Apocalypse (47 page)

Ethan sighed and tossed his pistol down onto the tiles before kicking it away toward the nearest soldiers.

He stood up and placed his hands behind his head as the big man approached, flanked by his soldiers. Quickly, both Ethan and Lopez were patted down and their spare ammunition clips taken from
them. Olaf walked up behind Ethan and gave him a shove in Katherine’s direction.

As he joined her with Lopez in the center of the hangar, Joaquin’s voice chortled down at them.

‘Excellent! There, now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Olaf, please escort our guests into the control room.’

Ethan, Lopez and Katherine were shoved and prodded forward by rifle barrels that guided them past the largest fishing vessel toward a bulkhead at the far end of the hangar that was flanked by a
pair of bright red fire axes mounted on the walls. Ethan briefly considered trying to make a move for one of them, but the soldiers were far too close. As they approached the bulkhead one of the
soldiers, a man who looked to be in his early thirties, jogged ahead and shouldered his weapon before yanking the hatch open.

As Ethan ducked his head to move through, he glanced at the soldier.

‘You know Joaquin’s going to kill you, too, eventually?’

The soldier grinned without sympathy.

‘The secret to staying alive,’ he hissed, ‘is to not ask fucking questions.’

With that, Ethan was propelled through the hatch and into the control room.

Joaquin Abell stood behind a raised control panel that was located on one side of the dome. Ethan saw immediately the large plasma screens arranged around the walls, and the
huge metallic sphere in the center.

‘Welcome,’ Joaquin said, spreading his arms wide to encompass the dome around them, ‘to the beating heart of IRIS.’

Ethan saw another man sitting near Joaquin. He was small and bespectacled, and Ethan guessed that he must be Dennis Aubrey, the scientist that Joaquin had effectively abducted.

Ethan, with Lopez and Katherine either side of him, was prodded to stand before the control panel as Joaquin stepped jauntily down to meet them, his face plastered with a bright smile.

‘I must say,’ he began, ‘that I wish this meeting could have occurred under more cordial circumstances, but alas, such is life.’

‘You saw us coming,’ Lopez muttered.

‘Of course I saw you coming,’ Joaquin replied and gestured to the giant sphere nearby. ‘I have foreseen everything that is about to happen here. I should thank you, both of
you, for locating Charles Purcell on my behalf and providing me with the camera he stole. It has proven remarkably entertaining, I must say, to watch the pair of you die, and yet it simply cannot
be as satisfying as watching it happen for real.’

Ethan shook his head.

‘I think your ego is so inflated that you can no longer see where you’re going.’

‘Is that such a bad thing?’ Joaquin wondered out loud. ‘So many people are so meek, so mild. Our society has taught us to be conservative, to be magnanimous in defeat, to bow
to the wishes of others. Crap, I say. Grab everything that’s yours, do anything you can to achieve your goals, even if it means pushing others out of the way, because when it comes down to it
they’d do the same to you in the blink of an eye. This is a dog-eat-dog kind of world, Mr. Warner, and I am a wolf.’

Lopez’s face twisted into a grim smile.

‘You’re only a wolf in that you’re a cunning animal who is brave in a pack but a coward alone.’

Joaquin smiled pityingly.

‘And yet such a wise and rapid wit as yourself was not able to enter this facility and achieve her objectives without being caught by this
sly, cowardly animal
’ he said.
‘You may enjoy your insults, but they will be the last you’ll ever cast in this life, you little—’

‘What’s the point of all this, Joaquin?’ Ethan cut across him. ‘Your device lets you see into the future. It could have won you a Nobel Prize, changed the future of
humanity for the better by foreseeing and then preventing natural disasters. You’d have been adored by millions, gotten everything you wanted. Instead, you’re stuck down here on the
seabed with your machine, like an overgrown teenage computer geek, planning apocalyptic disasters. Why?’

Joaquin appeared confused.

‘Why?’ he uttered. ‘
Why?
You’ve come all of this way to stop me and you don’t even know why I’m here?’

‘You’re here because you’re a fucking lunatic,’ Lopez shot at him. ‘A sane man would be using this contraption of yours
for good.
’

‘For
good
,’ Joaquin echoed. ‘That word, it’s
so
subjective. What’s good for one person may be lethal for another. I’m doing this because our
world is in a mess, crippled by economic fallout from unregulated capitalism, dogged by climate change, scoured by over-population. It needs strong leadership, and within a few years I, and IRIS,
will be able to provide absolute control over not just government, but over our own futures. We will be able to shape this world precisely as we wish.’

Ethan chuckled bitterly.

‘I doubt that very much. Life just doesn’t fit into boxes, Joaquin, no matter how much control you think you might have.’

‘Control,’ Joaquin growled and clenched a fist between them, ‘is everything.’

‘You’re not controlling anything,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘That thing you’ve got in that chamber, it’s not a weapon: it’s a force of nature, more powerful
than any bomb mankind could build and capable of bringing about the end of the world. If it gets out, there won’t be a world left for you to manipulate. Everything will be gone. Your control
is a fantasy and you’re as much at the mercy of fate as the rest of us.’

‘And what would you know of it?’ Joaquin snapped. ‘I did a little digging of my own, after you visited my yacht. Look at you. You’re a washed-out soldier and journalist,
a lowly gumshoe from a two-bit detective agency buried in Illinois. What possible difference can you make to this world compared to IRIS?’

‘Just preventing you from gaining a position of power would be a great service to humanity,’ Ethan replied. ‘That’ll be more than enough.’

Joaquin’s face twisted upon itself in apparent frustration.

‘You don’t understand. You’re just tiny little people, insignificant parts of a giant machine that cares nothing for your opinion or actions. I am in a position to change this
world for the better, for all humanity, and it requires such a small sacrifice.’

‘Sure,’ Lopez smirked, ‘what’s a few thousand lives here and there for your greater good?’

‘Opportunity follows crisis!’ Joaquin shouted. ‘There is never gain without loss. I have built this, all of this, to gain the faith and trust of humanity. Mankind does not move
forward in small and gradual steps. It takes a revolution to drive our progress, and I am producing one right here. This is more than just the future: this is control of the present, to bring all
countries into alignment, to provide equality and safety for all.’

‘And if people do not want you to control them?’ Ethan asked.

‘Everything I have done,’ Joaquin shot back, ‘every single action, has been with the intention of helping humanity climb out of its self-destructive existence and move toward a
better future. Idle government will be replaced with proactive IRIS rule that protects us all against tomorrow. I built this place to
protect
humanity!’

Ethan finally got it, in a brief flash of clarity that shone through the gloom of Joaquin’s warped ego. In a moment of inspiration he glimpsed Joaquin’s vision and the fragile state
of mind that harbored it.

‘You haven’t built a thing,’ he said.

Joaquin sneered at him.

‘This entire facility was built by IRIS, under my command, the better to—’

‘You’re nothing, Joaquin, nothing at all,’ Ethan interrupted. ‘This is all about little Joaquin living up to his daddy’s name. You’ve spent your life trying
to emulate a great man, but in doing so you’ve done nothing but revealed what a hugely inadequate son you really were to him.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Joaquin stammered. ‘You never even knew—’

‘Everybody has heard of your father,’ Ethan replied, ‘of the things that Isaac Abell achieved. But you? Everything people think they know about you is a lie, a mask.
You’ve spent your life trying to convince people that you’re some kind of great philanthropist, but in truth you’re nothing but a spoilt little psychopath. Even this facility
we’re standing in was built by your father, not by you: all you’ve done is stand on his coat tails, adding little bits and pieces to what he himself created. Everything you are is a
scam, a theft of other people’s ideas.’ He stepped closer to Joaquin. ‘Tell me, little man, of one single item in this facility that you built or invented all by
yourself.’

Joaquin stared at Ethan, his jaw agape and his skin flushing red.

Ethan took another pace forward, standing just inches from him.

‘Tell me, Joaquin, what’s it like to be a billionaire who can see into the future, and yet to still feel so totally and utterly inadequate?’

Joaquin quivered as psychological tremors wrought havoc in his mind. The tycoon whipped one small fist up at Ethan. The blow landed on Ethan’s cheek with a sharp crack, but it lacked
force. Ethan barely flinched, and smiled.

‘Not much weight to anything about you, is there, Joaquin?’

Joaquin trembled with fury, as though he were struggling to keep the lid on a boiling cauldron of anger.

‘You’ve a nerve, Mr. Warner,’ he uttered, ‘to insult me when your life is in my hands.’

‘It’s not in your hands,’ Ethan replied. ‘Like everything else, it’s in other people’s hands, because you can’t do it for yourself In one way
you’re just like your father, Joaquin -he wasn’t able to commit murder himself, either.’

Joaquin’s expression fell flat, his eyes uncomprehending.

‘Didn’t know about that, did you, little Joaquin?’ Lopez chimed in with a brittle grin. ‘That your wonderful daddy murdered Montgomery Purcell all those years
ago.’

Joaquin’s jaw opened and closed like a beached fish as he struggled to speak.

‘That’s insane! You’re making this all up!’

‘Isaac Abell first tested the device that he built here in 1964, on the very same evening that Montgomery Purcell flew home from a meeting with him,’ Ethan said. ‘It was timed
perfectly by Isaac, so that the magnetic fields generated by his fusion chamber would wreck the instruments in Monty Purcell’s airplane as he flew overhead. The man didn’t stand a
chance.’

‘That’s bullshit!’ Joaquin shouted. ‘My father was an honorable man!’

‘Yes, he was,’ Lopez said. ‘It’s why he took his own life nine years later. He could not deal with the grief of having murdered a man. He killed for what he thought were
good reasons, because he believed that Montgomery Purcell’s mission was to make money from building weapons. But in fact Purcell simply understood that mutually assured destruction could
prevent a nuclear holocaust.’

‘Point is,’ Ethan said, his face inches from Joaquin’s, ‘your father killed a man whom he thought was trying to dominate the world by using weapons against it. How do you
think he would have felt about what you’ve done with his work since?’

Joaquin’s skin flushed an unhealthy pallor, but he forced a feeble grin onto his face as he spoke.

‘You’ll find, Mr. Warner, that I’m made of a little more than you give me credit for.’

‘Surprise me,’ Ethan said.

Joaquin held out his hand past Ethan.

‘My dear?’ Joaquin asked.

Katherine stepped forward, and, to Ethan’s dismay, turned to face them as she stood alongside her husband. Ethan saw in her features a bizarre mixture of relief and shame, as though she
had been handed the secrets of the universe and then destroyed them out of spite.

‘Katherine?’ Lopez uttered.

‘Is with me,’ Joaquin said, his features locked into a smile that seemed more like a grimace. ‘No matter what you may think of me, my wife has stood by my side for fourteen
years and stands with me now. My dear, are they alone?’

Katherine nodded.

‘It is just the three of us,’ she replied. ‘The other one, Bryson, quit. The marines on the yacht are under orders to stay put.’

‘As I suspected,’ Joaquin said. ‘Your friend walked, didn’t he, Mr. Warner, just as soon as you were reunited in Miami. I have been watching. The news reports on the
survivors flown in to Miami – you were all in the background, standing around that truck.’

Ethan shook his head slowly, ignoring Joaquin. ‘This is a mistake, Katherine, and you know it.’

‘There is nothing that I will not do for my children,’ she replied.

‘This isn’t about your children!’ Lopez said. ‘Thousands will die because of this!’

‘And thousands more will live,’ Katherine shot back. ‘Criminals captured, lying politicians exposed, corporate greed slain, all by IRIS’s ability to see into the future.
This is the greatest opportunity in the history of mankind to cleanse the legal system of its corruption and the distorted motivations of its practitioners.’

Ethan let a bitter smile curl from his lips.

‘By using fraud, corruption and the manipulation of government to get your own way?’

‘What I’m doing,’ Katherine uttered, barely able to meet his eye, ‘is morally wrong here and now, and will cost lives. But it will save countless more in the future. The
needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few.’

‘Bet you’re glad that Bryson and I didn’t feel that way when we got you out of Puerto Plata,’ Lopez spat at her. ‘Did you forget your husband tried to kill you
there?’

Katherine refused to meet her accusing glare, but it was neither Ethan’s nor Lopez’s tortured cry that challenged her.

‘Katherine!’

They all turned, to see Dennis Aubrey’s face crippled with dismay and horror. Joaquin glared at the scientist but it was Katherine who spoke.

‘I’m sorry, Dennis,’ she said softly. ‘This is the only way.’

‘No!’ Aubrey yelled. ‘Think of what’s really best for your children!’

‘Our children are not your concern!’ Joaquin snarled. ‘Olaf, take him to the chamber. Take them all to the chamber!’