The Cyclops Initiative (31 page)

Standard operating procedure suggested he should stay quiet and keep his light off as much as possible. Standard operating procedure was very useful for infiltrating locations that were possibly full of unseen enemies in the middle of the night.

SOP be damned. “Julia!” he shouted as loud as he could. “Julia! Where are you? Are you okay?”

Angel winced and took a step away from him, as if he were inviting the wrath of the gods and lightning might hit him at any moment. When there was no reply, she pushed open a side door and pointed her light into the room beyond. “Clear,” she said and moved to the next door. “Clear.”

“Julia!” Chapel shouted. Why wasn't she answering? He was pretty sure the four-­legged robots weren't programmed to kill them. Otherwise, why not give them better weaponry than their spindly legs? But maybe Julia had hurt herself by accident, somewhere in the house. Maybe she had fallen through rotten floorboards or something had collapsed on top of her—­

“Clear,” Angel said, taking another doorway.

“Stop saying that,” Chapel snapped. She hadn't been trained for this kind of operation. She had no idea what “clear” really meant, especially not when she was just pointing her light into the middle of each room. Chapel sighed. “Corners,” he said.

“What?”

“You check each corner of the room, one, two, three, four. Even then, you don't say ‘clear' unless you're sure there are no doors or closets or even cupboards in there. If there are, you need to check every one of them.”

Angel looked hurt. “On TV—­”

“On TV, they don't fire real bullets,” he told her. He ran to the end of the hallway. “Julia!” he shouted.

Had he heard something? Had Julia responded? He couldn't be sure his mind wasn't just playing tricks on him. He'd thought he'd heard footsteps that stopped as soon as he called out.

It could have been anything. At the end of the hall was a huge foyer, with a cracked marble floor and a huge staircase leading up to the second story. The stairs looked intact, and more bundles of cable ran along the wall, following the risers. A little moonlight came in through tall windows and made the stone floor glow.

“Julia!” he shouted.

Nothing. He started across the floor, intending to climb those stairs. Behind him Angel stepped into the room and pointed her light across the foyer, at the entrance to the far wing.

Her light picked out a dark shape, crouching on four segmented legs. A shape with no head.

“Shit!” she cried out, the expletive lost as the robot started screeching away, its spindly feet lifting high and then stepping down hard on the slippery marble.

“Upstairs,” Chapel said. “Maybe it can't climb!”

But he was pretty sure it could.

NORTHWEST OF MOREHEAD, KY: MARCH 25, 01:29

He pushed Angel ahead of him, moving her up the steps as quickly as he could. The stairs were, in fact, completely intact, untouched by the general ruin of the mansion, and they made good time.

Better time than the robot, anyway. He'd been right; it could climb stairs, but it was a slow process. The machine had to test each new step with each of its feet, bearing down on one leg, then the other to make sure it would hold its weight. By the time Chapel and Angel reached the top of the stairs, the robot was only halfway up.

Which was good, except for one problem—­it meant they couldn't get back down, if they needed to.

“Keep moving,” he told her. “Keep looking for Julia.”

Angel's light hurried on ahead of them, following the bundles of cable that ran along the wall.

“I said to ignore those,” Chapel said. “Look for—­”

“I've got a hunch,” Angel told him. “I'm supposed to go with those, right? Hunches?”

Chapel shook his head. This was no time to argue. He shoved open a door and stumbled inside, his light hitting each of the corners. Nothing there.

“This way,” Angel said, grabbing his arm.

Behind them, the robot was three-­quarters of its way up the stairs. Chapel cursed and followed Angel. Together they headed down a long hallway with doors on either side. The bundles of cabling rose to the ceiling again. Occasionally one strand of cable would break off from the rest and disappear through a doorway, but the majority of the bundle continued in a nearly straight line toward the end of the hall. A big pair of doors stood there, one of them open just a crack. A hole had been drilled through the wall above the doors and the entire bundle of cable disappeared through it. Whatever lay beyond those doors clearly needed a lot of cable, though Chapel had no idea what that might mean.

He started to bellow for Julia again, but Angel reached up and clamped one hand over his mouth. Had she heard something? Seen something? He put his back against the wall and looked up and down the hallway, trying to determine what had alerted her.

Then he heard it. The screeching of robotic legs. The machine had made it to the top of the stairs and was coming closer, or—­no, it wasn't just one set of legs—­

Angel ran to the double doors and threw them open. The room beyond was well lit and gave off the distinctive hum of server racks breathing together like the bees in a hive. None of that mattered to Chapel, though.

He could think of only one thing as Angel stepped inside the server room.

“Corners!” he called out.

Just before someone grabbed Angel and hauled her, screaming, out of view.

NORTHWEST OF MOREHEAD, KY: MARCH 25, 01:32

Angel's scream cut off abruptly. The only thing Chapel could hear was the screech of the robot or robots behind him, coming closer.

The doors to the server room closed as if under their own power. Chapel ran forward and beat on the doors with his fists, calling Angel's name. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw not one but two of the headless robots approaching, their thin legs stepping high on the carpeted floor of the hallway.

He still had his tools. He could stand and fight the robots. At least he could go down fighting—­swinging away with a pipefitter's wrench while the machines kicked him to death. It would be a pointless, stupid way to die. It wouldn't help Julia or Angel. But Chapel had always been too dumb to just give up. He started to reach for the backpack.

That was when he felt the barrel of a silenced pistol touch the back of his neck.

In front of him the robots fell silent and unmoving. As if their power switches had been flipped to off. Clearly they weren't needed anymore.

Chapel set his face in an emotionless mask and started turning around to face whoever it was who had drawn down on him.

It was Wilkes, of course. He recognized the man's voice. “Stay right there, buddy. Don't turn around. Not until I tell you to. You can go ahead and nod a little to show me you understand.”

Chapel nodded.

“Good. This bullshit with the robots, that wasn't my idea. I want you to know that. My new operator thought it would be fun to test out some of his toys on you bunch. I protested, but after you got away the last time, I don't get to give so many orders.”

Chapel sighed in resignation. “I expected more out of a trained assassin—­”

The pistol dug into the back of Chapel's neck. “Don't talk,” Wilkes said. “You don't say anything until we ask you specific questions. Nod if you've got that.”

Chapel nodded.

“Okay. We're going to do a little dance. You're going to turn around and face the doors while I stay directly behind you. We're going to take this slow and easy. All you have to do is shuffle your feet until you're turned around. You understand?”

Chapel nodded again.

He rotated in place, very slowly. Wilkes was quick enough that Chapel never really got a good look at him. Much less any chance to grab the gun—­which was the point of their little pirouette, of course.

“Okay. When the doors open, you walk through, right into the middle of the room. Then you get down on your knees and put your hands behind your back.”

Just as Wilkes had promised, the doors opened. Chapel stepped through, noticing as he went that nobody stood near the doors—­they were, in fact, automatic. He walked through into the server room. Light came from two long fluorescent tubes overhead, bright enough to make it hard for Chapel to see much. He took in the boarded-­over windows of the room and the big shelving units full of computer equipment. It was warm inside, with so many racks of hard drives and circuit boards buzzing away. There were other ­people in the room, but he was blinking so much he couldn't make out their faces.

One of them had red hair. Julia was still alive. That was something.

Chapel stopped in the middle of the room and dropped down onto his knees. He put his hands behind his back and waited. He felt Wilkes come up behind him. A knife touched his neck and then cut down, through his shirt. Fingers dug into his back, getting under the complicated flanges that held on his artificial arm. Wilkes tripped the two hidden catches that locked the arm in place and suddenly it was gone. What remained of Chapel's shoulder felt naked and exposed.

Wilkes used a pair of handcuffs to lock Chapel's good wrist to his ankle. Chapel knew he wasn't going anywhere bound up like that.

He was pretty sure this was how he was going to die.

NORTHWEST OF MOREHEAD, KY: MARCH 25, 01:34

Chapel blinked in the light of the server room until his vision cleared and he could see again. The first thing he could make out was that there were two big armchairs at the far end of the room, their upholstery torn and their stuffing falling out. Julia sat in one of them, and Angel in the other. They'd been tied up with heavy rope and Angel had a gag across her mouth. They both looked terrified.

“We're still alive,” he told them. Wilkes grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, but Chapel needed to reassure the two women. “If they wanted us dead, they would have already—­”

Wilkes smashed Chapel across the mouth with the butt of his pistol. Blood leaked down between Chapel's teeth.

“You're still alive,” the assassin said, “because my operator had to see you die for himself or it doesn't count. Orders. Once he verifies you are who you are, that's when it's over. So don't fool yourself.”

Julia tried to say something, but Wilkes lifted his pistol as if he would strike Chapel with it again. She closed her mouth.

“It won't be long,” Wilkes said. “He just went down to look at that robot you took out. He didn't think it was possible. In fact—­”

“In fact,” a new voice said, from behind Chapel, “I recorded a lot of useful data that we can add to the evaluation process. We're testing those robots for battlefield use, to carry heavy equipment and even to ferry wounded soldiers back to field hospitals. They do an amazing job of handling rough terrain. Nobody had really thought to use them for base security before, though. For this trial, I downloaded a descriptive algorithm based on the way wolves hunt in packs. When faced with multiple prey animals, it turns out the best strategy is actually to separate them from one another. Pick out the weakest, the slowest, and get it away from the herd. I'm afraid that turned out to be you, Ms. Taggart.”

Julia's eyes went wide.

Paul Moulton, the analyst that Chapel had met at the NSA—­the one who had accused Angel in the first place, and started all this—­walked to the far end of the room, where Chapel could see him. He wore a sweater vest over a shirt and tie and a very, very smug expression on his face.

“Hello again, Captain Chapel,” he said. Then he turned to Wilkes. “This is them. You've got your targets. Um, fire at will, I guess.”

Chapel closed his eyes, waiting for the gunshot. He heard Angel trying desperately to talk around her gag, but he tried to block out the sound.

He couldn't ignore Julia, though.

“That's him,” she said. “Jim, that's the guy!”

“What?” Chapel asked.

“The guy who came to see me, when you were on your mission. The one who told me to break up with you or he would out you to the press.”

Chapel was seconds from being shot to death, but still his mind reeled. “Seriously?” he asked.

“Yeah, guilty, whatever,” Moulton said. “Do you really want to talk about this? We can just shoot you now; it'll be easier that way. Like pulling off a Band-­Aid.”

Julia clearly intended to hash it all out, though. “He threatened you. And then he showed me that picture of you and the other woman,” she said. “I thought he was CIA, but—­”

“NSA,” Chapel said, nodding. “Moulton, I have to ask. That part has never made any sense to me. Why would you want to split us up? Why on earth do you care about my love life?”

Moulton rolled his eyes. “I don't, obviously. It was a ploy. A gambit. And it backfired. I told her I would out you, that she was compromising your operational readiness and that you two couldn't be together. I thought she had more backbone.”

“I—­what?” Julia sputtered.

“I figured you would tell me to fuck off. That you would run straight to Chapel and Hollingshead and tell them what had happened. Then I could have leaked Chapel's name to the press and made it impossible for him to work as a field agent.”

“Jesus. That was, what, almost a year ago? Moulton, have you really been working that long just to bring me down?”

The analyst's eyes flashed. “Longer. And not just you. I took down Hollingshead's entire directorate. I did that. Now we're going to make it permanent. Chapel, dead. Angel, dead.”

“Angel's already gone,” Wilkes pointed out. “She was just a computer, and I smashed the last of its hard drives back in Pittsburgh.”

“Seriously,” Moulton said, “did you believe that? I never did.” He went over to Angel and pulled the gag out of her mouth. She tried to bite him, but he pulled his fingers away fast enough to avoid injury. “It was a cute trick, that neural net you left for us in your trailer,” he told her. “But did you really think we'd fall for it? I follow all the latest advancements in artificial intelligence. I know what neural networks are capable of, and I've been studying
you
for years. There was no way a machine could do all the things you've done, Angel.”