The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (40 page)

30

FIVE
stories beneath the lake’s southern shore, Flannigan stood alone in the
lab.  Fading evening light forced its way through the waters outside the
thick round windows.

We will not be
stopped
, he told himself yet again. 
The Project will continue.

There was a royal
mess to clean up first.    Rescheduling the test was the least
of his problems.  There was no telling whether or not any of the lab
employees would remain on the project.  Apparently people were hesitant to
come to work when they thought they might get shot at.  Flannigan may have
to replace the entire staff.

But he would, he
vowed to himself as he strode to his office.  And he would bring the
project back up to speed.

WITH
slow, resolute steps, Director Holiday stepped into the department
garage.  His eyes looked straight ahead, unflinching.

He halted. 
A greeting party of five had formed between him and his silver car.

“Good morning,
Director,” said Corey.

“You seem like you’re
in a hurry,” Amber observed.

Holiday tried to
look irritated.  “Believe me, I was in no hurry.”

“Weren’t you at
least
gonna
say goodbye?” demanded Dizzie, hands on
her hips.

“You’d like a
personal farewell each time I leave headquarters?”

“We do if you’re
not planning on coming back,” said Jill.

Holiday
sighed.  “Please get out of my way.”

They didn’t move.

“If you want to
get to your car,” said Bradley, stepping to the front of the group, “you’ll
have to fight your way past us.”

“Not to question
your combat skills, sir,” said Corey, “but I don’t think you’d make it.”

FLANNIGAN
took a seat at his computer.  The briefcase housing the five glass
cylinders sat open on his desk.

What was
this?  Someone had already logged on.  The screen said: 
RedEye
I on standby
.

He ran nervous
fingers through his long gray ponytail. 
How...?

It had to be some
kind of prank.  He keyed the abort sequence.

His screen went
blank—then flashed an image of an innocently smiling china doll.  “Be
careful,” she spoke in an infantile voice, “or I may break!”

“What is this?”
Flannigan blurted, panicking.  He tried the abort sequence again.

The china doll
frowned.  “Oh no, no,
nooooooooo
,
you’ve broken me!”
  As she cried out her voice grew grotesquely deep
and monstrous.

The image of the
doll shattered.

“PLEASE,”
Holiday said quietly, “don’t stand between me and what I have to do.  It
will be difficult enough as it is.”

“You don’t have
to blow the whistle, Director,” said Amber.  “You don’t have to go to
prison.”

“It’s true,” he
said softly, “I don’t have to—any more than we ever have to do anything that we
know is right; any more than we ever have to make any sacrifices for the
greater good.  But isn’t that what this department is about?”

“So long as
you’re here, yes,” said Dizzie.

“Which is why
we’re hoping you’ll stick around a little longer,” said Bradley.

“Flannigan was
right,” said Corey.  “You are the type who would willingly martyr yourself
for a cause you believed in.  We know you would have told the board about
Project RedEyez a long time ago, except that you knew they wouldn’t believe
you.”

In his briefcase
was the evidence he needed—the recordings he’d made when he was taken to the
lab to observe the testing.  He had footage of the lab and the workers,
and the entire conversation that had transpired between him and
Flannigan.  “They’ll believe me now,” he said.  “And you have to
believe me when I tell you there’s no other option.  If there was...”

“We thought of
one,” said Jill.

THE
shattering china doll continued wailing in that monstrous voice.

“No!” Flannigan
yelled.  He pulled the plug on his computer.

The screen went
blank.  But he could still hear the doll’s hideous voice shouting outside
his office.

He dashed out
into the lab.  The computer at each workstation bore the same image.

“THEIR
entire network will be completely destroyed,” said Jill.  “The RedEyez,
their designs, their artificial brains, everything.”

“It’s very kind
of you,” said Holiday, “but it won’t save my position.  Even if they trace
the virus to one of you, I’ll still be held personally responsible.”

“They won’t trace
it to one of us,” Corey assured him.

The director eyed
him skeptically.  “You seem confident.”

The party of five
became six as Jerry G stepped into sight.  “They’ll trace it to me,” he said
with a sheepish smile.  “See, I’m the one who originally created the China
Doll Virus.  And it’s not the first time I’ve used it.”

“Well, well,”
Holiday smiled at him, “you certainly do rise to the occasion, don’t you, Mr.
Grant?”

“I try to, sir.”

“They’ll come
after you, you know.  The Admin Office won’t let this pass.  You’ll
need protection.”

“I was hoping you
could help me out with that, actually.”

Holiday
smiled.  “I think we can arrange something.”

“Convinced yet?”
Bradley asked the director.

“That we’ve
stalled them, yes.  But it’s only a matter of time before they rebuild the
RedEyez and reprogram their data.”

“The
nanobots
are useless without the AI navigational and
data-gathering systems I made,” said Jerry.  “Without me, they’ll have to
start from scratch.”

“And it’ll take
anyone else five times as long as it took Jerry,” added Jill, “though he’s too
modest to say so.”

“She’s right,”
said Jerry G.  “I am.”

“They’ll do it,”
said the director, “no matter how long it takes.”

“When that
happens,” said Corey, “
if
it happens, that might be a good time for you
to spill the beans and go to prison.”

“In the
meantime,” said Bradley, “we have a criminal ring to track down.”

The ice had long
since melted from Holiday’s eyes.  Now they almost twinkled.  “We do,
don’t we?”

Dizzie took him
by the arm.  “Let’s go home, Director.”

A
profound
sense of satisfaction filled Jill as she stepped into her dorm room after
dinner that night.  It wasn’t a feeling she was used to, but it sure was
growing on her.  When was the last time she’d been so content that the
future didn’t bother her?  As she got ready for bed she didn’t even think
about the fact that Sketch’s ring was still stockpiling weapons somewhere under
her feet, didn’t worry about whether Doreen Maybury would cooperate and give
them a lead to finding that stockpile, didn’t brace herself in anticipation of
heading back into the tunnels next week.

That could all
wait, she told herself as she drew back the covers and prepared to settle in
for a night of much-needed, peaceful, uninterrupted sleep.

Her head hadn’t
even hit the pillow before her computer emitted a low warble.  Someone was
trying to contact her.

“Seriously?” she
grumbled as she sat at her desk to see who it was.

She
swallowed.  Anne Marie Cole, Administrator of the Home Planet Liaison
Office.  She’d better take it.

Ms. Cole’s
beautiful face appeared onscreen.  Her wavy auburn hair gleamed. 
Behind her glowed the lights of the Avenue of Towers out her office
window.  “Very sorry to disturb you at this hour, Miss Branch.”

“No problem.”

“I wanted to
contact each one of you personally and congratulate you on the capture of Miss
Doreen Maybury.”

 “Thanks,”
said Jill. 
Couldn’t that have waited until tomorrow?

Ms. Cole
hesitated.  “There’s...one other thing I wanted to tell you.  I don’t
suppose I ought to be speaking about it, but I felt you should know.”

“What’s that?”
Jill asked impatiently.

“It’s about your
father.”

What?
 
“You know who my father is?”

“I knew him a
long time ago.  I only recently reconnected with him.  He came to me,
actually. 
He wanted me to let you know that he thinks about you, Jill.  Every day.”

Jill
swallowed.  Her eyes went to the picture on her desk.  The picture
her dad wasn’t in.

“I know you’d
probably rather he told you himself,” Ms. Cole went on, “but I’m afraid that
just isn’t possible.  But I wanted to relay the message to you right
away.”

Jill nodded,
speechless.  She tried to say something; ask at least one of the thousand
questions that had flooded into her brain over the last thirty seconds. 
But all she could do was stumble through a goodbye as Anne Marie Cole signed
off.

She went back to
bed.  Her eyes didn’t close once all night.

ON
his way back to his dorm room from breakfast the next morning, Corey walked
right into Amber.  She was obviously in a hurry.  “Hey,” he asked
her, “what’s up?”

“Heading out for
the day,” she said evasively.

“Well, enjoy the
day off.”

“Thanks. 
You too.”  She strode past him.

“Hey, Amber?”

She
stopped.  “Hmm?”

“Good luck,”
Corey told her.

Her eyes shifted.

“With whatever
you’re doing,” he said, “whatever it is you’re working on every time you get a
free day.  I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for out there.”

She cleared her
throat.  “Listen, Corey, I wish I could say—”

He stopped her
with an upheld hand.  “Don’t worry about it.  I trust you, okay?”

She smiled,
relieved.  “Okay.”

“But if you ever
need help—if you ever need to talk to somebody about what’s up...”

“Thanks. 
I’ll probably be taking you up on that.”

He nodded. 
“All right.”

“But not today.”

He
shrugged.  “No problem.”

They said
goodbye, and he watched her disappear down the hall.

DOREEN
Maybury, clothed in gray, style-less prisoner garb, wore a resentful expression
as she sat handcuffed to the interrogation table.

A government
agent with silver hair and penetrating gray eyes sat down across from her,
setting his brimmed hat on the table.  He smirked at her.  “Well, we
have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

EARTH’S
SHADOW

1

ANTERRA
was barely visible from Earth, a cluster of lights slightly more noticeable
than the brightest stars.  Even that much was out of sight from the
majority of the Home Planet’s surface.  The floating city hovered
stationary over a specified point in the African equatorial rain forest, moving
in perfect unison with the planet’s rotation.  You could live a lifetime
in the region directly beneath it and practically never notice it was there.

From
Anterra
, on the other hand, Earth was only too
visible.  Half of its sphere soared into the sky above the metropolitan
satellite’s eastern rim, a massive dome painted with oceans and continents and
swirls of cloud.  When the sun sank below the floating city’s opposite
edge, throwing
Anterra
into nightfall, it shone for
hours more on the face of Earth and caused it to glow like a proud
beacon.  Slowly, from top to bottom, the Home Planet would itself slip
into darkness.  Even then it would make its presence known with cities
sparkling from its surface and displays of lightning flashing from its
atmosphere.

Not for a moment
did the citizens of the floating city forget where they had come from.

LIKE
the cities of Earth,
Anterra
did not sleep. 

The darkness was
drowned by infinite gleaming lights and echoed with infinite urban
sounds.  Ground traffic snaked along the lamp-lined streets, and
skytraffic
weaved among the glittering towers
downtown.  Shoppers and diners ambled along the walks.  Music thumped
from the clubs.  Drunken laughter drifted from the bars.  Neon signs
blinked.  Buses roared.  Cabs honked.  City nightlife was in
full swing.

And in the more
shadowy corners of the city, other darker activities were afoot.

“TODAY,
our city enters a new age.”

The high bank
of grimy windows behind her showed
Anterra’s
artificial
atmosphere painted in a deep predawn violet.  Growing rays of a brighter,
harsher violet made a halo over the distant crest of the Home Planet as the sun
prepared to rise.

“For one
hundred years we have been here,” the speaker went on, her voice echoing in the
wide, cement-walled room in which they were gathered.  Her accent was
reminiscent of Earth’s British.  “We came here with a purpose.  But
for one hundred years that purpose has not been fulfilled.”

She addressed
an audience of two dozen men and women dressed in black.  Those who were
not already masked had masks ready to pull over their faces momentarily.

“..
.
Not
yet.
” 
The speaker paused dramatically.  Her smile and dark gaze were framed by
jutting wings of white-blonde hair.  “Not until now.  The time has
come for a change.”

She began
walking among the old crates where the others sat, looking them in the eye one
by one.  They called her the Lioness.  Her ID said her name was
Doreen
Maybury
, though that would certainly be an
alias.  Her legal name remained a mystery.  The origin of her code
name was a mystery as well, though maybe it had something to do with the United
Kingdom’s royal coat of arms inked on her wrist.  They didn’t know for how
long the Lioness had been an operative in the organization.  They didn’t
know how close she was to the boss.  They only knew she was one of the
most important minds behind what they were about to do.  It had been
months in the making.  Endless hours of planning and preparation had led
up to this moment.

Pulses raced.

“You know the
crookedness that has twisted the ranks our government for these hundred years,”
she said as she strode among them.  “You know the incompetent leadership
that stands between us and prosperity.  But their time has come and gone. 
Today is the last day of that hundred years.”

She resumed her
post at the front of the room, stepping onto a small platform consisting of
shipping crates pushed together.  The sun seemed to be rising directly
behind her head; the halo of rays beyond the old factory’s dusty window seemed
to radiate from her.  “Tomorrow we will begin a new century—and a new era
in our great city!  And our citizens will have you to thank for it.”

IT
was called
GoCom
for short.  The
Anterran
Governmental Complex’s many wings of brick and
glass splayed this way and that, stacked and jumbled unevenly, a monster of
modern architecture rising out of the lake in the center of the satellite’s
inhabitable surface.  As the sun rose, the hallways and offices filled
with official looking people doing official looking things.

The most
important event of all was taking place in a windowless room buried in the
lowest regions of
GoCom’s
bulk.  Members of the
press crowded into the horseshoe of theater seats that filled most of the
chamber.  Facing them from the shallow platform at the front of the room
was a row of austere looking members of the
Anterran
government.  One of them, an old man with a failed comb over, had just
made an announcement at the podium’s microphone.

The door behind
the platform opened, and a pair of security officers ushered in the woman of
the hour.  She carried herself with all the dignity the onlookers expected
and more.  The style of her clothes and her deep auburn hair managed to be
utterly professional as well as beautiful, and she regarded them with a smile
of both friendliness and authority.

As she took the
podium the man who had made the introduction cleared his throat and handed her
a document.  She drew a breath and began to read it aloud:  “I, Anne
Marie Cole, do solemnly swear to perform the functions of the office of mayor
with honor and integrity...”

TEN
stories above the press room, a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl sat on a folding
chair in an unused office.  Her expression wasn’t exactly one of delight.

“Can I at least
have a hint?” she asked the men in armored uniforms standing on either side of
her—the men who had accosted her in the
GoCom
lobby
and escorted her here without explanation.

No response
came from behind the
visored
helmets.

“Okay, how
about the name of whoever ordered you to drag me here?”

Still no
response.

“What’s the
first letter?  What does it rhyme with; how about that?”

The door to the
office opened, and a haggard looking bald man entered via wheelchair.

The girl
grimaced.  “Chief Riley.  I should have known.”

The bald man
nodded to the uniformed men, who excused themselves and left him alone with the
girl.  “I’m afraid I was unable to reserve an actual interrogation room on
such short notice.  This will have to do.”

“As much as I
love a good interrogation now and then, I should tell you I’m in the middle of
a mission at the moment.”

“The mission
can wait,” said the chief Home Planet liaison.

“Not exactly.”

“
It can
wait,”
he repeated severely.  Then he sighed and slumped back in his
wheelchair.  “This is a life and death matter, Miss Branch.”

“So is our
mission, coincidentally.”

“I wouldn’t be
detaining you if I didn’t have solid evidence.”

She
hesitated.  “Evidence of what?”

WHEN
the Lioness had wished them good luck, they took the stairwell at the back of
the factory and descended to the ground floor.

And below.

Several stories
beneath street level, the stairwell ended at a thick metal door with a blinking
console.  Their leader passed the required retinal and vocal test, and the
door slid open.

They proceeded
into the dark passage beyond.

“I
will not forget the voters who placed me in this privileged position,” Anne
Marie Cole continued as cameras flashed, “nor neglect to keep their best
interests in mind at all times as I exercise my responsibilities...”

“THE
police department has uncovered a shipment from an arms dealer on the Home
Planet,” Riley said in that same tired voice, “a private weapons manufacturer
called
Belentzer
, Inc.”

“Our department
knows there’s supposedly a revolt coming, Chief Riley,” the girl said
impatiently.  “The rumors have been going on for months.”

“This is no
rumor.  Security at the port caught sight of the shipment when it
arrived.  From the dealer, we got a hold of a recording of the original call
placing the order.”

“I think I see
where this is going.”

“Once we
canceled out the distortion the caller used, we got a perfect vocal match.”

“Don’t tell
me...”

“Are you going
to deny that you placed that order, Jillian Branch?”

She crossed her
arms.  “Would it do any good?  Seems like you’ve already drawn your
conclusions.”

THEY
were all masked now.  Their leader led them from corridor to corridor
through the maze of tunnels below
Anterra
.  The
Dark Beneath, it had been christened—a system of gaps and passages hidden
within the satellite’s inner workings.  It was a world of its own lurking
under the city, a haven for the notorious and their schemes.

They descended
a dark ramp, ducking beneath rungs of pipework, and stepped into a small room
with a textured metal floor.  It was a weapons stash, one of many the
Lioness and her team had been assembling in recent months.  Racks along
the walls held rows of
Belentzer
third generation
assault rifles, Earth’s latest and greatest in the realm of automatic weaponry. 
Ammo belts clicked ominously into place.

Two dozen
Belentzer
3s entered the Dark Beneath in the hands of a
masked parade.

CAMERAS
kept flashing.  Anne Marie Cole kept solemnly reciting her oath of office.

A dull thump
echoed in the room.

The proceedings
hiccupped slightly as a few glances and whispers were exchanged.

The second
thump was louder, the ensuing whispers more anxious.

More thumps,
rapidly, each louder than the last.  They were coming from the floor
between the seated press and the platform.

The front row
of photographers and journalists gasped and fell backwards as the floor tiles
at their feet exploded upward in pieces.

A stream of
armed, masked figures in black leaped through the gap into the room.

Chaos.