On the ground, they were met by a contingent of X1 troops—mostly US Army with a few Marines. They offloaded the crates from the Cave of Altamira into a van with a FEMA logo on the side.
Lin took Peyton aside and spoke quietly. “I need you to deliver the cases. Alone.”
“Deliver them where? To whom?”
“My colleagues. It has to be you, Peyton. You’re the only one I trust. Please hurry.”
Peyton exhaled. “We need to talk about what happened back there. One of the others let Yuri go.”
“We’ll worry about that later.” She gave Peyton a folded piece of paper and an envelope. “Directions. Give the envelope to the gatekeeper.”
Peyton hesitated, then asked a question she was scared to hear the answer to. But she had to know—just in case.
“Mom, back in the cave—what you said…” Peyton considered repeating her mother’s words: Take care of my daughter, Chief. She is more important to me than anything in this room. But she couldn’t. And it didn’t matter. She knew from her mother’s expression that the woman knew exactly what she was referring to. “That was for show, right? So that the Citium operatives would tell Yuri?”
“Yes.”
The word hit Peyton hard.
“Taking Yuri was the only possible way out for us, Peyton. I had to get alone with him—I needed him to believe I was ready to negotiate.”
Every word was a nail through Peyton’s heart. The joy she had felt hours ago turned to pain.
Her mother grabbed her shoulders. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.”
Peyton blinked. She opened her mouth to speak, but Lin ushered her toward the van. “Go, Peyton. Time is of the essence.”
Behind the wheel, Peyton unfolded the page. It was a map with only a few roads marked. She really missed the internet—and GPS.
DFW seemed to be one of the nerve centers of the government’s post-pandemic relief efforts. Flights came and went every few minutes, and the airport was swarming with troops and cargo transports. It took Peyton ten minutes just to leave, and her papers were checked twice.
She took International Parkway south out of the airport, then 183 East to Highway 161 South, which turned into the George Bush Turnpike. The tolls were all electronic, but Peyton doubted anyone would get a bill.
The highway was nearly deserted save for military vehicles and transfer trucks. It was eerie, unnerving even. She took Interstate 20 East, then I-35E. The cityscape soon turned to countryside, skyscrapers replaced by barbed-wire fences around vast pastures.
She had been driving about an hour when she saw the signs for Waxahachie. She turned off the interstate at exit 399A, onto Cantrell Street, which turned into Buena Vista Road. A mobile home park lay on her left. Swings on the children’s play sets swayed in the Texas prairie wind, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. She passed barns, farms, and houses set back off the road.
She took the next turn, onto Perimeter Road. Six massive buildings stretched out before her, like a manufacturing plant set in the middle of a green field. The road was crumbling, neglected, left to bake in the Texas sun, its peeling pieces carried away by the wind. A chain link gate ahead was manned. Peyton stopped, rolled down the window, and handed the man the envelope her mother had given her.
The logo on the man’s uniform read “MedioSol”—Latin for “center of the sun.” Peyton had never heard of it, but she knew it was her mother’s work, a reference to the Invisible Sun her father had spent his life trying to find.
The guard grabbed the clip-on speaker microphone attached to his radio. “She’s here to see Ferguson—on Shaw’s orders.”
The gate creaked as it rolled aside. Peyton was about to put the van in drive when an idea occurred to her. She held out her hand.
“I’m going to need that back.”
The guard handed her the envelope, and she gunned the van along the uneven road.
When he was firmly in her rear view, she took the single page out of the envelope. Her mother’s handwriting was neat and small.
She has the research from the Beagle. Hurry. She’s my daughter. Protect her at all costs.
Another uniformed guard motioned her to the nearest building, where a wide roll-up door was opening. She pulled the van into the building, and the door closed behind her. The room looked like some sort of loading dock; forklifts and hand trucks lined the walls. Several workers in coveralls bearing the MedioSol logo entered from a side door and began unloading the van.
“Where are you taking that?” Peyton asked.
“Intake,” one of the workers answered. He motioned to a door at the end of the room. “Dr. Ferguson’s waiting for you.”
Peyton didn’t know the name.
The door led to a small, empty chamber with a door at the opposite end. As she entered, the door closed behind her. A blast of cold air ran over her, and she realized she was in a decontamination chamber.
The exit door clicked open, and Peyton walked through it. What she saw on the other side took her breath away.
Avery had spent the last hour debriefing, and she was sick of it. Finally, she walked out of the conference room, over the objections of the Rubicon-assigned FBI agent.
“Agent Price,” the woman called, standing up.
“Be right back,” Avery lied.
She found Lin Shaw standing in the X1 situation room, which was a repurposed air traffic control center.
“What’s next?”
Lin turned to her. “Miss Price. I thought you were being debriefed.”
“I’m briefless. So. What’s the plan?”
“We wait.”
“For Peyton to get back?”
“No.”
Avery ground her teeth. Lin Shaw was as transparent as a cinderblock wall.
“No what?”
“Peyton’s not coming back.”
Chapter 54
Peyton’s footsteps echoed on the concrete floor. The room was cold and dark and reminded her of Altamira, though this place was its technological opposite: a marvel of science and technology, not of ancient art. The room was tall, three stories, and the walls were glass. Beyond the glass, rows of server racks stretched out as far as she could see, their lights blinking green, red, and yellow. The place was massive, perhaps the size of twenty football fields put together. This datacenter had to be one of the largest in the world.
“Welcome.”
The voice caught Peyton off guard. She turned to find a slender man with close-cut hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a white lab coat.
“Sorry if I startled you.” Based on the accent, Peyton guessed he was from Boston. “I’m Richard Ferguson. A colleague of your mother’s.”
“Colleague in what?”
He frowned. “You don’t know?”
“I know she’s looking for a code in the human genome. But she’s never mentioned this place.”
“Ah. That was probably prudent.” He turned his back to her and headed toward another door. “I’m sure you’d like to shower and rest a bit. I imagine you’ve been through an ordeal.”
Peyton didn’t feel that “an ordeal” quite covered what she had been through. But she didn’t want to shower, or rest. She wanted answers.
Beyond the door was a corridor that was more cramped than she expected. Colored wires, some thick, others as thin as Ethernet, hung in the ceiling like the veins of a mechanical beast. Large pipes, painted white, ran along the walls just above the door frames. Three letters were emblazoned every few feet: SSC.
“I’d rather talk,” Peyton said, catching up to Ferguson.
“About?”
“What you’re doing here. I want some answers.”
“Certainly. I have some work to attend to first.”
“You’re going to work on the samples.”
“Yes. They’re very old. And delicate. I want to extract the DNA myself. And it needs to be done now—time is running out.”
“Why?” Then Peyton realized the answer to her qu
estion. “Yuri. You’re running out of time to stop him.”
Ferguson stopped at a door and swiped his key card. It opened, revealing a room with a bed and a couch, about the size of a hotel room, with a window that looked out on a retention pond. “Correct. Now Miss Shaw, you’ll have to excuse me.”
“Sixty seconds. Please. Then I’ll let you work.” She looked through the doorway. “I won’t go inside unless you talk to me.”
He smiled. “Well, that leaves no doubt that you’re Lin’s daughter.” He raised his eyebrows. “Not that we could spare the DNA testing equipment at the moment.” He laughed at his own joke, almost giddy. Peyton realized that the arrival of the samples was like the ultimate Christmas present for him; she understood why he couldn’t wait to sequence them.
She spoke quickly, knowing she had little time. “What is this place?”
“The Desertron.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “Some people know the name. It was the unofficial designation. The formal name is the SSC, or Superconducting Super Collider.”
Collider. That caught Peyton off guard. “Colliding…”
“Particles.”
“Like CERN.”
Ferguson soured at the mention, as if he had tasted a bad bit in his food. “Yes, like CERN—only this accelerator’s ring is over three times larger than the LHC and uses three times as much power.”
Peyton remembered hearing something about it now—when she was in middle school. “You’re government?”
“No. The Desertron got canceled in 1993 due to budget cuts. Your mother convinced a consortium of investors—like-minded people—to purchase the facility and complete the work. It took almost twenty years. But it’s operational.”
“I don’t follow. My mother’s work is in genetics.”
“True. But she believes the Invisible Sun operates at a quantum level, that it is a fundamental force in the universe, akin to gravity.”
“A force that does what?”
“Directs the flow of particles. Specifically, particles that influence the conversion of matter to energy. That’s the purpose of the universe, after all.”
Peyton couldn’t hide her shock.
Ferguson cocked his head. “Your mother didn’t tell you any of this?”
“No,” Peyton whispered.
“It’s the Citium’s fundamental theory. That the universe is a quantum machine that oscillates between matter and energy. The Big Bang wasn’t a singular event—it was one in a cycle of many big bangs. At the end of this universe there will be only energy, then another big bang will occur, and so on. This has been going on for an infinite amount of time. And will continue for just as long.”
Peyton felt lightheaded. She braced a hand against the wall. For some reason, she thought of Alice, growing tall and feeling trapped. The corridor seemed so small all of a sudden. She wanted to get outside.
Ferguson studied her. “Are you—did I upset you?”
Peyton shook her head, glancing down. “I… just give me a minute.”
“Sorry. I haven’t told anyone in a long time. We take this information for granted.”
Peyton tried to focus. “So, the code, in the DNA samples. I don’t understand how it’s involved.”
“Well, it’s quite simple. We believe that in the past, this fundamental quantum force—the force of the Invisible Sun—exerted very little influence on our DNA. But as we evolved, developing more complex brains and increasing our calorie intake to power them, the quantum changes accelerated, like a feedback mechanism, changing our DNA at an increasing rate. There’s only one known force that could affect changes at a subatomic level over great distance: quantum entanglement. The phenomenon Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’.”
Ferguson saw the confusion on Peyton’s face. “Let’s see, how to explain. We believe the Invisible Sun is a quantum force that has existed since the Big Bang. It exerts a subatomic pull on all matter—but some matter connects with it more strongly. In particular, brain matter is strongly tethered to it, and as our minds became more powerful, this quantum force reacted more strongly in turn. The result was a feedback mechanism that changed our genome. We believe that over time, this quantum force left a pattern, a sort of callback number for us. Now that we have the archaic samples, we can establish a baseline over time and see that pattern. The code, your mother calls it.”
“And what will you do with it?”
“Feed it into the accelerator, of course.”
“To do what?”
“The Invisible Sun has been interacting with us for a very long time. For the first time, we’re going to start generating similar subatomic particles. The running joke around here is that we’re going to make the first quantum phone call. To us, the code in the human genome is like God’s phone number.”
Chapter 55
Awareness came gradually, like a sunrise, a ray at first: the realization that he was in the hangar at San Carlos Airport—and that this wasn’t a memory. Desmond was awake and in the present.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw corkboards littered with photos and pages. Strings connected the pins where FBI and Rubicon agents had tried to tie the pieces together, to unravel the Citium conspiracy. They had failed. And so had he. His last memory lingered in his mind: of him staring at his future self in the mirror, saying, “You have to figure out what to do.”
Conner leaned closer. “You all right?”
Desmond nodded. His voice came out weak and horse. “Thirsty.”
Conner spun and yelled at one of the two Citium special ops soldiers. “Get us some water!”
Desmond realized then how hungry he was. And sluggish. How long had he been sedated? Days? A week? With a shaking hand he reached up and touched his face, trying to measure the stubble. Three days’ growth, give or take a day.
Conner handed him a canteen, and Desmond grabbed it, held it to his mouth, and let the water pour in and down his chin, onto his shirt.
Conner gripped Desmond’s hand and steadied the canteen. “Easy, Des.”
When the water ceased, Desmond panted. “Food.”
Conner didn’t turn or even say the words this time. The sound of plastic wrappers ripping echoed in the space, and a second later, one of the mercenaries was there, holding out a cold MRE, a spork dug into the home-style vegetables in sauce with noodles and chicken.
He sat up and braced himself, his legs dangling over the edge of the table. He took the tray and shoveled the tasteless meal into his mouth, pausing only to swallow, breathe, and take another bite.
When he was done, he stared up at the hangar ceiling, waiting for the sustenance to take hold. His hands were still shaking, his breathing heavy.
“Another one!” Conner yelled.
When Desmond finished, his eyes met Conner’s.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Still hungry?”
Desmond shook his head, which was pounding. “Just got a headache.”
“Doctor—give us something.”
A slender Asian man with round glasses and sweaty, disheveled hair approached, took a bottle from his backpack, and shook out two red pills, which Desmond swallowed down with a gulp from the canteen.
The two Citium operatives seemed to be the only other people in the hangar. Perhaps Conner had more troops stationed outside. It was unlikely that he would be here with such a small contingent.
“What do you remember?” Conner asked.
“A lot.”
“Rendition?”
“I remember creating it.” Saying the words brought memories to mind, mostly of long days and nights he’d spent on the project. He saw himself in his office, writing code, in a team room, drawing lines on a whiteboard, the developers gathered around him, the hardware and software teams arguing, working through issues. He saw the meetings with the integration teams from Rapture Therapeutics and Rook Quantum Sciences, his private meetings with Conner and Yuri, the things they didn’t tell anyone el
se.
“Where is it?” Conner asked.
Desmond stared at his brother. “Let’s talk. Just you and me.”
Conner smiled. “Good. Okay.” He motioned toward an office in the hangar.
Desmond slid to the edge of the table, lowered his feet to the ground, and stood, legs shaking. He had to hold the table for balance.
Conner grabbed his upper arm. “You need help?”
“No. Just—I just need a minute.” He glanced at the corkboards. “Did you read them?”
Conner paused. “I did. They knew so much about us. The Citium subsidiaries, even me, you, and Yuri. Why didn’t they act?”
Desmond swallowed. “I stopped them.”
“What?”
“I told them I was going to do it. To wait.”
Conner nodded. “Then in a way, you helped us.”
Desmond couldn’t think of a response. His head was still clouded from the sedatives. He took a tentative step, then another, Conner still holding him.
He stopped at a corkboard with pictures of a crime scene. The exterior of a large house in the country, framed by towering trees. A crushed gravel drive led to a fountain in front of the double doors. The pictures of the inside of the house were not so elegant. Dead bodies, lying on the floor—but with no signs of trauma, gunshots, or knife wounds.
“Did you see this?” Desmond asked.
“Yes. The last conclave.”
“The purge.”
“It’s very sad,” Conner said.
“Very.” Desmond let his eyes wander down to a picture of a wine glass and the toxicology report next to it. “Yuri poisoned them. Makes sense. They were his friends and his competitors. He wanted a painless death for them, something at arm’s length.”
“There’s no proof—”
“He survived, Conner.”
“So did Lin.”
“And her husband. William told me the truth about the purge. Yuri killed all these people so he could take control of the Citium.”
“If he did, there’s more to the story. They must have been a threat. He’d only kill if he had to.”