Genesis (Extinction Book 1) (15 page)

“Three agents remained on the train,” Ling announced as he slid the cabin door closed and took a seat next to Mittie Kate. “Why haven’t they tried to arrest us?”

Watching the sunrise over Lake Baikal, Mittie Kate didn’t turn around. Sleep had been hard to come by through the night and the luxurious coach had become a prison, yet it had given her plenty of time to think. “They have no intention of arresting us. They’re still toying with us.”

“Do you think they’ll let us leave?”

“Yes.” She finally turned in her seat and refilled her coffee cup. “They’re keeping an eye on us to make sure we do. But they
want
us to know they’re watching.”

“For what purpose?”

“Intimidation,” she sighed. “It’s an old game. They have at least three of our agents, maybe more. And they’ve made sure we know. Think about it, of the three people in Washington, someone had to turn them over. The new President? The Secretary of State? It has to be someone that holds my leash.”

“Regardless of where we go, they have us trapped?”

“Pretty much.” She took a sip, then smiled. “At least that’s what they think.”

Ling moved to take a sip of his tea and was startled into a very un-Confucius like jump that made Mittie Kate grin. The grin faded as Ling looked at his phone, then glanced up to meet her eyes. “Unknown caller on the emergency number.”

She nodded her head and he put it on speaker. “Hello?”

“Ling, we have a serious problem.” The caller’s voice was unmistakable and Mittie Kate let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding.

“Max, you old bastard.” Ling dropped his head into his hand, a rare show of his relief. “We’ve been trying to contact you. We’ve lost agents in Russia, China, and South Korea.”

“You almost lost one in Dubai. Listen, I know who was behind Genesis, but you’re not going to believe it. William Maitland.”

“Of the Central Organization for Research and Exploration?
That
William Maitland?”

“None other. From the sounds of it, that was the least of his plans. The guy I spoke to seems to think Maitland’s end game is some kind of planetary coup.”

“What exactly did he say?” Mittie asked, reaching for Ling’s free hand.

“He referred to Maitland as the antichrist.” While Max filled her in on his conversation with Yousef, Mittie Kate grew cold. The picture he painted was one of such bleak devastation, she could barely fathom the sheer evil involved. The man the world saw as a technological genius, the savior of modern man, was insane.

“Are you safe?” she asked when he finished his tale.

“Yes, they’re prepping the cargo plane now, I’m hitching a ride to the U.S. via the scenic route with Yousef in tow. Istanbul to France and then the U.S.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Yeah.” Max sighed. “And you know that don’t come easy. I’ll be in Washington day after tomorrow. I think you’ll have better questions for him than I do.”

“No.” Mittie Kate leaned forward. “Head toward location Delta. We’ll contact the others.”

“Are you coming?”

“Eventually. I think we need to make an appearance in Washington. They’ll be watching for us and they need to believe they have us hamstrung.”

“Mittie, you’re not buying into this Armageddon thing, are you?”

“Do I think Maitland is the antichrist? No. But he has certainly put himself in a position to bring the world to its knees if he chooses to do so. Merchant services, medical technology, it all ties back to him. Even if he was just responsible for the Genesis device, for what happened in Mexico, I would want his head on a pike. But our priority is finding out what else he’s been up to and what else he’s been hiding.”

Ling gave her hand a squeeze, “Lay low for a while. All of you. We need Maitland’s men to believe the stinger has been pulled from our tail.”

Mittie Kate held tight to her dearest friend. On the surface, she appeared calm, decisive. Inside, she was terrified. “We’ll let you know when you’ll be free to move about. I want you on Maitland, take him out if you can, but get the rest on tracking down his assets. We need information.”

“I just happen to have a pike with his name on it.”

“Max,” Mittie Kate debated on whether or not to share her thoughts, “how long did your man think we have until Maitland shows his true hand?”

“He didn’t say. It could be tomorrow or ten years from now. But something like this would take time, resources. Surely we’d have seen the trail of something this big in the works.”

“He’s been so active in plain sight it could have been camouflage for what he was really doing.” In the end, she decided she cared too much for both men not to tell them what she was thinking. “I think you’re informant was right. Maitland’s technology is so entrenched, his reach so spread out, that killing him won’t stop what’s coming. There is always another megalomaniac ready to fill Hitler’s shoes and I’ll bet a buffalo nickel he has surrounded himself with men just like him.”

“However, it may cause enough confusion in the trenches for us to figure out how to handle it,” Ling suggested.

“That’s my thought on it,” Mittie Kate agreed. “At least mitigate the damages. All right, Max. Get home and watch your butt. We’ll be in touch when it’s safe.”

“Ling, take care of the old girl.”

“I try, my friend. Be safe,” Ling smiled and disconnected. When he turned to Mittie Kate, his eyes held a dark mixture of anger and fear that she was not used to seeing in those calm pools. “It’s not just clean drinking water and medical care, Maitland has his hands in everything now. He’s not just part of the system, he
is
the system. If he falls, there will be an economic and technological collapse. No government will allow that to happen. We have already seen proof of this with our agents. So how do we hope to do anything to stop this if we cannot trust our own government?”

“I trust you and Max, my friend. No one else. From here on out, we are on our own.”

Ryan brushed a sleepy hand at his ear to rid himself of the insistent chirping, opening his eyes only after smacking himself in the side of the head. It took a moment for him to remember how he’d fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable position, but the gluttony of pizza and ice cream cartons brought it all back.

Eve was a warm weight on his side, sleeping nuzzled up against him as she hadn’t done since she was a child. Easing out from under her, Ryan put the couch pillow under her head and reached out to shut the infernal phone off before it could wake her.

Stepping into the kitchen, he put the phone to his ear and offered a groggy hello.

“Ryan, this is Ellen.” Getting a call in the middle of the night from the secretary to the Board of Directors was never a good thing. “There’s been an accident.”

After getting a few calls like this in the past, Ryan wished he’d never accepted the position on the board. The worst possible scenario was one that had become all too common, a girl had been caught walking back to her car alone. “Another rape?”

“No sir. A fire. In the communications lab.”

Ryan froze with a glass of water halfway to his mouth. It seemed to him that every neuron in his brain had ceased firing. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Cedric’s lab, Ryan. It’s been burned out. There are cops and firemen everywhere.” She spoke in a rush, then hesitated before adding in hushed tones. “They think Cedric and one of his students were in there.”

Stunned, Ryan walked back around the corner of the kitchen to stare down at his child, sleeping with a full belly of junk food and a head full of Abbott and Costello. “I’m on my way.”

Hanging up the phone, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t take his eyes off of Eve. Calling Marcus had lifted a huge weight from his shoulders. He’d been able to kick back and relax and enjoy a rare childish evening with his daughter. Now, it was no longer a crushing weight, but a wrecking ball.

Unless Cedric or Adam spoke to someone, and he really didn’t think that likely, no one else had known what they were up to. That left Marcus. If he was involved, how much danger did that put Eve in? What lengths would they go to cover it up?

“Eve, wake up,” Ryan shook her shoulder, hating to take her to such a horrible scene, but unable and unwilling to leave her there alone. “There’s been an accident on campus and we need to go.”

Eve sat up, her eyes alert and the mind behind them appeared to be firing on all cylinders. Her youthful brain responded much faster than did his own. “Another girl?”

“No, a fire. Get dressed, I’ll meet you at the car.”

Grabbing a pair of jeans from his drawer, he had one leg in and the other started when the chiming began. Soft, buried under the clothes in his drawer, he barely heard it. With a trembling hand, he pulled it out. He didn’t need any more riddles, no more puzzles that pulled him deeper into this madness. Against his better judgment, he swiped the screen to reveal the message.

“Keep her safe. Trust no one. When the collapse comes, get to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Ask for Gunny, my brother.”

“What in the hell have you gotten us into?” he demanded, typing as fast as his thumbs would go.

No answer followed. Frustrated, he pulled the phone back, ready to throw it against the wall. At the last second he held it to his chest and clenched his jaw to keep from yelling. He moved to throw it back in the drawer and stopped. If she acknowledged him, he wanted answers. He’d text her every five minutes for the next ten years if it came to that.

Shoving the phone into his pants pocket, he snatched his keys off the dresser and headed for the garage. Four in the morning was too early for the students of their little college town, or anyone else for that matter, to be out and about. The roads were clear so he turned on his hazard lights and ran every stop light between his house and the university.

“Do you have the key I gave you for my office?”

“Yeah.” Eve yawned. “Why?”

“When we get there, if it’s clear, I want you to go in the back way to my office. Lock the door behind you.”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

His heart screamed to tell her everything. The call from her mother, the satellite images, everything. “Just a fire,” he lied. “I just want to know exactly where you are in case they don’t have everything under control.”

“You’ve never kept anything from me before. I don’t think I like it.”

He should have known better. “I’m not sure, Peanut. And I don’t want to worry you with it until I am. Not until it’s necessary.”

“It might help to talk about it.” She reached out and took his free hand, giving it a squeeze. “You know I won’t tell anyone what we talk about.”

Pulling into the parking lot, he got as close as he could to his office without getting too close to the emergency vehicles or faculty cars that clogged the front few rows. Above them, steam and smoke boiled into the night sky, backlit by a few small cherries of light that the firemen were still focusing their hoses on.

He shut off the engine and turned to look at his daughter.

In many ways, Eve was as fragile as any flower. Crowds, close scrutiny from anyone not him, crushed something inside of her, leaving her a nervous wreck. He had no idea how the knowledge that the world was teetering on the brink of the worst catastrophe in human history would affect her.

Worse still was the knowledge that Cedric and Adam had died because of him. He was her safe place, her only harbor in a storm of people and sensory overload. To see his failure reflected back in those green eyes would be too much.

“They believe the fire claimed two lives tonight. Emotions are going to be high. I don’t want you around that. Not until things cool off.”

Using her emotional shortcomings against her, felt like the final nail in his karmic coffin. The fact that it worked only made him feel worse.

Her head snapped around to survey the smoking ruins at the top of the science building. “Someone was in there? Who?”

“We’ll talk about it after I find out more. I promise.”

She continued to stare at the damage, tears already forming in her soft eyes and he pulled her to him. He knew her brain wasn’t working over who might have been in there, but how they might have died. Her empathy, her wicked imagination, was only part of the reason she was so raw and vulnerable around other people.

“We won’t stay any longer than we have to, Peanut.”

Unable to speak, she nodded her head and pulled the keys from her pocket. He watched her small form weave through cars, avoiding the press of people gathered to watch the macabre show. When she disappeared into the shadows, he ran for the building.

After a five minute search, he found the Fire Marshall. “Mike, what happened?”

“Ryan.” Mike’s ready smile was nowhere to be seen as he shook Ryan’s hand. “Looks like an electrical short in one of the computer consoles. Once everything cools off, I’ll be able to get a better look at it to know for sure.”

“A short?” Could it really be something so easy, something as mundane as a short in the wiring?

“Yeah, come on up.” Mike tossed him a hat and jacket. “I’ll show you.”

After adding knee length boots over his own tennis shoes, Ryan followed Mike as he worked his way up the front staircase. The floor to ceiling windows that graced the three floor stairway had shattered. Following the beam of Mike’s flashlight, Ryan felt as if he’d stepped into the smoke-filled, blackened hull of a ship instead of the stairs he had climbed just hours before.

The doorway he had leaned against had been blown off its hinges. Inside was the dark remains of the most technologically advanced lab any campus ever had. Cedric’s dream machine. As soon as the thought was in his head, his eyes began searching for anything that even remotely resembled a body.

“Ellen said she thought there was someone in here?”

“Sorry, Ryan.” Mike looked away. “We pulled two bodies out. There’s very little left, not enough to identify. Since it was Cedric Miller’s lab, we’re assuming for now that it was him. Along with his grad student. Several witnesses said they usually worked late together.”

“Yes,” was all Ryan could get out. Smoke, the smell of burning plastic and hot wiring, and his emotions worked together to choke off his words.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” Mike said, raising his flashlight to showcase a smoldering black lump of metal and plastic.

He held it there for a few moments before moving it to another unidentifiable mass behind it. Unidentifiable, but Ryan nevertheless knew what he was looking at. Adam and Cedric’s work stations.

“Looks like this is the hotspot. Much more damage to this area of the room than the rest.”

“Do you think you’ll find anything once you’re able to dissect those?” Ryan asked, pointing to the melted monitors and computers that had only a few hours before held the forbidden knowledge of the true state of the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Doubtful. Look.” Mike lowered the flashlight and offered it to Ryan. “I know Cedric was a friend of yours. Why don’t you take a few minutes? Just don’t wander around in there. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

“Thanks Mike.”

Mike gave him a quick nod and disappeared back down the hallway.

Looking at the charred remains of his only link to the mystery of the satellite images, Ryan’s mind turned to the cellphone in his pocket. The puzzles, the riddles. Looking at the charred remains of Cedric’s lab, he could no longer pretend those messages from Mel were anything less than warnings.

If she knew something, why didn’t she just come out and say it? The only explanation he could come up with was worse than the destruction in front of him. “What in the hell is going on?”

“Do you really want an answer to that, kid?”

Ryan spun, startled, and barely caught himself before tripping and landing butt first in the soot and ash behind him. Across the hall, leaning on his cane and watching Ryan like a serpent in the darkness, was Marcus.

“You were waiting for me?”

“Mike and I go way back. I was sure you’d come running, so I asked him to bring you up.”

Marcus limped across the hall and Ryan took an involuntary step back. “Did you…”

“What? Did I do this?” Marcus laughed and shook his head. “Of course I did, you fool. Or rather, I gave the order. Getting Cedric to open the door for me was child’s play. The boy didn’t want to show me what you had discovered, but Cedric and I have been friends… well, as long as you and I have.”

“You killed them?”

“Does it matter? How much do you want to know, Ryan? How much are you willing to risk for that knowledge?”

“Will you kill me too? Rig my brakes or burn my house down in the middle of the night?”

“Before you get on your soapbox, you’d best stop and think about that little girl waiting in your office.”

Ryan took another step back. “Don’t you dare touch her,” he hissed.

“I don’t think I have to threaten her, Ryan, because I know who she really is. More importantly, I have kept your secret. Do you really think they would have bought that bullshit message from Mel if I hadn’t convinced them that you really did have an affair? That Mel really did leave you because she hated the child?”

Ryan clenched his fist, working hard to control his anger. Eve came first. Above all else, he had to protect his daughter. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to leave it alone, Ryan. This is no game. The stakes are way too high for that.”

“How much time do we have before this planet is not fit to live on anymore?”

“Long enough for you to watch your daughter grow up.” Marcus’ tone softened and Ryan had to force himself not to flinch away as Marcus put a hand on his shoulder. “There is no stopping this. Getting this information out to the public will do nothing but cause mass hysteria. A complete breakdown in society. Believe it or not, I have protected you. Sheltered you and Eve.”

“By killing a friend? By killing a child?”

“Would you have preferred it to have been you sixteen years ago?” Marcus laughed. “You really have no idea who your wife is, do you? If it got out that Eve was truly Mel’s daughter, they would have killed you and taken her. If you love her, leave this alone. Teach your classes, take your trips to the coast to take your samples. But mind your own business. This is bigger than you. Bigger than me.”

“How? How do I go on like nothing happened? Like I didn’t get these guys killed?”

“One day at a time, my friend. Pretend long enough and you will forget to dwell on it, forget that it is pretense. Your choice, but this will be the last time I interfere to save you.”

Marcus turned to limp down the hallway and stopped. Looking back over his shoulder, he added, “I truly am sorry, Ryan. If I had suspected they would break the code, I never would have sent the files to you.”

Waiting until the sound of the thumping cane had faded, Ryan walked back to the stairs on automatic pilot. The loss of Cedric and Adam, his guilt over their deaths, was dwarfed by the shadow that had fallen over him. Part of his disengaged brain blamed Mel. Truth be told, a large part blamed her.

As he descended the stairs and turned toward his office, eyes followed him. It seemed like everyone was watching him, scrutinizing him. The pressure of it had to have been imagined, but it made his skin crawl, itch. Briefly, under the white noise of his brain trying to assimilate what had happened, he wondered if this was what Eve felt in large groups of people.