‘He made an encryption key out of a provirus as well?’ Sophia said. ‘Wait, that means I need you and him in order to decrypt the anti-psychopath vector.’
‘Exactly. And that’s precisely how he wants it,’ Cecilia said.
‘Does he have to be alive?’ Sophia asked.
‘It’s the same as your key. There’s a die-off effect.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
‘The way the encryption is wrapped, you’ll need us in the same place at the same time.’
‘Jesus,’ Sophia said. ‘There’s no way we can pull this off. We need to abort.’
‘Listen to me, we can still do this. You’ll need to use the facility’s electronic countermeasures to block Denton’s communications. If his Blue Berets and shocktroopers are running blind and deaf, you can keep one step ahead of them. It’s the only way you can stay alive long enough for me to get there.’
‘You’re going to come here? Shit. You have to.’
The rules had changed. The game had changed.
‘Don’t abort yet, Sophia. We still have a shot.’
Sophia swallowed. ‘How long do you need?’
‘I’m in Puerto Rico, precisely as planned. So from here, I’ll need twenty minutes. Meet me at the BlueGene lab. The files you sent me are intact. Get rid of yours now.’
The call disconnected. Sophia lowered the com from her ear.
Her team was waiting for orders.
Jay was waiting for answers.
On her com, Sophia opened the folder that contained the encrypted photographs. Even if she was captured, they were untouchable without Cecilia’s DNA. It was safe to erase them, so she did it. Gutmann method: thirty-five sweeps of random overwrites, making the erased code virtually impossible to recover. Just to be sure.
She exhaled slowly, then said, ‘We can’t leave yet.’
‘Hang on a fucking minute. We betrayed the Fifth Column to help you!’ Jay snapped. ‘If we stay, we’re toast.’
She met his gaze. ‘We don’t have a choice.’
‘I do,’ Jay said. ‘We fulfilled our part of the agreement; we’re out of here. We want our money and childhood records now.’
‘And how are you going to leave without us?’
‘That’s our problem, not yours.’
Sophia said, ‘Damien?’
Damien frowned. ‘I’m afraid I’m with Jay on this one.’
‘Then I’m afraid I can’t give you the money now,’ Sophia said.
‘Oh really? And why’s that?’ Jay said. ‘So you can kill us and save yourselves the payment?’
Nasira shrugged. ‘The thought crossed our minds.’
‘Cecilia McLoughlin has the money. And the records,’ Sophia said. ‘She’ll be here in twenty minutes. If you want them so desperately, ask her yourself. In the meantime, you stay with us. That’s not negotiable.’
From the corner of her vision, she saw Damien shudder slightly. He stood perfectly still, as if suspended on a string, and his vest slipped from his grasp. He looked blank. Blood squirted from his chest. He opened his mouth to say something, but all she heard was a withering gasp. Not from his mouth but from his chest. He fell.
Suppressed rounds tore through the front of the railcar. Sophia hit the floor. Everyone else did the same.
She heard the whine of the railcar engine grow louder, then realized it wasn’t their engine. Fear shivered through her. She tried to ignore it. Pointing to the driver’s cabin, she yelled, ‘Override the batteries to full capacity! Get us out!’
If they were going to have a chance at outrunning the Berets they’d need to retreat. Sophia just hoped she could get her team to a railcar platform—any platform—before the Berets reached firing range.
Renée was the closest to the cabin. She crawled towards it. Moments later, the roar of their engine drowned out the pursuers’. Following Sophia’s directions, Renée juiced the lithium ion batteries and the hydrogen fuel cell, pushing their top speed from eighty kilometers per hour to a fraction over 120. Sophia just hoped the Berets didn’t know how to pull the same trick.
Something metallic skittered along the floor beside her. Flashbangs.
Sophia closed her eyes and clamped her hands firmly over her ears. Even with her eyes shut, all color and shape dissolved into a sheet of hot white. It sounded like someone had lit firecrackers inside her ears. She couldn’t tell where the bang finished and the dull ringing began. Counting to five, she opened her eyes. The hot white faded. It looked as though everyone had frozen around her. Then they jolted ahead in time.
The railcar was slowing down. The lithium ion batteries were dry. But the hydrogen was still going.
‘They’ve stopped firing,’ Benito said.
‘That’s because we’re out of range,’ Sophia said. ‘For now.’
Chapter 32
Jay dropped to his knees before Damien. Jay himself had taken a round in his left shoulder. It burned like hell, leaving his left arm dangling uselessly at his side. But the pain was nothing compared to watching Damien lie there with that fucked-up slurping noise coming from his chest. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Damien’s eyes were half-open, focused on him. Jay felt useless.
Lucia was over Damien, her medical backpack open on the floor. ‘Sucking chest cavity,’ she yelled above the rush of air.
Her hand was pressed firmly over the exit wound on the left side of Damien’s chest. The round must’ve ripped open the skin on Damien’s back and burned its way through his flesh, smashing open the veins and nerves. It had gone wide on his left side, missing his heart and perforating a lung.
Jay couldn’t give a fuck about the Blue Berets, the Chimera vector, any of that shit. Right now, he was going to do anything to make sure Damien survived.
Lucia pointed to Damien’s chest. ‘Hand here, firm pressure.’
As soon as she removed her hand, Jay took over. Damien exhaled. His eyes were closed now. Scarlet bubbles frothed over Jay’s knuckles. Jay swallowed, hard. His eyes tingled. He could feel tears coming. It only angered him more.
Lucia pressed two fingers into the groove between the large muscle of Damien’s neck and the windpipe. ‘His pulse is too fast,’ she said.
As soon as Damien opened his eyes, Jay yelled, ‘It’s OK, you’ll be fine!’
Lucia removed Jay’s trembling hand and applied a sterile dressing to the wound. He watched her tape three sides, leaving the bottom open for drainage. He could almost visualize Damien’s heart pumping furiously to make the best of what blood was left in his body.
Lucia reached for a plasma bladder and catheter from her backpack. Screw that. Jay beat her to it. He held the catheter between his teeth and ripped the bladder out of its packaging. Lucia let him do it, and stabbed Damien’s thigh with an auto-injector of morphine. Jay tore the caps off the bladder and jabbed the catheter into the bottle’s self-sealing neck. Lucia took the bottle from him.
‘Let me do it,’ he said.
‘It’s OK,’ Lucia said. ‘I have it under control.’
She undid the screw clamp, allowing the liquid to run through the line and bulk out the blood in Damien’s veins.
Jay felt tears splash his cheeks.
‘Thank you,’ Lucia said.
Jay rocked back on his heels until he was slumped against the side of the railcar. His mouth twitched. He tried to keep a straight face, but his chin trembled. He ran his functional hand through his hair. He should never have let Damien get on the railcar.
***
Renée called out from the driver’s cabin. ‘Where to?’
On her hands and knees, Sophia yelled back, ‘Keep going!’
She checked her com. The Blue Berets were yellow dots on her screen. They’d dropped back. Her team was safe. For now.
Jay shuffled towards her. He clamped his good hand over her com. ‘You need to get Damien to a hospital!’ he yelled over the noise. ‘Now!’
‘I’m sorry.’ She looked up at him. ‘We can’t help him yet.’
‘Actually, you can help him,’ Benito shouted.
Jay hesitated, turned to Benito. Sophia did the same. Maybe Denton had retained a medical team in case the Berets needed treatment.
‘How?’ Jay said.
Benito slipped a hand between the buttons of his shirt and scratched his chest. ‘The Axolotl Chimera vector. It’s only encrypted with Cecilia’s DNA, yes?’
‘Damien is dying!’ Jay yelled. ‘And you’re having a nerds’ tea party about DNA?’
Sophia glared at him. ‘Thank you, Jay, that’s enough quite testosterone for now.’ To Benito, she said, ‘That’s right.’
Then realization hit her. She hadn’t thought of that.
She called Cecilia back immediately. ‘I have critically wounded. I need the Axolotl Chimera vector—decrypted.’
‘That’s too dangerous,’ Cecilia said.
‘I’ll wipe it as soon as we use it,’ Sophia said. ‘Please. I need this.’
Cecilia didn’t respond straight away. For a moment, Sophia thought the connection had cut out.
Then Cecilia said, ‘As soon as you’ve used it, erase it from your com again.’
‘Thank you.’ Sophia ended the call.
Her com beeped. She checked it. Cecilia had just sent her the decrypted Axolotl code.
She looked up at Jay. ‘We can save him with the Axolotl Chimera vector.’
‘What?’ Nasira said. ‘You’re actually considering this?’
‘I can take you to the Vector labs,’ Benito said, scratching his chest again. ‘In the Project GATE labs.’
‘You’re going to risk all of our lives to help someone who never wanted to help us in the first place?’ Nasira said.
‘I’m not leaving a member of my team behind,’ Sophia said.
‘He’s not a member of our team!’ Nasira yelled.
‘He is now.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s considered impolite to kill your friends while you’re committing suicide,’ Nasira said. ‘For the record.’
‘Sophia!’ Renée called out. ‘We’ve passed another platform!’
She checked her com. There was only one more platform left. And it was crawling with yellow dots.
‘Fuck, they move fast,’ Jay said, peering over her shoulder at her com.
‘Too fast,’ Sophia said. ‘Much too fast.’
Something was wrong. With the surveillance under her control, it was impossible for the Berets to be in place that quickly.
On her knees, not wanting to give the Berets an easy target, Sophia crawled to Benito.
‘Nasira, get over here!’ she called.
Nasira crawled after her, but Jay was already kneeling beside her. ‘Are you crazy?’ he said. ‘They’ll be on us in a matter of minutes!’
‘If you want to stay alive, then stand aside.’ She looked down at him. ‘Or kneel aside.’
Jay’s Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the sweat-laden stubble on his neck. ‘No.’ His shiny eyes blinked. ‘I’m helping you.’
‘Fine.’
She glanced back at Benito. He was scratching his chest again. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘It’s itchy.’
‘Why?’
‘Inoculation I had recently.’
‘The hell you did. Nasira! Do his chest.’
Nasira kneeled before Benito and waved an open palm over his chest. She stopped near his heart. ‘Getting a soft buzz right here.’
‘Shit,’ Sophia said. ‘You have a subdermal GPS implant.’
‘We’re underground,’ Jay said.
‘Doesn’t matter. This is sferic-based GPS. Very low-frequency signals that penetrate earth and sea.’
Jesus, she thought. There was no way in hell she could remove that. At least not without killing him.
Benito nodded. ‘Next to the heart. That would be a generation-three implant then. I don’t remember it being implanted though.’
‘That sounds about right,’ Sophia said.
She wasn’t familiar with the third-generation implants. Her first thought was to get Cecilia on a voice call and have her talk them through it, then she remembered the Fifth Column’s most skilled cryptanalyst was sitting right in front of her. Dr. Benito Montoya.
She licked her cracked lips. They tasted sour with perspiration. ‘Can we disable it?’ she asked.
Benito pushed his glasses up. ‘Can you isolate and monitor the implant’s power consumption?’
She turned to Jay.
‘On it.’ Jay got to work with his own com. It took him a moment, but it wasn’t long before an electric blue line shivered across his screen. ‘Done.’
She took Jay’s com and handed it to Benito.
‘Right,’ Benito said. ‘Now set your com to transmit on five kilohertz.’
Sophia sensed Nasira hovering over her. She handed Nasira her own com. It was the only one currently in control of the hijacked surveillance system. Someone needed to keep an eye on it.
‘Here, swap,’ she said. ‘Keep watch on the Blue Berets.’
Using Nasira’s com, Sophia identified the implant and adjusted the com’s transmission frequency to match it. ‘OK, five kilohertz,’ she said.
Benito exhaled, surprisingly calm and surprisingly focused. More than she was, at least.
‘Right. I want you to transmit a password of sixteen zeroes,’ he said. ‘This will be the kill password.’
She punched in the numbers. ‘That’s the password?’ She transmitted it, but the com told her the implant wasn’t responding. ‘No, it’s wrong. It’s wrong.’
Benito didn’t look concerned. ‘Right. Change the first digit to a one.’
She did as he said. Same result.
‘Keep trying through to nine.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand—’
‘You will. Just do as I say,’ he said quickly.
She tried the number two. Nothing. She tried the number three. Same result. She continued through the numbers until Benito said, ‘Stop! What number was that?’
‘Six,’ she said.
‘Right. Keep that number, move to the next digit.’
She cycled from zero to nine, transmitting to the implant with every number.
‘How do you know which number is the right one?’ she said.
Benito kept his eyes on Jay’s com. ‘When it’s the right number, the implant doesn’t use as much power to process it. Dead giveaway.’ He laughed loudly and abruptly. It made her jump.
‘You’re guessing the password based on how thirsty the implant is for power?’ she said. ‘Is that how it works?’
‘Correct. I watch the power usage and tell you which numbers are accepted and which numbers are rejected.’
Benito’s hands moved in elaborate gestures. If a symphony conductor were tripping on acid, Sophia thought, that’s what his hand gestures would look like.