The Empowered, page 43
Odobe twisted one of his rings. “Not necessarily.” He seemed to be one of those guys who doubted everything.
I stood there, my chest tightening, gut churning. They weren’t going to go after Emerald Biologic after all. Damn it.
I fiddled with my wrist comm, brushed my finger against the button. Three short presses, and one long one would be all it would take, and then Support would swoop down. I’d be the hero. Assuming I lived.
And Ellis could keep on creating nightmares and enslaving people, kids.
I tasted bile.
Ashula spoke before I did. “That tells us something very important,” she said.
“Oh?” Odobe was still Mister Skeptical.
“That the Hero Council values Emerald Biologic, and, in particular, a site designated Emerald Green.”
Odobe stroked his chin. “We can use that.”
“Precisely.” Nefarious turned on the portable computer, swiveled the screen. A map of Colorado came up, the God’s eye view, and zoomed in on Colorado Springs.
Electricity crackled from Lightning’s fingertips. “The Citadel.” She said something in Spanish. The Hero Council’s North American stronghold.
I stopped fiddling with my wrist comm.
Nefarious froze the image of the computer display. He drew a green circle around a point to the northwest of Colorado Springs. “This is the Emerald Green facility. Its proximity to the Citadel provides more evidence that the Hero Council values what Ellis is doing.”
Ashula caught my eyes, smiled at me, as if to say, see, we agree with you. They had a roundabout way of doing that.
“What’s the plan?” Odobe asked.
Just like that, the man was all business.
Nefarious typed out commands on the computer keyboard, and a split image popped up on the screen. On the left was the Citadel, the fifty-story tower with the huge surrounding concrete circle of offices and workshops called the Disk, looking like a circular version of the destroyed Pentagon in Washington, DC. There were four aircraft and helicopter landing pads on top of the base of offices, surrounding the foot of the soaring tower.
It would take a huge army to storm that place. Even then it looked dicey. A circle of tall, skinny glasslike poles surrounded the Disk.
“Force projectors,” Nefarious pointed a computer cursor at one.
“Are you trying to convince us this is a bad idea?” Speed Guy asked.
“Just showing that we won’t be able to storm the place.”
I frowned. He was just showing off.
“So, what is the plan?” I asked.
“You will take a team into the Emerald Green facility. Here.” He zoomed in the right-hand screen image until we could see a giant complex of green buildings, like a city of tinted glass buildings, all the glass emerald green. “Once inside, you will head to an area designated in the intelligence data you obtained as ‘the Hothouse’.”
“Then what?”
“You will deploy an electro-magnetic pulse weapon, which will destroy the facility. There will be a timer. You will have fifteen minutes to clear the area. The resulting secondary explosions from the chemical tanks in the Hothouse will destroy the “unlife,” as you call it. The EMP will wipe their computers.”
“But it won’t wipe out what Ellis knows.”
Nefarious nodded. “It will if Ellis is in the Hothouse.”
“How do you know that?”
He tapped the computer screen. “The intel you provided.”
That couldn’t have been in there. But I didn’t know for sure.
“Okay. Fine. How are we supposed to get in?”
Nefarious glanced at Odobe. “He will provide a way under.”
Odobe put his hand on his chest. “Pardon, but why should I?”
“Because we need you to create a tunnel beneath the complex’s outer perimeter.”
They locked gazes. Macho posturing.
But Odobe looked away suddenly. “Very well. I will do it.”
“Thanks for the assist,” I said to Odobe. I looked at Nefarious. “What’s the second part of Double Tap?”
“An infiltration of the Citadel.”
This was Mutter-level insanity.
Lightning looked like someone had struck her with lightning. “Incredible. Do you both have a death wish?”
Odobe began laughing, a deep, rumbling belly laugh. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “I needed a good chuckle.” He grew serious. Something about the way he stood made me realize his power was a connection to the Earth. I could almost feel the floor tremble. This was a very powerful man.
The gold on his fingers, and on the chain around his neck. The gems studding those rings. He must be worth a lot of money. If his power was connected to the Earth, then the Earth’s riches-gold, silver, gemstones-were his for the taking. He could be fabulously wealthy. And yet he was still concerned about money.
He slapped the table, rattling it and making Lightning jump.
“I’m in.”
Just like that. A gambler. Maybe he went through money. “My people need things to be different,” Odobe said. “The UN stifles our opportunities by preventing us from controlling our ancestral territory.”
Power then. The Hero Council and the UN held power, and he wanted it. Nefarious seemed the same. But Ashula, Ashula I thought was different.
Before I realized it, my hand was back on my wrist comm. Three quick presses, then hold for three seconds. Stall a bit, ask more questions. Then the sudden attack.
I’d already waited too long. Zhukova would have a stroke if she knew where I was and what I hadn’t done.
“We have a way into the Citadel,” Nefarious said, and I paused, fighting with myself. Those kids in Colombia and on the Coast. Those things. The twisted, alien things that reared out of the water in that lab, and lumbered and bellowed on the mountain. That could be the world, remade by Ellis because he wanted to remake it into something else. Power again.
I forced myself to listen to Nefarious.
“We can get into the Disk as UN personnel and civilian workers—there are thousands there.”
“Then what?” Lightning’s face clouded. “What will being inside the Disk do? Or do you intend to penetrate the Citadel’s tower itself and take over?”
Nefarious smiled. “Something like that.” He tapped on his computer keyboard and the screen display showed a weird looking map—blue dots connecting by lines, superimposed over a ghostly looking globe of the Earth. One dot said, “The Citadel.” Another, in France, said, “The Arch.” One in Japan said, “the Pagoda.” There was another blue point in Australia, and a fifth in India.
“These are the five Hero Council fortresses. Regional headquarters. Each considered impregnable. Even if you were able to penetrate one, you’d be overwhelmed by quick response teams.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Odobe said, then laughed that rumbling laugh of his again. “There’s a reason why each of these is located in a city—quartering security forces and additional Empowered.” He got serious, his voice going deeper. “So, I say again, tell us something we don’t already know.”
“Very well.” Nefarious smiled again. “I will.” He typed on his keyboard. Bright blue lines appeared, connecting each dot to every other dot.
“This is how each fortress is protected. By being connected to every other fortress, via a quantum tunneling network, created by James Goldin.”
A quantum tunneling what? That was crazy. Goldin—Doctor Prometheus, had been dead for like forty years. And why hadn’t anyone heard of this before?
Odobe started to laugh again, then got serious. “Hypersonic transport is how they respond so fast, that and the local security teams.”
Nefarious leaned forward. “The Q-T network can’t handle transporting more than a handful of people at once, and then it needs to be reset. Goldin actually considered it a white-elephant.”
“But Goldin’s dead!” Lightning snapped. “Do you expect us to believe this network has been in place for decades and kept secret the whole time?”
“I do. Because it has been. We only learned about it from the data Ms. Brandt recovered in the recent operation.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “That was the Ellis data I found.”
Nefarious nodded. “You couldn’t realize that Ellis had information stored on his private network concerning the Hero Council.”
“How would he get this super secret intel?” It didn’t make sense to me. Nor from the expressions on their faces, did it to Odobe or Lightning.
“An excellent question. The obvious answer is because Titan gave it to him.”
“Titan!” We all said it at once, even Speed Guy.
“Yes, Titan. Because he sees Ellis as the next James Goldin.”
“But Ellis isn’t Empowered,” I said.
“But he’s a genius nonetheless.”
Ashula stood, went to the world map taped on the wall behind her. I finally looked closely at the map—it was an old style map, the kind that had “beware of dragons” scrawled on it. A weird map to have at this meeting.
“No one knows the origins of our powers, where they come from, why we have them. They seemed to come out of nowhere in the 1950s. The first Empowerings occurred a few years after the atomic bomb was developed. But no one’s been able to find a connection.” She made a circle in the air over the map.
“This old mariner’s map of the world, actually a cheap reproduction, shows the world as it once was thought to be. India believed to be just west of Europe. We have this map here because it illustrates how wrong a worldview can be.”
She touched the map. “The same is true for the Q-T network. None of you realized it existed until just now.”
“There is more information in the data we uncovered. Information which indicates the existence of a far older world-spanning network.”
“Insanity,” Lightning said.
“Mythology,” Odobe added.
I shook my head. “You’re saying there’s some sort of ancient network, whatever that means? Doing what?”
“Connected to the source of our power,” she said.
There’s way more crazy in this room then I thought you could cram into one small storage room.
She smiled. “Mat, I know this seems preposterous. Yet it’s true. This ancient network is connected somehow to the source of our powers. How it is connected we do not know. Yet.”
Lightning looked confused and angry at the same time. Her eyes were practically popping out of her head. “So how does this help us take down the Hero Council, which you claimed was our goal?”
“It shows us how connected Ellis is to the Hero Council, at least to Titan, and to an ancient secret. But they guard this secret. We need to cut off the head of the guardian in order to finally find the truth.”
Nefarious looked triumphant. His eyes shone. “We are going to disable their command facilities and their Q-T Network by inserting electromagnetic pulse generating devices into the Q-T network, and activating them at each of the fortresses.”
I smelled a lie. Something about the way he said it said he was lying; he wasn’t quite telling it like he planned it. I’d been around a lot of liars, so I could smell them from a mile away.
“You are going to somehow get five of these EMP devices into the Citadel, and then send one to each of the other fortresses, and simultaneously detonate them, in order to wipe out the command and control capability of the Hero Council and their UN minions,” Odobe said. “I just want to be clear on this.”
“Yes.”
Odobe grinned. “I’m in.”
Lightning jerked, stared at him. “You are as crazy as they are.”
He laughed. “I never said I wasn’t crazy—we all have to be a bit crazy to do all the things we do. It’s being Empowered—it makes us each a little crazy.” He got serious again. “But this is our chance. And it’s our cause. Because if what we have learned about Ellis is true, and Titan is in on it, we have to act.”
Ashula nodded. “Ellis is involved because Titan wants him to improve the Q-T network, expand it so that it can reach three times, maybe even ten times as many locations.”
I shivered. There it was. That was it.
“Destroying the Q-T network and disabling five headquarters is only a start,” Nefarious said. “The real work begins after that. But Ashula and I have been in touch with counterparts to our organization in other parts of the world, who have agreed to act against the Hero Council once this blow is struck.”
Ice in the pit of my stomach. I should have contacted Zhukova.
My jaw tightened. But this was the chance I had to stop that bastard Ellis from spawning more nightmares, and I was going to take it.
The fact that Titan and one of the factions Winterfield had warned me about were in on this, colluding with this maniac, smooth-talking billionaire, that cemented the deal.
I wasn’t calling Support. I was in the whole way. The Scourge and my cell were going to help me take out Emerald Green.
23
Ashula took me inside the hangar at a private airstrip, flicked a wall switch. A single lamp, dangling from rafters, came on. Plastic crates were piled along one wall. On the opposite there were metal shelves filled with all kinds of junk, old engine parts, propellers, gas cans, you name it. There was a van parked in the center of the hangar. Your run-of-the-mill white courier van.
She opened the rear door. Half a dozen suitcases, the kind that were made out of ballistic casing, sat in a weird kind of rack that kept them from bouncing around when the truck moves.
“The EMP devices.” She said it quietly.
“I thought they’d be bigger.”
“Easier to transport this way.”
“But are they powerful enough?” It just didn’t seem like the cases were big enough.
“I assure you Mat, they are,” Ashula said.
I swallowed. Okay, these were dangerous, but they were EMP devices—Nefarious said non-nuclear, so it wasn’t like I was going to die as long as I wasn’t standing next to it when it detonated.
The EMP would destroy the artificial parts of the unplants Ellis had made, as well as wipe the computers and electronic controlled vats.
Almost seemed too good to be true.
“Which one is mine?” The case in the front seemed a little smaller. She pointed at that one. She unlocked the rack, and I pulled it out. Felt like the case weighed fifty pounds. Lighter than I thought.
I wasn’t so sure she was telling me the truth, but why would they send me on a suicide mission, with Obode and Lightning attached to my cell? I couldn’t get Lightning’s glaring out of my head—she was royally pissed off when she found out I was in charge.
Tough.
Obode had taken it easier than I figured he should, especially for a man as rich as he must be. That didn’t make sense.
“Why is Odobe even in the Scourge?” I asked Ashula. “He seems bent on getting money, but with his Earth power, he can mine for gold and gems. What does he need with us?”
“He’s a gambler and can never hang on to his money. He’s also propped up several African nations, and that becomes expensive when you are bankrolling your friends’ corrupt regimes.”
That seemed like a bullshit answer. Sure, I hadn’t figured him for a Good Samaritan, but there has to be something more than just greed with him.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I like to know motivations. Thing is, we are smashing Emerald Green, right?”
She nodded. She looked away again. “Yes.”
I had a feeling I was being set up, but I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to believe Ashula meant what she had said about taking down Ellis.
“As long as we can stop Ellis,” I said.
“We will.”
I followed her out, towing the suitcase behind me. Handy that it had wheels.
This had to work.
“I want to check on the bomb’s status,” Simon said. We were at a godforsaken place in the middle of Utah. The rest of the cell was at a greasy spoon diner next to a gas station. We had tanked up, and then pulled over across the lot, away from the diner, for some privacy.
The wind had whipped up, and the rusty “Diner” sign creaked on its rusty pole outside.
I pull the door shut and helped Simon pull the case. I took the key from my utility belt, then unlocked the case.
Inside, the black cylinder was secure in its foam casing.
I nodded at the EMP device. “See, snug as a bug in a rug.” The old rhyme popped into my head for some reason. Guess because it was always what Ruth used to say when she was trying to make me feel better, when I was little and she found a favorite toy I thought I had lost.
Funny memory to have just now.
Simon bent over the case, frowning.
“This is the EMP device?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He ran his fingers over the black casing, pried open a panel cover at the waist of the thing. There was a status indicator, showing numbers in green, and below that, a ten key pad.
“This isn’t an EMP device.”
“What?” I leaned forward. “I don’t get it. Ashula and Nefarious said we would get a bomb.”
He looked at me. “We did receive one. But not a specialized EMP one.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I’m familiar with all sorts of ordnance, from conventional to nuclear. EMP devices are shaped differently than this, rounder, to maximize the electro-magnetic pulse.”
He stared at the device. “This is a neutron bomb.”
I moved back from the cylinder. “No shit?” It couldn’t be a neutron bomb.
“No shit. The display numbers indicate the status of the detonator, and the casing is made of a composite material that enhances neutron generation.”
I shivered. I only understood about half of what he said, but what I understood made me realize Ashula and Nefarious were in fact playing me.
They were aiming for mass murder. Neutron bombs were UN property only and had been used only a few times, in the Russian territories and China, in order to defeat criminals and rebels decades ago. Supposedly the Hero Council had banned them.
