Journey Into the Flame (47 page)

“Mother, you’re not buying any of this crap, are you?” Lucius took his gun and casually pointed it at Logan. “Let me just put one between his eyes.”

“Oh, dear boy,” Andrea said, as she walked over to Logan, a sad smile on her face as she shook her head. “You are so much like your father, Camden. You fail to understand the same thing he did, that people are lazy. They will always need to be guided. They can barely grasp what is in front of them. We are merely giving them what they want.”

Valerie and Sylvia listened to the exchange, their eyes shifting back and forth as it continued.

“
Lazy
. Like Adam in the painting,” Logan whispered.

“Yes, exactly like Adam,” Andrea said. “Since you’ve grasped Michelangelo’s symbolism, you must understand on
some
level that what we are about to do is for the greater good.”

“Where is your compassion?” Logan asked.

“Compassion?” she said, as if affronted by the mere idea. “Are we not more compassionate than the kings and queens of the past? Our solution requires no war, no battles, and very little suffering. It will be quick and painless.”

“This isn’t going to work,” Logan said. “You should stop before it’s too late.”

“Too late?” Andrea said in a haunting voice. “It is already too late. Look around you.” She pointed to the large monitors in the SCC, which were displaying broadcasts from around the world of people dancing and cheering and singing songs in happy anticipation of Liberty Moment. Andrea shook her head with something like disgust. She pointed to a screen displaying a clock: 04:25:32. “Look at them celebrating, totally unaware of their impending liberation. When that clock reaches 04:45:00, they will emerge into a more peaceful and well-ordered world. Well, most of them will.”

“Liberation!” Sylvia burst out. “All those people—why do you need to kill all those people?”

“When you don’t know who your enemy is,” Logan said, “the swing of your sword must be very wide.”

Andrea raised her eyebrows and nodded, pleased with Logan’s interpretation.

“Let’s just take care of them right now,” Lucius snarled. “I’m sick of his philosophical babble.”

“No,” Andrea said. “Let them watch. Let them witness the end of the Rising and the beginning of a new world order. Then, when Camden’s son has experienced the shame of his failure, we can send him to join his mother and father. I fear,” she added, looking at Logan, “your passing will have been as unceremonious as that of your parents. It is a shame that you were not able to meet with Simon. He could have told you much more about the unfortunate plight of your parents.”

It took Logan a few seconds to realize what Andrea had said. She’d
just admitted that Simon was indeed involved in his parents’ murder. “Oh, no, I plan on meeting with Simon,” he said. “In fact, I look forward to it. I have a few questions about
his
father and how he really came to possess the
Chronicles
.”

Lucius lunged forward and slammed the butt of his gun into Logan’s head, knocking him to the floor.

Valerie attempted to jump from her seat to assist Logan, but Lucius put his gun to her chest and forced her back into the chair. Logan lay on the floor for a moment, rubbing his head. He eased back into the chair, and he could see blood on his fingers.

“Calm yourself, Lucius,” Andrea commanded.

Lucius went to a nearby desk and started rummaging through Logan’s backpack.

“The activation frequency has been uploaded.” Gretchen walked over, holding a gun pressed against the side of an SCC staff member. “What do we do with the remaining employees? We don’t need them any longer.”

“We’ll deal with them when we deal with these three.” Andrea looked at Sylvia, Valerie, and finally, Logan. “Oh, Simon would also like for you to know that your friend Robert Tilbo does not seem to be faring too well.”

“What have you done with my father?” Valerie shouted.

“Your father?” Andrea suddenly looked confused.

“Look what I found!” Lucius called out, as he pulled something out of Logan’s backpack.

“Not now, Lucius!” Andrea was still staring at Valerie. “Robert Tilbo is your father?”

Valerie was silent now. Andrea’s interest in her father worried her. She looked away without answering.

“Mother, I think you really need to take a look at this,” Lucius insisted.

“What in the world is so important?” Andrea said, annoyed. When she turned toward her son, her eyes widened in surprise.
Lucius was holding up the frequency device that Sylvia had taken from the WCF lab.

Logan watched the clock on the device. 04:29:58, 04:29:59. While Andrea was distracted by Lucius’s discovery, Logan turned to Valerie and Sylvia, looked at them intently, and nodded. Then he closed his eyes; somehow, without speaking, they knew they should do the same. Another second passed, and then a blinding violet light filled the control room.

58

Find a religion about the future,

not one locked into the past.

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

DHARAN, NEPAL, 4:30 A.M. LOCAL TIME,

15 MINUTES UNTIL LIBERTY MOMENT

Pandemonium broke out in the Satellite Control Center. Logan heard people screaming and stumbling all around him. He remembered the blinding green light he experienced at the auction and hoped the violet light would have a similar effect now. The loudest, most bloodcurdling scream came from Lucius. Logan opened his eyes just in time to see the scorching-hot frequency device fall from Lucius’s burning hands. He was stunned to see the skin on both Andrea’s and Lucius’s faces shriveling and splitting, exposing the raw flesh underneath. Andrea pushed back her hood as she dropped to her knees. But unlike her son, she fell to the floor without uttering a sound.

During the ensuing chaos, Logan tackled one of the guards to the ground, knocking the gun from the guard’s hand. The guard’s head hit the floor hard, and he lay unconscious or dead, Logan wasn’t sure. Sylvia also sprang into action, overtaking the other guard, who was struggling with his loss of sight. Dazed and blinded, Gretchen drew her weapon and started to fire randomly. A single shot from Sylvia took
her down. Logan looked around for anyone who still posed a threat. He saw Andrea trying to crawl over to where Valerie had fallen, struggling to say something. The only words that Logan could make out were “Robert . . . Robert . . .” He ran over to her to hear what she was saying, but she collapsed before he could reach her.

While the remaining staff members slowly recovered from the blinding light, Logan and Sylvia bound the hands and feet of the two remaining guards, one still lying on the floor. Sylvia then quickly took a seat at one of the control panels. She opened a communications link to Chetan, who had witnessed the alarming events in the SCC via the security cameras. After Chetan guided Sylvia in lifting the security lock-down, he told her he was on his way up to the SCC.

“We need to disable the wavelength pulse!” Sylvia instructed the staff members. “We don’t have much time left!”

Logan heard someone calling his name. “Valerie!” he shouted. He turned around to see her lying on the floor. He ran over to her.

“I can’t move my legs,” she said, struggling to sit up and lean against a desk. “I can’t feel them.”

Logan raised the legs of her trousers to see if she had been shot. “I don’t see any blood,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked. “What did you do?”

“I took a chance,” he said. “On the plane ride over, I read more of the doctor’s notes. He said that Andrea and Lucius were given the serum to cure their disease, but they had to wait seven days until the proper wavelength could be administered, or there would be side effects. I wondered if that first wavelength, the one that didn’t activate the DNA collar in the lab, was actually their activation frequency. I took a chance and set the device for two hundred five nanometers and set the timer to go off after seven minutes. It was the only way I could think of to take them out.”

Logan and Valerie looked at the bodies of Andrea and Lucius sprawled on the floor. Lucius was lying next to the frequency device; it was still smoldering.

“ ‘Side effects’ is an understatement. That is one painfully gruesome way to go,” Valerie said. She nudged Logan on the arm. “I’m gonna make an agent out of you yet,” she joked, yet Logan could see her grimacing in pain.

“I don’t understand why you were affected,” Logan said.

“No time to figure that out right now,” she said, weakly shaking her head. “We have to figure out how to stop the pulse.”

“Sylvia is on it,” Logan said. He turned and looked at the fallen body of Andrea again. “Hold on just a second.” He placed a comforting hand on her cheek. Then he went over and removed Andrea’s PCD from her jacket pocket.

Chetan rushed into the main control room and went directly to Sylvia, who was still seated at the controls. The two remaining SCC staff members joined them. After conferring a moment, Sylvia and Chetan went over to Valerie.

“What happened to you?” Sylvia asked, as she kneeled beside her. “A medical team is on the way.”

Logan was still struggling with Andrea’s PCD. “There’s no button on this,” he said.

“It must be one of those new DNA-activated devices,” Chetan said, coming over to take a look. “They send a slight electrical pulse through the body, and if you have the right DNA, it turns on.”

“Well, the security seems to be working,” Logan said, continuing to struggle with the PCD.

“Let me take a look,” Valerie said.

Logan handed her the device. As soon as her fingers touched it, it activated.

“I don’t think that should have happened,” Chetan said with surprise.

Sylvia grabbed the PCD from Valerie, and it once again deactivated. When she handed it back to Valerie, the PCD turned back on. “There must be something wrong with it,” Sylvia said. “The pulse must have done something to it.”

Valerie looked puzzled as she held the activated PCD in her hand. She shook her head. Logan continued to look at her.

Chetan went over to Lucius, checked his pants pockets, and confiscated his PCD. “Just out of curiosity . . .” He handed it to Valerie, who took it in her other hand. It activated, too. “So,” Chetan said, “I must ask the obvious question.”

“Heavens, no!” Valerie exclaimed, clearly offended. “I am certainly
not
related to either of them.”

“Hey, over there!” a voice shouted from the control table. “We have a problem. We can’t prohibit the pulse! And we have less than seven minutes left!”

“Go help!” Valerie ordered Logan and the others. “I’ll be all right—just go!”

Logan, Sylvia, and Chetan ran over to the control table.

“We have to figure out how to override the programming,” Sylvia said, as she took a seat next to the staff member. Logan huddled over her anxiously.

“The satellites are controlled by a series of operating tasks,” the staff member said. He brought up a list of them on the large display in front of them. “I’ve already filtered out the ones that run daily and any that are set to repeat. There are twenty or so left. We have to find the right task and delete it.”

Beast I

Beast II

Harvey

Pathaya

Voyager X

Opus Ninety

Orion

Denique Defaeco

Simplicity

Duplicity

Jupiter Bound

. . . 

“Why do techies always have to assign dramatic nicknames to everything?” Sylvia cried out in frustration.

Everyone scanned the list, trying to determine which was the rogue task. Sylvia was right; none of the names seemed to have anything to do with what the task was supposed to accomplish. Logan felt his heart sink when he saw Chetan look perplexed and shake his head.

“Denique Defaeco!” Valerie yelled. Everyone turned and looked at her. “Andrea’s PCD says the task is named Denique Defaeco.”

“What does that mean?” Chetan asked.

“Of course.” Logan took a deep breath as he spoke. “In Latin, it means ‘final purge.’ ” The group looked at him for only a moment before returning to the list.

With a few motions of his hand, the staff member highlighted it. He clicked to have it removed from the list; nothing happened. He clicked again. Again and again. Still, nothing happened. “They have it protected!” he cried. “Without the proper password, it can’t be removed!”

“Chetan! We need ideas, anything!” Sylvia called.

The clock read 4:40:05.

Chetan replaced the staff member in the chair and desperately started to work with the controls. “These passwords are stored in an encrypted file,” he said. “They rotate the key every hour. It would take at least thirty minutes to decrypt the one we want.”

“That’s too long!” Sylvia cried.

Logan fell into a chair and shook his head. He stared at the displays showing people from around the world preparing for Liberty Moment. The first one that caught his attention was a view of local people from the city of Dharan, just down the hillside from the Vault. They all held lit candles, and the children played with theirs, delighting in pouring the melting wax onto the ground. The combined phosphorescence from the flames illuminated the streets. Logan thought of Jordan and Jamie. He might never see his children’s smiles again. He would have
given anything to be with them. If he couldn’t protect them, he would have at least wanted to be with them.

Another screen caught Logan’s attention. It showed surfers on the west coast of the NAF participating in the annual Freedom Day surfing competition. They were riding huge waves and cutting away on their boards before the waves crashed onto shore.
Waves,
Logan thought. He remembered what the mysterious voice had told him in his last candle vision: “Change the waves in your life, and you change how they crash.”