Eden Rising

22

For the first time since 1804, Earth’s human population dipped below one billion.

23

Sanjay knew his best chance of getting back inside the Pishon Chem compound unseen was to go while most of the troops stationed at the survival station were spread throughout the city, looking for escaped survivors. He asked Kusum to come with him, knowing he would need someone as backup, and she was the one he trusted most. Besides, she wouldn’t have let him go without her.

They made record time on their return trip, and worked their way through the neighborhood surrounding the compound until they were once more standing next to the hole at the back wall. They paused there, listening, in case a guard had been stationed on the other side. All was quiet.

As soon as Sanjay passed underneath the wall, though, his heart sank. Someone had moved a couple of barrels over the hole’s exit. He put his hand on the bottom of one of the barrels and tested its weight.

Empty.

He tried the other. Also empty.

Not quite the disaster he had feared.

Careful to not tip over the barrels, he inched the first one to the side, and then did the same with the other. After they were out of the way, he poked his head out and looked around. The area was as deserted as it had been when he and Kusum came through earlier.

He crawled back out the other side. “Okay,” he whispered to Kusum. “Be very careful.”

She rolled her eyes and waved impatiently for him to go back under.

After they were in the compound, they put the barrels back in front of the hole. To the casual observer, it would look like the barrels were still in place. Sanjay then led Kusum around the scrap piles and headed toward the administration building.

The vaccine he had stolen for Kusum and her family had been located in a medical storage room near the first-floor conference room. He thought they must have more of it there. If not…

No! It is there, he told himself.

They passed between the dormitory buildings and over to the back entrance to admin.

“You stay out here,” he whispered to Kusum.

“Why? So someone walking by can see me?”

“What? No. Someone needs to keep an eye on things out here. And since I am the one who knows where the vaccine is, I need to be the one who goes inside. There,” he said, pointing at a few parked vehicles a dozen meters away. “Hide behind those cars. You will be fine.”

Senior manager Dettling had lost track of how many times he wished someone else had been put in charge of the Mumbai location, but never had he wished it more than after his ass chewing by the principal director.

Just get me through this so I can help with the rebuilding.

That’s what he’d been looking forward to. This killing, this culling of humanity, as necessary as he realized it was, still gnawed at his soul.

This was why he had conspired with the other Pishon managers to hide the real cause of Herr Schmidt’s death. He couldn’t blame that boy Sanjay for shooting the senior manager in the shoulder so he could steal some vaccine for his family, any more than he could blame one of his own people if one were responsible for cutting the holes in the detention-area fences. The possibility of it being an inside job hadn’t occurred to him, but the principal director seemed convinced. Hell, under the right circumstances, Dettling himself might have cut the holes.

The director wanted a witch hunt, wanted him to serve up whoever had done this — if indeed it was one of Dettling’s people — and undoubtedly pack him off for punishment elsewhere. Dettling didn’t think he could do that. He ran a hand through what was left of his hair, trying to think of some way out of this.

It was the picture on the wall that provided him the answer. It was a shot of the Pishon Chem managers with several of their Indian team members. A PR picture taken by a local newspaper that probably never had the chance to run it. But it had been important to keep up appearances, so the team had posed, smiling.

One of the managers in the picture was Bernard Weathersbee. He’d been one of Dettling’s lieutenants until he was severely injured in a truck accident less than twenty-four hours after the spraying had begun. Weathersbee had held on for over a week, but finally succumbed to his injuries yesterday morning.

Dettling made a quick check of the logs. No, the death had not yet been reported to the directorate.

He thought for a moment. Yes, it might work. He felt bad blaming his friend, but it was better than pointing the finger at someone who would suffer for it.

When the escapees were finally caught, Dettling would serve up Weathersbee, saying he’d been killed during the search. Satisfied, he left his office in search of van Assen to help set the plan in motion.

As Sanjay neared the conference room, the door across the hall began to open. With nowhere else to go, he slipped inside the unused office he’d just passed.

Leaving the door open a crack, he watched as Mr. Dettling, one of the Pishon Chem managers Sanjay had known, emerged from the senior manager’s office. If Sanjay had been a few feet farther down the hall, Dettling would have seen him and recognized him for sure.

Sanjay’s pulse raced.

Relax, he told himself. You’re almost there.

He waited to make sure Dettling didn’t immediately come back, then he reentered the hallway and slinked past the empty conference room to the unmarked door of the medical supply room. He tried the knob, hoping it was unlocked, but he wasn’t that lucky. And he couldn’t break into it. Besides the fact the door was sturdy, the noise would draw attention. What he needed was the silver key with the J on it. That’s how he’d gotten in last time.

He looked back at the senior manager’s office. Had Dettling come from a meeting with the man? Or was it empty, the senior manager attending to business elsewhere? Sanjay had been armed with a gun the previous time he was in the gray-haired man’s presence. He’d even had to shoot the senior manager in the shoulder to convince him to cooperate. Now, the only things he had were the wire cutters he was still carrying and his own two hands.

You do not need a gun, he told himself.

The senior manager was old and weak and dismissive. Sanjay could easily get the key from the man. He was sure of it.

He checked the hallway Dettling had turned down to make sure it was empty, and crossed over to the office. Slowly he pushed the door open, ready to rush in if the manager started to yell.

But no one was inside.

Hoping the manager had left his keys behind, Sanjay raced over to the desk. There were no keys sitting on top, so he started pulling open drawers. Nothing in the center drawer or in the top drawers on either side.

The bottom drawers presented a problem. Both were locked. He finally figured out that if he left the center drawer open, the locks would release. He hit pay dirt in the bottom left drawer. A cardboard box stuffed in the back contained three key rings, each holding a couple dozen keys. The first set he checked had the silver J key, so he didn’t bother with the other two. Putting everything back so no one would know he’d been there, he returned to the hallway.

The key slipped easily into the medical supply room door, like he knew it would. A turn to the left resulted in a click as the latch pulled away. Sanjay stepped inside, closed the door, and turned on the light.

He was here. He’d made it.

Knowing he had precious little time, he hurried over to the glass cabinet where the vaccine had been last time. When he took it then, he’d identified it by its orange tint, the selection confirmed by the look in the senior manager’s eyes. Now, after filling dozens of syringes with the vaccine when he and Kusum had inoculated the others in their group, he had seen more than enough bottles to recognize the drug’s name if he saw it again.

He had no idea what it meant, but that wasn’t important.

Starting on the top shelf, he worked his way to the bottom, checking every item. No vaccine. He moved to the bottom cabinet, but it was empty.

This is where it was, he told himself. Could I have taken it all?

He looked around, searching for another cabinet like the ones he’d checked. But he already knew there were no other similar cabinets. As he twisted to the left, his gaze fell on a stack of boxes in the corner that had not been there before. Printed on the side in black was /V/ASH.

It wasn’t the full name he’d seen on the vials, but part of it.

He pulled the top box off the stack and set it on the counter. It was just under a half meter square and almost the same high. The seams were sealed with black and yellow striped tape.

He pulled the wire cutters from his pocket and sliced down the middle of the tape. Inside the box were four smaller containers that looked identical to the ones full of vaccine he’d stolen. Trying not to get his hopes up, he opened one of the small boxes. It was full of vials containing an orange-tinted liquid. Holding his breath, he pulled one out and looked at the label.

He opened another of the smaller boxes. It, too, contained the vaccine. All the boxes must’ve contained the vaccine.

His excitement was momentarily tempered by the thought that maybe the survival station was exactly what it was supposed to be. That maybe anyone coming in would get one of these shots.

But why would the same people who had brought the plague down on everyone be the ones who started handing out the cure?

That’s when the likely truth dawned on him. It was horrible. Almost worse than unleashing the disease itself.

The cure would be handed out, but only to those the Pishon Chem people — whom Leon had referred to as Project Eden — deemed worthy of it.

Sanjay put the vials away and secured the top of the box. No, he would not allow this Project Eden to make that decision. If someone needed the vaccine, no matter who they were, Sanjay would make sure the person received it.

Kusum checked her watch again. It was closing in on thirty minutes.

She stared at the door Sanjay had disappeared behind, willing him to open it and step through. When he finally did, she let out a gasp of surprise.

Realizing he was having difficulty closing the door because of the box he was carrying, she jumped out of her hiding spot and ran over. As she neared, she realized it wasn’t just one box, but two.

“Let me,” she whispered, putting her hand on the doorknob.

With relief, he let go and watched her quietly close the door.

“Is this all vaccine?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“This is so much more than before.”

“This is not even half of it. There are six more boxes.”

“Six more,” she said. “How can we carry that many?”

“We cannot, but we can hide what we cannot take with us, and come back for them later. Better in our hands than in theirs, yes?

Instead of taking the boxes from him, she grabbed his face and kissed him. “You are a surprising man, Sanjay.”

“Not surprising. What other choice do we have?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Take these,” he said, shoving the boxes toward her. “Carry them over to the hole and come right back.”

She transported the first two boxes, and then boxes three and four.

When she returned for the next pair, he said, “I will bring the last two. Take these and the others out of the compound, then start taking them to the building we used before. The sooner we can finish, the better.”

Kusum nodded. “Do not be long.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

Dettling found Van Assen at the security office near the main gate, monitoring the search efforts. He motioned for him to come outside where they’d have some privacy.

“Any progress?” he asked, after he’d led his assistant around the side of the building.

“Unfortunately, no,” van Assen said.

“What do you think the likelihood is we’ll find any of them?”

His assistant seemed reluctant to reply, but finally said, “We’ll be lucky if we find one or two. It’s a huge city, and they know it better than us.”

“I agree,” Dettling admitted. While it would have been nice to find them, the important thing now was the assigning of blame. “I need your help on a delicate matter.”

Van Assen had proven to be a very trustworthy and competent assistant, who was of a similar mind to Dettling on most matters concerning the Project, so the senior manager had no reservations about filling him in on his plan to placate the principal director.

“We can do this quietly,” Dettling said when he finished outlining his plan. “The report will go straight to the directorate. No one else here needs to know about any of it.”

“Of course,” van Assen said. “I’ll handle the staging and the pictures immediately. There are plenty of empty rooms on the basement level. We can say we cornered him in one of them. He then put up a fight and, unfortunately, was killed in the process.”

Dettling kept his expression blank, but inside he felt relieved. Van Assen understood exactly what he wanted. Everything was going to be just fine.

“I think, perhaps, it would be good if we continue the search for a few more hours,” van Assen suggested. “The fewer people here at the compound while I take care of this other matter, the better.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Well, then, I suppose I should get to work.”

Sanjay entered the main building and returned to the medical room for the fourth time that evening. As he picked up the last two boxes, his gaze fell on the set of keys he’d put on the counter.

For a few seconds, he wondered if he should return them to the senior manager’s office, but thought that the missing vaccine would be noticed long before the missing keys, so he left them where they were.

As he’d done each trip before, he used the wall to help him hold the boxes while he turned the knob, and started to open the door.

That’s when he heard the footsteps.

Van Assen returned to the admin building and made a stop at his office. There, he retrieved a pair of gloves, a camera, and his set of keys. While he could have grabbed the Glock 9mm pistol in his drawer, he knew it would be better if the shots that “brought Weathersbee down” were not from the gun assigned to him.

The main weapons arsenal was located back in the security building. There was, however, a weapons locker — albeit a less — equipped one — near Mr. Dettling’s office. He headed there next, and was considering which firearm would be best when he heard a door open behind him.

He turned quickly, a thousand excuses for why he needed to be in the locker running through his head, but no one was in the hallway. As far as he could tell, all the doors were shut.

But it had definitely been a door. He closed the weapons locker door and tiptoed over to the nearest office. Placing his ear close to the surface, he listened for anyone inside. Not hearing anything, he moved quietly to the next office, but it was more dead air.

He knew he had heard a door, and it had been in this hallway. Not counting Dettling’s, there was one more office, the conference room, and a few storage rooms. He headed for the office.

When he reached the door, he stopped and listened again.

Kusum was almost caught while transporting the first two boxes to the safety of the building outside the compound.

She was only a block away from her destination when a car came around a bend. She barely had time to dodge into a narrow gap between two stores.

The car drove slowly down the road, flashlight beams shining out the open windows onto buildings and parked cars.

Kusum knelt down, intending to go all the way prone with the boxes beside her when she remembered the distinctive yellow and black tape. If they saw that, they would stop for sure. She snatched up a pile of food wrappers and newspapers and covered the exposed ends of the boxes, hoping that would be enough. Then down she went.

A few moments later, through the corner of her eye, she saw the wall beside her light up, less than an arm’s length above her head. She tensed, ready to make a run for it if the light dipped any lower, but the car kept moving, and the muted glow of the flashlight beam quickly faded.

She waited until she couldn’t hear the car anymore, and then jumped to her feet and ran the rest of the way.

She hid the two boxes in a storeroom of a first-floor shop, concealing them behind a stack of dresses and children’s clothes. Then she headed back to the compound to help Sanjay bring the others.

But when she arrived, Sanjay wasn’t there yet.

She nearly crawled into the hole, thinking he might need help, but stopped herself.

He’s being careful, she told herself. He’ll be fine.

She wasn’t sure if she believed that or not, but she knew if she went back in, there was as much of a chance she’d make things worse than better.

She grabbed two more boxes and started back for the building.

He’ll be here when I get back.

He’ll be here.

Both the office and the conference room were empty. Van Assen even went ahead and checked Dettling’s office. No one there, either.

So, which door had opened?

He looked around the hallway again.

One of the storage rooms? No one should be in any of those, not this late at night, and especially not on a night like they were experiencing. But those were the only places he hadn’t checked.

There were four of them: the weapons locker he’d been in, a maintenance closet, the medical storage room, and the telecom equipment room. The medical storage room was closest, so he went there first.

Sanjay heard footsteps approaching the storage room. Not knowing if the door had automatically locked when he shut it, he grabbed the knob and held it tight.

He realized too late that he should have put the boxes down first so he could use both hands, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

The steps stopped right outside, and then the knob shook, but it didn’t turn. It was locked, he realized with relief. As soon as the other person let go, he did, too, and thought, Go look somewhere else.

But instead of steps moving away from the door, he heard the rattle of metal, followed by the sound of a key slipping into the lock.

Van Assen inserted the J key into the doorknob and turned it. As he stepped forward, something grabbed his arm, yanked him inside, and shoved him to the floor.

As he looked back, he saw the culprit flee the room. But the man wasn’t one of the Project’s people; he was an Indian. And he was carrying two boxes sealed with yellow and black tape.

Van Assen pushed himself to his feet and rushed over to the back corner where the eight boxes of vaccine had been stored.

They were gone.

Every last one of them.

Sanjay sprinted down the hallway toward the exit, knowing the man he’d thrown to the ground would be after him in seconds. He’d recognized the guy. The man had been one of Dettling’s subordinates, but Sanjay had never known his name.

Faster! he ordered himself, sure that a hand was about to clamp down on his shoulder.

He knew he should have dumped the vaccine — it was slowing him down — but the idea of leaving any of it behind was not acceptable to him.

“Hey! You there! Come back here!” the man yelled behind him.

Sanjay kept running until he reached the door. As he banged it open and rushed outside, he would have collided with Mr. Dettling if he hadn’t spun at the last second out of the way. While the move saved him from hitting the man, the top box slipped from his grasp and fell on the ground.

“What the hell? What’s going on?” Dettling said. As Sanjay leaned down and picked up the box, Dettling narrowed his eyes. “Sanjay?”

“Leave me alone,” Sanjay said as he started to run again. “Leave all of us alone. Haven’t you and your Project Eden friends killed enough?”

Van Assen shoved the door out of the way. When he exited the building, he was surprised to find Mr. Dettling standing just outside, staring at the receding form of the intruder.

“He’s got the vaccine!” van Assen yelled.

Dettling had no reaction.

“Mr. Dettling, did you hear me? He has the vaccine!”

“The vaccine?” Dettling said, as if not comprehending the words.

“Yes! He’s taken all of it!”

More silence.

Whatever was wrong with Dettling, van Assen wasn’t about to let it take him down, too.

Pushing past his boss, he headed after the thief.

Sanjay didn’t even bother trying to hide. The faster he got out of there, the better chance he had of remaining free.

He weaved his way through the compound and into the back junk area. When he reached the barrels sitting in front of the hole, he risked a look back. He didn’t see anyone, but knew he couldn’t count on that for long.

He shoved the first box into the hole as far as it would go, then used the second one to push the first, and then he followed it. The first box cleared the other end, but the second seemed hung up on something. He pulled it back a few centimeters and wiggled it forward, hoping to avoid the obstruction. For a second, it felt like it would get stuck again, then it was free, and…

…pulled from his grasp.

As the hole above him cleared, he saw Kusum looking down. “What took you so long?”

“Go! Run! They are chasing me!”

Instead of running, though, she grabbed his arm and helped him out.

“Come on, come on,” he said, grabbing two of the boxes.

Kusum picked up the other two that were there, and they ran.

Van Assen’s encounter with Dettling ended up causing him to lose the intruder. He ran in the direction he thought the man had gone, but could not find him. When he ran into the junk area, he noticed that the barrels covering the hole by the wall had been moved.

Dammit!

Without hesitating, he dropped into the hole and squirmed under the wall. It was a tight fit, but he was just able to make it. When he climbed out the other side, he whirled around.

But there was no one there.

Dettling stared into the night.

Sanjay. My God.

The last time he’d seen the kid, Sanjay was holding a gun as he forced Dettling and several other managers into a storage room. And now here he’d been again, not only saying words that Dettling had often thought himself, but actually using the name Project Eden. Where could he have heard that?

Dettling knew he should have been running right behind van Assen, knew they should be doing everything they could to retrieve the vaccine, but the final straw had broken him.

What have we done?

He numbly walked into the building and down to his office. From one of the desk drawers he pulled out a bottle of whiskey, intending to drink himself into a stupor. He was halfway through the bottle when he thought about the gun in his other drawer.

The first shot went wide as his head swayed from the alcohol.

He was smarter the second time, and had the gun’s barrel firmly planted against the top of his mouth when he pulled the trigger.

“I do not see anyone,” Kusum whispered.

“Neither do I,” Sanjay said.

They were lying on the roof of the building where the boxes were hidden, scanning the streets between them and the compound.

“I think we are okay,” he said.

She slapped his shoulder. “Not okay. Why did you let him see you?”

“Because I thought it would be more fun that way.”

She slapped him again.

“We need to talk about you hitting me so much,” he said.

“What is there to talk about? If you stop doing stupid things, I will stop hitting you.”

“And you are the judge of whether the things I do are stupid or not?”

“Of course.”

He frowned. “I am not sure I am enjoying marriage so much.”

“You are enjoying it fine.” She turned on her side. “Now come here and put your arms around me.”

He snuggled into her. “We really should be going,” he said. “The sooner we can get all the boxes to where the others are, the sooner we can leave the city.”

“Soon,” she said. “But not yet.”

24

The vehicles heading south into New Mexico were lined up in the hotel parking lot, their engines running. Ash, Josie, Brandon, Chloe, Dr. Gardiner, and Ginny stood outside the lobby shaking hands and wishing everyone good luck. Rick was up in his room. According to Ginny, he was sulking about being kidnapped, but wouldn’t fight continuing on with them.

“Be safe,” Ash said to a couple of the men coming out of the hotel.

“You guys, too,” one of them said.

“Take care.”

“Same for you.”

Lily Franklin came out. “Wish you guys were coming with us,” she said.

“I hope you’re bored to death and don’t need to patch anyone up,” Ash said.

“You and me both.”

Matt came out with the last two men. “Davis and Sorrento here will be your drivers,” he said.

The two men didn’t look happy about being left out of the raid, but they nodded to Ash and Chloe.

“If you guys get going here pretty quick, you might be able to make it all the way to Salt Lake City tonight,” Matt said. “But don’t push it. Stop when you’re getting tired.”

“We’ll be fine,” Ash said.

“Anything else you need?”

Ash shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

“No,” Chloe said. “Think we’re good.”

“All right, then. I guess we’ll be off.”

Before he could turn away, Ash held out his hand. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Matt said, shaking it. “If we can pull this off, we all might have a chance.”

“Then I suggest you pull it off.”

After Matt had climbed into his Humvee, Ash said to Chloe, “You could have loosened up a little. At least said good-bye.”

“Yeah. I could have.”

In a mighty roar, the convoy turned onto the road toward the interstate.

As soon as the last truck disappeared onto the on-ramp, Ash said, “Ginny, get your cousin. It’s time to leave.”

Ash assigned Rick to ride in the snowplow with Davis, which seemed to suit the kid fine. The rest of them piled into the Humvee. For the first time since they’d left the Ranch, Ash took the front passenger seat.

Sorrento, a skinny guy in his late twenties, seemed to have shrugged off the disappointment of missing the main mission, and smiled as he checked to make sure everyone had a seat.

“All right. Let’s get going,” he said.

“Just a second,” Ash told him.

Sorrento paused, his hand ready to shift the truck into gear.

Ash sat motionless for a moment, running everything through his head again.

“Captain?” Sorrento said.

Ash glanced at him, and then picked up the handheld radio they were using to communicate between their two vehicles. He switched to the same band Chloe had set the radio in the plow to — one they were confident Matt would not be using — and clicked the talk button.

“Davis?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Davis said. “Ready to go when you are.”

“I think for this first part, you just follow us,” Ash said. “If we run into any problems, you can swing around and take care of them.”

“Okay, sir. If that’s what you’d like.”

Ash looked at Sorrento. “Let’s hit it.”

Sorrento put the Humvee in gear and drove them toward the parking lot exit.

“Go left,” Ash told him.

Sorrento slowed the vehicle. “Sir?”

“Change of plans. We’re taking the interstate.”

“The exit for 160 is only a mile or so down,” Sorrento said, confused. “It’s actually quicker if we go through town.”

“We’re not taking 160.”

“We’re not? But Mr. Hamilton said—”

“I don’t care what Matt said.”

“Okay, but if you’re thinking we should go through Albuquerque and head west from there, that’s kind of the long way around.”

“We’re not going to Nevada,” Ash said. “Not yet, anyway.”

Sorrento looked completely lost now. “I’m not sure I—”

“We’re going south.”

“But Mr. Hamilton thinks we’re going to Nevada.”

“That, he does.”

The truth of Ash’s intent seemed to slowly dawn on Sorrento. Brow unfurrowing, he tilted his head back. “We’re going to follow them?”

“Now you’re getting the picture,” Ash said. “Won’t be a problem, will it?”

Sorrento eased off the brake and smiled. “Not at all, sir.”

“Hold on,” Dr. Gardiner said from his seat behind him. “Did I hear you right? We’re heading into New Mexico?”

The Humvee rumbled onto the street and turned toward the interstate.

“That’s correct, Doctor.”

“No, no, no! We’re going to Nevada. That’s where my family is.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you there eventually,” Ash said. “At the moment, your services may be needed elsewhere.”

“Uh-uh. No way. I didn’t sign up for this.”

“You didn’t sign up for anything,” Chloe said. “We saved your ass. I saved your ass. You and your family would already be dead otherwise.”

“This isn’t the old world anymore,” Ash said. “We don’t get to sit around in our living rooms while someone else fights our fights.”

“I don’t consider what I’ve been doing just sitting around a living room,” the doctor argued.

“No, that’s true, but there’s more work to be done. What Matt and the rest of the team are planning will go a long way to saving a lot of people. They’ll be putting themselves in harm’s way, which means they will very likely need medical attention, probably more than Lily can handle on her own.”

“So we’re following them because they might need me?”

“No,” Chloe said. “We’re going because they will definitely need Ash and me. You are an additional benefit.”

Davis’s voice came over the radio. “Weren’t we supposed to take that?”

Ash glanced outside. They had just passed the US 160 exit off the I-40.

He picked up the radio. “Change of route,” he said. “I’ll explain when we take a break in a while.”

“All right, sir.”

Ash looked back at the doctor. “Is this going to be an issue?”

He knew Gardiner was a good man who was still trying to come to grips with all that had happened. The doctor wanted to be with his family, to know they were safe. But these days, the best way to keep loved ones safe often meant risking one’s life. Ash was sure that on some level, the doctor understood this.

A few moments later, his hunch paid off.

“No,” Gardiner said. “Not an issue.”

“Robert, you up?”

Someone knocked rapidly on Robert’s door.

“Hey! Come on. Wake up!”

Robert forced his eyes open and checked his watch. It was already after seven. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept that late.

“Robert! Wake up!”

He recognized Renee’s voice now.

“Just a minute,” he said.

Estella stirred beside him, her body draped over his side. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

“I’ll check.”

He extracted himself from the bed as Renee began pounding on the door again.

“I’m coming,” he said.

He grabbed his shorts off the floor and pulled them on as he moved out into the small living room that made up the rest of his apartment. Since he was now in charge, he could have moved into Dominic’s larger place, but that seemed wrong.

“Robert!” Renee yelled.

He pulled the door open and stepped onto the threshold in case she had been planning on coming inside. But the moment she saw him, she turned and started walking away.

“Come on,” she said, hurriedly. “We’ve got to go.”

“What’s going on?”

“Another plane,” she said. “They just radioed and said they’ll be here soon.”

“The UN?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a second.”

“I’ll be in the radio room.”

Robert ran back inside to grab his shirt and sandals.

“What is it?” Estella asked.

“The UN. They’re coming back.”

She pushed herself up. “With the vaccine?”

“I don’t know. I would think so. Look, I’ll, um, meet you at the bar in a little while.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Robert went over to the bed, gave her a deep kiss, and ran out of the room.

After giving the plane instructions to land in the lagoon, Robert and Renee — and pretty much all the rest of the island residents — headed down to meet it.

The plane buzzed overhead as it did a flyby of the lagoon before coming in and landing smoothly on the calm waters. The engine noise increased again as the aircraft taxied across the bay to the main pier, where Robert and Renee were waiting. A few of the others were also on the pier, while most remained on the beach, with a mix of wary and excited looks on their faces.

As the plane pulled up next to the dock, Robert counted six people inside — four men and two women. He grabbed a rope and tied the front of the pontoon to the dock while Renee did the same at the back.

The plane’s door opened, and the first visitors the resort had received since the outbreak climbed out.

Leading them was a smiling woman with brown hair and tan skin.

Robert offered her his hand and helped her down. “Welcome to Isabella Island.”

“Thank you,” she said. “We’re very glad to be here.” She had a hint of a Hispanic accent but her English was perfect. “I’m Dr. Vega, but please call me Ivonne.”

“Robert,” he said. “Robert Adams.”

The other woman was next, introducing herself as Helena Chavez, a nurse, and then one of the men, a doctor named Peter de Coster.

“The others will join us in a little bit,” Ivonne said. “They need to unpack the supplies.”

“We can get some people to help them out, if you’d like,” Robert offered.

“That would be great.”

He asked for volunteers and saw almost every hand shoot up. He picked out three, who quickly made their way to the plane.

“We will need someplace to set up,” de Coster said.

“Of course,” Robert said. “The bar will probably be best. Plenty of room there, and that’s where people tend to hang out anyway.”

“Sounds perfect,” Ivonne said.

“Follow me.”

As they walked along the path back to the resort, Renee said, “I can’t tell you how glad we are that we didn’t have to wait long for you to come back.”

“We’re glad we could make it,” Ivonne replied.

“Can you tell us what’s going on out there?” Robert asked. “How bad is it?”

Ivonne’s smile faltered. “About as bad as you can imagine. Billions have died already.”

He stopped walking. “Did you say billions? With a b?”

“Yes,” she said.

Robert couldn’t get his head around the number. Did that mean whole countries were gone? Continents? Was that possible?

“That can’t be right,” he said.

“I wish it wasn’t, but there’s no part of the planet that hasn’t been touched.” She paused. “Except, perhaps, your island.”

“No,” he said, still stunned. “We’ve been touched.”

Dr. de Coster’s eyes widened. “The disease is here?”

“Not anymore.”

“How can you be sure?” he asked.

Robert told them what had happened to Dominic.

“No one else has come down with the flu?”

“Not a one,” he said.

Ivonne smiled. “Sounds like you dodged a bullet.”

“Dominic didn’t.”

“Of course. I’m very sorry about your friend.”

They fell into silence for several seconds.

De Coster finally spoke. “You were going to show us where we could set up?

“Right,” Robert said. “This way.”

Ben woke with a start. He’d been dreaming. Of what, he couldn’t remember, but his heart was pounding and his breaths were short and fast. As the rush receded, his body began to relax and his head sank back into the pillow. He lay there for a minute, trying to remember what it was that had caused such a panic, but whatever had occupied his unconscious mind was gone for good.

He glanced over at the bed where Iris had been sleeping, but it was empty. He sat up and looked around. He didn’t see her anywhere in the showroom.

Restroom, he guessed.

Ben pulled on his shoes and headed to the back of the store, needing to use the facilities himself. After making a stop in the men’s room, he knocked on the door to the women’s.

“Iris? You in there?”

No answer.

He pushed the door open a few inches.

“Iris?” When she didn’t respond again, he said, “I’m coming in.”

A quick check of the stalls confirmed what he’d suspected. She wasn’t there.

Great.

She’d probably run off again. The question was, should he once more try to find her?

“No,” he told himself a moment later. She knew what was going on now. Maybe she just wanted to be alone. If that was the case, so be it.

He walked back into the main showroom, thinking the sooner he hit the road, the sooner he’d reach Ridgecrest, where, God willing, he’d find Martina. After he’d repacked the few things he’d taken out of his bag, he unzipped the pouch where he kept his keys. But his keys weren’t there.

“Son of a bitch!”

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he ran toward the front of the store, but long before he got there, he could see through the big plate-glass windows that his Jeep was not where he’d left it.

“Dammit!”

He burst out the main door and ran out into the parking area. No Jeep anywhere.

“No! No! No!”

He jogged over to the street and looked both ways. Nothing moved in either direction, nor could he hear the sound of an engine, even in the distance.

He yelled in frustration. It was his Jeep with his things in the back.

Oh, God, he thought. The photo of his family, his mother’s favorite, it was still under the driver’s seat.

And the earrings. The ones he’d bought for Martina. They were to be the first ever Christmas gift he’d give her.

All of them, gone.

He stared down the road, numb.

25

Perez made his way through NB219 to the barracks section used by the security forces. As he stepped into the common area, the men who saw him first immediately jumped to attention, with the rest soon doing the same.

“I’m looking for Mr. Sims,” he said. “Anyone know where I can find him?”

“In his room, sir,” one of the men said. “Keep going straight. B-09.”

“Thank you.”

The door to Room B-09 was open a few inches. Perez looked inside and saw Sims unpacking his bag.

“Mr. Sims,” Perez said as he rapped a knuckle on the door.

Sims whirled around. “Principal Director,” he said, surprised. “Did I get the meeting time wrong?”

After spending the night in Denver, Sims and his team had arrived back at NB219 less than fifteen minutes earlier. He was due in Perez’s office for a debriefing at the top of the hour.

“No. I had something that finished up early. Thought I’d save you the trip.”

In truth, Perez had canceled a previously scheduled video conference so he could make this personal appearance. In his mind, Sims was the second most important person in the Project. He had become the hammer that reinforced the principal director’s rule. So Perez knew it was necessary to make sure their working relationship was solid. Small things, such as dropping in like this, went a long way toward solidifying loyalty.

“Thank you, sir, but you didn’t have to do that.”

“Not a problem,” Perez said. “I take it you didn’t find anything after your last report.”

“No, sir. Those first tracks we saw were it. There was a big storm up there. I’m pretty sure they’re riding it out somewhere. Once the weather clears up, we can go back out and look for them again.”

Perez had received a report on the storm. It was the same one, though diminished, that was expected to hit northern New Mexico in the next hour or two, and could possibly make it all the way down to Las Cruces at some point during the night.

“If you do go back, what do you think your chances are of finding them?”

“Fair, I guess.”

“Give me a percentage.”

“Well, if the weather clears up in that area like it’s supposed to tonight, and we leave before first light tomorrow, I’d say we have maybe a forty-percent chance. If we have to wait twelve hours or a full day more, it would go down to single digits and probably not be worth it.”

Perez wasn’t sure a forty-percent chance would be worth it. “Touch base with me this evening. We’ll make a decision then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else to report?”

“No, sir. That’s it.”

“Very good.” As they shook hands, the principal director said, “Tell your men I’m very pleased with the work they are doing.”

“I will. They’ll appreciate that, sir.”

26

“Try again,” Rachel said.

“Okay,” Crystal said, “but the result’s going to be the same. Either their radio is off, or Matt’s not answering.”

“He’s got to answer.”

“I realize that, but I can’t make him pick up.”

Rachel’s jaw tensed. She needed to reach her brother, and try to talk him out of this insanity one last time. “Keep at it, Crystal,” she said. “You can make it every ten minutes, but don’t stop. They’ve got to check in at some point. When you do reach them, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, let me know. I must talk to Matt.”

“I’ll do my best,” Crystal said.

Robert made sure he was the very last person in line to receive an inoculation from the UN doctors. Renee had tried to take the position for herself, but settled on second to last at his insistence. Together they watched as the others went behind the screens that had been set up, and come back out a few minutes later, a few rubbing their arms and all of them smiling.

After Estella received her shot, she paused when she reached Robert. “It doesn’t hurt too much,” she said.

“I’m happy to hear that,” he said.

She touched his hand. “Lunch after you’re done?”

“Sure.”

She walked off, and he could feel Renee staring at him.

When he looked at her, she said, “Oh, really now.”

“Please don’t start.” Robert wasn’t in the mood to participate in any teasing. He was happy they were all being vaccinated, but he was still coming to grips with how many people Ivonne had said were dead.

Renee seemed to sense his frame of mind and didn’t say anything more.

Slowly, they continued moving forward until they were the last two in line.

After a few minutes, Helena, the UN nurse, stepped around the end of the screen and motioned to Renee. “Señorita, please come back.”

The two women disappeared behind the screen, leaving Robert the only one left.

He glanced out at the sea. It was another postcard day in paradise — blue sky, light breeze, and sunshine. It was the kind of day guests coming to the resort always hoped for as they flocked to the water, and took to the Jet Skis and snorkeling boats and surfboards. But that was Before. In the After, the water was empty and the beach deserted.

“Robert?”

He turned and found Ivonne smiling at him.

“Your turn.”

Renee was still there, sitting in a chair next to Dr. de Coster.

“Please sit here,” Ivonne said, pointing at the empty chair next to where she was set up.

After Robert followed her directions, she placed a strip of plastic against his head. When she pulled it off, she looked at it, and then noted something on the pad of paper. “Temperature’s normal,” she said. “Your arm, please.”

She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his bicep, placed a stethoscope against his arm, and pumped up the device. Again, she wrote down the results.

“Feel any unusual aches or pains?” she asked, her fingers probing under his jaw and down his throat.

“No, I’m fine. I told you, we’re all fine,” he said.

A disarming smile. “I’m sure you are. It’s procedure only.”

“Sure. I guess that makes sense.”

She opened a plastic packet and removed a swab attached to a long, wooden dowel. “If you would open your mouth, I want to take a sample from inside your cheek.”

The testing went on for another few minutes, ending with two vials of blood being drawn before she pulled out a prepared syringe with orange-tinted liquid inside.

“This won’t hurt much, but you may feel a little uneasy in the next few hours. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but if it does, don’t worry. It will pass quickly.”

She jabbed the needle into his arm and pushed down the plunger. At first, it felt like he had a knot under his skin, but even before Ivonne put a small, round bandage over the injection point, the sensation had gone away.

“That’s it. You’re all done,” she said with a smile, and looked over at Helena. “Next one, please.”

“He was the last,” Helena said.

Ivonne leaned back in her chair and began rolling her head over her shoulders. “Finally.” She noticed Robert looking at her. “Yours is the largest group we’ve had to deal with at one time.”

“We’re the largest?” he said, surprised yet again.

“By far,” Dr. de Coster said. He’d finished with Renee a few minutes before, and she had left to join the others. “The average is three or four people. Our biggest group previous to yours was seventeen.”

“It’s a miracle that all of you are still here,” Ivonne said.

To Robert, it wasn’t so much a miracle as him and Dominic making hard choices and sticking by them.

He touched the bandage on his arm. “How long until we’re safe?”

Something changed in her expression. She glanced past Robert at de Coster. When she looked back, she said, “You’re the one in charge here, correct?”

“Well, there are a few others who try to help keep things in order,” he said.

“Perhaps you should have them join us.”

Robert suddenly felt very uncomfortable. “Why?”

“There are some things we need to discuss.”

Not wanting to cause any unnecessary concern among the rest of the island’s survivors, Robert decided the meeting would be held in Dominic’s apartment, located in a part of the resort few others ever went.

In addition to Renee, Robert asked Enrique Vasquel and Chuck Tyler — the two people who’d been helping him and Renee the most — to attend the meeting. Ivonne, Helena, and de Coster were joined by the older man who had ridden in the back of the plane with them.

“Are we talking about how we’re getting off the island?” Chuck asked. “I assume that’s why we’re here.”

“Perhaps I should introduce our colleague first,” Ivonne said, motioning to the man from the plane.

“No need to be so formal,” the man said. “Name’s Richard Paxton, but you all can call me Pax. And it’s a damn pleasure to meet you. What you’ve all done here is pretty amazing. I am definitely impressed.”

“Um, thanks,” Robert said. “I’m a little confused, though. Ivonne made it sound like there was something important you guys needed to talk to us about.”

“There is,” Pax said. “And it starts with an apology. Robert, my friends here and I, we have deceived you. We are not, nor have ever been, associated with the United Nations.”

A stunned silence.

“I know that’s a bit of a surprise, but—”

“If you’re not the UN, then who are you?” Robert blurted out.

“Screw that,” Chuck said, clamping a hand over the bandage covering his inoculation. “What the hell did you put into us?”

“The vaccine for the Sage Flu,” Ivonne said. “We didn’t lie about that.”

Chuck rose out of his chair, clearly not believing her. “Jesus! Maybe you’re wondering how we’re still alive. Maybe that’s why you took our blood. Maybe you think we can save you!”

“Hold on,” Pax said. “No need to get all riled up. First off, as you can see, we’re not sick, either.”

Chuck’s face twisted into a grimace. “That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe you’re just not showing signs yet.”

“Secondly,” Pax went on, “taking your blood would tell us nothing. There are too many people alive here for all of you to be naturally immune. You’re still breathing because you’ve kept the sick away. That’s it.”

“You’re talking bullshit,” Chuck said.

He walked quickly to the door and pulled it open. Standing right outside were the two pilots.

“Out of my way,” Chuck said.

“Best if you go back inside and finish listening to our friends first,” the larger of the two pilots said.

“Or what?”

“Now, Chuck, nobody wants any trouble here,” Pax said. “We’re just talking. Come on back and have a seat. Afterward, you can run around and shout that the sky is falling to your heart’s content. You have my word on that.”

“Your word?” Chuck scoffed.

The friendly smile Pax had been wearing disappeared. “My word.”

Robert rose to his feet. “Chuck, come on back. It’s better to hear what they have to say than not, don’t you think?”

“What are they going to tell us that’ll be worth listening to?”

“Well, we won’t know until they’re done, will we? I promise you, if I think it’s all bullshit, I’ll be the first to say you were right, and then you and I can escort them back to their plane and kick them out of here. Deal?”

Chuck considered Robert’s suggestion for a moment. He shot a glance at the blocked door, and then, his face hardening, he returned to his seat. “All right,” he said, his gaze now fixed on Pax. “Tell us what the hell’s going on.”

“Thank you,” Pax said. “I appreciate you giving us the time.” He said nothing for a moment, looking at Robert and his friends. “Yes, we did lie about being with the UN, but we’re not the only ones who have done that. You see, there is no UN anymore, not since the flu hit.”

“But that’s not true,” Renee said. “The message on TV, on the radio. The secretary general.”

“Gustavo Di Sarsina,” Pax said.

“Yes!”

“I watched the video myself last night on my trip south. Pretty convincing. The thing is, Di Sarsina is not the secretary general, and the message is not from the UN.”

“Oh, come on!” Chuck said.

“He said there are survival stations,” Renee argued. “Places people can go.”

“He’s right about the latter, but calling them survival stations is a bit disingenuous,” Pax said. “It’s a long story, if you’re willing to listen.”

“We’ve got time,” Robert said.

Martina and her friends had been on the road for over an hour. The temperature was cool but not unbearable, the sky clear and wide. The freeway north of Paso Robles consisted of two ribbons of asphalt, each two lanes wide. One was for northbound traffic and the other for south, with about a thirty-foot-wide strip of grass between them.

The four travelers had already come across several accidents, the worst of which had forced them to ride off the road to get around it. So, in the interest of not dying, they were once more keeping their speed down to forty miles an hour. It wouldn’t get them anywhere fast, but by Martina’s figuring, they would still make San Mateo before nightfall.

They had just come over a small rise when the sun glinted off something in the distance.

Glass, probably, Martina thought, either another accident or an abandoned car at the side of the freeway. A few moments later it winked out, masked by the undulating road. She’d almost forgotten about it when the glint appeared again, only it had shifted position. A different car? Or…

Was it moving?

She slowed.

The glint shimmered and dipped.

It was moving.

Martina let her bike roll to a stop.

“What’s up?” Noreen asked as she and the others stopped next to Martina.

“I think there’s a car heading this way.”

They all looked down the road.

“I don’t see anything,” Riley said.

“It was there a moment ago,” Martina said.

“That sun reflection?” Craig asked.

“You saw it, too?”

“For a second, but it disappeared pretty quick. You saw it moving?”

“I think so,” Martina said.

Riley cocked her head. “You hear that?”

Martina and the others listened. Above the sound of their idling bikes was a low whine.

“That’s an engine,” Craig said. “I’m sure it is. I think you’re right.”

“Should we try to flag them down?” Riley asked.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Noreen said. “The only other person we’ve come across shot at us. Maybe this guy will try to ram us with his car.”

“She’s right,” Martina said. “We have to be careful. Maybe we should stay right here and watch it drive by. We can get a look at whoever’s inside. If they seem okay, we can catch up to them and get their attention. If not, we keep going on our way.”

The others seemed to like this idea.

After killing their engines, they climbed off their bikes and walked over to the shoulder so they’d have a better look when the car drove by.

It wasn’t long before Martina could see the approaching vehicle was red. It looked more like a truck than a sedan, but it was still too far away for her to tell. Maybe an SUV or a station wagon?

It disappeared into a dip, and when it came up again, it was considerably closer.

Not a station wagon or an SUV.

It was a Jeep. A red Jeep.

Not unlike Ben’s red Jeep.

A few seconds later, Martina realized it didn’t have just a passing similarity to Ben’s Jeep. It looked almost identical, and a few seconds after that she thought, Not almost.

She whipped around and raced back to her bike.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

She wasn’t sure which one of them had yelled at her, but she didn’t care. All she could think about was Ben, and that he was right there on the other side of the road. She fired up her bike and raced onto the grass separating the lanes.

When she reached the southbound side, she stopped and began waving both arms over her head. “Ben!” she yelled. “Ben!”

Behind her, one of the other bikes pulled up.

“What the hell, Martina?” Noreen asked.

“That’s Ben’s Jeep,” Martina said, her gaze still on the approaching vehicle. “I know it is!”

The Jeep was only a few moments away now, but given that it hadn’t started to slow, she realized Ben hadn’t seen her yet. She stood up, one foot on the ground, the other on the bike’s footrest, and waved again. “Ben! It’s me!”

That did it. The Jeep began to decelerate.

“It’s him,” Martina said to Noreen, a huge smile on her face. “It’s Ben.”

She was starting to hop off her bike when the Jeep sped up again.

She waved her arms faster. “Hey, Ben! Stop! It’s me!”

As the vehicle blew past her, she realized two things: first, it was indeed Ben’s Jeep, the license number and the dent in the front fender being proof of that; and second, the person behind the wheel wasn’t Ben.

The driver — a woman with wild brown hair — glanced stone faced at Martina before looking back to the road. Martina had met a few of Ben’s friends, but this woman wasn’t one of them.

But whoever she was, Martina was certain the woman knew where Ben was.

Without thinking twice about it, she fishtailed into the southbound lanes and raced after the Jeep.

27

Matt knew he and his team had caught a break. Bad weather was coming — there was no missing the wall of gray clouds following them southward — but so far they had been able to stay ahead of the storm and make excellent time.

As the town of Alamogordo came into view, Matt said, “We’ll stop here for a bit.”

“Yes, sir,” Hiller said. He’d taken over driving Matt’s Humvee. “Any place in particular?”

Matt checked his notes. “East on 10^th Street. Should be a big market four or five blocks in on the left.”

“Got it.”

Matt shifted in his seat and looked out the side window at an ocean of shrubs and dirt. Though it had been a long time since he’d been in this part of the country, it looked exactly the same.

How naïve he’d been back then, enough to become a member of Project Eden without fully understanding what the organization’s real mission was. He had been an engineer, working on what he then considered a dream job, helping to build secret underground facilities throughout North America.

It had been interesting.

It had been cool.

It had been a huge mistake.

Plumbing, that had been his specialty. He’d spent six years of his life overseeing the installation of pipes and vents and toilets and sinks and showers.

The horror he helped create.

The unimaginable he helped bring about.

There was no forgiving his participation. It didn’t matter that as soon as he and several close friends who were also members figured out what was truly going on, they began planning how to get out. Nor did it matter that Matt had dedicated every moment of his life since to fighting Project Eden.

Blame for the deaths of the billions lay at the hands of anyone who had ever helped the Project.

Lay at his hands.

He knew nothing he could do would ever change that, knew he wasn’t fighting Project Eden to right his own sins. He was fighting them because he had to, because not to fight wasn’t an option.

His convictions could only take him so far, though. The resistance organization he’d built to combat the Project had achieved no more than minor victories at best. Even the destruction of Bluebird had not stopped the Project from unleashing its genocidal pandemic.

But as he’d told Ash, eliminating the previous directorate was a start.

And now Matt had a chance to add to that.

And by God, it was a chance he would take.

They parked their vehicles near the entrance to the Lowe’s Marketplace grocery store. Matt tasked his men with checking inside and stocking up on any useful supplies.

“Hiller,” he said, before the team leader could walk off with the others.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like you to come with me.”

With Hiller beside him, Matt limped his way toward the gas station at the opposite end of the parking lot. Three long days of riding had stiffened up his leg more than usual, and left him with a dull, constant ache radiating from his knee.

If Rachel had been there, she wouldn’t have let him even leave the truck.

His sister. His beautiful, loyal, wonderful sister. What a mess of her life he’d made. She hadn’t been part of the Project, hadn’t known anything about it. He had let her believe he was dead for nearly a year, but it had been the only way to ensure that the Project forgot about him.

And what did he do when he finally contacted her? Pulled her into his madness.

Yet one more thing I’ll never be forgiven for.

As they neared the station, he told Hiller, “Stay here and make sure no one disturbs me.”

“Yes, sir,” Hiller said.

Matt walked past the pumps, pulled the satellite phone out of his pocket, and checked his watch. The correct window of time had just opened up, but, to be safe, he waited another thirty seconds before dialing the number.

The line was answered after half a ring.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” Matt said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” C8 said. “Like why the hell you think you need to come here yourself?”

“Because you can’t do what I can.”

A pause. “It’s an unnecessary risk,” the man said.

“Not to me.”

C8, like most of the Resistance’s other moles, was not someone who’d infiltrated the Project from the outside as Matt had always portrayed it, but a man who’d been a member since when Matt himself had been a part of the organization.

“When will you be here?” C8 asked.

“I’m an hour away right now.”

“What?”

“I told you I was coming.”

“I know…I just…I thought…”

“This is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.”

“I realize that.”

“So you can get me inside?”

A slight hesitation. “Yes.”

“Tonight?”

A much longer pause. “Yes.”

“Where do I meet you?”

Matt walked back to Hiller, the sat phone once more in his pocket.

“Everything all right, sir?” Hiller asked.

“Yes. All good.”

As Hiller turned to head back to the others, Matt put a hand on his arm.

“One moment,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. If your leg’s bothering you too much, I can go get the truck and bring it over.”

“Thank you, no. I actually need to talk to you.”

“Of course,” Hiller said. “What can I help you with?”

“We’re going to stay here in Alamogordo for a little while.”

Hiller’s brow furrowed. “What about Las Cruces?”

“We’ll get there, but not until it’s dark,” Matt said. “We won’t go together, however. I’ll leave first. You and the rest of the men will follow twenty minutes behind me.”

“You’re going alone, sir? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand because you haven’t been given all the details. And I’m afraid it’ll have to stay that way for now.” He gave Hiller the directions to a shopping center in the south side of the city. “You’ll wait there in case you’re needed.”

Hiller was clearly uncomfortable with the plan.

“This is a unique opportunity,” Matt explained. “But one that needs to be handled in a very specific way.”

“With you going in alone.”

“Correct.”

“Sir, I can’t lie to you. I don’t like this. Have you talked this plan over with anyone?”

Matt appreciated the kid’s concern, but it was a waste of time. Taking a harsher tone, he said, “If I have or have not talked to anyone about this, it is not your concern. This is what we will be doing. Understood?”

A reluctant “yes, sir.”

“Thank you,” Matt said. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’ve been at this fight a lot longer than you, so don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

“I wasn’t trying to suggest—”

“I know you weren’t.” Matt made a show of looking around the parking lot. “Now, while we’re waiting for the sun to go down, I need you to do something for me.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I need a car.”

The clear roads were a blessing and a curse. Back in the snows of Colorado and Wyoming, following Matt’s group would have been a simple matter of keeping eyes on his vehicle’s tire tracks, but in New Mexico, where the snow was only now threatening to fall, there were no ruts to show the way. So while Ash and the others could travel quickly, they had no idea if the convoy was still in front of them.

“Why don’t you call him?” Gardiner said.

“Do you really think he’d tell us where he is?” Chloe asked.

“Maybe someone else will answer.”

“Not if I know Matt,” she said. “Hell, he probably turned the damn phone off.”

“What about Rachel?” Josie suggested.

“Who’s Rachel?” Ginny asked.

“Matt’s sister,” Brandon told her.

“Maybe she knows where he is,” Josie added.

“I doubt it,” Chloe said.

Ash pulled the satellite phone out of the bag between the two front seats. “Maybe not, but it’s a good idea, Josie. We’ll give it a try.”

He punched in the number for Ward Mountain.

The call was answered with, “Can I help you?”

“Crystal?”

A slight pause. “Yes?”

“It’s Daniel Ash. Wondering if I can speak to Rachel.”

“Captain Ash? Definitely! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you guys for her all day. Hang on. I’ll go find her.”

Ash looked back at Chloe. “They’re getting her.”

“My money’s on she doesn’t know anything,” Chloe said.

Over two minutes passed before Rachel picked up the other end.

“Ash. Thank God,” she said.

“Afternoon, Rachel.”

“Please tell me you’re heading back to Nevada,” she said.

“I know that’s what Matt thinks we’re doing, but we’re not. We’re trying to catch up to him, but hoping you might be able to tell us exactly where he is.”

“What?” she said, confused. “You’re with him, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said, surprised by the question. “Matt left Chloe and me with the kids and told us to head to Nevada.”

“And he went to New Mexico,” she said, sounding as if it were inevitable.

“Yeah. Didn’t you know that?”

“He said he was going to go, but I was hoping he would come to his senses.”

“His senses? You don’t think he should have gone?”

“Of course not. He’s in no condition to be out in the field, especially if he’s going inside that damn place.”

“So I take it you don’t know where he is.”

“Somewhere near Las Cruces, I would guess.”

“Yeah, well, we knew that much. We’re hoping to avoid showing up at the wrong time and making things worse.”

“I don’t understand why you guys aren’t with him right now,” she said. “I mean, I get it with the kids, but someone else could have brought them here. You and Chloe should be with Matt.”

“That’s what we thought, too, but Matt was concerned about our injuries. Didn’t think we’d be up for it.”

Dead air, then, “Oh, God.”

“What?” Ash asked.

“Look, I’m…sure he was concerned about your injuries, but I have a feeling that’s not the main reason he didn’t bring you along.”

“Well, then why?”

“Because either of you would have stood up to him, kept him from doing what I think he’s going to do.”

“And what’s that?”

“God, I hope I’m wrong.”

“Rachel, what?”

“I think he’s going into that facility alone.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’m sure he thinks he’s the only one who can do this.”

“Why would he think that?”

She hesitated. “Because he’s been there before. And because he thinks it’s his responsibility.”

“Why would Matt have been in a Project Eden base?” he asked.

“It was years ago,” Rachel said.

“I didn’t ask when. I asked why.”

A long pause. “Because he was part of the crew who helped build it.”

Ash put his hand over the phone and looked at Sorrento. “Pull over. Now!”

As soon as the Humvee was at the side of the road, Ash hit the speaker button. Chloe needed to hear this, and, as much as he wished he could keep it from everyone else, there was no other way.

“Rachel, tell me how Matt was involved in the construction of Project Eden’s Las Cruces facility.”

Eyes throughout the truck widened in surprise.

“Please don’t ask me that,” Rachel said.

“Too late.”

A sigh, then in a low, defeated voice, “It wasn’t just Las Cruces. He helped build a lot of different Project Eden bases. That’s why our facilities are so good. He saw what they had done, and tried to create something even better.”

“Was he on an outside construction crew, or was he a member of the Project?”

“Ash, please understand, he didn’t realize what he was getting into. It was a job offer with great pay. When you joined the Project back then, they didn’t always tell you everything up front.”

“He was in the Project.”

“Yes.”

“Is he still?” Ash asked.

“How can you ask that? After all he’s done? After all that’s happened to us?”

She was right. Matt’s actions in the last several years would not have made sense if he were still in the Project. But it was a necessary question, so he wasn’t about to apologize. “When did he get out?”

A few seconds passed before Rachel said, “There was a group of them who figured out what was really going on, and realized they had to do something about it. Most remained in the Project to do what they could from the inside.”

“Your sources,” Chloe said.

“Yes. Many of them.”

“And Matt?” Ash asked.

“He and a couple others volunteered to leave the Project so they would be freer to fight it. No one just leaves the Project, though. To get out, they would have to die. Matt’s death was the easiest, from what I was told. With the help of others who were remaining behind, he set it up to look like he was killed in a construction accident at one of the facilities. The other two were going to fake a plane crash, only something went wrong and they both lost their lives.

“Matt lay low for a while to make sure no one suspected anything. While he was doing this, he obtained a new identity, the one you know him by, and had some plastic surgery done so he could walk down the street without being nabbed. Once he was sure they weren’t looking for him, he started up the Resistance.”

Ash wasn’t sure what to say. It made sense, of course. How else would Matt have known so early about the Project’s existence and the need to stop them? What bothered Ash wasn’t that Matt had been a member of Project Eden, but the fact he’d hidden it from everyone.

“What about you?” Chloe asked. “Were you part of the Project, too?”

“No. Never. I didn’t even know what it was until…well, until Matt came back from the dead. That’s when I gave up my old life and promised I’d help him. And that’s all I’ve done since then.”

No one in the car said a word as they absorbed what Rachel had told them.

Ash finally broke the silence. “How’s Matt planning on getting into the facility?”

“I don’t know specifically. C8 will get him in.”

“C8?”

“That’s his inside contact.”

“Does C8 have a real name?”

“I’m sure he does, but I don’t know what it is,” Rachel said testily.

“I should have phrased that better,” Ash said. “I apologize.”

Rachel made no reply.

“All right,” Ash said. “So he’s going in alone with this C8 guy, and will try to take out the principal director. Have I got that right?”

“Yes,” she said. “But, Ash, you’ve got to stop him.”

“I’m not sure I want to stop him. If he really can accomplish what he told us he’s planning on doing, I don’t think that’s an opportunity we can pass up.”

“He can’t do this alone. You’ve got to keep him from going. We can find another way.”

“We could find him and convince him, forcibly if necessary, to take Chloe and me with him.”

“I guess you could,” Rachel admitted. “Not a great answer, though.”

“We still have our original problem,” Chloe said. “How are we going to find him?”

Ash thought for a moment, then said, “He’ll have to leave the others somewhere.” He turned to Sorrento. “Hand me that New Mexico map.” The driver gave it to him and Ash opened it up. “Where exactly is this base?”

“A few miles north of Las Cruces,” Rachel said.

“Off the interstate?”

“Not far from it.”

“Seems likely that Matt’s won’t want to chance putting the others right next to the base. So he’ll probably keep them in a town where they can blend in and hide if necessary. Las Cruces itself is an option.” He studied the map. “If he’s coming in from the north, maybe he’ll park everyone in Truth or Consequences, and if from the east, um, Alamogordo. So we have three choices.”

“What if they’re not in any of them?”

“One step at a time,” Ash said. “Rachel, we need to get moving here. We’ll contact you again as soon as we find them.”

“Please do.”

After the phone was stowed away, Chloe said, “So where do we start?”

“Truth or Consequences,” Ash said, pointing at the small town on the map. “We’re already heading that way. If they’re not there, we’ll backtrack north a bit and cut over to Alamogordo.” He showed both routes to Sorrento.

“Got it,” Sorrento said.

Chloe looked like she wanted to say something but was hesitating.

“What is it?” Ash asked.

She nodded discreetly toward the children.

“Right,” Ash said.

“Right, what?” Brandon asked. Apparently the nod had not gone unnoticed.

“I think we can find something here in Albuquerque to keep you all occupied.”

“Dad, no,” Brandon said.

“Uh-uh,” Josie agreed. “We’re staying with you.”

“Not this time,” Ash said.

“We’re not kids anymore,” Brandon said.

“Maybe not, but you’re still my kids. And this time, you’re staying here.”

Rachel had felt the others staring at her as she talked to Ash. Maybe she should have cleared the room again, but by the time the idea came to her, it was too late. It was probably better this way anyhow. It was time people knew the truth. Besides, it shouldn’t change anything.

At least, she hoped not.

After the call disconnected, she looked around at the disbelieving faces.

“Yes,” she said. “Matt was in the Project. I’m sorry you weren’t told before, but there it is. You can ask all the questions you want later. Right now, there’s still work to be done.”

28

Ben’s jeep whipped around another abandoned car without slowing.

She’s going to get herself killed, Martina thought for the millionth time.

In the three hours she had been following her boyfriend’s car, the brown-haired woman had kept the Jeep’s accelerator pressed to the floor. Only once had Martina been able to get close to the vehicle. That had been near the beginning of the chase. When the woman noticed her, she jerked the vehicle into Martina’s path, missing the front tire of the motorcycle by only a few feet. After that, Martina decided the better tactic was to stay several car lengths back and wait for the woman to eventually stop.

South they went, through Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, and Santa Barbara. As they sped down the stretch of the 101 squeezed between the mountains and the ocean, north of Ventura, Martina began to wonder if she would end up chasing the woman all the way to Los Angeles.

The answer turned out be no. A few miles farther on, as they came around a bend, she heard a loud pop and saw the Jeep jerk left and right before slowing. The culprit was a piece of metal in the road that had ripped open one of the vehicle’s front tires. Martina would have hit it, too, if she hadn’t already clamped down on the brakes.

Before the Jeep came to a complete stop, the woman jumped out and ran down the middle of the road. Martina weaved her bike around the Jeep and caught up to the woman in seconds.

“Stop!” Martina yelled.

The woman looked at her, wild-eyed. “Leave me alone!”

“Stop, dammit. I only want to talk to you!”

The woman yelled something incomprehensible, then sprinted forward in a burst of energy.

Groaning in frustration, Martina brought her bike to a halt, pushed down the kickstand, and hopped off. The woman may have had a few seconds’ lead, but Martina was an active college athlete. Twenty steps down the road, she clamped a hand on the woman’s shoulder and forced her to stop.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Martina asked. “Why wouldn’t you stop?”

The woman struggled to get away, but Martina held on tight.

“Let go of me! Let go!”

“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you!”

“Let go! I’m not going back. I swear to God I’m not!”

“Going back? Listen, lady, I’m not taking you anywhere. I just want to know how you got Ben’s Jeep and where he is.”

The woman stopped twisting around and looked at Martina, surprised. “Ben?”

“Yes! Ben. That’s his Jeep. How did you get it? Did he give it to you?”

“You know Ben?”

“I’m his girlfriend.”

“His girlfriend?”

“How did you get his Jeep?” Martina asked again, her patience all but gone.

“He, um, he didn’t need it anymore.”

There was sudden defiance in the woman’s voice, and Martina knew in that instant Ben hadn’t given it to her.

She gave the woman’s arm a jerk. “What do you mean, he didn’t need it anymore?”

“He’s dead,” the woman said, sticking out her chin. “He didn’t need it anymore because he’s dead.”

Martina’s grip on the woman’s shoulder slipped as every cell in her body went numb. “You’re lying,” she managed, her voice cracking.

“I’m not,” the woman said quickly. “He’s dead. I’m sorry, but he didn’t need the Jeep anymore.” She nodded back toward the vehicle. “You want it? Take it. I don’t care.”

Martina continued to stare at the woman. “He can’t be dead. He can’t be. How…how did—”

“The flu. Everybody’s dying from the flu. Don’t you know?”

“But that’s not possible. If it didn’t take me, it shouldn’t have taken him.”

The woman crossed her arms. “I don’t know what to tell you. He’s dead. Can I go now?”

Martina’s mind reeled as she tried to think of an alternative answer, something that would make what the woman said not true.

“His body,” she said, grabbing on to a sliver of light. “Did you actually see it? Do you even know Ben?”

“Of course I know him. I…I went to school with him in Santa Cruz. So, yeah, I saw his body.”

Martina’s peripheral vision began to dim. She swayed and half fell, half sat on the freeway.

“You’re wrong,” she whispered. “You’ve got to be wrong.”

She repeated it over and over.

When she finally looked up, wanting to ask the woman where his body was, the woman was gone.

Martina jumped up and ran back to her bike. “Hey! Hey, where did you go?

She had to find the woman. She needed to know where Ben’s body was. She had to see it for herself.

She started the engine and drove slowly away, her eyes searching both sides of the road.

“Hey! Come back! Where is he? You’ve got to tell me where he is!”

Her mind was so focused on the woman and Ben that she didn’t realize her friends had yet to show up.

“Everyone quiet, please,” Robert said, his hands raised high in front of him. “We can’t all talk at the same time.”

“Do we even know if this shot they gave us works?” someone shouted.

“Who are these people? I mean, it sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me,” another said.

“What if they’re right? What if there is no UN?”

“Please,” Robert said again, raising his voice. “Quiet down!”

All one hundred and twenty-nine Isabella Island survivors were gathered in the restaurant dining room at the very top of the hotel, the same room where Dominic had told them all about the outbreak, what seemed like years ago to Robert.

When the roar subsided to a rumble, Robert said, “I realize this isn’t what you expected to hear, but I felt it important to tell you exactly what we were told. Before you go forming too many judgments, though, let’s consider some facts. We all saw the shipping containers on TV. We saw the boxes releasing Sage Flu. We saw people dying, and governments going into emergency mode before the news finally went off the air. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say things only got worse after that.

“The thing is, we know this wasn’t a natural occurrence. Someone did this. Someone with a huge, well-organized operation. So you’ve got to think whoever these people are, they’ve planned on still being around. To me, it makes sense that they would want to run whatever was left.”

“Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind to believe this guy,” a guest named Phil Gatner said. “What if they’re the ones who put the virus out there? What if they’re the ones who want to kill us?”

“I guess it’s possible,” Robert admitted. “But it’s been hours since we received our shots, and if they wanted us dead, we would be already.”

Several people shouted questions and comments.

Robert raised his hands again. “Please! One at a time.”

Pax hovered outside the restaurant door for the first several minutes of the meeting. He had offered to speak to everyone himself, but both he and Robert agreed it would be better coming from someone the people of Isabella Island knew.

Pax did, however, decide to stay on the island while the medical team moved on to help others. Since this was the largest single group the Resistance had found so far, making sure they did everything they could to stay safe was a priority. He hoped the fact that he was willing to remain here by himself would convince them to take his warning seriously.

When it was clear the meeting was going to last awhile, he wandered out to the deck.

Pax loved the mountains. He couldn’t get enough of the Rockies, felt at home anytime he saw them, whether in Alberta, Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado. But the view here of the palm trees and the beaches and the sparkling sea did give the scenery up north a run for its money. He felt he could probably get used to it. It was hot here, too. That was a bonus that would take no getting used to at all.

He leaned against the railing, a gentle breeze blowing across his shoulders, and wondered if there might be other islands like this one, where groups had survived because of their isolation. The more he considered it, the more he thought there had to be. The Project Eden assholes had missed this place. They were bound to have missed others.

He hoped he was right.

For several more minutes, he watched the waves break near the shore and the water lap against the tan beach. He was starting to push himself up, thinking he should go back and check how the meeting was going, when something on the horizon caught his attention.

“There’s not enough information,” Maureen Johnston said. “How are we supposed to decide what to believe without all the facts?”

“Exactly how are you expecting us to get all those facts?” Kim Sutter countered.

“I don’t know. I’m just saying we need to make the correct decision.”

“What are you, an idiot?” Kim said. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Hey!” Robert said. “Let’s try to keep it civil, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Kim said. “But, Robert, you know there’s no way to know all the facts.”

“We’re only hearing people out right now,” Robert said. “Who was next?”

Several dozen hands shot up. Robert pointed at a German guy named Herman Wolfe.

“In my opinion, we are missing a very important point,” Wolfe said. “If there is no United Nations, then what will take—”

The door at the back of the room flew open and Pax ran in.

“Robert, may I see you for a moment?” he said.

“We’re still in the middle—”

“Please.”

Pax looked distressed, so Robert nodded and said to the group, “You all have plenty to talk about amongst yourselves. We can pick this up when I come back.”

Loud conversations immediately broke out all over.

When Robert reached Pax, he said, “What’s going on?”

Pax put a hand on his back and started leading him to the door. “Not here.”

They walked out of the dining room and into the open-air lobby.

“Where do you keep the radio?” Pax asked.

“Downstairs, behind the bar.”

“Are all your food supplies up here in the restaurant?”

Robert shook his head. “No, in the kitchen by the bar.”

“Okay, then we’re going to need a few people.”

“Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“I will, but first grab four or five folks you trust, and let’s get down to the bar.”

Robert returned to the dining room and rounded up Enrique, Chuck, Estella, and Manny Aguilar.

“What’s going on?” Renee asked as he was leaving again.

“I’m not sure. Just keep everyone occupied. I won’t be long.”

Pax led the group down to the bar, and let Robert show them the rest of the way to the radio room.

“All right, fire it up,” Pax said. “There’s a plane out there. We need to find out who they are.”

“A plane?” Chuck said. “More of your people?”

“Let’s hope so, but I doubt it.”

Robert activated the radio and pushed the talk button. “This is Isabella Island calling unidentified aircraft. Do you read me?”

Static.

“Try again,” Pax said.

“Isabella Island calling unidentified aircraft. Come in, please.”

No response.

“You sure you have it set right?” Pax asked.

“This is the same frequency we used to talk to your plane and the one that said it was from the UN the other day,” Robert told him.

Pax looked like it was the answer he was expecting but didn’t want. “Do you have any duct tape? Plastic sheeting?”

“What?”

“Do you have any?”

“Um, there’s probably duct tape in the maintenance room, but no sheeting that I know of. Pax, what the hell’s going on?”

“What about tarps?”

“Yeah. We have tarps, but—”

“You and I will go to the maintenance room.” Pax turned to the others. “You four grab as much food as you can and take it up to the restaurant, things that will be easy to make and can stretch for a couple of days for everyone. You probably have time for two trips at most.”

“You’ve got to tell us what’s going on!” Robert said.

“That plane,” Pax said. “I’m pretty sure that’s your ‘UN’ friends coming back. And I can guarantee you if it is, they’re not bringing you vaccine.”

The Isabella Island survivors nearly went into full revolt when they saw all the supplies being carried in.

“Listen up,” Pax said. “I realize many of you don’t believe a word I told Robert, but here’s your chance to get your proof to see whether I’m lying or not. We have a plane heading this way. If it just flies by and doesn’t cause any problems, then you can lock me up or put me in a boat and shove me out to sea.”

“What do you think they’re going to do?” someone asked.

“If I’m right, your island is about to be doused with the Sage Flu,” Pax said. “Now, if some of you would be so kind as to help us seal up the room, that would be appreciated.”

“That’s ridiculous!” someone yelled.

“Why are we even listening to him?”

“What if he’s telling the truth?”

Robert jumped up on a chair. “Seems to me we’ll know soon enough if he’s lying or not, so it’s not going to hurt us any to do as he asks. Who’s going to help?”

Several hands shot up. After Robert divided them into groups of three, they began working their way through the room.

They were nearly finished with the last window when they heard the drone of the approaching plane. Pax applied the last bit of tape, and then he and Robert went over to where the others were sitting.

The sound of the plane continued to grow louder and louder until it passed not more than a hundred feet directly above them. After it flew by, one of the survivors cocked his head to the side, and then several others did the same.

The sound was soft, almost nonexistent, like the gentlest of rains.

Pax moved over to one of the windows and peeled back the corner of the tarp. Liquid dripped down the outside of the glass. As he motioned for Robert to join him, the plane approached the island again.

“Don’t get too close,” Pax said. “Just a quick look.”

He lifted the flap again.

“Is that it?” Robert asked.

Pax nodded. “All wrapped up in a nice little liquid delivery system the people you thought were from the UN developed for stubborn locations like yours.”

The plane flew overhead again, spattering more of the liquid onto the window.

Pax looked up toward the noise. “Another fifteen minutes and they’ll have covered every inch.”

“Why would they do that?” one of the guests asked.

“They’re in charge now,” Pax said. “You’re excess humanity, and not part of their plan.”

Robert was quiet for a second. “The flu won’t hurt us, though. We’ve been inoculated.”

“You have, and chances are you’d be fine, but you only received your shots a few hours ago. It’s better if we let your immunity build up a bit more. Besides, that’s quite a concentration they’re dumping out there right now. We need to let it thin.”

“So how long do we have to stay in here?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll check in with the medical team. They can give us a timeline.”

Robert scanned the room “You think this place is safe?”

“Safer than being out there.”

29

Ash had been positive they would find the Resistance convoy in Truth or Consequences, but they had searched all the logical places the others could have been, and there was no sign of them.

Having no choice but to move on, they headed for Alamogordo, a trip that took them two and a half hours. When they arrived, they began working their way through town.

“Try this one,” Chloe said as they approached 10^th Street.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sorrento said, and took the turn.

“Anything?” Ash asked a few moments later.

“Nothing over here,” Chloe said.

“I don’t see anything,” Gardiner threw in.

Ash looked toward the back of the truck. “What about you?”

“All looks the same to me,” Rick said.

Ash hadn’t wanted to bring the kid along, but leaving him behind with Brandon didn’t seem like a good idea, either. Davis would have probably been able to keep Rick in check, but Ash thought it was better not to tempt fate. When Brandon asked why Rick was allowed to go but he wasn’t, Ash had said, “Because he’s sixteen and you’re not.”

“Hey, what’s that?” Gardiner said.

He was sitting behind Sorrento, his gaze locked on a parking lot, left of the vehicle. While Sorrento slowed the truck, both Ash and Chloe adjusted their positions so they could see out Gardiner’s side.

“What are you looking at?” Chloe asked.

“Up there, near the building. Gas cans, I think.”

He was right. In the floodlights that still lit up the parking lot, Ash could see over a dozen cans stacked side by side.

“Let’s check it out,” he ordered.

Sorrento pulled into the lot and stopped. As Ash and Chloe hopped out, they were greeted by a blast of frigid air, the temperature having taken a drastic downturn since their last stop. The only question now was whether they would have a wet snow or an icy rain when the storm decided it was time to open up.

Chloe knelt next to one of the cans and tilted it toward her. “These look like the same type we picked up in Sheridan.” She unscrewed the cap and gave it a sniff. “This one was full recently.”

“Looks like they were here,” Ash said.

“Only one way they could have gone.”

“Yep.”

Wicks read through the report again, but still found he couldn’t focus on the words, his mind understandably preoccupied. Knowing it wouldn’t be any better if he tried again, he clicked the box indicating he’d read and approved it, and sent it on its way.

He glanced at the clock in the top corner of his screen. It was time to go. He opened the bottom desk drawer, reached underneath it, and pulled off the envelope he’d taped there. He stood up, stuffed the envelope in his pocket, and left his office.

“Mr. Wicks!”

Wicks looked back. Adrian Bernstein, one of the true believers who worked under him, was leaning out of his office.

“What is it?” Wicks asked.

“I just received some additional stats from western Africa. I assume you want those included in the report.”

“I was under the impression it was already included.”

“I didn’t realize you were going to send it out early. I thought I had another hour.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Wicks said. “I’ve been called into another meeting. I don’t have time to deal with this. Write up an addendum and send it out.”

“Yes, sir. Of course,” Bernstein said. “Would you like that broken down as—”

“Adrian, don’t make me do your job for you.”

Wicks walked quickly away before the other man could speak again.

He took a route he knew would be less trafficked so he could increase his pace without drawing undue attention. As he neared the elevator, though, he heard steps coming from the other direction. It was too late for him to head back into one of the corridors that led off the elevator lobby without being noticed by the approaching person, so he continued on.

Reaching the elevator, he realized he had a serious problem. While his own ID pass was right there in his pocket, the one he needed to swipe in front of the reader to call the elevator was still in the envelope in his pocket. How was he supposed to retrieve it without being noticed? He stared at the elevator, paralyzed by indecision.

“Evening.”

Wicks jerked back at the sound of the voice. Standing next to him was a gray jumpsuit-clad security guard named Cliff Eames.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Eames said.

Wicks attempted a disarming smile. “My fault. Lost in thought.”

“Call the elevator already?”

“What? Oh, uh, no. I…”

“No problem. I got it.”

Eames flashed his ID badge in front of the reader. Less than thirty seconds later, the door for car number two opened and the two men entered.

“Business up top?” Eames asked.

Wicks had prepared for this question, only in his mind it hadn’t been a security guard who asked, but one of the warehouse workers.

Again with the smile. “Inventory discrepancy on one of my department reports. Needed to stretch my legs, so thought I’d check it out myself. You going on duty?”

“Monitoring room tonight.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Boring, more like it.”

When the door opened at the top, Wicks motioned for the guard to go first and said, “Don’t work too hard.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Wicks spent a few minutes walking down aisles and acting interested in some of the items stored there. When he reached the auxiliary exit, he finally removed the badge from the envelope. He’d cloned it several days earlier from an ID belonging to a manager in an entirely different department, after receiving the message he would be having a guest.

Two other items were in the envelope: a key fob-sized signal scrambler, which, when activated, would interfere with the links to security cameras within a twenty-five-foot radius of the device; and a piece of paper with information he’d waited far too long to obtain.

He turned on the scrambler, opened the door with the cloned card, and headed down the tunnel to the outside.

“Why isn’t this working?” Bobby yelled in frustration.

“You’ve checked everything?” Tamara asked.

“Of course I have, like twenty thousand times.”

“You’re obviously missing something.”

He looked at her as if contemplating whether gutting her or ripping her head off would be the more enjoyable task.

“I’m just saying the answers has to be there somewhere,” she told him.

“No kidding,” he said.

“Okay, okay. I didn’t mean to upset you. Look, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes. Clear your head. I’ve got a Coke that’s still cold if you want it.”

He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, all right. Toss it here.”

Surprisingly, Bobby had been able to get the uplink working for North and South America, portions of Europe, and nearly all of Asia. He also told Tamara he felt confident he could bust in on the current signal. That was not something he could test, though. They’d have to save that until they were ready to go, in case the Project Eden techs could figure out a way around it and block any future attempts. That would be disastrous.

The problem he was having was one of input, something that should have been easy to solve. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t get the system to accept the video file he was trying to feed it.

“Maybe if I rerouted the playback machine again,” he said, then took a drink. Not only had he tried that at least four times, he’d also worked through a dozen different playback machines.

If only it was as easy as their old stand-ups had been, Tamara thought. Back then, in their news days, all they needed was a camera and the van that linked them to the satellite and they could broadcast from anywhere.

She leaned back. “Bobby.”

“Yeah.”

“We did bring the camera, didn’t we?” They had recorded the file in Washington, DC, with the deserted White House in the background. While that image would add dramatic flare, it was the message that was important.

“It’s out in the car,” he said. “But if you think recording the message again might work, forget it. It’s not the file. I’ve tried it on a bunch of computers, and it plays perfectly.”

“No, I was thinking maybe we could do it live.”

“Live?” His eyes lost focus for a second as he fell into thought. “Probably would need to…and then…yeah, yeah…and…”

“Will it work?” she asked.

He stared at nothing for another moment before turning to her, the start of a grin on his lips. “Yeah. I think it might. It means you’ll have to keep talking until I figure out how to get the playback going, though.”

“I can do that.”

Unlike elsewhere in the city, where parking lots and streets were all but empty, the lot serving the Mountain View Regional Medical Center and the road feeding into it were packed with cars. It was the same pattern Matt had seen in other towns, vehicles left behind by the desperate who had rushed to medical facilities only to die there.

It was heart wrenching and depressing, but the hospital was also the perfect rendezvous location. Matt parked the car Hiller had obtained for him in Alamogordo and waited. If someone from Project Eden happened to be in the area, they would drive right by and never know he was there, hidden among all the cars.

He’d been there for an hour, and had spent most of it staring out the window, trying not to think about anything. But of course that was impossible. He knew the dead in the cars surrounding him, in the homes he’d driven by to get there, in everything everywhere. Each body represented someone he should have saved. Someone he had failed.

He could have done so many things differently, small things that would have rippled out and brought about entirely different results. He could see that so clearly now. But there was no going back. There were no do-overs, no second tries. The billions who lay at his feet would always be there.

When he heard a motor in the distance, he climbed out of the car, removed from the back seat the duffel bag containing the special presents he’d brought for the principal director, and walked over to the parking lot entrance.

The car approached, lights off. Nearing the entrance, it slowed, and then stopped entirely as the driver caught sight of Matt. For several moments the two men stared at each other across the dimly lit space between them — the presumed dead, former Project Eden member and his friend who had stayed, both older now but neither as wise as they wished they had been.

Curtis Wicks made a U-turn. As soon as he stopped at the curb, Matt opened the door and climbed in.

“Hello, Curtis,” Matt said.

“I…I don’t know what to call you,” Wicks said.

“I’ve been Matt for so long, I don’t think I could answer to anything else.”

Wicks held out his hand. “Good to see you, Matt.”

Matt shook it. “You, too, my friend. You, too.”

“What about there?” Sorrento asked.

The Humvee had just entered the Las Cruces city limits.

Ash looked through the light snowfall at the set of interconnected buildings Sorrento was pointing at. It appeared to be a school with several large parking areas. Perfect place for a convoy to hide.

“Yeah. Let’s take a look.”

The passing hours hadn’t made Hiller like the situation any more than he had when Mr. Hamilton told him what was going to happen. Sure, Mr. Hamilton was the boss, but going off on his own? That was crazy. What could he possibly accomplish by himself? He should have, at the very least, taken one of the men with him.

But Hiller had been trained to follow orders, and Mr. Hamilton’s orders were to wait thirty minutes after he left Alamogordo, then proceed to the Las Cruces shopping center where they now were, and wait.

“Be ready,” Mr. Hamilton had said. “If I need you, I’ll call, but if nine p.m. comes and I haven’t, don’t hang around. Get to Ward Mountain as quickly as possible.”

Hiller checked his watch. There was less than an hour to the deadline.

No, he didn’t like this one bit.

Matt felt his chest constrict as they pulled to a stop near the warehouse that sat above NB219. It had been a long time since he’d been so close to a Project Eden facility, and even longer since he’d been near this one, back when it was still under construction.

“We have to hurry,” Wicks said. “I have to be in my office in ten minutes. And it won’t look good if I’m late.”

He led Matt to the auxiliary entrance, located one hundred feet from the side of the warehouse. Meant primarily for emergencies, it was below ground, the door situated in a cutout that had been made to look like part of an arroyo. To open it, Wicks placed an ID card against a reader attached to the frame, and they were in.

A tunnel sloped gently upward, taking them all the way to the warehouse level. Another door, another reader. After the lock clicked open, Wicks held up a hand, telling Matt to stay put while he slipped through the doorway.

Matt was beginning to feel his friend had been gone too long when the door opened and Wicks waved him inside.

“We’re all clear,” Wicks whispered. “Here, put these on.” He was holding out a dark gray jumpsuit and matching baseball cap. “It’s what security wears.”

Matt put the duffel on the ground and donned the suit. After he zipped it up, he pulled on the hat, wearing it low so the bill would shade his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, picking up the duffel.

Wicks led him through the packed warehouse, and made Matt wait again in one of the aisles while he summoned the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, Matt walked as briskly as his bad leg would allow, from his hiding place and into the car with Wicks.

“When we get out, follow me,” Wicks instructed. “But not too close. Don’t make it look like we’re together.”

As Matt followed Wicks off the elevator two minutes later, he had another overwhelming moment of dread. He was actually here, in the belly of the beast. Suddenly the plan he’d made seemed ridiculous, impossible. There was no way it was going to work.

Stop it! he told himself. Take things one step at a time.

While the warehouse level had seemed deserted, down in the heart of NB219 plenty of people were passing from one hallway to another through the elevator lobby. Matt almost forgot to check for the panel but caught himself in time. It was there, all right, a few feet to the left of elevator car number one. Exactly where he remembered it.

Though he was increasing his physical discomfort, he did everything he could to minimize his limp as he followed Wicks down the hallway. Unfortunately, this required him to walk at an even slower pace than usual, so he fell farther and farther behind. When Wicks finally noticed, he was almost out of sight, and had to slow his own pace considerably until a more comfortable distance between them had been restored.

Matt was fairly sure no one had noticed him, but he was more than a little relieved when Wicks led him into an empty office and shut the door.

“Take this,” Wicks said, handing him the ID card he’d used to get them into the warehouse and to call the elevator. “It’ll open any door except to the principal director’s suite.”

“How am I supposed to get to him, then?” Matt asked.

“You don’t have to get into his suite. There’s a planning meeting at eleven p.m. in the conference room two doors down from here. No one’s using this office so you can stay in it right until the meeting starts.”

“You’re sure he’s going to be there.”

“He’s the one who initiated it. Wants to know where things are on the preparations for the recovery phase.”

“All right. Good.”

Wicks looked at his watch. “I need to leave.”

“Curtis, wait a second,” Matt said.

He set the duffel on the desk, unzipped it, and pulled out a plastic-wrapped package.

“You’ll find sixteen devices inside. Place them wherever you can, out of sight. The wider dispersion the better. There’s a sticky side, remove the plastic, and they’ll stay where you put them.”

Wicks hesitated a moment before taking the package. “Do I really need to do this?”

“Yes,” Matt said. “You do.”

Wicks took a deep breath. “Right. I’m sorry. Of course, I’ll do it.” He took the package from his old friend.

Before heading for the door, he remembered the envelope in his pocket. He pulled it out and removed the piece of paper inside.

“Here,” he said, setting it on the desk.

Matt picked it up. “What is it?”

“Something you asked me to look into a long time ago.”

Matt unfolded the paper, read the words printed on it, and then looked at Wicks. “Is this—?”

“Yes.”

“But you said it didn’t exist.”

“I lied. I was scared and I lied. I’m sorry.”

He turned to leave.

“Hold on,” Matt said.

Wicks wanted to keep walking, but forced himself to look back at his friend.

“When the time comes,” Matt said, “you’ll want to be miles away from here.”

30

Wicks arrived at his office just in time for his meeting with two of his team members — Adrian Bernstein and Evelyn Courser. Predictably, they were already waiting outside his door.

“Did you take care of the western Africa problem?” he asked Bernstein as he led them inside.

“Yes, sir,” Bernstein said. “It’s all done. Again, I’m sorry that—”

“It’s done,” Wicks said curtly. “That’s all I care about.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Wicks moved around his desk, Bernstein and Courser started to sit down in the guest chairs.

“Don’t,” he said. “This needs to be quick.”

“Quick, sir?” Bernstein said. “But, uh, we’re supposed to be prepping you for the eleven o’clock meeting.”

“Do you think I don’t realize that? Unfortunately, I’ve been pulled into something else I need to deal with, so my time has become limited. I assume you put together notes?”

“Yes, sir,” Courser said.

“Then I suggest you highlight anything you were planning to point out, and send them to me. I’ll go over the notes before the meeting.”

Neither of his people looked happy with that solution, but Bernstein said, “If that’s what you’d like.”

“It is not what I’d like,” Wicks said. “What I would have liked was to take the full time for this prep meeting, and not be yanked around by those who have nothing better to do.”

“Of course,” Courser said.

“Right. No problem,” Bernstein threw in.

“Good. Then get to it.”

As soon as they were out of his office, Wicks shut the door and locked it.

Back at his desk, he opened the package Matt had given him. The devices were rectangular boxes made of some kind of plastic material. They were about three inches long by two wide, and another half inch thick.

Whatever their purpose, he knew it couldn’t be good, and the sooner he got rid of them, the better. He pulled his laptop bag out of the cabinet behind his desk, emptied out the pens and papers inside, and carefully transferred the devices into the wide center section.

When he finished, he took a deep breath, pushed himself up from his desk, and headed out.

Matt knew if things went wrong, he couldn’t be found with the piece of paper Wicks had given him. If that happened, the Project might be able to trace it back to Wicks and eliminate any possibility of the message finding its way to the Resistance. So he spent several minutes memorizing the three words it contained, and then crumpled the paper so he could easily get rid of it.

Having kept a second set of devices like those he’d given Wicks, Matt headed down to the conference room where the meeting was supposed to be held and placed two of the small boxes in there. One would have been more than enough, but he didn’t want to risk failure.

Using his rusty knowledge of the facility’s layout, he made his way as close as he dared to the NB219 director’s suite, which he assumed had been taken over by Principal Director Perez, and hid half a dozen devices along the corridor.

As he made his way back, he placed all but one of the remaining devices where he could, and returned to his office hideout. There, he removed three more items from the duffel bag. The first was a mobile phone with a single, remote-control application on it. The second was a set of five one-pound bricks of an extremely powerful plastic explosive that had been strapped together. And the third, a detonator.

After slipping the phone into his pocket, he inserted the business end of the detonator into the explosives, and put the whole thing back into the bag. As an afterthought, he reached into the bag, wedged Wicks’s message between two of the bricks, and left the office again, headed for the center of the complex.

Matt’s group had not been at the school. Nor had they been at the business park a few miles west. Nor in the lot of the Big Kmart near the interstate.

Thinking it unlikely his friend would have wanted his group stationed to the north, closer to the Project Eden base, Ash had directed Sorrento to go south on a road that paralleled the I-25.

“Looks like a big shopping center coming up,” Sorrento said.

It appeared to be an indoor mall, with a wide parking lot already blanketed with a thin layer of snow. The portion of the lot they could see was empty.

“Take us in and around,” Ash said.

Sorrento drove their truck into the lot and headed to the south end. As they made the turn around the mall, they were lit up by four sets of headlights.

“Hold on!” Sorrento yelled as he slammed on the brakes.

“Get out of your vehicle right now!” someone yelled from beyond the lights.

Ash whipped his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare.

“Get out now!” the voice ordered.

“I think those are Humvees,” Chloe said.

Ash squinted his eyes and could just make out the shapes of two of the vehicles. Chloe was right. He also spotted something else. Behind them and off to the side was the shadow of another vehicle. Not a Humvee. A cargo truck.

He reached for his door.

“What are you doing?” Chloe asked.

“It’s them,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He pushed out the door and stood in the opening, still on the truck. “Matt? Matt, it’s Ash!”

Hushed voices on the other side, then the lights cut out.

Ash squeezed his eyes shut, trying to readjust to the sudden darkness. When he opened them again, he could see someone stepping out from between the trucks.

“Captain Ash?”

Recognizing the voice, he said, “Hiller?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hiller took a few more steps forward and Ash could make out his face.

“We thought you were going to Nevada, sir,” Hiller said.

“Change of plans. ” Ash hopped to the ground. “I need to see Matt.”

“Um, Mr. Hamilton’s not here.”

“Please do not tell me he went to the base.”

“He did.”

“Alone?”

“I tried to get him to take one of us with him, but he wouldn’t go for it.”

Ash swore under his breath as he looked out into the storm.

“Where is he?” Chloe said, getting out of the truck.

“We’re too late,” Ash said. “He’s gone.”

“That son of a bitch. What does he think he’s doing? How the hell is he going to handle this on his own?”

Ash looked back at Hiller. “Do you know what he had planned?”

“No, sir. He just told us to wait here, and if he didn’t call in by nine p.m., we were to head for Nevada.”

“Tell me he took a gun with him, at least,” Chloe said.

“I don’t know. The only thing he had was a duffel bag.”

“What was inside?” Ash asked.

“No idea.”

Ash rubbed a hand across his chin. With a frown he said, “As much as I wish we could go blazing in and pull him out of there, it’s not an option. But sitting around here and waiting isn’t, either.” He looked at Chloe. “You and I are going to move in close. Hiller, I need two of your best men to come with us.”

“That would be me and Lin,” Hiller said.

It didn’t surprise Ash that Hiller would want to come along. “Okay, the two of you pull together some weapons and whatever gear you think we might need. Chloe and I will appropriate one of those cars over there.” He nodded toward the part of the lot where a handful of cars were scattered. Any of them would be stealthier than using one of the Humvees.

“What’s the plan?” Chloe asked.

“We watch. If there’s any way to tell if Matt’s in trouble, we go in. Worse case, we’ll be a hell of a lot closer if he does call for help.”

“So?” Tamara asked.

“Another second. I’ve almost got it,” Bobby told her.

“FYI, not the first time you’ve said that.”

“If you’d stop talking to me, maybe I could…there! I think that’s it.” He pulled out from the rack where his head and arms had been buried. “Let’s give it a try. Get in front of the camera.”

The camera was aimed so that the rows of workstations would be seen in the background. It wasn’t as dramatic a backdrop as the White House, but Tamara felt it would do.

She moved into position. “All set.”

Bobby typed a few commands into the computer he’d been using, and Tamara’s image filled the giant wall screen.

“Are we going out?” she said surprised. “Is this it?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Only an internal test. But it means it works.”

“So we can do it?”

“Yeah. Whenever you want.”

“Now,” she said. “Let’s do it now.”

Grinning, Bobby turned back to the computer. “I’ll point at you when you’re live, but give it a couple of seconds before you start. You know, for everyone to realize that jerk isn’t on the air anymore.”

He input the string of commands he’d worked out earlier. In theory, they would override the Project Eden signal and replace it with their broadcast, but since this was the first time he was trying them out, he couldn’t help but feel he should be crossing his fingers. As he typed in the last few characters, he muttered, “Please work,” and punched the ENTER key.

His gaze shifted to the four small monitors he’d hooked up on the neighboring desk. Each had a piece of white tape stuck in the bottom corner, with letters written on them — NA for the North American feed, SA for the South American, E for the European, and A for the Asian. Until that moment, all four monitors had been playing the message from the faux secretary general of the UN.

Now, one by one, Tamara’s image began replacing Di Sarsina’s. When she appeared in the last monitor — the one for North America — Bobby pointed at her.

She waited a few beats, and then began.

“My name is Tamara Costello. Some of you might remember me as a reporter at PCN. This is not a PCN broadcast. They do not exist anymore. None of the networks do. My purpose for speaking to you is to expose a lie you have all been told. Gustavo Di Sarsina is not the secretary general of the United Nations. I am not sure Gustavo Di Sarsina is even his real name. I do know that the United Nations no longer exists, and therefore it could have not initiated a worldwide effort to save those of us who are still alive.” She paused. “The survival stations Mr. Di Sarsina talked about have nothing to do with survival. Mr. Di Sarsina and the people who are running these stations are the very same people who are responsible for releasing the Sage Flu on the world. The only purpose of these stations is to finish the job. To be clear, what I mean is that if you go to one of these ‘survival stations,’ you will die. Do not trust these people. Do not go anywhere near them. Do not let them know where you are. If you are someplace where English is not spoken but you understand what I’m saying, please, I beg you, translate my words so others will know, too. We need to stay alive. We need to survive.” She paused again. “My name is Tamara Costello. You might remember me as a reporter at PCN. This isn’t a…”

“We expect things will pick up in the next few days,” the regional director for southern Asia said.

“You’re lagging, and that’s a problem,” Perez said. “A few days is a few days too many. It should be happening—”

The door to his office opened and Claudia hurried in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but we need to end this call right now.”

“What’s going on?” Perez asked.

“You need to see this.”

The center screen went momentarily blank before another image appeared, of a woman standing in some kind of control room.

“This just started broadcasting,” Claudia said.

“What do you mean, broadcasting? Where?”

“North America for sure, haven’t heard about anywhere else yet. It’s knocked our message off the air.”

He stared at her. “What? How is that possible?”

“We don’t know, sir.” Claudia looked at the screen. “You should listen.”

She touched a key and the woman’s voice boomed from the speakers.

“…is his real name or not. But what I do know is that the United Nations doesn’t exist anymore, so there’s no way it could undertake a worldwide mission to save everyone. The survival stations you’ve heard about? Those are being run by the same people who set off the outbreak in the first place…”

“How long has this been playing?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I can tell it’s not a loop. She’s saying some of the things I first heard, but not quite in the same way. I think it must be live.”

“Has the cyber division been notified?”

“They’re the ones who told me.”

“And they can’t take her down?” he asked in disbelief.

“They’re trying, but they’re not sure if they can.”

“What about her location? Where is she broadcasting from?”

“Unknown at this point, but we’re working on that, too.”

“Is she also on radio?”

“Last check, no. Only TV.”

Perez looked at the woman on the screen again, his eyes narrowing. How much damage could she actually do? Would anyone listen to her? Was anyone even watching television anymore?

“Find out how widespread this is,” he ordered Claudia. “And the moment we figure out where this is coming from, get someone there to shut her down.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “What should we tell everyone? If they haven’t seen it already, they soon will.”

Many of the monitors throughout the facility had been tuned to the Di Sarsina message, so they would now be displaying the woman’s broadcast. Claudia was right. It would have to be addressed.

“Patch me into the general comm.”

“Hey, Cliff. Look at this,” McCabe said to his colleague.

Cliff Eames swiveled his chair so he could look at the other security officer’s screen. On it was a camera feed from level three, specifically the area in front of the main elevator doors. Both sets of doors were currently shut. The display on the digital panel next to McCabe’s screen indicated both cars were up at the warehouse level, where McCabe and Eames were stationed. Standing to the left of the elevators, facing away from the screen, was a man in a gray security jumpsuit.

“Who is that?” McCabe asked.

Eames studied the man, but it was hard to tell much from the guy’s back. “I’m not sure. Jones?”

“That’s not Jones. Jones’s thinner.”

“What’s he doing?”

Both men watched the screen. From the movements of the man’s back and shoulders, and the occasional elbow sticking out to the side, they could tell he was busy at something.

“Got me,” McCabe said.

Eames knew there was probably a mundane answer to his question, but it was a quiet night — it was always a quiet night — and they didn’t have much else to do. “Back it up,” he said. “Let’s at least get a look at his face.”

McCabe pulled his keyboard out from under the monitor, accessed the menu, and reversed the feed to where the man walked into the picture. He pressed PLAY.

“I don’t know who the hell that is,” McCabe said.

“Me, either.”

Eames pointed at the screen. “Is he opening that?”

The man was carrying a duffel bag. As he reached the spot where they had originally seen him, he turned his back to the camera and began to unzip the bag, which was now blocked from view by the guy’s body.

“Go live,” Eames said.

McCabe switched back to a live shoot. “Dammit.”

The man was gone.

McCabe quickly reversed the video until they saw him leave.

“His bag looks lighter, doesn’t it?” McCabe said.

It did look lighter, but nothing obvious was left behind.

Eames rolled back to his own desk. “Find out where he went,” he said. He adjusted the microphone connected to his computer, and tapped into the security radio system. “Aldridge, this is Eames in monitoring. Proceed to level three, main elevators. Make it quick.”

The black Prius drove north out of Las Cruces with Ash in the front passenger seat, Hiller behind the wheel, and Chloe and Lin in the back.

Ash was holding the sat phone to his ear.

Two rings. “Can I help you?” a man said.

“This is Ash. Is Rachel there?”

“She’s right here, Captain. Hold on.”

A brief pause, then Rachel’s voice. “Ash, what’s going on? Have you found him?”

“He went to the base.”

“God, no.”

“We’re heading in that direction right now, but we don’t know exactly where it is.”

The line remained quiet.

“Rachel?”

“I’m sorry, what?” she said, clearly dazed.

“Rachel, we need your help. Where precisely is NB219?”

“NB219, um, right. Let me check.”

He could hear her asking someone for the base’s location.

When she came back on, she said, “We have a set of GPS coordinates. I’m not sure if they’re right, but they should be close. Is your GPS still working?”

“Last I checked,” he said. “Text the coordinates to me right now.”

Matt hurried down the corridors, wanting to get back to the safety of the empty office as soon as possible. The placement of the plastic explosives had taken him longer than he’d wanted it to. One of the screws holding in place the plumbing-access panel near the elevators had proved stubborn and needed extra effort to remove. Once it was out of the way, though, stuffing the explosives into the available space had been easy.

He was two minutes from his hiding place when the speakers in the hallway emitted a reverberating bong…bong…bong.

After the last tone faded, a voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Principal Director Perez. I’m sure some of you have noticed that our televised message has been replaced.”

Matt unconsciously slowed his pace. Replaced?

“For those who have not, the new message is an attempt to warn people from traveling to one of our survival stations.”

It had to be Tamara and Bobby, Matt realized. They’d done it. They’d actually done it.

“This message is too little, too late, and, I’m confident, will prove to be ineffectual. We are, however, in the process of returning our own message to the air, and dealing with those who are trying to stop us. I ask that you continue with the excellent hard work you’ve all been doing. Soon we will be moving into our recovery phase and…”

Matt picked up his pace again.

To hell with the eleven p.m. meeting. This was his cue to act.

“Eames, this is Aldridge. I’m at the elevators. What is it I’m supposed to be doing here?”

Eames could see the man on his screen. He keyed his mic. “To the left of car one as you face the doors, see if there’s something on the ground or the wall there.”

“Uh, say again?”

“On the left. You’re looking for anything that looks unusual.”

“Unusual like what?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I need you to look.”

Aldridge walked over to area where the man with the duffel bag had been standing. After a few seconds, he said, “Nothing on the ground, and the wall looks…wait a minute.” He paused and leaned closer. “I don’t know if this is what you mean, but there’s a scratch on the surface right next to one of the screws. Looks turned recently.”

That had to be it, Eames thought.

“You have something you can open the panel with?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got something.”

Aldridge pulled a Leatherman multi-tool out of his back pocket and set to work. As with when the other man had been there, Eames’s view was blocked.

Less than thirty seconds later, Aldridge said, “Holy shit,” and moved quickly back from the wall.

Eames could see the panel was off, exposing an area with pipes running through. There was also something oddly shaped stuffed on the side.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Somebody put explosives in there,” Aldridge said. “There’s a detonator sticking out of it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m no bomb expert, but that’s what it looks like to me.”

“Close down that area! Don’t let anyone without authorization anywhere near there. I’m sending someone to take a look at it!”

“Okay,” Aldridge said, sounding like he’d very much like to get the hell out of there himself.

Eames looked over at McCabe. “Did you find him?”

“One second.” McCabe stared at his screen, and smiled. “Got him. He’s in an office. Section 23. Room, um, 3C. I’ll send someone in.”

“No,” Eames said. Who knew what this guy might have with him in there? There were people at the base better equipped than the security staff to handle this kind of situation. Eames put a call through to the barracks.

“Sir, we have a situation.”

Sims was standing in the common room, at the back of the small crowd that had been watching the broadcast the principal director had just told them about. Sims looked back to find Neal Duncan, one of his men, standing behind him. “What kind of situation?”

“Security’s on the line,” Duncan said. In his hand was the wireless phone servicing the room. “They’re reporting an intruder who has possibly placed some explosives near the main elevators.”

Sims whipped around. “Give me that.”

Duncan handed him the phone.

“Who is this?” Sims asked.

“Eames in security, sir.”

“What’s this about explosives?”

Eames gave him a quick rundown, ending with a request for assistance.

“Keep your people away from there,” Sims said. “We’ll take care of it.” He hung up and looked at Duncan. “Get the men, now!”

Principal Director Perez looked up from his desk as the door opened, and was surprised to see Claudia returning so soon after having left.

“Have they found her?” he asked.

“Uh, no, sir,” she said, her face gravely serious. “There’s something else.”

“What?”

Matt removed the final item from the duffel bag, pulled on the straps, but left the apparatus sitting on top of his head.

He removed the remote control and unlocked the screen.

Wicks had distributed nearly half the devices by the time the principal director made his announcement over the intercom. After Perez finished, Wicks — like Matt — knew everything had changed. All he wanted to do at that point was get rid of the remaining devices and get out of there, so he was considerably less cautious in his placements. As soon as the last one was gone from his briefcase, he headed for the elevator, but was stopped before he could get there by security.

“Sorry, this area’s off limits at the moment,” the guard said.

“What’s going on?” Wicks asked.

“Security matter, sir.”

Wicks knew it had something to do with Matt, but what? Had they caught him? If so, even more reason for Wicks to get out of there right away.

The only available exit now, though, was the emergency stairwell. He took a second to remember where the entrance was and then headed off, hoping he wasn’t already too late.

Sims split his team into two groups. The first went to determine the nature of the explosive and whether it could be easily defused. The second — the group he took personal charge of — headed to section 23 to apprehend the intruder.

When they reached the correct hallway, they proceeded until they were four doors down from Room 3C.

Sims signaled one of his men to approach the door of 3C to determine if the intruder was still inside. The man moved down the corridor in a crouch and knelt by the door. After a moment, he held up his thumb and nodded.

Matt heard a noise just outside the office. It was faint, nothing more than a brush of cloth, but he knew what it meant.

It was okay. He was ready.

Sims and the third man with him joined the scout at the door. Sims motioned for the others to get ready, then he grabbed the knob and threw the door open.

“Down on the floor! Down on the floor!” he yelled as he and his men rushed in.

The intruder was there, but not on the floor. He was sitting on the desk, a gas mask covering his face.

In a distorted voice, he said, “Sorry to disappoint, but you’re a little late.”

Sims took another step forward. “On the fl—”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Matt said, “but you’re a little late.”

The one in charge took an angry step toward the desk. “On the fl—”

Matt pushed remote button number one.

The floor rocked as the explosives ripped apart the elevator shaft. The armed men staggered and looked back at the doorway as if they could see what had happened.

As they were turning back, Matt tossed the final plastic device on the floor at their feet, and pushed remote button number two.

There was no blast this time, no rocking floor, only the hiss of sarin gas releasing from the device. Throughout the facility, the other plastic boxes would be doing the same thing.

“On the floor, now!” the leader commanded.

Matt didn’t move.

“I said…on…the floor.”

All three men began to blink as the odorless gas reached them. One started coughing, and then another, and then the last. Guns were quickly forgotten as the men dropped to their knees.

Matt rose and stepped over to the leader.

“How does it feel? Dying?”

“Go to…” The man coughed. “Hell.”

“Maybe. You never know. You all, on the other hand, I think your tickets are punched.”

He waited until the leader fell all the way to the floor before searching the guy’s pockets and finding his ID badge.

“Let’s see, Mr.…” He looked at the badge. “Sims, Special Operations. Very nice. I’ll bet that gives you all kinds of interesting clearance.”

Matt picked up the man’s rifle and rose to his feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Sims. You’ve been a big help.”

He headed for the door.

Ash tilted the sat phone so he could look at the displayed map without snow falling on the screen.

“Should be right in front of us about a quarter mile,” he said.

If Project Eden’s base was anything like the one he and Chloe had broken into in Oregon, there would be a large, warehouse-type building at ground level. But the only thing in front of them at the moment was flat farmland covered in a light layer of snow.

“She didn’t guarantee it was accurate,” Chloe reminded him.

He huffed out a cloud of vapor and frowned. “We’ll drive on another mile or two. Maybe we can spot it.”

As he turned toward the car, Chloe said, “Uh, Ash. You think that might be it?”

He looked back around. About a quarter mile past the coordinates’ location, the red glow of flames illuminated the clouds.

“That wasn’t there a moment ago,” he said.

“It just shot up,” she said.

“Matt.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Let’s go,” Ash said, already heading toward the car.

Wicks had just passed level two when the metal staircase began to shake so violently, he had to hang on with both arms to keep from falling off.

His friend had apparently decided there was no longer any time to wait.

As soon as the shaking decreased to a gentle tremor, Wicks started up again, worried that if there were a second blast, the stairs wouldn’t hold. When he opened the door on the warehouse level, he was greeted by a wall of hot air radiating from a growing fire toward the center.

Toward the elevators.

Thank God he hadn’t been able to take them. He likely would have been dead by now.

The warehouse supplies were feeding the blaze, creating a fire too big for the overhead sprinklers to tame.

The main exit was on the other side of the flames, so his only choice was to use the auxiliary exit again. He’d have to use his own card to open it this time, which meant that if the computer databases survived, there would be a record of him leaving the building long before anyone else had a chance to escape. His only alternative would be to stay. Not an attractive option.

He swiped his card in front of the reader and rushed into the tunnel.

31

The explosion knocked Principal Director Perez to the floor. Claudia was only able to maintain her feet because she fell into his desk and held on tight.

As soon as he could, Perez shoved himself up.

“Are you okay?” Claudia asked.

“I’m fine,” he growled.

“Your head,” she said, touching a spot on her own forehead. “It’s bleeding.”

He touched his head and felt the cut that was spilling out blood. “It’s nothing. Get security. I want to know how the hell that happened! I thought someone was taking care of it.”

Claudia picked up the phone, but instead of punching in a number, she looked at Perez. “It’s dead.”

“Dammit. Can we get them on video?”

“Let me try.” She circled the desk to his computer. It still seemed to be working, but after several seconds, she shook her head. “They’re not answering.”

“Can we at least find out if there are any cameras out there still working so we can see how extensive the damage is?”

“Should be able to.”

It took nearly a minute before the center screen came on. The feed was from a camera in one of the hallways. No obvious damage, but several people were lying on the ground.

“Is this close to the explosion?” Perez asked.

“I don’t know. The system’s only giving me camera numbers, not locations.”

“Are there any others?”

“Hold on.”

The next feed came up thirty seconds later, an empty conference room.

“That doesn’t tell us anything.”

“I’m sorry. I told you all the labels are missing. I think the blast did something to the system.”

“Keep going.”

A new camera showed a wider hallway, lit only by two emergency lights spread far apart. More bodies on the ground.

“I recognize this,” Claudia said. “It’s one of the hallways leading to the elevator.”

The blast concussion must have been intense enough to knock everyone out.

“Is that someone?” he asked. Something was moving in the shadows at the far end.

“I can’t tell. Could be a camera glitch.”

She switched to the next feed.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

The image was of a common area. Like the corridor they’d seen first, there was no damage but there were bodies. Lots of bodies.

“This is near the barracks,” he said.

That was nowhere near the elevators, and he was sure the blast could not have done that to everyone. Were they being attacked by a whole squad?

“Is there an escape exit in here?” he asked.

While most of the Project Eden bases were the same, a few details changed from location to location — an escape exit in the director’s suite being one of them. Perez had been so busy since he’d taken over as principal director, he hadn’t had time to worry about such things.

“I don’t know,” she said. “The previous director didn’t share that information with me.”

Dammit.

“All right, you and I need to look for it. There’s got to be one here.”

She glanced at the monitor. “If we go out there, that’ll happen to us, too, won’t it?”

“Claudia! Help me find the exit!”

Not everyone Matt passed in the hallways was dead, but there was no question they soon would be. He felt no compassion for any of them, no guilt for what he’d done. Every last one of them had taken an active role in the deaths of billions. They deserved their fate. Just like he would eventually deserve his.

A fire was raging at the epicenter of the explosion, its heat prickling his skin. He idly wondered if the flames would consume all the air down here. If so, those who had survived his gas attack would live only to suffocate a few hours later. Again, the thought did not trouble him.

Not surprisingly, the door to the principal director’s suite was closed. Matt waved in front of the reader the ID card he’d taken from Sims, but nothing happened, not even a beep denying him access. He pulled out the card Wicks had given him, and encountered the same result.

That was all right. He had a solution.

Switching the rifle to semiautomatic, he aimed at the area around the lock and shot an arc through the door.

The gunfire didn’t frighten Perez. It merely focused his anger.

Claudia, on the other hand, screamed.

“Keep looking,” he ordered.

He ran his fingers under the countertop behind his desk. Three inches from the end farthest from the door, he found a switch. He pushed it, but nothing happened.

What the hell?

Out in the antechamber, the gunfire ceased.

He pushed it again, and this time heard a click under the cover. He dropped to his knees, sure he’d discovered the way out, but what he found instead was only the latch for the exit door. The escape exit itself had never been built.

He dove toward his desk, pulled open the bottom drawer, and fished around for the Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol he kept there. As he freed the gun, the door to his office flew open. He aimed across the room, but no one was there.

“Principal Director Perez,” a strange-sounding voice said from the other room. “It’s good to meet you.”

Perez aimed at the wall he thought the man was hiding behind, and pulled the trigger.

“Good thinking,” the intruder said. “And not bad on the aim, either. But these bases were built to last. No flimsy walls around here. Trust me, I knew the guy in charge of putting them in.”

Who the hell was this guy?

“What do you want?” Perez said.

“Already have what I want, thanks. You just aren’t aware of it yet.”

Perez moved to the other corner of his desk so that he’d have a more acute angle on the doorway He couldn’t see anything yet, so, with gun held out in front, he carefully stepped out from cover.

Across the room, Claudia coughed.

“Ah, that got back there quicker than I expected,” the voice said.

As Perez narrowed his eyes, unsure what the man meant, he had the sudden need to blink.

Another cough, but this one was his.

“Downward spiral from here, I’m afraid,” the voice said.

Perez staggered back to his desk, his chest heaving. Between blinks, he saw something move into the doorway. He lifted his hand, raising the gun, only he wasn’t holding it anymore. He looked around. It was on the ground where he’d started blinking. He took a step toward it but began coughing again.

“You won’t need that anymore,” the voice said, closer now.

The voice belonged to a man, that much Perez could tell, but what the guy looked like was hidden behind a full-face gas mask.

“How you feeling? Pretty crappy, huh?” The man looked past Perez. “I think your friend over there’s done for. Sorry about that.” He turned back to Perez. “You know what? That’s a lie. I’m not sorry.”

Perez could feel his strength draining away, but he wasn’t ready to collapse yet. “Who…are you?” he said.

“Me? I was a member of Project Eden, way before your time.” The man looked around. “I helped build this place. Yeah, but then I realized what was really going on. Been trying to stop you guys ever since. The destruction of Bluebird? That was my people. The message you were telling everyone about tonight? Mine, too.”

The gnat, Perez realized. This man was the gnat who had been bugging the Project for years.

“You aren’t…going to stop…anything,” Perez said, forcing each word out. “The Project’s too big.”

“I guess that’s a wait-and-see thing, isn’t it? Only you won’t be around to see it. But trust me, it’s going to happen.”

Perez doubled over in a coughing fit.

“Bet that hurts,” the man said. “You know, it’s amazing what you can find when you hunt around a deserted military base. I guess I could have taken a nuke, but that would have been too heavy to carry in here. The gas is a nice touch, though, don’t you think? From the poetic point of view, it would have been better if it was some kind of deadly disease you all weren’t vaccinated against, but this will work faster.”

Perez wasn’t about to give the man the satisfaction of his death. With his last ounce of will, he pushed himself up, and said as forcibly as he could, “This isn’t going to kill me.”

“Perhaps not,” the man told him. “Could be not enough of the gas got back here to kill both of you. That’s a shame.”

He raised his rifle and shot Perez in the thigh.

Screaming, Perez fell to the ground.

“Caught the artery on the first shot. Not bad,” the man said. “Now you are going to die. You’re going to bleed out right there on that nice carpet, in this nice office.” The man plopped down on the desk. “And I’m sitting right here until you do.”

Perez rolled onto his back, knowing the man was right.

I was so close. A few more weeks, maybe a month, and I would have truly ruled the world.

Through half-closed eyes, he looked at the man and whispered, “Fucking gnat.”

Matt waited until he was sure Perez was dead before leaving the office.

The former principal director had said his death would not stop the Project, and that was true, but it was a big step in that direction.

He wondered if Wicks had been able to get out. He hoped so. His old friend had done a lot for the Resistance from the inside, and didn’t deserve the death the others here had received.

Matt, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure about himself. There was a part of him that wanted to pull off his gas mask, and face the punishment he felt he deserved. Maybe if Wicks hadn’t come through with the information he’d passed along, Matt could have gone through with it, but now it wasn’t an option.

There was a thud somewhere in the hall behind him. Thinking it was probably the echo of something collapsing closer to the explosion, he kept walking.

Someone yelled behind him, the voice so strained and raw he couldn’t make out any words.

When he turned, he saw he was no longer the only one still breathing in the hallway. Down by the last corridor intersection, a woman was leaning against the wall. She was staring at him, her chest heaving. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before she joined her dead colleagues.

As she pushed from the wall and took a few staggering steps toward him, he realized he’d seen her before. She was the woman who had been in the office with Perez. Matt had seen her crumble to the floor and assumed she’d died.

Yelling again, she raised her hand as if to point at him, only it wasn’t her finger she was aiming in his direction.

32

Belinda Ramsey’s snowmobile ride south has taken her just over the Illinois border when the motor begins to smoke. Another two miles on, the machine dies. With no other options, Belinda starts hiking toward the town of South Beloit, hoping she can find someplace warm to sleep. She tells herself she will look for a new snowmobile, but in the morning. She’s too tired to do that now.

As she nears a neighborhood on the edge of town, she hears something in the distance. At first she thinks someone has left a music player on somewhere, perhaps looping through a playlist that will go on and on until the power finally goes out.

But it’s not music, she soon realizes. It’s words being spoken.

She skips the neighborhood and continues toward town, toward the sound, and it’s not long before she can start making out what’s being said.

“…help you. We will be in the parking lot of the high school on Prairie Hill Road in ten minutes. We will stay there for an additional thirty. This is the Untied Nations. We are here to help you. We will be in the parking lot of…”

Belinda starts to laugh in happiness. She’s not going to need a snowmobile tomorrow. She’s not going to ever need a snowmobile again. The UN is here. Her nightmare is over.

She searches for a road sign and finds she is actually on Prairie Hill Road. But she hasn’t seen a high school yet, and has no idea how far away it is.

Though the snow is not as deep here as it was in Madison, it’s still too deep for her to run through, so she has to settle for walking fast. Even then, it’s over twenty minutes before the high school comes into sight. She is both relieved that she doesn’t have far to go, and scared to death that the UN will already be gone.

But a blue tourist bus with UN painted in white on the side is idling in the parking lot.

She weeps as a soldier meets her at the lot’s entrance. She thanks him over and over as he gives her some food and guides her onto the bus.

Three of the seats are already taken. Their occupants, wrapped in blankets, stare at her. She smiles hesitantly, then notices not one of them is sitting near another.

Hiking her scarf over her face, she takes her own isolated spot.

As the bus begins to roll, she leans back and relaxes. Before sleep can take her, though, she remembers her journal and her promise to record her journey. She opens it, enters the time and date, and then writes a single word:

Ben Bowerman stands in the modest living room of the Cape Cod house in Santa Cruz where he found Iris the previous day. He has returned because it’s the only place he knows that she might come back to. But she is not there.

He’s now sure he will never see the picture his mother loved so much again, or retrieve the earrings he’d picked out for Martina. Tomorrow he will head south once more, this time in the car he found in Salinas. Tonight, he will find a hotel and sleep.

But he finds he can’t leave the house just yet. He wants to know what happened here, what he got tangled up in. If there are answers in the house, he figures he will find them in the dead man’s room.

Seeing Mr. Carlson on the bed for a third time is not nearly so disturbing as it was before. Ben can see now there’s something under the man’s hand, partly hidden by the covers. A piece of paper. Ben teases it free without having to touch body or blanket. There are words scribbled on it, but the writer’s hand was so shaky Ben can only make out “Iris” and “door.”

He searches the dresser but the closet is where he finds his answer. Tucked against one end is a filing cabinet, and every item inside pertains either directly or indirectly to Iris, Mr. Carlson’s daughter.

The words on the documents say many things, but all paint the same picture. The girl does not see the world the same way others do, and never has. Drugs have been tried, hospital stays, intensive therapy. Some appear to have worked better than others, but none truly well.

Ben wants to still feel angry at Iris, but he doesn’t.

What he feels instead is tired.

At some point, Martina gives up looking for the girl and just drives. She goes into the hills above Ventura, back to the coast, and finally down Highway 1 through Oxnard toward Malibu.

She runs out of gas not long before the sun goes down, so she leaves the bike at the side of the road, wanders aimlessly onto the beach, and sits on the berm crest, facing the water.

If she’s paying attention, she will see a beautiful sunset, but she’s not. Her mind is both idle and racing.

She doesn’t mean to, but she will sleep here tonight. And when she wakes in the morning, though she won’t voice it, she will feel for the first time that she is completely alone.

The one thing Sanjay did not take from the Pishon Chem compound was a box of syringes. While the others are resting as they wait for the sun to set, he and Kusum search local medical facilities until they collect enough syringes to give shots to everyone they have rescued.

Once darkness finally falls, Sanjay, Kusum, Jabala, and Prabal say good-bye to Arjun and Darshana, who will be staying in the city to try to stop others from going to the survival station. They then head out of Mumbai with the newly inoculated escapees, in a bus they find on a nearby street.

When they arrive at the boarding school, those they have rescued are given food and shown to empty dorms, while the boxes of vaccine are stored away.

“Why are you not sleeping?” Kusum asks Sanjay later as they lie in bed.

“Why are you not?” he counters.

“I am thinking about the vaccine.”

It’s what he’s thinking about, too. “We cannot wait for people to come to us,” he says. “We need to somehow let them know we can help them.”

“I know,” she says. “But how exactly are we supposed to do that without the people from Pishon Chem finding us?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “That is why I cannot sleep.”

The restaurant dining room of the Isabella Island Resort seems a lot smaller after so many hours with everyone jammed into it. Or maybe it’s knowing what they’re hiding from that’s making it feel like the walls are pushing in, Robert thinks.

The liquid that coated the windows after the plane flew over is now dry, but no one is foolish enough to think the danger has passed.

As the evening grows late, the satellite phone Pax has brought with him rings. When he finishes talking, he waves Robert over and says, “You’re going to want to turn on the TV.”

Robert does, and is surprised to find that Gustavo Di Sarsina has been replaced by a familiar face — Tamara Costello, a reporter he has seen on TV in the past.

No one sleeps for hours, as they all watch Tamara deliver her message over and over, never quite the same way twice. When the TV is finally turned off, even Pax’s most ardent critics are starting to believe he’s been telling the truth.

Robert’s eyelids grow heavy as he lies next to Estella later.

“Do you think they might come back?” she asks.

“Who?”

“These people. Project Eden. Do you think they will come back to make sure we are dead?”

Robert puts his arms around her and pulls her to him. After a moment, he whispers the only answer he can come up with. “I don’t know.”

Brandon makes a deal with Davis. He points out there is no way Davis can stay awake twenty-four hours a day, so Brandon lobbies to help with night watch and takes the first shift, from eight p.m. to one in the morning.

He likes the feeling of responsibility it gives him, but it’s still a poor substitute for going south with his father. He should have been on that trip instead of that idiot Rick. He understands why his father left him behind, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.

He is stewing over this when Ginny walks into the living room of the house where they’re staying.

“Sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“It’s okay,” he tells her.

She walks over and joins him on the couch that has been turned toward the window.

“I’m sure they’ll be back soon,” she says.

“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t want to talk about it.

“I wish your dad hadn’t taken Rick.”

“Uh-huh.” He really doesn’t want to talk about that.

She must sense his reluctance, because she says nothing for several minutes. When she finally talks again, she says, “It’s never going to be the same again, is it?”

She could mean a million different things, and probably does. “No. Not like it used to be.”

“So what is it going to be like?”

He shrugs. How the heck is he supposed to know that? But he realizes that’s not what she needs to hear. “It’ll be different, I guess. But someday it’s going to be good. You’ll be happy.”

“I’m not sure I can ever be happy again.”

He wants to promise she will be, but knows she will see right through him. So he focuses on the street, and says nothing.

When Ginny falls asleep fifteen minutes later, she slumps to the side, her head falling against Brandon’s shoulder. He thinks maybe he should move it, but it feels good there, makes him feel like he’s not the only person in the world.

Makes him feel like he’s doing good.

Ash instructs Hiller to drive the car to within a couple hundred yards of the warehouse. Though much of the structure is in flames, he can see the similarities between this building and the one in Oregon, and knows without question it belongs to Project Eden.

They grab their gear out of the back — weapons, rope, crowbars, wire cutters, and the like. Hiller pulls out a bag of gas masks and gives one to each of them.

“It could get smoky. These aren’t perfect, but they’re all we’ve got.”

Ash dons the mask, and throws a coil of rope over his shoulder before heading as quickly as he can toward the building.

He is still a good distance away when a man, also wearing a gas mask, appears on the bank of an arroyo that runs near the building. Ash raises his gun, but then notices the limp and lowers his weapon.

“Matt?” he yells.

The man does not seem to hear him, so Ash pulls the mask off his face.

“Matt!”

The limping man stops, looks in Ash’s direction, and falls to his knees.

As Ash rushes over, Matt rolls onto his hip and lies back in the snow.

“Hey,” Ash says. “You okay?”

He drops down next to Matt and pulls off his friend’s mask. There is pain in the man’s face, and his eyes are closed.

“Matt, can you hear me?”

The only reaction is a wince.

“Matt!”

It takes but a second for Ash to discover that Matt’s shirt is soaked with blood. He rips it open, and in the flickering light of the fire sees a bullet hole in his friend’s abdomen. He feels around the back, finds a hole where the bullet exited that’s three times as large as the entry point.

Applying pressure to the wounds, he looks around until he spots Chloe. “Over here! Over here!” Once he’s sure she’s seen him, he focuses on Matt again. “You’re going to be fine. Hang in there.”

Matt’s eyes flutter. “You…” he says.

“Quiet. Save your strength.”

“No, you…”

Ash hears the sound of running feet approaching from behind him.

“What is it?” Chloe shouts. “Is that…Matt?”

“Get the first-aid kit!” he tells her. “And have Hiller or Lin call the others in. We need the doctor and Lily here now!”

Chloe runs back toward the car.

“Ash,” Matt whispers.

“Don’t try to talk.”

Matt’s eyelids part a fraction of an inch. “Augustine…green..sky.” Each word hitches a ride on a different breath.

“What?”

“You…need to…know…”

“Augustine green sky?”

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

“Augustine dream sky.” As Ash says this, he sees some of the stress in Matt’s face melt away.

“Yes,” Matt whispers, his eyes closing again.

“What’s it mean?”

Matt whispers again, but his voice is now too low to hear no matter how close Ash moves in.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ash says. “Don’t worry about anything. It’s going to be fine.”

But he knows it’s not going to be fine, and before Chloe can return with the first-aid kit, he watches helplessly as the man who founded the Resistance takes his last breath.