The Breach

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

A phone began to ring. Somewhere in the dark. Travis felt Paige stir. She rolled toward the nightstand-the clock read just past four in the morning-switched on the light, and pressed a button for the speakerphone. Even as she answered with her name, she slipped under the covers again and hugged her body to his.

The voice that issued from the phone sounded scared. "Paige, it's Crawford. I'm at Secure Storage on B31. The attendants on duty called me down. There's something going on. Maybe you should come down here."

Her eyes locked on Travis's.

"Paige?" Crawford said.

"I'm here." She let go of Travis, sat up and swung her feet to the floor, hunting for her clothes. "Describe what's happening."

"We're not really sure. It has to do with the object you brought back from Zurich. The black cube."

"The amplifier," Paige said. She looked at Travis again.

In the background over the speakerphone, they could hear some kind of droning sound. Like someone humming, from deep in the diaphragm. It was the sound they'd heard on the ninth floor of 7 Theaterstrasse, just before everything went to hell.

"It's locked inside one of the vaults," Crawford said. "Where we put it yesterday morning. But it's making the sound you're probably hearing behind me. We haven't opened the vault yet. Not sure we should."

At that moment they heard a quick gap of silence over the phone, and Crawford said, "Paige, hold on, I've got a call from Defense Control. I'll put it on conference so I don't lose you." He clicked out for a second, and then they heard him say, "Defense go ahead."

A woman spoke. "Mr. Crawford, we have a situation up top. We're not sure how this is happening, but there's a radar contact directly above us, about forty thousand feet up, and falling. Computer says it's human bodies."

"Divers?" Paige said.

"We think so. They're dropping at around two hundred miles per hour, consistent with terminal velocity for humans tucked into a bullet fall. Radar didn't see a plane, so it was either an ultra-high-altitude bail-out from something like a U2, or a stealth, if that's possible."

Travis saw Paige's eyes narrow at that, but only slightly. Pilgrim had the Whisper; of course it was possible.

"The diver formation went into a sparse pattern right after the first contact, and the radar lost them, but with the thermal cams on the chain guns, we should be able to track them manually when they get low enough. With your permission, sir, we'll just kill everyone up there."

"Do it," Crawford said. The bass-range hum continued on his end of the call.

Sufficiently rattled by whatever the hell was going on down there, Paige stood, her clothes still balled up in her hand.

"Did anything trigger the amplifier?" Paige said. "Any experiment going on nearby, anything like that?"

"Nothing," Crawford said. "It just came on. Like it was on a timer."

A thought hit Travis. Hit him hard enough to make him sit up and put his feet to the floor. Paige turned, seeing his expression.

"Crawford, this is Travis Chase," he said. "What entities are in the vaults closest to the amplifier?"

There was a pause as Crawford processed the fact that Travis was speaking over Paige's phone at four in the morning. Then he answered. "I don't have that information in front of me. Hold on." They heard him talking to one of the attendants in the background.

But Travis already knew the answer. He stood from the bed and crossed to Paige's desk, looking for a pencil and something to write on. Paige followed, dropping her clothes behind her.

"What is it?" she said.

Before he could answer, the woman at Defense Control spoke up again. "I see them on the thermals now. Barely. Initializing ground cannons for manual targeting."

"We need to write ourselves a message," Travis said, "so we'll know what happened."

He pulled open a drawer, found a dull pencil, and grabbed a printout of some kind, turning it over to write on the back.

"What do you mean?" Paige said.

Crawford spoke up over the phone. "Got the list. The vault nearest the amplifier contains Entity 0436, Jump Cut."

Just what Travis had expected. The thing Paige had told him about in Zurich. The thing that was exactly like the Ares, except for its effect. Which was that it killed the past three days' memory, and left you feeling like you'd just blinked and missed that time.

Paige's mouth fell open slowly. Head shaking a little from side to side. Understanding. Unwanted understanding.

"If the Whisper can predict the lotto," Travis said, "it can predict which vault the amplifier would end up in."

"Oh my God," Paige said.

He returned his eyes to the paper, his mind laboring for what to write. Then Crawford screamed on the phone, and Travis knew it was too late. An instant later Paige's bedroom flared with bright green light, like every room in Border Town, Travis was sure. On instinct he threw his arms around Paige, as if he could protect her from it. The light seemed to shine right through their bodies