Journey Through the Mirrors (34 page)

Britney nodded.

Anita gave both her father and Britney an exasperated look before turning back to Sebastian. “Is the old clan who gave the king information still in existence? Are they somehow behind this?”

“I do not know,” Sebastian answered.

“So what do we do?” Anita asked impatiently.

“You, my dear, are to continue your studies. And that goes for you, too,” he said to Halima. “When the moment is right, you will be called into service.”

“How will we know?” Halima asked.

Sebastian smiled. “Focus on the Satraya Flame, and use the Jaladarz as I’ve instructed. More information will arrive when it is ready to arrive.”

37

You should start every day with a smile and end every day with thoughts of why you did so.

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

WASHINGTON, D.C., 9:00 A.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 24, 2070

Valerie hit a few buttons on her PCD and showed Logan the video that she took in Château Dugan’s dungeon and the surrounding rooms.

“What’s all that writing on the wall?” Logan asked.

“Not exactly sure,” Valerie said. “But it looks like people were kept down there against their will.”

The video played on. Logan and Valerie sat across from each other at a table in a small meeting room at the north side of the Cube. They had met up at the WCF lab after Logan, Mr. Perrot, Madu, and Nadine had flown in from Mexico City. Valerie and Chetan had returned only a few hours earlier from their visits to Château Dugan and Rigel Wright. After Logan and Valerie were finished sharing information at the Cube, they planned to take Mr. Perrot and Madu to the Calhoun Medical Center so they could see Sumsari Baltik before the Council of Satraya commemoration that evening. Mr. Perrot, Madu, and Nadine were waiting anxiously at a nearby hotel.

“Here is the hidden vault we discovered,” Valerie said. “I was certain
that we were going to find the missing three sets of the
Chronicles
, but they weren’t there. I’m more convinced than ever that Simon and Andrea had others helping them with the Freedom Day plot. Do you remember that e-mail message Fendral Hitchlords wrote to a man named Dario that we found last year?”

“Yes, the one in the old FBI archive retrieved from the Akasha Vault that dated from before the Great Disruption,” Logan replied.

“Well, it’s gone. The message is no longer in the archive.”

“It has to be there. Did it get moved to another system?”

“No.” Valerie looked up at him. “It’s been expunged.”

“By whom? Someone in the government?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But we did find something else in Simon’s vault that you need to see.” She shut off the video and slid an orange envelope across the table.

Logan opened the envelope and pulled out two photographs. One was of his mother, and the other was of his father. The disturbed look on Logan’s face reflected his inner anguish. Simon, it seemed, was still taunting Logan from the grave.

“Believe me, this was not what I was expecting to find at the Château,” Valerie said. “If anything, I thought we would discover information about who might have been helping Simon and Andrea with the Freedom Day plot. If Simon had any pictures of your parents, I would have expected them to have come from the time of the first Council forty years ago. But they didn’t. Look at the date on the photos.” Valerie turned over the one of Logan’s mother. “I grabbed these before the WCF team in Switzerland could enter them into evidence.”

Logan nodded in thanks as he read the date:
July 21, 2066, Freedom Day Rally, New Chicago.
“That’s only a couple of months before my parents were murdered,” he said. He looked more closely at the photo of his father. “This was definitely taken in New Chicago. You can see the Cloud Gate in the background. I took the kids there for dinner the other day.”

“We found something else,” Valerie said, pulling out a handwritten
letter from the orange envelope and handing it to him. “The return address on the envelope says it also came from New Chicago.”

“That’s a few blocks from the house,” Logan said, alarmed as he continued to read the letter.

“We ran the address,” Valerie said. “It’s a rental property. Sold in 2067. We’re attempting to track down the previous owner.” Logan’s eyes widened. “What is it?”

“RJ,” Logan said in a low voice. “My mother mentions an RJ in a few of her recordings.” Logan looked up at Valerie with dread in his eyes. “And your father told me that there was a young man named RJ who was a Forgotten One and arrived in Washington with my mother.” Logan’s mind raced, trying to reconcile the photos, the note, and his mother’s recordings. “Do you remember when we confronted Simon in India? He denied killing my parents. Remember his saying to us that someone else—”

“ ‘Performed that necessary deed,’ ” Valerie finished. “I remember. I also remember Simon’s saying that it was
love
that might have gotten your parents killed.”

Logan looked at the note. “Whoever wrote this might be the person Simon was alluding to. We need to figure out who RJ is.”

Valerie nodded. “I’ll have Chetan and Sylvia analyze the photos. They were taken with a plenoptic camera; we might be able to analyze something more out of them.” She gathered up the pictures and the letter and put them back in the envelope. “The problem is, I’m not supposed to be working on this case. My team is supposed to be completely focused on the natural-gas investigation. Don’t worry, though,” she said, moving around the table and kissing the top of Logan’s head, then looking into his eyes. “I’m not going to let this go until we figure it out.”

Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door. Valerie reached over and opened it, and Chetan poked his head into the room. “We have something you need to see,” he said.

Logan stood and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He and
Valerie followed Chetan to where Sylvia was sitting. The motionless image of a single nanite was projected in front of her.

“Do you remember Mr. Wright mentioned activating and deactivating the nanites?” Chetan asked. “Well, I think we’ve made some progress.”

“We’re still working to isolate the exact signal,” Sylvia said, “but we’re getting close.”

“We’ve isolated one of the nanites from samples we received from the North African Commonwealth,” Chetan said, and he continued before Valerie could protest. “Don’t worry, we’ve taken all the precautions this time.”

Sylvia pressed a few keys on the control board in front of her. “Check this out. If we create an ELF of seventy-nine point six-five-four hertz . . .”

Everyone watched as the nanite seemed to come alive and move around in random directions.

“It appears that these nanites are programmed to activate when a certain ELF signal hits them,” Chetan explained.

“How do you turn them off?” Valerie asked.

“You just kill the signal,” Sylvia said. She hit a control, and the nanite went motionless. “These things are really simple; they’re either on or off.”

“We found something else,” Chetan said, taking a seat next to Sylvia. “Maybe the clue we have been looking for. As you know, the Akasha Vault satellites are constantly recording telemetry off the surface of the earth.”

“Included in the telemetry are ELF signals,” Sylvia said. She activated another display, which projected jagged lines moving from left to right.

“It looks like a heartbeat monitor,” Logan commented.

“It sort of is,” Chetan said. “Extremely low frequencies, or ELFs, are a common occurrence on the earth. This yellow line represents the normal ELF range of the planet, between three hertz and sixty hertz.”

“What is that straight dark blue line?” Logan asked.

“It is a constant signal known as the Schumann resonance,” Sylvia said. “It always stays at seven point eight-six hertz. It is the frequency that exists between the surface of the earth—”

“And the ionosphere,” Logan finished. Everyone turned to him, wondering how he knew that. He shrugged. “I learned it when I was down in Mexico yesterday.”

Chetan resumed. “As you can see, unlike the steady blue line, the yellow lines fluctuate and have peaks and valleys. But they remain within the normal range. Now, watch as I move the time lapse forward.” Chetan slowly slid his hand across a set of controls. The images of the gas field and the graph advanced in unison. “There’s the spike,” he said, pointing to the display.

“And ELF at seventy-nine point six-five-four hertz is detected,” Sylvia said.

“That’s the same frequency that activated the nanites,” Logan said.

Chetan nodded. “If we advance further, we will see that as the radical ELF continues, the gas wells begin to shake, until tower two implodes.” He continued to slide his hand. “Twenty seconds after the collapse, the wave disappears, and once again, we are within the normal ELF range.”

“So someone planted the nanites at the site,” Valerie clarified, “and then activated them by turning on some kind of signal?”

“That’s correct,” Sylvia said, and Chetan nodded in agreement.

“Can we tell where the signal originated?” Valerie asked. “How close would whoever activated the signal have to be to the natural-gas well?”

“Based on the satellite readings, the signal was localized within the vicinity of the imploded well tower in a radius of about one hundred meters,” Chetan replied. “The device was at the center of that area. It could have been on a timer or activated remotely. Which means whoever did it might not have been on the premises. We have no way of telling. Either way, the device is probably buried under tons of rubble now.”

“What about the well in western Australia?” Valerie asked. “Have you been able to determine if the same thing happened there?”

“We have, and the answer is yes.” Chetan brought up the image of another graph. “The exact same ELF was detected there just before the implosion of that well.”

Valerie thought for a moment. “We have some answers, but I’m not sure if we are any closer to knowing who did this or why.”

“How would you test something like this?” Logan asked suddenly. Everyone looked at him, not understanding his question. “If I were building a killer machine, I’d want to test it out first, right?” Logan set his backpack down and sat in a chair next to Chetan. “Just like what Simon and Andrea did with their frequency generator in that Indian village.”

“That is an interesting thought,” Chetan said. “In theory, we should be able to search for seventy-nine-point-six-five-four-hertz ELF anomalies.”

“I would imagine the initial engineering of these nanites took place in a laboratory,” Sylvia countered. “Which means that those ELFs would have been isolated and not detectable. But if any real-world tests were run, we could theoretically detect them. Follow me—we need to use Bertha.”

“Who is Bertha?” Logan asked.

“That’s the nickname they’ve given the big projected image of the earth over there,” Chetan told him.

Sylvia led everyone to a control pod near the large display of the earth. “Hi, Darvis,” Sylvia said. “Any chance we can get hold of Bertha?”

Logan looked at the revolving image of the earth. Numbers, letters, and indicators of all sorts were sprinkled over the surface. “Wow, that is some map,” he said. The continents of North and South America slowly rotated into view. “I’m not sure how anyone can make heads or tails of it.”

Darvis rose from his chair, and Sylvia took his place. “Yeah, it can get very confusing when all the telemetry is displayed,” Darvis said.
“We track everything from satellite positioning to aircraft patterns. We also bring up weather and atmospheric conditions.”

“Which of these controls brings up the ELF map?” Sylvia asked. Darvis leaned over and showed her.

“See all those red markers?” Valerie said. “Those are where the earthquakes have been taking place.” She pointed to the two red markers near Mexico City. “The larger one is the quake you and my father experienced.”

Logan looked at other markers on the globe as it continued to rotate. “The earthquake markers seem to be clustered in certain areas. Most spots have three or more indicators.”

“Yes, we’ve noticed that pattern,” Darvis said. “Each time a rash of earthquakes strikes, they occur in the same locations. During the last round, a few additional locations popped up.”

As the globe rotated, the Atlantic Ocean came into view, along with the western coast of Africa. Logan pointed to a spot in the ocean due west of Portugal. “Looks like a large number took place there.”

“Not too surprising,” Chetan said. “That is the Azores archipelago. There is a tremendous amount of volcanic activity there. During the Great Disruption, all the islands were flooded, and the inhabitants had to flee. After the disruption, the volcanic activity increased, and it remains strong to this day. Those islands are uninhabited. Volcanic and seismic activity go hand-in-hand.” Darvis nodded in agreement. “Any progress on explaining the epicenter-less earthquakes?” Chetan asked him.

Darvis shook his head. “No, it is still a mystery.”

The ELF signal map was now projected on the rotating globe. “There we go,” Sylvia said.

“What are you guys looking for?” Darvis asked.

“ELFs at seventy-nine point six-five-four hertz,” Chetan replied.

Different-colored indicators showed up on the globe as the African and European continents rotated away and the continent of Asia appeared. Sylvia leaned back in her chair and gazed at the results. “We’re
looking at two months’ worth of data. Any ELFs of seventy-nine point six-five-four hertz are identified by those orange markers.”

“There must be more than two hundred orange markers,” Valerie observed. “It’s going to take forever to investigate all of them.”

“Do we have a choice?” Sylvia asked, sounding resigned.

“I thought you said the Schumann line was always supposed to be straight,” Logan said, referring to the fact that the dark blue line and the yellow lines contained a series of closely grouped spikes.

“That is strange,” Sylvia said. She pressed a few buttons, stopping the rotation of the globe and the time lapse of the ELF graphic. “The spikes don’t line up with any seventy-nine-point-six-five-four-hertz anomalies.”