Donati stopped, as if waiting for a response, then continued when Sam, Alex, and Raiff remained silent, as the boat headed straight for the Golden Gate Bridge. “It was manufactured to be able to interface with the human brain and keyed to the subject’s DNA to avoid rejection.”
“You’re talking about boosting brain function the same way you might add RAM to a computer,” Sam theorized.
“Indeed I am, Dixon. But in your boyfriend’s case the chip isn’t connected to any part of the brain. That would seem to suggest it’s an independent body implanted by this means to avoid detection.”
Alex was massaging his temples. “Until I got my bell rung the other night, you mean, and the CT scan revealed it.”
Donati nodded. “Your doctor’s report here notes his utter befuddlement at its presence. There’s a record of him making a call to a neurological specialist, probably to inquire about his experience with such things.”
“That man has been eliminated as well, in all likelihood,” Raiff said flatly. “Anyone who could expose or uncover the truth behind Dancer’s presence here.”
“Which is?” Alex snapped. “I mean, please tell me, because I’d like to know. What is the truth behind what I’m doing here?”
“We’ve got another problem,” Donati said, studying Dr. Payne’s report again. “It appears the chip is now leaking.”
97
ATTACK MODE
“YOU REALLY SHOULDN’T BE accompanying us, sir,” Rathman said to Langston Marsh, as his thirty commandos packed into the Zodiac rafts. “This is going to get messy.”
“Nothing you can’t handle, I trust.”
“We’re about to sink a civilian vessel. That’s a new experience even for me.”
“But necessary in this case. I’m sure you understand that now.”
“I do.”
“Then you should also understand why I have to be here. Something about this young man is different from the others we’ve hunted. He must be disabled and taken into our custody, not exterminated like all the others. And I have to be on site to interrogate him immediately—myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the insurance policy I asked you to take out?”
Rathman checked his watch. “En route now. Ten minutes or so out, depending on traffic.”
“We’ll take them with us, then. As leverage.”
Marsh gazed out into the bay, toward the lights of the Blue and Gold Fleet tour boat that had now crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge. “I often wonder what my father was feeling as he took off on that fateful flight. Did he know what he’d be facing? What was he thinking when he climbed into that cockpit? Did he somehow sense he was about to confront his own mortality? Did he realize he was among the first men at the front in a war I’ve been fighting ever since? That’s the kind of moment I believe this is, Colonel. That’s why I have to be there, just like my father was.”
Marsh spotted a dark van slide to a halt up the hill from which the private dock was located.
“I believe,” he said to Rathman, “that our insurance has arrived.”
98
LEAKAGE
“LEAKING?” ALEX WONDERED. “WHAT’S that mean, exactly?”
“It explains the contents of your sketchbook, for one thing,” Donati told him. “Each of those images you drew represents something your conscious mind couldn’t possibly have knowledge of. But if the image leaked out from the chip hidden in your head and was somehow processed by your subconscious, you’d have an explanation for how you could draw things you’d never seen with no memory of imagining them. It explains everything.”
“Including my headaches?”
“You mean the ones you’ve been getting since Friday night?” asked Sam.
“And before.” Alex nodded. “Only, they’ve gotten a lot worse since Friday night. But it’s not just the pain. It’s also, I don’t know, kind of a pressure, like somebody squeezing my skull. Seems to originate just behind my eyes, but I’m not sure.”
“I thought you were lying about them, to get out of tutoring sessions, so I’d give up and leave. Like you always being late.”
“I never told Dr. Payne about the headaches,” Alex said, addressing them all, “not a single word.”
“You didn’t have to,” Donati said, still scrolling through the images. “Your CT scan spoke for itself, only your doctor didn’t understand the language well enough. That’s why he called in a neurological expert, someone who could tell him what it was he’d found. A foreign body that looks implanted in the skull? A foreign body that by all indications has ruptured and is leaking something dangerously close to the brain? I can only imagine what he made of that.”
“But how can you tell it’s leaking?” Sam asked him.
“I can’t, based on these still shots. I’m proceeding from the anecdotal evidence you’ve provided that further suggests that the concussion Alex suffered altered the chip’s positioning which accounts for the worsening of his symptoms. As for the leakage, well,” Donati continued, moving a finger from one of the tendril-like things to another, “I believe we have these to blame. Each time a new one sprouts, it weakens the chip’s molecular integrity and creates space for neurons to escape and interface with his brain.”
“So whatever it is I’m carrying in my head,” Alex picked up, “all these secrets about how to win the war that’s coming…”
“Are stored molecularly inside this chip, essentially within strands of your own DNA,” Donati completed. “Its organic nature indicates it could only be implanted in utero to avoid almost certain rejection, explaining why you were smuggled here as an infant.”
The tour boat was steering toward Alcatraz now, the island a blotch on the dark, fog-drenched horizon through the big viewing window. They had entered “the Gap,” passing between hills on either side that forced the air lifting off the ocean into a kind of wind tunnel. Normally, such thick fog was more of a summer phenomenon, but the unseasonable warmth had left it lingering well into the autumn months.
“There’s something else,” Alex told them all, “something that happened in the second CT scan.”
“Obviously called for since Payne didn’t believe the results he got from the first,” Donati replied. “Probably suspected a machine malfunction or something like that.”
“What happened during the second scan, Dancer?” Raiff asked him.
“The machine went crazy, I mean flat-out nuts. Sparks were flying in all directions, things popping and crackling. How does that jibe with your theory, Dr. Donati?”
“Well, not being a medical doctor, I couldn’t say for sure. I’d start from the fact that no such occurrence marked your first scan and that tells me something may have changed before the second one.”
“The leakage?” Alex barely managed to ask, as if afraid of the answer.
“More likely related to the effect exposure to such a powerful magnetic field had on the chip itself. It could be that the chip, being an organic entity, was simply defending itself against what it perceived to be a threat. That’s something of a stretch, but then so is everything else we’re facing here,” Donati finished, turning his gaze on Raiff as if to make his point. “And this leakage the first CT scan detected does not bode well for any number of reasons.”
“Like?” Sam asked, when Alex couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“I’m an astrobiologist and a physicist, not, as I just said, an MD—or a witch doctor. But the first thing I’d say is that the chip you’re carrying in your head may be killing you. And the second thing I’d say is that the degradation of the chip, as represented by the leakage, could mean it can no longer fulfill the purpose for which it was implanted inside you.”
Alex looked toward Raiff. “You didn’t know anything about this chip?”
“Not until tonight, no.”
“And what’s your thinking now that you do?”
“That the intent was always to drain the information off it.”
&
nbsp; “How, exactly?”
“Either through some kind of interface or…”
“Or what?” Alex prodded.
“Surgical excision,” Sam said, when Raiff hesitated.
“You mean open my head to get it out?” Alex exclaimed, his voice growing angry. “No way that’s happening, no way!”
“It may be your only chance to live if the leakage worsens, even in the slightest,” Donati interjected. “You’re carrying a foreign body around in your head that, organic or not, is spewing something that might ultimately be toxic. Radioactive, perhaps, or worse.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not an MD, Doctor,” Alex told him. “Because you’ve got a lousy bedside manner.”
“How about ‘radiation or something just as bad’?”
Alex shook his head and turned back to Raiff. “You’re supposed to be my Guardian. So what’s the playbook say for this?”
“To save your world, I’d have to find a way to transfer the information the chip is carrying. To save you, I’d have to find a way to get it out of your head.”
“But you can’t do both,” said Sam.
“I don’t know,” Raiff admitted. “With the technology available here, in this world, I just don’t know.”
“The devil’s alternative,” muttered Donati.
“In other words,” Alex said, face starting to tighten into a scowl before going utterly flat, “I’m totally screwed.”
“No,” Sam insisted stridently, when the others didn’t respond, “you’re not.”
“Huh?”
“Remember when you told me you never let the first tackler bring you down?”
“Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“This is the first tackler.”
“No, the first tackler took down my parents, my mom and dad.”
Sam’s eyes searched his, as if they were alone, nothing and no one else mattering. “You said they might still be alive.”
“That’s what the ash man told me. I think he wanted to make a deal, maybe bring me to them if I stopped being a pain in his ass.”
Sam looked toward Raiff and Donati now. “Is it possible? Could they still be alive?”
“Alex just described a second encounter with an astral projection from millions of light-years away,” Donati noted. “I’d say that suggests we shouldn’t discount or dismiss anything whatsoever out of hand.”
“How’s your head feel now, Alex?” Raiff asked, sounding more like a parent.
“Not so bad.” Alex frowned. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“One other thing,” Donati said suddenly, “if there’s some kind of invasion planned, if this enslavement is about to commence, they’ll have to open another wormhole, won’t they?”
Raiff nodded. “One way or another, yes.”
“Because, thanks to Dixon here, I think I know where they’re going to open it. I could be wrong, but—”
And that’s when the first explosions rocked the tour boat.
99
A SINKING SHIP
THE FIRST BLAST ROCKED the boat, left it teetering in the water. The second blast sent it listing heavily toward starboard, en route to toppling over.
Raiff had moved from his seat instinctively to protect Dancer, but the boy had already moved to grab Samantha just before she hit the floor, cushioning the blow enough to avoid any injury.
Langston Marsh …
A single blast could have resulted from something random and mechanical. But two spaced this close could only be sabotage, and professional at that. Raiff came to this conclusion in the moments just before the power died, replaced only by emergency floodlights that did little to break the darkness. The harsh stench of oil and the sight of thick clouds of black smoke flooding the tour boat’s covered area told him the bomber, or bombers, knew exactly what they were doing.
As he moved to help Dr. Donati, who’d slipped out of his chair, Raiff also registered the fact that the explosions had been triggered in the hull, well below the waterline. Divers, then—commandos, in all likelihood, well versed in such things—which again suggested the work of Marsh’s modern-day Fifth Column. Clearly he was upping the ante and, just as clearly, enough information had reached him to suggest that Dancer was no ordinary target.
“What happened? Are we sinking?” a ghost-white Donati managed to ask, as Raiff helped him back to his feet.
“We were attacked,” Raiff said, leaving it there. Then, swinging fast, “Alex?”
“I’m fine.”
The smell of oil was already stronger, the smoke thickening, when the covered area of the boat began to take on water. Raiff couldn’t tell where it was coming from, meaning it was coming from lots of places at once, which suggested a catastrophic hull rupture.
“Lifeboats!” he called out.
But Alex had already surged ahead of him for the stairs, joining those who’d chosen to enjoy the tour without the bother of the biting wind or cool mist rising off the sea. They pushed up the stairs in a pack, needing to cling to both railings with the boat now listing at what felt like a forty-five-degree angle and increasing. Raiff clung as close as he could to Alex without shoving the other passengers forcefully aside. Keeping the boy safe had been his sole purpose for eighteen years, hyper-exaggerated over the last forty-eight hours. So strange to think of little else for so long without needing to act, only to have the tables turned so suddenly and violently.
Once on deck, Raiff had no choice but to forgo his attempt at restraint. An all-out panic had set in, exaggerated further by the boat’s desperate, dying keeling. For all Raiff knew, Marsh’s men had infiltrated the tour and had waited for just these moments of chaos to strike, when their target would be most vulnerable. So his rapid scan of faces focused on eyes filled with precision instead of panic. In the process, Alex drew too far ahead of him in the direction of the life rafts, which the crew were doing an incredible job of readying to abandon ship.
“Stay with me, Alex!” Still holding fast to Donati so as not to lose him to the crowd, Raiff’s gaze captured Samantha as well. “Both of you!” he added, leading them away from the cluttered mass of humanity funneling toward the aft side.
“But the life rafts are there!” Alex protested, holding his ground.
“Not all of them,” said Raiff.
100
LIFEBOAT
THEIR LIFE RAFT HIT the water hard, Alex tensing and instinctively taking a deep breath when it seemed certain to topple over from absorbing the initial brunt of impact solely on its nose. But the raft flattened out quickly, melding with the waves instead of fighting their swell, and it was just the four of them sliding about the soft bottom and going for the life vests clasped to the sides.
Except Raiff, who went for the oars instead, to get them clear of the tour boat before it keeled all the way over.
“Is everyone all right?” he cried out, as he began to row, alternating the oars to turn the raft away from the listing boat.
“Oh, my God,” Donati cried out.
“Alex, talk to me!”
“I’m fine!” Alex called back to him, as he tightened the straps on Sam’s life vest for her.
“Oh, my God,” Donati said again.
A big swell tossed a gush of water over the side, the raft feeling weightless against the power of the wave rocking it. Alex didn’t ski much but he’d taken to it quickly, as he took to pretty much anything athletic. He recalled the sense of “getting air” off a mogul jump or natural hump in the trail. That’s what this felt like, the whole raft getting air. He felt Sam throw herself against him and captured her in his grasp, hugging her tight. She clung to him, trembling horribly from the cold and shock. Alex ran a hand through her hair, tightened his grasp.
All he could do.
“Oh, my God,” Donati repeated.
Raiff had somehow managed to get the raft righted, the waves still fighting him every inch of the way, but now he seemed to be winning. Angling them for the nearest
landmass, which was little more than a dark blotch set against the mist and the night.
“That’s it!” Donati cried out, rising in the raft to point in the direction Raiff was steering.
“That’s what?”
The next wave pitched Donati down into the water pooling at the raft’s bottom. “The wormhole! Dixon’s pattern plugged into an elementary algorithm to determine the location from which it’s going to be opened!”
“Where?” Sam yelled to him.
Donati pointed again, soaked now. “There!”
“Alcatraz,” Alex realized.
TWELVE
ALCATRAZ
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking
if mankind is to survive.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
101
ZERO-SUM GAME
FOR LANGSTON MARSH, LIFE was a zero-sum game. Somebody won and somebody lost, which must be the case in a time of war.
And in war there were casualties, many innocents inevitably among them. A necessary sacrifice, the level of life lost measured against the rewards that could be gained as a result.
A zero-sum game.
And the stakes here couldn’t be higher. Whoever and whatever Alex Chin really was, he represented the highest threat assessment Marsh had ever faced. Something was building, something was coming; he could feel it with the same cold pangs that had left him certain that his father would never return from his mission that fateful day. He had already cried for hours when the man in uniform rang the doorbell with cap tucked stiffly under his arm. His mother had taken on the crying duties at that point, Marsh unable to comfort her because he was too busy staring at the sky, picturing himself soaring up there in a jet suit to destroy whatever had killed his father.
Sometimes life really is that simple, he thought, as the Zodiacs clung to their position in a fog bank a half-mile off the aft side of the now fully toppled tour boat. The fog bank was thick enough to conceal them but thin enough for Rathman’s high-tech night-vision binoculars to clearly see the world ahead.