hesitated, then removed his hand from the stock of his rifle and shook Gabriel’s.

Gabriel had the man’s rifle before the guy had a chance to react. The main guard grabbed for his radio, but Gabriel smashed the butt of the gun into his hand, batting it away and breaking bones in the process. He looked over and saw the rest of his team, led by Resistance security members, had disarmed the other guards.

“Ramon,” he said. “Please take possession of this man’s radio.”

As Ramon removed the device, the guard said, “What the fuck? This is not the way to get our help.”

“That’s funny,” Gabriel told him. “I hadn’t realized Project Eden was in the business of helping.”

The guard stiffened. “Who are you?”

As tempted as Gabriel was to answer with another thrust of the rifle butt, he motioned to the others that it was time to move. Keeping the guards between them, they hurried the rest of the way to the stadium.

Gabriel took a quick look around, and then pointed at a metal pipe railing meant to protect the public from a sunken drainage intake. “That should do nicely,” he said.

They secured the guards to the railing with zip ties.

“Whatever you’re planning,” the main guard said, “do you really think you’re going to get away with it?”

Gabriel plucked his own radio off his belt and clicked the SEND button. “Team B?”

The delay was barely a second. “Team B secure.”

“Team C?”

Again, a brief pause. “Team C secure.”

“Anyone have any problems?”

“Negative.”

“None here.”

“Stand by,” Gabriel said. He looked at the guard. “Actually, I think we’ve already gotten away with it.”

Hypodermics were produced, and before the guards realized what was going on, they were each injected with enough sedative to knock them out for at least twelve hours.

Gabriel raised the radio again. “Phase two.”

33

The reassignment room was back in order — the chairs in straight rows, the body fluids cleaned up, and the smell of sweat and fear filtered from the air.

Terrell had felt like a robot as he helped Diaz and the others get things ready for the next group. When he and Diaz had hauled the bodies out of town, Terrell had considered slipping away and disappearing forever. But that would have been the cowardly choice, a selfish act no better than if he were pushing the button to activate the gas.

So he had returned and done what he had done so many times before.

“Better be the last group today,” Diaz whispered to him as they waited outside the room for the guard detail to return with the next batch of survivors. “By the time we get back from the dump, it’ll be almost three a.m., and if I don’t get some sleep I might start bashing in heads myself.”

Terrell knew he should respond with some witty comeback — that kind of banter made up most of their communication — but all he could manage was a small nod and barely audible “yeah.”

Diaz frowned. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been acting weird all day.”

“Sorry. Just…tired,” Terrell said, seizing on to Diaz’s own admission.

“Lightweight,” Diaz said.

Terrell forced a smile. “Better a lightweight than a dumb shit like you.”

If Diaz noticed Terrell’s less than smooth delivery, he made no mention of it. Instead, he seemed to take Terrell’s jab as a sign that everything was okay. He grunted a laugh and said nothing more.

Terrell heard the footsteps long before the procession came into view. As usual, Drs. Harvell, Wilhelm, and Yang were in front, followed by the survivors — twenty-one this go-around — and then the guards.

The first few groups that had been escorted in had been full of hope and excitement, while those that followed were progressively less so. The new group looked as if nearly everyone’s hope was gone.

Terrell tried not to glance at any of their faces for more than a second, but then a girl near the middle of the pack locked eyes with him and he could not look away. She was maybe twenty, with an intelligence in her gaze that reminded him of a girl back in high school. Lindsey, two years ahead of him. She had always been kind, even helped him study on occasion.

The girl being led to her death continued to stare at him all the way into the room, and for a moment he thought, She knows. She knows what we’re about to do to them. But that was impossible. She was just tired like the others, he told himself, done in by the ordeal of survival and the wait for the promised vaccine.

“Please, everyone, move all the way to the end of the rows and take a seat,” Dr. Wilhelm said as the survivors entered.

Terrell and Diaz followed the last of the guards in, stopping next to the door as they’d done at the start of each previous session.

After everyone was seated, Wilhelm said, “Let me be the first to say congratulations. You have all cleared the quarantine period, and in a few minutes you will be administered the Sage Flu vaccine.”

There were murmurs of relief and even a few smiles, the dark mood lifting a little.

“First, though, we will be showing you a video that explains the safe zone you’ll be taken to after you get inoculated. So please relax and we’ll get it started.”

Several hands shot up.

Dr. Harvell took a step forward. “We understand that you have a lot of questions. Some of those will be answered by the video. If you still have questions after, we’ll be happy to answer them then.”

Though Terrell had heard the words before, their true wickedness hit him hard this time. They were for the doctors’ benefit only, so that they wouldn’t have to face any longer than necessary those who were about to die.

The survivors lowered their hands. As Terrell was about to look away, he saw the girl again. Unlike the others who were watching the doctors, she was looking at him. It was almost as if she were trying to see into him to find the truth.

He blinked and tore his gaze away as the lights began to dim.

The doctors and guards made their way out of the room, then Terrell and Diaz grabbed the double doors and began to close them. As he swung his half around, Terrell tried to resist the urge to look back at the girl but failed. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes were on the screen, and he could see the faintest bit of hope on her face. His breath caught in his throat.

Click. The doors sealed shut.

Click. A switch flicked on inside him.

Per routine, the doctors headed back to their offices. They would stay there until twenty minutes later, when they would be needed to verify everyone was dead. All but two of the guards also left. The two who remained took up positions in front of the airtight doors while Terrell and Diaz made their way to the control room.

“Evening, guys,” Harris said as they entered. He was the board operator and had been the one who’d dimmed the lights.

A wide-screen monitor on the front wall displayed a feed from inside the room. A few of the survivors were fidgeting in their chairs.

“Showtime,” Harris said as he hit a button that dimmed the lights the rest of the way.

A second button started the video projector, and on the screen in front of the survivors, the image of Gustavo Di Sarsina appeared. As the man started speaking, Diaz stepped over to the controls that operated the gas. A turn of the key and a tap of the switch would set things in motion.

Terrell watched as his partner removed the safety guard and reached for the key.

“Wait,” Terrell said. “Can I?”

Diaz raised an eyebrow. He’d always been the one who had to perform this task.

“About fucking time,” Diaz said.

He stepped away and made a grand motion of ceding control.

As Terrell stepped into place, Diaz said, “You know what to do?”

“I know what to do.”

Terrell placed his hand on the key, feeling the curved top and the hole where a ring would go through. Just turn and push the button and they would all die.

“Anytime now,” Diaz said, a laugh in his voice.

Enough.

The key slipped out of the slot surprisingly easily.

Diaz was still grinning as Terrell whirled around and jabbed the jagged piece of metal into his neck. Though unintentional, the aim had been perfect. Blood pumped from Diaz’s carotid artery, gushing down on the counter and covering the touch screen.

“What the fuck?” Harris said, turning at Diaz’s gargling sound.

Terrell launched himself forward and slammed into Harris, ramming him back against the other counter. There was a loud smack as Harris’s torso connected with the sharp edge. He screamed as his face twisted in pain. Terrell jammed the bloody key into the man’s neck. Unfortunately, he was a little off this time, and had to dig around for a second before ripping open the artery with the uneven edge of the key.

Harris dropped to his knees, clutching at his wound.

Terrell leaned against the wall, hyperventilating as the reality of what he’d done hit him. Both men were on the floor, unmoving. Unconscious or dead, he didn’t bother to check.

Keep moving! he told himself. He was all in now.

He ran over to the control room door and inched it open. He could see the two guards down the hall in front of the sealed doorway.

He opened the door a bit more and said, “Excuse me.” The guards looked over. “Could one of you come down here? We’ve got a piece of equipment malfunctioning and need to move it. Could use some help.”

As soon as the nearest guard was headed his way, Terrell pulled back.

This was going to be trickier, he knew. A guard wasn’t a defenseless tech, and wasn’t likely to allow a key to be shoved into his neck. Terrell grabbed an unused laptop off the table near the door. It was the only thing near him with any heft to it. He then moved to the other side of the door.

As soon as the guard entered, Terrell pushed the door closed and brought the edge of the laptop down onto the back of the man’s head.

The guard buckled but didn’t fall. As the man put a hand over where he’d been hit, Terrell brought the computer down again, and again, and again. Finally, the guard joined the others on the ground.

Working quickly, Terrell retrieved the guard’s rifle and returned to the entrance. He cracked the door open and peeked outside, expecting the other guard to still be back at his station, but the man was heading toward the control room.

“Everything all right?” the guard asked.

Terrell widened the opening. “A bit more trouble than we thought. Sorry.”

The guard was about a dozen feet away now, his eyes narrowing. “What’s that on your face.”

Terrell lifted a finger to his cheek and felt a drop of something sticky and wet. Blood, he realized.

The approaching guard seemed to sense something was up a half second after Terrell realized his ruse had run its course, but he had enough time to raise his rifle and pull the trigger before the other man could do the same.

As the guard dropped to the ground, the echo of the shot reverberated down the hall. Knowing it wouldn’t be long before someone came to investigate, Terrell raced out of the room, snatched up the other man’s rifle, and ran to the Reassignment Room door.

The rubber seals sucked loudly as he pulled the doors open.

When he rushed into the room, several of the survivors screamed, and all jerked back as if he were about to attack them. Which, he quickly realized, was what barreling in there with two rifles probably looked like.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to get you out. We need to go now!”

No one moved.

He searched out the girl and spoke directly to her. “Please. If you stay here, they will kill you.”

“Who will?” the girl asked.

He gestured with the rifle back toward the rest of the warehouse. “Everyone!”

She stared at him, confused.

“Don’t you understand?” he said. “We didn’t bring you in here to vaccinate you. We were supposed to gas you.”

Shock and terror rippled through the room.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s no time!”

He turned for the door, hoping they would follow.

The girl was the first to get up. “He’s right. We all knew something was wrong. We need to leave.”

“What if it’s a trick?” someone argued. “What if he kills us out there?”

“Here. There. What does it matter?”

The girl ran toward the door. Before she reached it, the others were up and following.

Terrell moved into the corridor and checked both ways. No one was there yet. Perhaps the others hadn’t heard it, or maybe had been behind closed doors and hadn’t registered what the noise meant. If so, it was a blessing, but one that would last only until someone noticed the guards weren’t where they were supposed to be.

He held the extra rifle out to the girl.

“I don’t know how to shoot.”

“Point and pull the trigger. Anyone you see who is not in this group will want to kill you.”

As soon as she took it, he led the group down the hallway toward the loading docks. It wasn’t the closest exit, but he thought it would give them their best chance to get away.

The girl stayed with him step for step. After a few moments, she said, “You’re not the UN, are you?”

“No. No one here is.”

“The others who were locked up with us and taken out earlier?”

“Don’t ask me that.”

She was silent for several seconds. “Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t ask me that, either.”

Five yards ahead, another hallway branched off to the right. Terrell held up his hand, telling everyone to stop, then proceeded to the intersection alone and took a look around the corner.

Shit.

A couple of techs were standing outside a door maybe twenty feet down, drinking coffee and talking. Worse, a dozen feet farther down the hall, a guard was heading toward them on rounds. If it had been only the techs, Terrell and the survivors could have waited a few minutes and hoped the two men went inside the room. The guard, though, would come all the way to the end of his hall, turn the corner, and see them standing there.

Terrell leaned against the wall, unsure what to do.

Who’s more important? a voice in his head said. The three people in the hall who work for the organization responsible for more human deaths than ever in the history of the world? Or the innocents behind you?

He cursed to himself and then took a deep breath. Gripping the rifle in his hands, he pushed himself from the wall into the middle of the intersection.

The only one to notice him was the guard, but the man only had time for a puzzled look before Terrell squeezed the trigger.

The burst of bullets filled the hallway, cutting down all three men. Off to Terrell’s side, several of the survivors screamed.

“That way!” he yelled, waving down the hallway past him. “Go! Go!”

“What the hell was that?” Evie Ruiz asked.

The unmistakable sound of gunfire had come from the warehouse.

Alonzo Knox moved his binoculars back and forth as he examined the building. “Don’t see anything.”

“That wasn’t one of ours, was it?” She brought up her radio. “Blue One to all. Who fired that?”

Her three satellite teams all reported back that it wasn’t them.

“And none of you are receiving fire?”

None.

Had someone been doing target shooting inside the building? Seemed a little late at night for that.

As Evie started to bring up her own binoculars, more shots rang out, at least two different guns, maybe three.

“Sounds like a firefight,” Alonzo said. “Should we do something?”

Evie grimaced. They were supposed to do nothing until told otherwise.

She grabbed her pack and pulled the sat phone out of the main compartment. She hesitated a moment before punching in the quick-dial number.

“Ward Mountain.”

“Ruiz. Chicago.”

“This is Leon. Go ahead, Evie.”

“Think we might have a situation here,” she said.

“Explain.”

She told him what she’d heard.

“No visual sign of activity?” he asked.

“None yet. But I’m wondering if this is something that we should take advantage of.”

“Hang on for a sec.”

While she waited, she looked back at the building. She and her team had been given the task of creating a disruption at the survival station once they were given the go signal. It would be part of a coordinated effort with teams all over the world, so she was pretty sure what the decision was going to be.

When Leon came back on, he said, “We’d like you to hold for now. But keep monitoring the situation. If things change and you have enough time to report back, do so. Otherwise you are free to make the call. Just be sure to let us know as soon as you can after.”

The hold was what she’d expected, but the flexibility was not. “Got it,” she said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

After she hung up, Alonzo said, “So?”

“For the moment, we wait.”

Terrell stayed at the back end of the group, constantly looking over his shoulder for the counterattack he knew would be coming.

“Where are we supposed to be going?” the girl shouted from up front.

“Loading dock. Straight ahead,” he said just loudly enough for those around him to hear.

They passed the message forward.

He was starting to think they might make it to the dock unmolested when a burst of bullets raked the wall only ten feet behind him. The shots came from a hallway they’d passed seconds before. He couldn’t see the shooters but returned fire anyway, hoping to keep them tucked back around the corner.

He chanced a look ahead, and saw that the girl was nearing the warehouse door. There shouldn’t be anyone on the other side but that wasn’t a guarantee.

“To the side,” he said as he ran through the group, arriving at the door a moment after the girl did. “I’ll check.”

He eased the door open and let his gun lead him through. The truck they used to transport the dead was backed up to the dock where they’d left it, waiting for its next trip. Otherwise, the area was empty.

“All right,” he said. “Quick. Into the truck.”

He held the door open as wide as it would go so they could pile past him.

“Get in the cab,” he told the girl. “The keys are in the ignition. Start it up. I’ll be right there.”

She nodded and took off around the side of the truck while the others climbed into the back. He couldn’t help but think about the fact the truck had been waiting for those people, only they weren’t supposed to be still breathing when they boarded it again.

After the last person raced by, he slammed the door closed and jammed a shipping dolly under the handle to slow down their pursuers.

As he was turning to run for the truck, bullets punched through the metal door. At first he thought a piece of the door had torn free and hit him in the back. He stumbled a few steps but righted himself. That’s when he realized he was bleeding, not only in back but in front, too. A bullet had passed through his right shoulder just below his clavicle.

He gritted his teeth against the pain as he hopped off the dock and moved quickly to the cab of the truck. He jumped on the running board outside the driver’s door and saw the girl in the passenger seat.

“You’re going to have to drive,” he said through the open window.

“What? Why?” Then she saw his shirt. “You’ve been hit.”

“You can do it. It’s an automatic. Pretty much like any car.” He motioned at the other end of the loading area, where the overhead cover ended. “Hang a left and that’ll get you to the main road. From there go south as fast as you can. There are several car dealers that way. You can’t miss them. There are trackers in this truck so you need to switch vehicles.”

“You’re not coming with us?”

“Don’t worry about me! You need to get out of here! Whatever you do, avoid big cities and any survival stations. Hurry!”

As she crawled into the driver’s seat, another salvo of bullets ripped into the metal door and flew through the dock, barely missing the truck.

“Go!” he said, stepping to the ground.

More gunfire poured out of the building. The girl stepped on the accelerator and the truck jerked away from the dock.

Terrell glanced back at the now perforated door, knowing members of the security team would come charging through it at any moment. He aimed his rifle at it and let off several warning shots, in hopes of delaying them for a few more seconds, and then took off running after the truck.

He reached the vehicle right before it cleared the covered area. He jumped onto the rear bumper, and could see those he’d rescued huddled together in the back, their eyes wide with fear. He wanted to say something to comfort them, but no words came.

As the truck turned for the main road, he saw the shipping dolly give way and the door fly open. He didn’t bother aiming when he fired off three more shots as the dock disappeared from view.

Turning onto the main road, the truck started to pick up speed, so Terrell hopped off while he still could and ducked behind an abandoned VW van at the side of the road. He watched the truck race away, and then turned his attention back to the warehouse, hardly believing what he had done.

The gunfire was now coming from the loading dock area. Evie had her binoculars trained on the entrance, but so far had seen nothing.

She snapped up her radio. “Everyone stand by.”

A truck rumbled out of the dock area, the same one they’d seen go in and out several times, always with a male driver. This time, the driver was a young woman, her face tense and scared.

As the truck took a right turn onto the main road, an armed man hopped off the back and ran behind a van like he was trying to hide from anyone still at the survival station.

She couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

“Evie,” Alonzo said, slapping her arm. “In the back of the truck.”

She swung her binoculars around and looked inside the vehicle’s cargo area. There were people there, fifteen or more. Old and young, men and women, and none dressed in Project Eden uniforms.

For a second, she simply stared, unable to move as she realized what was going on.

“Go,” she said to Alonzo. “Follow them. Take Gage with you. Those are survivors. They’re escaping!”

Terrell knew the Project would never let the detainees escape unchallenged, so he would have to try to stop them.

He had no idea how many shots he had left. He would have to make the remaining bullets count.

Yeah, and then what?

And then…well, he would deal with then when it came.

He had expected to see security rush out of the loading dock, but instead a Jeep came racing along the back of the warehouse.

As it turned onto the main road, Terrell took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. His bullet pierced the windshield and entered the driver’s head. With a sudden swerve to the right, the Jeep jumped the curb and plowed head on into the side of a plumbing supply building.

While the men in front were clearly dead, the two in back pulled themselves from the wreckage and staggered to the sidewalk. Terrell recognized them as two of the men usually tasked with watching the holding areas, but he didn’t know their names.

The one in the lead raised his rifle and scanned the street.

It would have been an easy shot for Terrell, but he hesitated. Taking out the Jeep that could have easily caught up to the truck was one thing. Shooting an injured man standing still was something else altogether.

Terrell crept back behind the van so that he wouldn’t be seen, but as he stepped over the curb, his foot slipped on a patch of ice and he instinctively slapped his hand against the vehicle to steady himself. The man in the street whirled around at the whap of metal. He pulled his trigger and held it down, burning through the whole magazine.

The vehicle shuddered under the barrage. Terrell wasn’t sure at what point the bullets struck him, but it didn’t matter. He deserved it.

With what strength he had left, he pulled himself out from behind the van.

“You?” the security guard said, surprised.

The man’s expression transitioned into one of pure fury. He clicked a new magazine into place, raised his rifle, and aimed it at Terrell’s head.

Go ahead, Terrell thought.

The blast from two shots filled the street. But neither hit Terrell. Instead, the guards dropped to the ground.

Evie watched in near disbelief as the guy who’d hopped off the back of the truck took out a Jeep full of soldiers with a single shot.

When the two guards who’d survived climbed out, she expected the man behind the van to shoot them, too. Instead, one of the soldiers shot first, strafing the van until his rifle clicked empty.

Evie missed the next few seconds as she reached back for her rifle. When she looked at the road again, the man had crawled out from the van’s protection, his clothes covered with blood. The soldier in the street had just finished reloading his rifle and was bringing it up to shoot again.

Evie aimed her weapon and squeezed the trigger, taking out the soldier, then quickly moved the barrel and eliminated his partner.

She picked up her radio. “Everyone, now!”

Before she could even get to her feet, explosions started going off all around the perimeter of the survival station. She pulled out her own remote and set off her charges. The first was a hundred yards down the street, in a car parked next to the warehouse. The concussion ripped a whole in the side of the building.

Her second bomb was the one she was most proud of. She had been able to place it outside the loading dock area. When it went off, the entire covering collapsed, rendering the dock inaccessible and blocking the access road that the Jeep had used along the back of the building.

As she made her way off the roof and down to the street, more bombs went off, some merely adding to the chaos, some doing actual damage to the building. Explosions were timed to continue for the next hour, with the occasional lull built in to achieve the maximum amount of terror.

She stopped when she reached the sidewalk and checked to make sure the street was clear. Then, keeping low, she headed down the block. In the gutter, she found the man who’d been hiding behind the van, lying on his back and blinking at the sky.

She knelt beside him and said softly, “Hi.”

With much effort, he turned his head enough to see her. “Who…who are…you?”

“A friend.”

“I don’t…remember you.”

One look at his wounds told her all she needed to know. “What happened in there?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I…couldn’t do it…any…more. I know I broke…the promise…but we…we were…”

“Don’t worry about the promise. I don’t care about that. Who were those people in the truck?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “I couldn’t kill anyone else…I just couldn’t. I’m sorry. But can’t you…let this group go?”

She smiled. “You have my word. No one will harm them.”

He looked at her as if unsure he could believe her. “You’re just saying…that.”

“I’m not.”

Whether she convinced him or not, she would never know. He exhaled a breath and never drew in another.

She stayed with him for another few seconds out of respect for what he’d done, and then hurried back to grab her things and get out of there.

34

Ben leapt as he neared the fence, grabbed the top, and pulled himself up and over.

No yells for him to stop. No bullets hitting the ground around him.

He’d been right. For the moment, no one was watching.

He examined the back of the fence, found the latches holding the two sections together, and unhooked them.

As soon as the wall parted, he said, “Jilly, now!”

She climbed out of the hole and sprinted over to him.

“Stay here until everyone is through,” he said. “The instant the last person comes out, close the gate.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Figure out where we go from here.”

When Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Rivera entered the room used for large group intakes, they expected all the other administration personnel who usually helped out to be there. Surprisingly, only two others were present.

“Are we in the wrong place?” Lawrence asked.

Dieter Schneider, the man in charge of survivor viability assessment, shrugged. “I just got here myself, but I do not think so.”

“Then where is everyone?” Rivera asked.

The girl sitting in one of the chairs said, “There were more people here, but the director got a call and she took them with her.”

“When was this?” Lawrence asked.

“About two minutes ago.”

“Did she say what we were supposed to do?” Schneider asked.

“The only thing anyone told me was to say here.”

They were probably up in the director’s office, Lawrence thought. She turned for the door.

“Where are you going?” Rivera asked.

“Well, I’m not staying here. If something’s going on, I want to know what it is.”

Apparently so did Rivera and Schneider. They followed her upstairs and found the others not in the director’s office, but in the security monitoring center down the hall. Formerly a conference room, it was now equipped with dozens of monitors, each showing feeds from different cameras around the stadium. The director and the rest of the management team were gathered in front of two of the biggest monitors.

Lawrence walked up to the group. “What’s going on?”

“Problems,” Hughes, head of supply, whispered.

“What problems?” Lawrence asked, looking at the monitors.

Each displayed a lit-up slice of the parking area surrounding the stadium. One was completely empty, while in the other was a large group of people talking to seven members of Project security.

“Just watch,” he said.

“Is this live?”

He shook his head. “Happened a few minutes ago.”

Except for the size of the survivor group, it seemed no different than other encounters Lawrence had witnessed. If all stayed to form, within a few minutes the guards would be escorting the survivors to the stadium for processing. But things did not stay to form.

Before she realized what was happening, several of the survivors had weapons in their hands. Others grabbed the guards, stripping them of their rifles. One of the guards struggled free and tried to make a run for it, but the man who’d taken his rifle smashed it into the guard’s back, knocking him to the ground. The guard tried to rise but the man hit him again, this time in the head. The guard collapsed and stopped moving.

“Oh, my God,” Lawrence said. “Who are these people?”

“We don’t know,” the director said. “Three large groups arrived at once. We sent teams to intercept each, but we’ve lost contact with all of them. This is the only one we have on camera, but I assume the others have met with the same fate.”

“A coordinated attack?” Schneider said. “Why?”

The director turned and looked at him. “Let me take a stab in the dark. Perhaps they’ve discovered the true nature of our business here?”

“How…how could they possibly know that?” he stammered.

“At the moment, I don’t care. I’m more concerned about the safety of this facility.”

“How many guards are missing?” Lawrence asked.

“Nineteen.”

The facility had a twenty-five member security force. Six was not nearly enough to guard the stadium.

The director was clearly on the same wavelength. “Have everyone in your departments report to the armory immediately,” she said, scanning the managers assembled behind her.

Hughes grimaced and said, “But they don’t all have training for—”

“I don’t care what they’ve been trained for,” she said. “Go! Get them—”

“Director!” Rivera shouted from the back of the pack. “The detainees!”

They all turned toward him. He was pointing at a small monitor that showed a wide shot of the stadium’s interior from the press boxes above home plate. All three holding areas could be seen in the image, but everyone was looking at the gap in the center-field fence. They watched as two people ran out from somewhere behind the immune compound and through the opening.

“Goddammit!” the director yelled. “How many?”

“At least three,” Rivera said. “Shouldn’t the guards have…” He stopped, obviously realizing no guards were currently inside the stadium.”

“What are you all standing here for?” the director asked. “Go!”

Martina raced toward the back of the stadium, her legs aching from her days of walking. But it was easy to ignore the pain.

Ben was here.

She was so focused on her destination that she didn’t see the two soldiers running toward her until they shouted at her to stop.

She nearly tripped over her own feet, and had barely stopped when two gunshots rocketed across the parking lot. The uniformed men dropped to the ground.

Seconds later, Pax and Nyla ran up, rifles in their hands.

“What are you doing?” Nyla shouted.

“I…I…”

“You need to get back to your post,” Pax said.

“No! I can’t. Ben. He’s there. I saw them.”

“Your boyfriend?” Nyla said. “I thought you told me he was dead.”

“I was wrong. He’s alive. He’s inside!”

She stepped to the side to get past them and head for the stadium, but Pax snagged her around the waist.

“Let me go!” she yelled. “Let me go! It’s Ben!”

“It’s too dangerous,” he told her.

She twisted and turned but couldn’t break his grip. “Let me go. Please! He’s there. He’s trying to get out! I need to help him.”

“What do you mean, trying to get out?” Nyla asked.

“I was watching the stadium and saw that they’ve dug a hole under the gate of the tarped area. Someone was standing outside. When he turned, I saw it was Ben.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“And you think he was trying to get out?”

“Yes! Yes! Now please let me go.”

Nyla and Pax shared a look.

“All right,” Pax said. “We’ll go together. But you need to stick with us.”

“Sure, sure. Whatever. Come on!”

With no staff assigned to the medical assessment department other than the two of them, Lawrence and Rivera were the first to reach the armory. Rivera used his code to get inside, and they each selected a pistol because, like most non-security Project personnel, it was the only type of weapon they’d been trained on.

As they exited, Rivera turned in the direction of the lab.

“No. Follow me,” Lawrence said as she started jogging the other way.

“Where are you going?”

Without stopping, she said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to lose a whole group of potential test subjects!”

Keeping as close to the stadium as possible, Gabriel led his team to a ticket-holder entrance along the third-base side. The gates were solid on the bottom, but the tops were covered with heavy wire mesh. As expected, all gates were locked, but Gabriel’s team had come prepared for that.

He nodded at Cahill and Walker. They ran up to the nearest gate and pulled out the reciprocating saws they’d been carrying on ropes under their jackets. Each was equipped with a blade intended for metal use. While the two men went to work cutting through the mesh, the others split their attention between watching the parking lot and keeping an eye on the inside area beyond the gate.

“We’re at our entrance now,” Gabriel said into his mic. “Team B and C, status?”

“Team B, at our gate, almost through.”

Gabriel waited. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Team C?”

“Sorry,” the leader of Team C said. “Had a little problem with one of the guards. Taken care of now. We’re still on the way to ours, but should be there in the next two minutes.”

The basic goal of the mission was to free the prisoners and cause Project Eden as much trouble as possible. The wish-list goal was a complete takeover of the facility. The next several minutes would decide which one they’d accomplish.

“Done,” Cahill said.

He and Walker pulled out the freed section of mesh and dropped it on the ground. Two volunteers from Isabella Island hoisted another former island resident — a short and sinewy woman — through the hole to the other side. Once she was clear, one of the saws was passed through, and she made quick work of the chain holding the gate closed.

As Team A hurried into the stadium, Gabriel tapped his mic again. “We’re in.”

Between the two sets of outfield bleachers was a wide concrete wedge running from the center-field wall to the outer wall of the stadium. Ben crossed it in no time and moved along the perimeter fence, looking for a way out.

The only gates he found were locked solid. He spent a few precious moments searching for something to pry one open, but there was nothing in his immediate vicinity.

They would have to go over the top. Not the ideal situation, but better than staying here.

As he turned to head back to the others, a gunshot boomed across the playing field.

Dr. Lawrence was the first out of the dugout and onto the field. Not waiting for Rivera to catch up, she raced past the non-sick holding area and into the outfield. As soon as she hit the end of the fence, she angled her path toward the back of the immune pen.

When she spotted the ditch dug under the gate, she muttered, “Unbelievable.” She turned toward the outfield wall just in time to see the two sections of walls pushed shut. She raised her 9mm pistol and pulled the trigger twice. Thankfully, no screams came from the other side. She needed the prisoners alive.

She ran to the wall and shoved the left half open. In the lit up area beyond the gate, she could see the immune survivors running toward the back fence. If they made it over, her chances of getting them all back would be slim.

She sprinted through the opening, halted ten feet in, and pointed her gun at the escapees. “Stop where you are or I will shoot!” she yelled.

Only those in the back heeded her order.

She moved her barrel just left of the runners and fired off a shot, then quickly did the same on the right.

That stopped them. Even the guy straddling the top of the fence froze, looking at her.

Ben Bowerman, she realized. Their newest inductee.

“Mr. Bowerman, I advise you to climb back down. On this side of the fence, please. If not, one of your friends here will pay the price.”

The kid hesitated for a moment before pulling his leg back over and dropping to the ground.

“Thank you,” she said.

Behind her, she heard Rivera arrive, breathing heavily. “You got them,” he said, sounding both surprised and pleased.

“Why are you doing this?” one of the girls asked. “You’re supposed to be helping us.”

Lawrence smirked. “If you’re running then you already know that’s not true. So let’s not pretend anymore.” She raised her voice. “Everyone line up! Now!”

“What are you going to do with us?” another girl asked.

“You’re lucky we haven’t killed you on the spot,” Rivera said. “Now do as Dr. Lawrence said. Line up!”

“You see this?” Cahill asked.

“Yeah. I see it,” Gabriel said.

The failed escapees began forming a single line. All except for Bowerman. He walked toward the two doctors and didn’t stop until he was only ten feet away.

“Please, let us go,” he said. “We’re a small group. We promise we’ll disappear and never cause you any problems.”

“Really?” Lawrence said. She nodded past him at the fence. “I believe you and your friends out there already have.”

He looked confused. “What friends?”

“That’s enough. Get in line.”

“No, wait. At least let them go. I’ll stay. It was my idea to try to escape.”

“Is that so?” she said. “Under normal circumstances, that might have changed things, but unfortunately we need more than one test subject.”

“Test subject?”

She smiled and raised her pistol, pointing it at Ben’s head. “But I guess I don’t need all of you.”

She was going to pull the trigger, knew that beyond a doubt, had even started to apply the pressure. But the next thing she knew she was on the ground, trying to fill her lungs with air, but unable to do so. The pain came next, a visceral, scorching pain.

Her hand found the wound on her chest and came away covered with blood.

How…? What…? Tired. So damn tired.

She remembered the prisoners and tried to grab for the gun that seemed to have fallen from her hands. All she could manage, though, was to twist enough so she could see Rivera. He, too, was on the ground, but the top of his head seemed to be missing.

So tired.

She closed her eyes, thinking she’d rest for a second, regain her strength so she could…figure out…what…had…hap—

Gabriel moved his eye from his rifle’s scope and patted Cahill on the back. “Nice shot.”

“Thanks,” Cahill said. “You, too.”

Gabriel frowned. “I was trying for her head.”

“Close enough.”

As they rose to their feet, Walker asked, “We go after them?”

Gabriel scanned the back of the stadium, and saw that the group that had been fleeing was heading once more for the fence.

“They’ll be fine. We go inside.”

At the sound of the first two shots at the back of the stadium, Martina increased her speed, getting almost all the way to the wall by the time the second pair of shots went off.

She raced along the wall, looking for a way in as she tried not to think about the possibility that one of the bullets had hit Ben, but all the gates were locked.

She screamed in frustration.

“Over here!” Nyla yelled from along the fence behind her. “Boost me up.”

Martina raced back. “I’ll go.”

“No. I will.”

“No way!”

“Martina, which one of us is armed?”

Martina almost said to give her the rifle, but she knew Nyla was right. Martina had no firearms experience.

She laced her fingers together. As soon as Nyla stepped into the cradle, Martina thrust up her hands.

“Hurry,” she said as Nyla dropped out of sight. “Please hurry.”

Ben had been sure his life was over. But then the doctor had collapsed. Before her colleague could react, he was down, too.

There were shouts of surprise. Ben thought one of them had been his, but he quickly pulled himself together and said, “Come on!”

He raced back to the outside fence and was about to start climbing when he noticed movement to the left.

A woman with dark brown skin stepped from the shadows, a rifle in her hands.

As soon as the others saw her, they stopped in their tracks, a few raising their hands in surrender.

“Drop your weapons!” the woman said.

“We’re not armed,” Ben told her.

“We heard gunshots,” she said.

He couldn’t help but flick a gaze at the two dead doctors. When the woman looked, too, he said, “We didn’t do it. Someone else shot them. I don’t know who.”

The woman sidestepped over to the bodies. She poked a foot against Dr. Lawrence but didn’t bother with Dr. Rivera. When she seemed satisfied, she lowered her weapon.

“You’re the prisoners?” she asked.

“Um, yeah, I guess we are,” Ben said. “Who are you?”

“Let’s just say I’m not with them,” she said, nodding toward the bodies. “Any of you know how to shoot?”

No one moved.

She picked up the pistols the doctors had been using. “Anyone?”

Still no response.

She tossed one pistol to Ben, and the other to Jilly. “You’ll figure it out. Now come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

She led them behind the left-field bleachers and showed them how to help each other over the fence.

“There are more people still in the detention area,” Ben said. “And another inside somewhere. We can’t leave them here.”

The woman thought for a moment. “It’s Ben, isn’t it?”

He was surprised, but didn’t think he had time to ask how she knew. “Yeah.”

“Good to meet you, Ben. I’m Nyla. Show me where these others are.”

Teams B and C each reported successful entry into the stadium. All three teams made their way into the interior and headed toward the home-plate end of the structure.

Here and there they encountered sporadic gunfire, but most of the shooters appeared to have very little idea about what they were doing and were subdued with little effort.

“Gabriel?” Anton Helms’s voice said over the radio as the teams did a final sweep.

“Go for Gabriel.”

“Something here you need to see.”

“Where are you?”

Following Helms’s directions, Gabriel made his way to a set of rooms that appeared to have been converted into a medical facility. Helms and two others were standing by a windowed door.

“So?” Gabriel said.

“Over here.”

Gabriel walked over and looked through the window. A girl who couldn’t have been much more than eighteen was standing a few feet inside, staring back with fear in her eyes.

“Please, let me out,” she said, her voice coming out of an intercom on the wall. “Please.”

Gabriel glanced at Helms. “What’s going on?”

Helms shrugged. “We just found her like this. Said they stuck her in here earlier today after giving her an inoculation.”

“Double inoculation,” the girl corrected.

“Right, double. Apparently they told her she had to wait twenty-four hours to make sure it took.”

“Uh, and why would that be?” Gabriel asked.

Helms turned off the intercom and motioned for Gabriel to follow him. About ten feet over was a set of valves mounted on the wall, with one set of hoses leading to the door of the room the man was in, and another set leading to several metal tanks.

He touched the first. “This one’s on and hooked up to a couple of tanks marked O2.” He skipped the two middle ones and pointed at the fourth. “This one? Well, come here.”

He traced the hose back to a single tank. On the outside was stenciled KV-27a.

Gabriel gaped. They’d all heard the code before. It was Project Eden’s designation for the Sage Flu virus.

“They’re pumping virus into her room?” he asked.

“Pumped,” Helms corrected him. He easily picked up the tank with two fingers under the valve. “It’s empty.”

Gabriel shot a look back at the room. “Why?”

“You got me.”

They walked back over.

“Can you at least tell me what’s going on?” the girl pleaded.

“You’re going to be okay,” Gabriel said, hoping that was true. “The people who were running this place are no longer in charge.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, God. We were right, weren’t we?”

“Right about what?”

“Some of the others and I were starting to think the doctors and guards weren’t who they claimed to be. And that they didn’t really plan on helping us.”

“No, ma’am, they didn’t.”

“Are you the UN?”

“The UN died with everyone else.”

“Then who are you?”

“We’re the ones who are going to figure out how to keep you alive.”

Pax and Martina heard the sound of running steps just inside the stadium, and then voices. A few seconds later something pounded against the fence and a head poked over the top.

“Jilly?” Martina said.

The girl looked down. “Martina?” She turned so she could glance back on the other side. “Martina’s here!”

Jilly swung over the top and dropped down. She hugged Martina so tight it hurt, but neither seemed to care.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Jilly said. “You came for us!”

Four more came over, including a man Martina didn’t know, but the others were from her old softball team. She and Valerie even hugged, whatever problems between them forgotten for now or maybe forever.

When the last person dropped down, Martina stared expectantly at the top of the wall. “Where’s Ben? I saw him. He’s with you, isn’t he?” She moved up to the fence and yelled, “Ben!”

“He went back to the enclosure with that woman,” Jilly said.

“What woman?”

“The one with the gun. I thought she was with you.”

“Nyla?”

Jilly shrugged. “I guess.”

“Why would he go back?”

“There were others locked up with us,” Jilly said. “And Ruby…they took her somewhere early today.”

“All right,” Pax said. “We’re not safe here. I want you all to head across the parking lot to those trees over there and wait. Martina can show you where.”

“I am not going anywhere,” Martina told him.

He frowned but said, “Okay. The rest of you go. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“If Martina’s staying, we’re staying,” Jilly said.

“Definitely,” Valerie agreed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Pax said. “Did you hear those gunshots?”

“We saw two people killed in front of us,” Jilly said. “So, yeah, we heard them. And we’re staying.”

It was another four minutes before they heard people arriving on the other side again.

“Stand back!” Nyla yelled.

Everyone moved away from the fence.

A rifle blasted and the fence shuddered. There was the rattle of a chain, and then a gate a few feet away swung open.

The rest of the survivors swarmed out.

And at the very end came Nyla and Ben.

Martina rushed forward and threw her arms around him. At first he didn’t seem to realize who she was. He pushed her back enough so he could take a look, and then his breath caught in his throat.

Their kiss was infused with relief and joy and longing.

It didn’t matter what happened now.

She had found him.