Kill Switch (37 page)

Shutting the barn door after the cows had run off, though. He was sure of it.

Not that Bell knew who exactly had been sneaking around in his head. Someone from Gateway, for sure. Some of Erskine's remote viewer spies, those fuckers.

And someone else.

Was it Prospero? Was the boy still alive? If so, what on Earth was he up to? The rumors Bell was hearing terrified and sickened him. ISIL, for Christ's sake. Selling the null field to a gang of insane murderers. How was that any kind of justice, even from Prospero's perspective?

How?

If it was true, and Oscar Bell did not have real proof.

Then there was Corrine.

She'd been in his dreams, and maybe inside his head twice now. Both times on nights when he forgot to wear the damn helmet.

Bell hated it. He was no romantic and even if he was, having someone inside his head like that was not romance. It was rape. It was a violation on a level that ran so deep that he wanted to saw open his head and scrub his brain with Lysol.

Damn the woman.

After the first time, he tried to call her, but her assistant said she was unavailable. After the tenth call Bell decided that Corrine was down at Gateway.

Last night's dream … well, that sealed it.

He'd become aware that he was sleeping. It was like that. You are asleep but then you realize that you're asleep. You are still inside your body but you are aware the body is sleeping.

That's how it began. And then she was there.

It was not like meeting her in the flesh. There was no flesh. It was her but it was like he could see her with some sense other than eyes. There is no word for it in the English language. “Sensed” her did not fit because there was no precise sensory input. No sight or smell, no sound or touch. But she was there and he knew it was her.

Corrine Sails. Stripped of everything. No uniform, no face. No skin or bones. No blood or breath.

Just her, whatever “she” was.

Bell knew why so many people had committed suicide. It was a nightmare encounter. Her thoughts were right there, shooting through him like electrical shocks, as if the nerve signals fired by neurons were stun guns. He had no defense against them and the power was raw and immediate. Bell wasn't sure how exactly his body was registering them. Again, there were no words for this kind of contact. It wasn't even a purely electrical connection, either. There had to be some of that, of course, or the helmets wouldn't work, but on the plane of communication there were other rules, other forces yet to be cataloged. Someone at Gateway had tried to coin the term “soulspeak” but it was too silly for the scientific and military minds to grasp.

Bell, despite his cynicism, thought it might be right.

What were souls, after all? If they existed at all, then they were some kind of energy that had no label in science. Yet. Quantum scientists would have to label them at some point, give them a properly sober Latin name, place them in a category, force them into a range, measure them and meter them.

That would come. Science wasn't there yet.

When Corrine stepped into his mind Bell was sure that the contact dragged them both into another place entirely. The soul level? Maybe.

Or another dimension.

Another world?

Another universe?

After all, the God Machine was Prospero's attempt to open a doorway that would take him to what he believed was his home. To another world, but not another planet.

To a different universe than this.

Or to a different plane of existence where words like “world” and “universe” and even “dimension” had no practical relevance.

They did not really talk to each other. Conversation is a product of organic machinery. Breath vibrating the larynx, tongue and lips forming words, the jaw hinge moving, and electrical impulses accessing memories and forming thoughts, using syntax and vocabulary. All physical things.

They had no bodies in that place.

But he heard her. Felt her. Whatever it needed to be called.

Corrine was trying to tell him something. He was sure of it.

Warn him?

Maybe. Probably.

But warn him about what? About who?

He couldn't remember what frightened her, only that something did. It terrified her. It was the only clear thing Bell could remember when he woke up.

However, he woke up naked, on the balcony where they often stood after making love. Except he stood on the stone rail, his toes over the edge, his body swaying as if trying to leap.

It took a lot of scotch to stop the shakes.

He did not know why he crawled under his desk with a gun.

All he knew is that after that night, he never went to sleep without that goddamn helmet.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 8, 8:41
A.M.

“The Gateway matter has presented us with a number of complications,” said Mr. Church. “Particularly in the matter of reliable information. Most of the records are unavailable to us through our usual channels, and that includes MindReader. We know that the project was initiated fifteen years ago and the focus of the research being conducted at Gateway has changed many times. We know that Dr. Marcus Erskine was the head of the research and development team down there, and that they were working on several projects that, on the surface, appear to be unrelated.”

“That's all we have?”

Church removed a folder from his briefcase and slid it across the table to me. “This is something Bug dug up for us from very deep in the records of the black operations file attached to Gateway. It's a fragment of a project proposal paper written thirteen years ago by Dr. Erskine.”

I read it hungrily, needing answers. Unfortunately most of it was scientific mumbo jumbo that shot way over my head. However, there were footnotes and annotations in the distinctive scrawl of Hu's handwriting and Bug's juvenile scribble. The story this all told was bizarre. Erskine hadn't gone down there with one purpose in mind. Gateway was one of those cluster projects where several ultra-top-secret research programs were being conducted under one roof, with Erskine as overall director. Unfortunately each project had a code name. Kill Switch was the easiest to understand—a weapon that interrupted power. But also referenced—without useful explanations—were projects labeled “Dreamwalking,” “Dreamshield,” “God Machine,” “Freefall,” and “Unlearnable Truths.”

Church was petting his cat and looked way too much like a James Bond villain. Even the gloves creeped me out.

“This is all we have?” I demanded.

“It's a piece of what was clearly a larger document. Bug said that most of it was scrubbed from the Net and this is part of an editing memo that he was able to salvage. The text is suggestive of certain kinds of projects that surface every once in a while. Psychic phenomena, esoteric espionage, thought projection.”

“Thought projection? You mean mind control?”

“Possibly,” he said. “I've put out some feelers for information on any project related to that, with a bias on anything that might explain what happened to Glory Price and Dr. Sanchez.”

I sipped my coffee, realized it had grown cold, and splashed some warm into the cup. “Mind control…? Is that even a real science?”

Church said, “There are a lot of radical projects in the various levels of R and D. Some are improbable, most hit walls and are proven to be unsound, some are merely unlikely, a few stretch credulity to the breaking point. But every now and then we advance the more arcane branches of science by an interesting inch or two.”

I drained my cup and set it down. “We didn't get close enough to assess the process down at Gateway. And without our body cams and telemetry we got bupkes. Do you have anything else?”

“That was all Bug found. I asked him to dig deeper but so far he hasn't found anything of use.”

“What about that QC thingie? I thought our new quantum computer could find anything.”

“Bug hasn't fully integrated that science into MindReader,” Church said quietly. “He has been readjusting.”

I nodded glumly. Several months ago I'd recovered a prototype of a truly practical quantum computer. Normally Bug would have freaked out about it and danced the Snoopy dance, but the guys who owned that tech had made some vicious attacks against us, targeting our families in order to cripple the DMS. Bug's mother was killed by a small drone packed with explosives. Her murder nearly killed Bug, though in a different way. It took Church a lot to get him to even agree to come back to work. Since then Bug sounds and acts like his old self, but I think a lot of it's game face. My dad, Church's daughter Circe—who was pregnant at the time—and other innocents were also targeted. Rudy was attacked and Aunt Sallie nearly died. If Bug needed time to get up and running, then I wouldn't be the guy standing over him with a whip.

That said, I kind of wanted to stand over him with a whip because I fucking well needed to understand what happened in Antarctica. When, of course, I could actually stand.

I sighed. Very audibly, and Church gave a small, sympathetic nod.

“I'm not sure the QC would help,” he said. “Even if we had all of the MindReader upgrades finished we still might be looking for something that does not exist on any computer.”

“‘Verbal briefing only,'” I quoted, and he nodded. “So what are we thinking about all this?”

“That is still a work in progress, Captain. We need a lot more information. Currently the pieces don't seem to fit together in any way I find comfortable.”

“Well, join the damn club, Boss.” I rubbed my tired eyes. “So, are we both thinking the same thing? That our friends from outside the neighborhood are the ones who built that city?”

“Ah,” he said wistfully, “if there were only something left to study, then perhaps we could answer that question.”

“You think I shouldn't have called in an air strike?”

“I wasn't there, Captain, and I try not to Monday-morning quarterback my officers. The call was made and that's that. Even if it was the same call I would have made, it still leaves me with regret that we can't explore that city.”

“Yeah. Sorry I didn't pick you up a travel brochure, but I was in the moment.”

“Apparently so. Unless we can identify and interrogate any surviving persons involved, we may never know what most of these programs are, or were,” said Church. “Excavating the site is pointless. Have you seen the satellite pictures? Cartographers around the world will have to redraw their maps of Antarctica. To say that the president would very much like to have you skinned alive is not an understatement. He used those exact words.”

“Nice to be admired for one's accomplishments.”

Church gave me a sour look.

I said, “Well, okay, maybe I was going off the deep end when I tried to order a nuke—thanks for running interference on that one—but the rest? Yeah. You didn't see what we saw. Maybe it was us hallucinating, but I don't think so, which means the strikes I ordered kept whatever it was from getting out. Or … if it was some kind of psychic warfare, then this is on them for playing us. Either way, I stand by my call.”

“Have you heard me say otherwise?”

“Yeah, well…” I stopped and changed the subject. “So … what does Bolton make of this? Does he think I'm crazy, too?”

“Harcourt has been very sympathetic to your recent troubles. He has also tried several times to intervene with the president. The fact that our charter has not been terminated is largely due to him.”

“Ah. But what does he think about all of this?”

Church took a moment with that. “He was not involved in the Majestic affair, but he's been briefed on it. He knows that we are dealing with some extraordinary matters.”

“You're dancing around it, Boss,” I said. “He doesn't believe what Top, Bunny, and I saw down there, does he?”

Church picked up a cookie, looked at it, then set it down without taking a bite. “He has expressed some concern that, with a lack of evidence, we should all avoid jumping to conclusions.”

“Sigh,” I said. I got up and stretched my aching muscles and began pacing the room, feeling restless and angry.

“Harcourt is working the Kill Switch angle,” said Church. “Portable directed-energy weapons, particularly jammers and EMP-type devices, are the next hot technology. The science of miniaturization is catching up to both military and terrorist needs for man-portable weapons of that kind. They are very attractive to terrorist groups because of the relatively low cost and ease of transport.”

“Houston,” I said. “That's ISIL, right? I mean that's what we all think?”

“It's a high probability, but they are being coy about taking credit because of the obvious global political and military backlash.”

“Sure, if we knew it was them, then everyone would go on a witch hunt for them. A lot of civilians would get killed in the process, though.”

“Regrettably, yes, but that witch hunt would happen. Nothing could stop it.”

I squatted down to pet Ghost while I thought it through. “Houston was big,” I said slowly, “but it wasn't enough. It was a stupid risk because of what you just said.”

“But—?” he said, gesturing to encourage me to follow my thought.

“But, I think there's another shoe about to drop. Houston was a punch but it wasn't a knockdown punch. Not even close. Same for the racetrack and the debate. They were jabs, but somewhere there's a big overhand right coming. Whatever it's going to be, the Kill Switch thing is going to set it up.”

“Agreed.”

I straightened. “What about nuclear power plants? What would happen if they hit one of those with the Kill Switch device?”