Текст книги "Influx"

Автор книги: Daniel Suarez

Соавторы: Daniel Suarez
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CHAPTER 22

Interception

Special Agent Denise Davis held Richard Louis Cotton’s elbow firmly as she escorted him out of the parking garage elevator and into the subbasement of the Dirksen Federal Building. Her way was lined by dozens of FBI tactical officers in body armor, with assault weapons slung across their chests. They scanned sight lines for trouble as they waved her and the escort detail onward, toward the open doors of a waiting armored FBI transport van. It was just one in a line of identical unmarked escort vans standing by.

Cotton shuffled along in leg irons, his hands cuffed before him and chained to his waist. He wore bulky orange body armor to protect him against reprisals from his victims’ loved ones. Cotton’s trademark beard without mustache was carefully trimmed. But his disappointment was obvious when he looked out across the parking level and noticed the lack of news cameras. There was only the long motorcade of FBI vehicles and armed agents.

He cast an irritated look toward her. “A transfer in the wee hours. You won’t silence me, Agent Davis. His message shall still reach the world.”

“It’s not my job to give you an audience.”

“The Lord will find a way.”

“What’s the Lord got to do with you?” She eyed him closely. Difficult to believe Cotton was anything but what he appeared—just another megalomaniac cult leader. But what she’d seen couldn’t be denied. “Watch your step.”

Transport agents pulled Cotton up into the van and escorted him into a small caged section at the front of the passenger bay as he began to cheerfully sing a hymn in a booming voice, offering his hands to his captors.

“Lord, the King of kings art Thou. In Thy presence here we bow; God’s anointed we adore. Worship Thee in holy awe . . .”

They chained Cotton to a railing and locked the cage door on him as Davis took a seat on a bench alongside half a dozen heavily armed agents. The guards even had gas mask pouches on their harnesses. No one was taking any chances.

Cotton stopped singing as the engine revved, and they began to move out. FBI radios blared in confirmation of their departure, units sounding off. Cotton leaned against the thick wire mesh, staring at Davis. “And it was He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms . . .”

“Even God took a day off from religion, Richard.”

Cotton chuckled. “The ever-watchful eye of our Lord is upon you, Agent Davis.” He examined the agents arrayed before him. “I was told I’d be in Chicago until the trial.”

“Operational security precludes this discussion.”

“Do you really want to anger me, Agent Davis? I don’t have to cooperate with the prosecution’s case. I can drag this out far longer, if that’s what you want.”

Davis stared back. “You can’t help yourself from confessing, Cotton. You want to take credit for these bombings. We couldn’t shut you up if we wanted to.”

Cotton smiled. “I say to you, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Davis looked to the helmeted agents sitting across from her. “This is going to be a long goddamned drive . . .”

 • • •

Two hours later Davis saw Cotton awake with a start. He looked around, apparently uncertain where he was for a moment. Then he shouted through the wire mesh at her. “Why are we still traveling?” He rattled his chains. “What time is it?”

“Go back to sleep, Cotton.”

He seemed genuinely concerned, and Davis enjoyed a little private victory at the sight.

“We would have arrived at Stateville by now. Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere. And I mean that literally: I am bringing you into the middle of nowhere.”

She could see the muscles of Cotton’s jaw tense. He thrust his face up to the wire and shouted, “You don’t have the right to do this! I’m supposed to be in Stateville!”

“Are you? According to whom?”

“Those were the terms of my cooperation. You’re violating the terms of my plea agreement.”

“It wasn’t my agreement.”

“You take orders from the federal prosecutor.”

Davis shrugged, enjoying his discomfiture. “Well, if you see him, be sure to mention it.”

The dull roar of jet aircraft came to them even over the engine noise of the armored van.

Cotton glanced up at the ceiling. “You’re not following the rules.”

“Suddenly rules are important to the terrorist bomber.”

The armored van slowed and turned, causing them all to lean.

“I don’t know what you’re up to, Davis, but you’re risking my cooperation on this trial.”

“Duly noted.”

The tactical agents around her smirked, evidently pleased to hear someone putting Cotton in his place.

“It will vastly increase the length and cost of the proceedings.”

“No doubt.”

He examined her confident demeanor and apparently found it worrisome, but the van had now started to slow.

She smiled. “Looks like we’re here.”

“Where?”

Davis didn’t answer but instead turned away as the van stopped. Almost immediately the armored doors opened, and members of the security detail poured out. She stepped down as well, accepting Thomas Falwell’s hand as he walked up to greet her.

“Hey.” Falwell spoke over the thunder of distant jet aircraft. “They’re ready for you. And you weren’t kidding, these guys are serious.”

She looked around. “It looks like Bagram out here.” Stars filled the night sky around a crescent moon, but in the moonlight Davis could see what must have amounted to a mechanized company or two of heavily armed U.S. Marines in Stryker armored vehicles. Antiaircraft missile batteries were arrayed in defensive positions all around them. The hundred or so FBI agents who had escorted the motorcade this far were also disembarking and milling around with the soldiers.

There could easily be three hundred soldiers out there. The deep roar of jets still thundered above.

“We’ve got air cover, too.”

Davis turned to see the stunned face of Richard Cotton as he was lowered to the ground. He stared around in amazement at the military camp arrayed around them.

“What the hell is going on, Davis?”

He looked truly worried as she grabbed his waist chain and pulled him along. Falwell fell in behind her, as did the rest of the security detail. “Come here, Cotton, there’s somebody I want you to meet.”

“What in holy hell is going on?”

“Tsk, tsk, the Lord wouldn’t like you using that sort of language.”

“I demand to know what’s going on. I demand it!”

A Marine lieutenant directed her to a nearby Stryker armored command vehicle. As they approached, the rear hatch whined down to just a few inches off the pavement, revealing Jon Grady and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Bill McAllen sitting on cushioned benches in the LED light.

Davis shoved a stunned Cotton inside, his chains rattling against the steel deck. “Cotton, you remember Jon Grady, right? One of your victims from the Chirality Labs bombing?”

Cotton collapsed onto the bench across from Grady and McAllen as Davis and Falwell slid in behind him.

A marine sergeant in a command chair turned back. “Hatch coming up. Watch your fingers.”

The rest of the security detail took posts outside as the armored door whined back up and boomed shut.

Cotton stared at Grady, apparently uncertain what to say.

Grady stared back. “They know about the Bureau of Technology Control, Cotton. And they also know you’re a BTC agent.”

McAllen leaned forward. “Mr. Cotton, I’m the deputy secretary of Homeland Security. My name is William McAllen. I’ve informed the BTC that you’ve decided to turn informer and are now under our protection.”

Cotton’s eyes went even wider, and he nodded to himself.

“The BTC thinks you’ve betrayed them. I think you’d be wise to help us bring them down.”

What came out of Cotton’s mouth next surprised them all. He took a deep breath and spoke calmly and evenly for the first time in Davis’s memory. “This is unfortunate timing. It really is.”

“Mr. Cotton—”

“I know you think you’re helping, but it’s actually going to ruin everything.”

McAllen held up calming hands. “I can offer you protection, but only if you give us the structure of the BTC organization—who’s in charge, details of their facilities.”

Cotton sighed and shook his head, looking at Davis. “Is he serious?”

Grady cast a confused look to Davis.

Cotton turned his attention to Grady. “I don’t know how you got away from them, Grady, but you’d better damned well go straight back. If we all go back to the way things were, there’s a chance—a slim chance—that we might not be dead come morning.”

McAllen sighed impatiently. “Mr. Cotton, there isn’t going to be any bombing trial. We know you’re not a bomber, and we know there aren’t any bombing victims. What we need to find out is where those people are and who’s running the BTC.”

Cotton laughed ruefully. “No bombing victims? Well, you’re wrong about that. The harvester teams only take the people they want. Everybody else gets killed.” He studied their reactions. “No, not by me.”

Grady felt crestfallen. “So . . . my partners are dead?”

“I’m sorry to tell you that, but listen to me . . .” Cotton leaned forward in his chains. “You’re about to join them. We all are if you don’t stop this and put me back where I was.”

“Mr. Cotton . . .”

Cotton suddenly struggled against his chains, shouting. “Damnit! I had this all worked out until you idiots screwed everything up. I should be in Stateville!” He started banging his helmeted head against the bulkhead.

Grady grabbed Cotton’s bulletproof vest. “You’re saying they’re dead? Tell me!”

“Yes, they’re dead. Don’t look at me; I didn’t kill them. I haven’t killed anybody, but they’re not about to grab useless people. They grab the best and kill the rest. That’s their motto.”

McAllen eased Grady away from Cotton. “Look, we need to know everything you can tell us about Graham Hedrick.”

“Oh, man . . .” He shook his head vigorously. “You have no idea how far ahead of you these people are.”

“What was your deal with them?”

“The deal was I got to live if I was useful. That was the deal. But I had other plans—plans you idiots have well and truly fucked up. I need to get out of here.”

“We can protect you.”

Cotton laughed bitterly. “Look, I’ve been crawling around in their world for a decade. I know what they’re capable of—and that’s why I want to get the hell out of this Styrofoam cup you’ve put us all in.” He gazed around at the armored vehicle.

McAllen nodded to a Marine captain nearby. “Get us under way.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cotton laughed again. “Under way? I’m sure that will stop them from frying our brains from orbit. Hey, did you talk to the others who’d tried to take down the BTC?”

“Others?”

“Oh, that’s right. You couldn’t. BECAUSE THEY’RE DEAD!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Now unchain me, and get me the hell out of this coffin!”

Suddenly all the lights went out. Electric motors whined to a stop in the blackness around them. Silence. No emergency lights came on. It was so black, Davis realized, it made no difference whether her eyes were open or not.

Cotton groaned again in the darkness. “There’s the HEMP. Great job, guys . . .”

Davis asked, “What’s a HEMP?”

“High-altitude electromagnetic pulse. They would have fired it from the edge of the atmosphere. Out there, the X-ray and gamma ray radiation interact—creates a massive free-electron maser. Any microelectronics within fifty miles are for shit now.” He listened carefully. “Don’t hear any fighter jets now, do you?”

“FBCB2 is down, sir!”

McAllen’s voice: “Captain, get this rear door open!”

“There are hatches over our heads, sir . . .” They heard banging around. “Hang on . . .”

Cotton’s chains rattled as he held forth. “You have no idea what you’ve done. If you brought ten thousand people, you couldn’t protect me. Just put me back! Let’s go back to the trial! It’s not too late. Come on—back to prison . . .”

Just then moonlight entered the vehicle as the staff sergeant opened an overhead hatchway up front. The captain opened another one near the rear and stepped up to look out, shouting down to someone. “Lieutenant, do they have power over there?”

There were muffled calls as Davis frowned at Cotton, who was busy groaning fearfully.

The captain came back down. “Power’s out in the entire force. And there’s thick fog coming in.”

Cotton nodded. “They’re lowering the dew point to mask their advance. And you no longer have night vision. Are you happy now? We’re all going to die. And I nearly had this solved. But you had to go and ruin it, didn’t you, Davis?”

She scowled at this strangely alien Richard Cotton. “Ruin what?”

Suddenly horrific sounds—like the fabric of reality tearing—reached them through the armored walls of the Stryker. Automatic gunfire erupted outside, with intermittent shouts and explosions. Then booms from a .50-caliber machine gun.

And then the deafening roar of a whole marine company opening fire shook the Stryker.

The staff sergeant poked his head up through the hatchway, shouting down, “We’re under attack, Captain!”

“From what direction?”

“I can’t . . . this damn fog. I can’t even see the tracers.”

Cotton nodded. “You’re blind, and they see everything. We’re sitting ducks in here.” He shook his chains. “Unchain me, damnit.” He looked to McAllen. “If we survive this, I’ll talk, I swear it—just get me out of here!”

Davis grabbed his arms. “Calm the hell down, Cotton. No one’s going to reach you in here.”

Already outside the gunfire had gone silent.

“There. They might have driven them off.”

Cotton just shook his head sadly. “You have no idea what’s coming.”

Then a blinding light and searing heat cut through the cabin—slicing the marine captain in half lengthwise even as it cauterized him. The last two feet of the Stryker fell away, the edges glowing red, as tons of steel and composite armor collapsed onto pavement. Night air swept onto the stunned faces of Davis, Grady, Cotton, Falwell, and McAllen.

Outside, they could see thick roiling fog and soldiers lying motionless on the asphalt. It was suddenly eerily quiet. No aircraft overhead. Not even the sound of crickets.

Davis turned back to see half of the marine captain twitching on the bench. She coughed at the combination of ozone and burned flesh and looked away, drawing her Glock pistol. Falwell and McAllen did likewise. The staff sergeant grabbed an M4 from a weapon rack and aimed it out into the fog.

He shouted toward the driver. “Captain’s down, Ricky!”

“What the hell hit us?”

“I don’t know!”

Davis glanced back to Grady and Cotton, only to see them both staring in horror out into the fog. She turned back again. “Thomas, we have to get Grady and Cotton out of here.”

Falwell shook his head. “This is insane. I don’t understand . . .”

Moments later three negative forms materialized from the fog. They were the darkest black Davis had ever seen. Their outlines swallowed light, as though they were living silhouettes.

Cotton covered his head with hands and cowered in his orange body armor. “Oh God! Morrison, it wasn’t me . . .”

Davis, Falwell, and McAllen opened fire with pistols, while the staff sergeant fired short bursts with his M4. In the confines of the Stryker the gunshots were deafening—spent cartridges bounced all around them—but they fired repeatedly until their clips were empty.

As she reloaded, Davis focused downrange, through the gun smoke into the dark fog. The three negative forms stood unmoving.

Finally a voice like that of God spoke: “Deputy Secretary McAllen. I bring a message from the director of the BTC.”

McAllen scowled as he lowered his gun. “What is it, you bastard?”

A tearing sound ripped the air again, and before Davis’s eyes, a white-hot fire swept from inside the tip of McAllen’s outstretched hand and down within his arm as he screamed in agony. It was as though some chain reaction was turning his body into fire. He started to burn like the glow moving down a cigarette. He barely got a second shriek out before his face and torso were consumed by the wave of glowing embers—the heat bursting forth from him singed Davis on the other side of the cabin. By the time the blinding flash ended, his form had collapsed into ash, his undamaged pistol clattering to the steel deck.

“Oh my God!”

Davis had reloaded, and she and Falwell opened fire at the dark forms again, but to no avail. When their guns were empty, they stared at the figures still standing, unaffected.

And then Davis heard the ripping sound again. Falwell turned back toward her as he burned. “No!” She grabbed his outstretched hand and screamed in agony as her skin burned along with his.

The unnatural fire consumed them both.

CHAPTER 23

Harvesters

Jon Grady stared, unbelieving, as Agents Davis and Falwell blew away into ash. He then turned toward the dark silhouettes at the mouth of the wrecked Stryker.

“Aaaahhh!” He charged at them. But one of the forms held up a hand, creating a force that swept over him, Cotton, and the staff sergeant, hurling them against the rear bulkhead. Dazed, Grady felt gravity shift, and they “fell” out to land roughly on the pavement—as if a giant had upended the Stryker and shaken them out like candy. Every loose object in the Stryker came along with them—including the remaining half of the captain, tools, and rucksacks. Grady and Cotton then floated up a couple of feet above the ground. Spent shell casings and trash levitated around them.

Several more dark forms floated down from above to join the first three, and they now stood staring at the floating men.

Grady turned to see that the staff sergeant was still breathing but unconscious. Apparently someone had noxed him—something Grady had seen many times before.

The fog was already dissipating as the summer breeze continued to blow over them, and now Grady could see just how many marines were lying unconscious in the parking lot.

Cotton was babbling toward the jet-black center figure. “Morrison, I wasn’t working with them! Scan me! Go ahead and scan me!”

The same wrath-of-God voice spoke from the ink-black human outline. “How much did you tell them, Cotton? You piece of shit.”

“I didn’t tell them anything!”

As Grady floated in the air, helpless to move, he concentrated on the dark forms. They were menacing in a way he’d never felt before. Like demons from hell.

Morrison aimed his arm. “I don’t feel like scanning you, Cotton.”

A female voice spoke from the sky. “I’ll take the prisoners.”

The BTC warriors looked up to see Alexa descend wearing a black tactical suit of her own—although hers appeared much simpler. It was clearly not assault armor. She had a matching helmet as well with a crystalline visor across her blue eyes. Grady couldn’t help but notice a belt similar to the Morrisons’ woven into her outfit, and he assumed it must be the gravity mirror he’d invented—shrunken to absurdly small size and perfected.

As Alexa descended into Grady and Cotton’s gravity field, they joined her gravitational well, and now seemed to move along with her.

Morrison shouted, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Alexa?”

“I’m taking these prisoners back to the BTC.”

Cotton looked over at her. “Thank God! Alexa, tell them I haven’t said anything.”

She eyed him. “Perhaps not, but you are going to tell me some things.”

She then glanced at Grady.

Grady looked to her. “They killed Davis. They burned her alive.”

Alexa looked visibly disturbed by this news, and she turned angrily toward Morrison and his gathered sons. “An XD gun? You didn’t have to kill anyone, let alone split their water.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Sometimes examples need to be made of people.” Morrison made no visible motion, but loose rocks and debris floating around him started to “fall” with him as his “down” edged toward Alexa and her new charges. “You’re not going anywhere. Hedrick ordered me to deal with Cotton just as soon as I learn whether he betrayed us.”

“I’ll handle that.”

Cotton was floating sideways, trying to get his spin under control. “What does he mean ‘deal with’ me?”

Morrison’s armored black oval of a face remained focused on Alexa’s. His voice came across now at a more conversational volume. “This isn’t your field of expertise, Alexa. You should be back at base. Hedrick has been looking for you.”

“I don’t report to you.”

His voice grew impatient again. “Neither do you have the right to come here and interfere with my operation.”

“You’ve already captured the prisoners. I’m taking control of them now. Don’t even think of ordering me around.”

“Ah, I forgot. There’s only one person you report to . . .” He paused and then looked upward slightly. “Get Director Hedrick on a q-link to me immediately.”

Alexa apparently wasn’t waiting around. She extended her booted feet, and then she, Cotton, and Grady began to fall upward, slowly at first.

Grady felt little acceleration as he rose into the night sky, and now he could see how many marines were lying unconscious all around them in the moonlight—hundreds.

Morrison’s voice shouted after her, louder now. “Alexa, I’m not letting you take those prisoners!”

“Don’t follow me, Morrison. I mean it.”

They ascended faster, rising above the trees, and now Grady could see the vast expanse of farmland stretching beyond. And the fallen army around them.

His synesthesia made even this horrible vista beautiful, as the stars above were wondrous.

 • • •

Morrison popped his visor with a hiss, revealing his weathered, scarred face. There were now six of his sons around him in full diamondoid armor, and they likewise popped their visors.

“What’s up with Granny?”

Morrison covered his microphone and hissed, “Go after her. Get the prisoners back while I get Hedrick on q-link.”

The sons exchanged worried looks and covered their mikes as well.

“Fuck that . . .”

“Iota’s right, Dad.”

“I’m not getting in the middle of a fight between Granny and Hedrick.”

“She’s supposed to be ‘priceless intellectual property’ or some shit.”

“She’s his goddamned girlfriend.”

“What if she fights back?”

“That bitch is dangerous.”

Morrison aimed a diamond-hard black finger at them. “Get your asses up there and follow her.”

“She’s on a tracker. We don’t have to follow her.”

Morrison checked in with tactical operations again. “TOC, this is Alpha Dog, do we have the director on q-link yet?”

“The director left the command center when you radioed mission completion. Is this an emergency, Alpha Dog?”

“Yes, it’s a damned emergency. Tell him I found Alexa, and that she left with both prisoners—interfering with my command.”

There was a pause. “Stand by, Alpha Dog.”

Morrison gazed up into the stars and finally pounded the side of the armored Stryker with his diamondoid fist, putting a dent in its armor. “Goddamnit!” With that he ripped out the comm module from his helmet and tossed it to one of his sons—who caught it deftly. “Hold onto that for me.”

“What are you doing?”

“Someday you boys will learn it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” Morrison’s visor swept across his face with a hiss, and he immediately fell into the sky, followed by a trail of debris.

His sons watched him go and then turned to one another with worried looks.

“To hell with this.”

“Let’s get back to base. I don’t want to be downrange when this shit hits the fan.”

 • • •

Grady watched the moon’s reflection on a lake below them and stared in wonder at the world from five thousand feet. The tragedy of recent events was flowing through him at the same time the beauty of the natural world flowed over him. It was a beautiful summer night. Turned backward, he wasn’t blinded by the wind. Judging by the stars, he figured they were “falling” to the north—back toward Chicago. It was a miraculous feeling even given his black mood.

He’d invented the gravity mirror, and now, before he died, he could see how marvelous it was.

He was still trying to process all that had happened in the last ten minutes. Davis and Falwell were dead. Killed in a horrible way. So, too, was the deputy secretary of Homeland Security—their bodies incinerated as they shrieked. Grady turned to face Alexa as she guided the three of them in the shade of her gravity mirror. He could see Cotton looking below them, probably warm enough in his protective, orange body armor.

Alexa cast a glance at Grady and shouted, “I owe you an apology.”

He just stared at her.

“I realize how feeble that sounds. Apologizing for destroying your life. I didn’t know.”

“But now you do.”

She nodded. “Your scars . . . I checked and—”

“Then you really didn’t know, did you?” He could see what looked like true emotional pain in her eyes.

“My God, what you had to go through. I had no idea.”

Grady felt relief wash over him. He strangely felt he could believe her.

But then the flow of air over them stopped. They just hung there, suspended. There was no sensation of deceleration. They just stopped.

Alexa was busy checking her systems and looking up at projected displays in her helmet.

Cotton shouted, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” She was ticking through items: “Third of a g, zero pitch, zero yaw . . . we should be moving.”

Just then a familiar voice came across the night air to them. “You’re not going anywhere with my prisoners, Alexa.”

They turned to see Morrison floating toward them in the moonlight. He aimed an armored finger at them as he did so, the tip glowing fiercely.

Alexa stopped checking her gear. There was a grim look on her face. “Integrated extogravis. That’s new.”

“I can nullify your gravity mirror. Quite a toy you invented, Mr. Grady. One improvement we were able to make was the ability to instantiate the mirror at an arbitrary distance.”

Grady’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t help but feel amazed even as he was horrified. “But . . . how . . .”

Alexa now floated alongside them, just as helpless as they were. Like a fly in a spiderweb. “I didn’t know they’d built projectors small enough to mount in assault armor.”

“Not that big really. Just requires lots of power. Certainly doesn’t fit in a flight suit like yours. So I guess Hedrick doesn’t give you all of his toys. He’s that smart at least.”

They all four hung there silently in midair, five thousand feet above rural Illinois in a cloudless night sky.

“Let us leave, Morrison.”

He shook his head at her. “You’re free to go once you turn over my prisoners.”

“Hedrick lied to me. You all lied to me. Why?”

“You’re in your fifties, Alexa. It’s time to grow up.”

“You knew what was going on at Hibernity.”

“I’m so sick of your sustained innocence. You get to waltz around and have everyone love you. You’re the future of humanity, while my project gets canceled and I become a genetic punch line. Well, I’m a survivor. I do the dirty work that no one knows about. When things need to get done, the director counts on me and my sons to do them. The outside world is a ruthless, shitty place. At least Grady and Cotton here actually have a purpose—what’s your purpose? Other than being a genetic library for when they finally figure out how to transfer minds from one body to another?”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, you didn’t know about that project either? Well, we don’t tell you everything.”

Alexa stared at him, her jaw clenching.

“Now push Grady and Cotton over here.” He aimed a gloved finger on his other hand, apparently a weapon integrated into the suit.

Cotton tried to swim through the air to get behind her. “Alexa, you know they forced me to do this. I haven’t harmed a soul, I swear it.”

Morrison laughed. “You’re no saint, Cotton. Did Cotton ever tell you where we found him—a master thief trying to break into BTC headquarters? Bit off more than you could chew, eh?”

“Alexa, don’t let him do this.”

“Your ten years is just about up, anyway, Cotton.”

Alexa drew a black spikelike device from her belt. Its tip glowed with an intense indigo light.

Morrison lowered his weapon arm. “A positron gun? That’s a killing weapon, Alexa. Where did you get that?”

“You know damn well.”

Morrison’s ink-black armored face was inscrutable, but he nodded slowly to himself. “He’s weak.”

“Let us go, Morrison.”

“Listen to yourself, Alexa. You’re breaking bureau regulations. Ignoring rules about tech level exposure. Chain of command.”

Cotton shouted, “He’s going to kill us—split our water like that Davis woman.”

Morrison nodded toward her raised weapon. “How much antimatter do you have in that thing?”

“A billionth of a gram. So don’t toy with me.”

“You’re not a killer, Alexa. And you know that Grady and Cotton must come with me. Civilian government knows who Cotton is now. They’ll interrogate him—torture him if necessary—to get information out of him.”

She didn’t lower the weapon, although Grady could see she was unsure of what to do. “Don’t test me, Morrison. Just leave. And tell Graham to back off while I sort this out.”

Morrison slowly reached toward his harness. “See this? I’m getting a psychotronic weapon—nonlethal—and that’s all there is to it. I’m not going to harm you or anyone. Ask yourself: Are you going to kill me, Alexa? Are you going to kill me to stop me from using a nonlethal weapon against—”

He fast-drew the weapon, but Alexa’s reflexes were faster. A blinding flash and crack of thunder, and the front of Morrison’s suit burst apart in weirdly intricate sparks and whirling vortexes of energy—hurling him backward and then downward.

But on his way down Morrison zapped Alexa with the psychotronic gun as well. She spun out of control, causing Grady and Cotton to fall out of her local gravity field—and into free fall from the night sky.

 • • •

Alexa almost immediately regained her senses and found herself free of Morrison’s projected gravity field. She scanned the sky below her with thermal imaging. Cotton was falling below her, screaming, while Grady descended farther off—probably impossible to reach at terminal velocity. However, Morrison appeared to be moving to intercept Grady—sparks issuing from his combat assault armor.

“Damnit!” Alexa soared down to try to catch up with Cotton before he hit the forest thousands of feet below. She tucked her arms onto her thighs to streamline her aerodynamic profile and descended at much more than a hundred miles an hour.

 • • •

Grady’s heart pounded in his chest as the rushing air buffeted him. His watering eyes saw the dark forest racing up to meet him, and he realized that these were his final seconds of life. He glanced up at the stars above him. The beauty was heartbreaking. However, his time in Hibernity had taught him how to manage fear, and he turned toward the approaching trees—determined to see his life right up to the very end.