Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (21 page)

Gale relayed the horrible saga she’d endured to Rip, beginning with the call from Harmer informing her that Cira had been injured and taken to the hospital. Each detail ratcheted up the couple’s already strained emotions. The warm breeze carrying the fragrance of flowers and tropical fruits and the gentle sound of the turquoise waters lapping the shore belied the tension contained in her story. Rip listened silently, stunned by the plane crash into the Pacific, shaking his head at the decision to board a commercial airliner, and riveted by her account of Kruse getting them off that plane and onto the Gulfstream.

“But they must have followed you, right?” Rip asked. “How did you escape Hawaii? How did they even let you take off?” he wondered, looking up into the sky, expecting a squadron of fighters to spray the beach with machinegun fire. 

“I don’t know,” Gale said, “but you know Booker is decades ahead in technology because of what we’ve discovered in the Sphere, what he’s stolen from the Cosegans.”

Rip didn’t want to get into that debate again, not now. Although he was not in the mood to defend Booker after hearing of the deceptions he’d used on them in the past day and a half, he also couldn’t deny that, at the moment, his family was still alive. They had all survived, except maybe the two people most directly involved with their protection, Kruse and Harmer.

Rip filled her in on what he knew, then shared the painful revelation that Cira was now in the hands of the Foundation.

“Get. Booker. On. The. Line,” Gale demanded.

A minute later Huang’s face filled the monitor from Rip’s INU. Gale adored their collaborator, and was grateful to see him.

“Blue Eyes,” Huang said, beaming. “Thank the stars you made it.”

“No doubt I owe much of that to your abilities at cloaking planes and islands,” she said.

“The NSA has an entire team devoted to uncovering what they call EAMI, but if they knew how far we’d come with Eysen Anomaly and the promise it holds, they would put the
entire
agency on it,” Huang said, cocky with the triumphant victory of Gale’s escape.

She nodded sadly, but couldn’t help smiling at him. “But Cira . . . ”

“I know, the sun is less bright,” he said, a reference to her name’s origin. “It’s dangerous right now, but the Foundation is steady. They won’t be careless with her, it’s just that the others might. We have to get her.”

“We haven’t been able to raise Booker,” Rip said.

“I’ll try to bypass his queue,” Huang replied.

Rip sent Huang an encrypted message while they waited. Huang relayed a simple ping as confirmation he’d received it and Rip knew his request would be followed to the letter.

A short time later, Booker came across on audio only. “Gale, I’m glad you made it.”

“We can talk about that some other time, Booker,” Gale gritted out, as though each word caused her physical pain. “You get my daughter or you’re going to be anything but glad I survived.”

“Gale, please don’t threaten me. I know we’ve had our differences, but—”

“You have no idea what a threat is if you think I’ve even
begun
to threaten you!” Gale shouted back. “You’ve backed us into a corner, dropped us on this damned remote island, and left us with only one way to save our daughter.”

“Which is?”

“You know what it is,” Gale snapped. “And we’re prepared to carry it out.”

Normally Booker would have reacted to a threat in a very different manner, but he understood how she felt. “I’m all over it,” Booker said.

“What’s the plan?” Rip asked coldly.

“We’re going in for a rescue in a matter of minutes.” Booker went on to explain the false deal with the Foundation and the fact that the NSA was about to bring a SEAL team in to capture Cira. They needed to know the risks. There was no other choice now. “I’ll be back in touch shortly.”

“No!” Gale shouted. “Keep us on the line!”

But Booker was gone.

Rip thought of the message he’d sent Huang. If Cira was not returned safely to Rip and Gale, and if something were to happen to any of the three of them, then Huang was supposed to give the exact coordinates of El Perdido, along with a list of the key scientists who had contributed the most to the research, to Dixon Barbeau. Rip could still stop the order, and he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but he believed that Barbeau was the only other person who understood the stakes, and who also had the connections to get to the Sphere before the NSA or the Foundation. Still, it felt too much like retribution to Rip.

“This is not about revenge,” Gale said. “Booker has had us and the Sphere for seven years. If we wind up losing Cira, then . . . ”

“Crying Man promised me he would protect her,” Rip interjected.

Gale looked at Rip with a silent stunned expression. “Crying Man? You’ve seen him? You
talked
to him?”

Rip explained everything that had happened in the past few days, starting in Hawaii. “All along, the Sphere, the very thing we were trying to save, has been the very thing that could save us.”

“Us as in our family, or us as in the human race?” Gale asked.

“Both.”

“Who else knows what happened in Hawaii?”

“A handful of the scientists,” Rip said. “You remember Dabnowski? He and four others presented a paper to the brain trust.” The brain trust was comprised of the top twelve scientists in UQP. “We’re so close to a breakthrough. We actually found a command language, but it was beyond my skills. I have the data on my INU, but I don’t really fully understand it.”

“They’ve raided the university, Gale said. “The AX agent on the plane told me. They’ve started rounding up
all
the scientists and are grilling them. They won’t talk, will they?”

“Some of them will. They’re scientists, not terrorists. They know nothing about resisting interrogation methods, and the CIA is very good at getting people to talk.”

Gale nodded, her expression conveying fear and anger. “How can Crying Man protect Cira?” she asked.

“Crying Man, or something, allowed your plane to land here undetected.”

“That was Booker. The same way he keeps this island hidden, some program fed into the satellites. His company manufactures most of them,” Gale reminded him. “If Booker wasn’t certain that we could have landed invisibly, he wouldn’t have let the pilot get within a hundred miles of El Prison.”

“But he got that technology from the Eysen.”

“He’s taken much from the Eysen,” Gale reminded him.

“Booker told me that the NSA has an entire team studying what he’s been able to do. They have a theory called EAMI, Eysen Anomaly Matter Interference. They use it to explain stuff that is beyond scientific knowledge or current technology. It’s a way to put together enough pieces of the puzzle that the government scientists can reverse-engineer some of what he’s done.”

“Or use it to find him,” Gale added. “How has
he
been able to stay hidden, yet they found
us
in Fiji?”

“You know how,” Rip said, grabbing her hand and finding her eyes. “Cira. It was all an accident.”

“There is no such thing as accidents!” Glare protested. “Oh, Rip, our baby is all alone! She’s suffering . . . alone.” Gale stood up. “Damn that Booker. He had them drug me, and—”

“He may not have gone about it the right way, but we both know you’d be in custody now if he hadn’t and Cira would
still
be alone.”

“Are you on his side?”

“It’s the truth, Gale. You know it is.”

“Truth? The only truth I know is that Booker’s about to bring a full-scale war into that hospital. Our little girl will be surrounded by explosions, guns, and death.”

“Why are you so against Booker? He’s kept us safe for seven years, allowed us the time to explore the Eysen. You knew having a baby could expose us. Whatever mistakes he’s made, we’re still here, and you’re always telling me how powerful forgiveness is . . . Forgive Booker!”

Gale nodded, wiping tears. “I’ll forgive anything once we have Cira back.”

“Crying Man said he’d protect her.”

“Where is Crying Man?”

Savina arrived at the lab seconds before her Foundation security escort. She also now assumed there was a transponder somewhere in her vehicle.

None of this is necessary
, she thought.
I’m committed to the study of the Sphere. I’m committed to saving the future of our species, and that means I’m committed to the Foundation, to the Phoenix Initiative.

The assistant she’d given the note to looked up at her with a desperate and apologetic expression. Savina had begged the Judge to allow him to stay. “Neither one of us was doing anything against the Foundation,” she’d told the Judge. “We were trying to broaden our understanding of the Sphere.”

The Judge may not have agreed, but the assistant had just been following Savina’s orders, and, with all his experience, he could not easily be replaced. Booker’s near monopoly on top talent meant the Judge sometimes had to be less exacting than he’d like.

Savina told both assistants what had happened, beginning with informing them that their conversations were being monitored. During the next few hours, she carefully dropped codes into their casual comments while working. The code, based on equation, was something that only someone with a strong knowledge of physics would pick up on and understand. She managed to convey her intention to bypass Booker and to contact Gaines directly through his Sphere.

“They’re connected. There is a way,” she told them as part of the coded instructions. “Let’s find it.”

Savina opened up every area of the Sphere she’d gained any control over during her years of research. Each time, she carefully repeated the steps, as closely as possible, that they’d taken prior to the earlier incident when the Sphere had swallowed them.

There’s a way in
, Savina thought, her pulse quickening. She wasn’t just after Gaines and the other Sphere, modifying the future from the past, or even “time travel.” Savina needed to know what was beyond all human knowledge, and she could sense that, and more, was only a breath away.

—O—

While the Judge seemed unaware that a SEAL team was about to raid Cira’s hospital in Fiji, Booker took the news as just another logistic to contend with. Orders were changed, diversions increased, and Huang besieged Washington with a roaring cyber attack of technology. Booker remained confident, but knew his team had to get in first or they would lose.

“Is Cira prepared to move?” Booker asked when the Judge came on the line.

“Yes.”

“The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute’s protocols were followed?” Booker asked. “Because if she winds up permanently blin
d
‒
‒
”

“We’ve done what we could.”

“Okay.” Booker knew he couldn’t ask for anything more. It would be risky, no matter what.

“And Gaines, you have him standing by?”

“He’s still an hour away, but he’s moving.”

“Excellent,” the Judge said, still wanting to push for the Sphere instead of just Gaines. However, the deal was better than it appeared. In one swoop, he denied the American government the trading power of having Gale and Rip’s daughter, he took Rip and all his knowledge away from Booker, and he gained all that expertise to be shared with Savina and the Foundation’s team. He also still had time, and other options, to get to Booker’s Sphere, and Gaines would be the key.

He allowed himself a slight smile at his own degree of cleverness. With each minute, the fulfillment of his grand vision was coming closer to reality.

The two powerful enemies arranged the final details. Booker’s people would bring Rip to an address in Nayarit, a coastal area of Mexico. At the same time, the Judge had assured Cira would be delivered to one of Booker’s waiting boats in Suva Harbor, about a ten-minute ambulance ride from the hospital.

Once the call with Booker ended, the Judge quickly joined a previously scheduled encrypted video conference of the committee overseeing the Phoenix Initiative. After explaining the deal that would bring Gaines into their control, the Judge switched topics.

“It is an incredible understatement to describe our extreme solution to the coming troubles in the world as controversial,” he reminded them while twisting wires into place and soldering the connectors on a circuit board, the inner workings of a small robotic finger. “Because of that, I’ve set up every aspect of the Phoenix Initiative to include double-blind backups. That is to say, we have to be certain that if any key participants change their minds, we’ll have others in line to immediately take their place.”

Unbeknownst to Savina, the Judge had a second group of researchers, led by a bright physicist working on her off-hours. The Sphere was too important to ever let it sit idle. From the beginning, he’d kept “Sphere expeditions” going twenty-four hours a day. It wasn’t that the Judge didn’t trust Savina, it was that he didn’t trust
anyone
.

“The B-team has been pursuing its own routes into the Sphere, and they have found the first evidence that the Phoenix Initiative will be a success.” He let his statement sink in before he showed them images. “This information is too sensitive to send to you directly,” he said, enjoying the looks on the four men and two women on the committee as they saw a future led by the Aylantik Foundation. The Judge smiled. “You’ll notice it isn’t an awful or scary world.”

“It looks incredible,” one of them said.

“Paradise,” another put in.

“When is this?” a woman asked.

“About fifty years from now,” the Judge replied.

“Wow.”

“As I have always said, bold action is the only way to save humanity,” the Judge espoused, wrapping up the meeting and carefully putting the circuit board away. “If we do our job correctly, the Phoenix Initiative will never be discovered, but if it is, some may call us evil, and we’ll certainly be misunderstood. One day though, history will see us as its greatest heroes.”

They all agreed. Sometimes one must destroy everything in order to save it.