Extinction (The Divine Book 7) (27 page)

"That's easy enough to solve," I replied. "Don't get caught."

He looked like he wanted to hit me, and I didn't blame him. I was asking a lot. Just coming back to him after the Fist had nearly killed him was asking a lot.

"What do you say?" I asked.

He sighed, clearly resigned to his fate as my sidekick.
 

"Let's do it."

I brought us back to Mexico, leaving Obi with Alichino to work out the details of their planned electronic break-in. For as much power as I had gained from Raguel, Dante, Srizyl, and the djinn, all of the globe-hopping was starting to leave me feeling the drain. We didn't have any time to waste, and I wouldn't have considered trying to rest if it weren't for the fact that when it came to hacking government systems, I was a miserable failure.

Then again, my hacking days had been limited to pre-written scripts and fast-talking. Obi's skills were far more advanced and far less likely to be detected. I winced at the thought of the days I had spent in prison, all of those years ago when I was still a mortal. If I had only known what my afterlife would become back then.

I fell onto my bed, the one I had intended to share with Alyx. I stared up at the ceiling. It was mirrored so that Espanto could see every part of whatever happened in here from whatever position he was in. The idea of watching yourself was nauseating to me, and I reached out with my power, putting pressure on the glass until it cracked into a thousand pieces. Then I looked over each of the slivers, catching my reflection there. Some people theorized there was a new dimension for every decision every person made, an infinite number of timelines that stretched infinitely across time and space. It was a mind-boggling concept, and as I stared up at the hundreds of me, I wondered if I was looking into those other places, getting a glimpse of who I would be if I had done things differently at any one of a thousand points in my life.

The funny thing was, every one of them looked the same.

I closed my eyes. In theory, I didn't need to sleep. In truth, I had always found it helped restore me, if only because I didn't have to worry for a while. I drifted off in a hurry.

I woke to someone shaking my arm. I opened my eyes, looked over, and saw Alichino standing there.
 

"Hey boss, we're ready."

I slid off the bed and trailed behind Alichino, back to the control center where I found Obi and Adam standing over a workstation. Obi was wearing a headset.

"What's the play?" I asked.

"Okay, so Allie got me hooked up with a line onto the Pentagon intranet," Obi said, pointing at his monitor. "He's got a login, too, but the clearance isn't high enough to get to the goods. So, I'm planning on giving Ms. Cecilia Jackson a call. She's the secretary for Colonel James Lamont. I served under him in the middle east fifteen years ago, and the guys always told me I did a spot-on impression of him."

"You're going to try to get her to give up his credentials?" I asked.

"Yeah. I already tried his birthday and all that crap, but he's too smart for that."

"Why would she know them?"

"Because that's how Colonel Lamont is. He wouldn't trust writing something like that down. He would give it to a second source he felt he could trust."

"Even though it leaves them open to this sort of thing?"

"Anyone working under Lamont is going to be a tough nut to crack. That's where the impression comes in. Either she believes she's talking to the Colonel, or we get nowhere."

"And you're sure Lamont's not the guy Gervais used to get himself in?" I asked.

"Yes," Adam replied. "I already had Alichino check it out. You probably won't be surprised to hear that a General Weston was found murdered in his home a few months back?"

"The murder, no. A few months? That would predate Matthias' death."

"I know," Adam said. "It seems like Gervais had been watching me for a while. He knew quite a bit about the program."

"That asshole. He led me into thinking he didn't know what the Fist was."

"Playing both sides, waiting for his moment," Obi said. "Sounds just like him."

"And you're sure he isn't in the office today?"

"I called him already. I asked him if he were in New York because I was thinking about him and wanted to see if we could meet. He said he's in Los Angeles for a speaking engagement." Obi smiled. "He remembered me like he had seen me yesterday."

"Okay. It sounds like we're ready. Do what you're going to do. Let's see what we can get."

Obi nodded and then tapped a key on his workstation.

"We're spoofing Lamont's caller id," Alichino said. "That was my idea."

Obi put a finger to his lips. He looked completely relaxed, but I knew he was feeling the pressure internally. The last thing he would want would be for his former XO to take any heat over this.

"Hi Cecilia," Obi said, adding a couple of octaves to his voice and gaining a southern drawl. "How are you today?" He paused while she spoke. "Good to hear. How are the kids?" He paused again. "Great, great, great. Oh, Maggie? She's fine. Just fine. Thanks for asking. Hey, listen, Cecilia, I was just firing up my laptop so I could grab a copy of the slide deck I've been working on for this here gig, and I'll be damned if I can remember my password. Yeah, yeah, I know. Losing my head in my old age."
 

He laughed raucously. I tried to imagine what the Colonel was like in real life. Probably a real ass-kicker.

"I know, I know, the channel's not secure. I'll tell you what, can you text it over to me? End-to-end encryption. No spies except maybe our own boys in the NSA." He laughed again. "You have the number right?" He paused. "Yeah, that's it. I appreciate it, Cecelia. Okay. I'll call you back if I have any trouble. Have a great day."

He pressed a button on the workstation and the phone hung up.

"Text you the password?" I asked.

Alichino smiled. "The pièce de résistance, Landon."

A bubble popped up on the workstation, with only the password in it.

"How?" I said.

"Espanto has some very cool toys," Obi said. "Including a back door into every major utility in the country. We hijacked his cell number for a few minutes."

"What if he were on the phone?" I asked.

Obi shrugged. "There's always some risk."

"Well, you've got the password. Now what?"

"Now we try to get the files. We've already routed our traffic through a VPN in LA that should be close enough to trick any auditors into thinking we really are Lamont's laptop. Unfortunately, we don't know his MAC address to fake that, too, or I'd feel even more comfortable."

He returned to the portal and typed in the password from the text. Then he was into the main Department of Defense index. There was a search field in the top-right corner, and he typed in 'Project Fog.'

Nothing came up.

"Hmm," Obi said, looking over. "Maybe Gervais was able to delete it? That doesn't make sense, though. This kind of thing should be read-only once it's submitted."

I thought about it. "Project Fog was the codename at Taylor Heavy Industry. But you said the Pentagon didn't have the entire project under their wing."

Adam nodded. "That's right. Only specific portions."

"What was the command module called?"
 

Adam shook his head. "I don't remember."

"You have to remember."

He considered, tapping his fingers on the side of the cubicle.

"The longer I sit here, the more suspicious it looks," Obi said.

"Oh, I know," Adam said. "Amplified Neural Gateway for External Logistics."

"Angel?" Obi said. "You couldn't remember that?"

"Falling from Heaven takes a lot out of you," Adam said in defense.

"That's your own damn fault," Obi replied.
 

Adam looked like he wanted to start with the former Marine again. A glare from me got him to step away.

"Here we are," Obi said, getting a single result on the hit. He clicked on it, opening up a document that was over a thousand pages in length. "I'm going to download it so we can get offline. I just hope the security team doesn't ask Lamont what he needed it for."

The PDF downloaded quickly. As soon as it was done, Obi signed out of the account, passed the document to Espanto's internal network, and shut off the workstation completely. Then he leaned back in his chair as though he had just finished a marathon.

"That was easy," I said.

He turned his head to glare at me with his shut-the-hell-up face.
 

"I'm printing it now," Alichino said. "Give me a few hours with it and I'll figure something out."

"Thanks, Allie," I said. "I'm going to head out for some reinforcements."

"Reinforcements?" Obi asked, leaning forward.

"Yup."
 

It was time to bring Alyx back into the game.

Once Alichino found a way to stop the signal to the Fist, or to otherwise disable the link between Zifah and the armor, we would need a means to bring them to us so we could actually use it. Since I had sent Alyx off with her sister to keep her bright red, Great Were aura from giving my position away, it made sense that I would take her back to do the opposite.
 

Sure, there was a risk that Sarah would latch onto the signal and go on the offensive, but she knew that thanks to Dante I could get away any time I wanted to. She also knew that eventually, one way or another, I wouldn't want to. The idea of it created a number of subsequent thoughts and questions that swirled around my head. Mainly, I wondered how her visions had reacted to my escape from the djinn? If she had truly believed I was supposed to end there, how would her farseeing abilities spin what had really happened?

I didn't have too much time to consider it. Within a few minutes of leaving Obi, I was standing on the front porch of Onyx's house on the French countryside. It was early morning. I could hear roosters crowing in the distance. I could smell waffles and eggs and bacon cooking inside the house, and for a moment I thought I had gone to the wrong place.

Alyx was at the door a moment later, her entire face lighting up when she saw me. She opened the door and rushed to me, taking me in her arms.

"You're back," she said.
 

I accepted her embrace, leaning down to kiss her. She returned the affection with a chastity that surprised me.
 

"We were just having breakfast. Do you want to come in?"

I nodded, a little dumbstruck. Alyx was wearing a long black dress with long sleeves that covered ninety percent of her body. It was a massive shift from her formerly provocative dress.

She headed back for the door.

"Alyx, wait," I said.
 

She paused and turned back to me.

"Yes?"

"I didn't come for breakfast. I need you to come back with me. It isn't over yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Gervais and Zifah are still out there with the Fist. Sarah is still out there. I have a plan to remove Gervais from the equation, but I can't do it without you."

She stared at me for a long moment. I could sense a change in her, one that confused me, and sent a wave of anxiety up my gut.
 

"No," she said.

"What?" I replied, not sure what else to say.

"I can't help you, Mast.... Landon. I don't want to fight anymore."

"You're a Great Were."

Her eyes narrowed. "So what? I am a demon, and so I have to fight? Is that what you're saying?"

Yes. Sort of.

"Uh, no," I replied. "Alyx, I really need you."

"I don't want to fight anymore. I won't fight anymore."

"Al-"

"Do you not understand no, Landon?" she snapped. "Or do I only have the right to decide as long as it's in line with what you want?"

I closed my mouth and didn't speak. It was like she was a completely different person.
 

"What happened to you?" I asked a moment later.

"You ask me that like not wanting to fight is a bad thing. Like all I should be is a monstrous killing machine."

That was what I needed right now. It was clear I wasn't going to get that.