Ward motioned to the machine in the center of the cavernous room. “That it?”
“Yeah,” Desmond said.
“Rendition is loaded on there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the only copy.”
“It is.” He was getting annoyed with Ward’s prodding. He needed to question the others. To Dr. Jung, he said, “How long have they—”
“Whoa!” Avery screamed.
Desmond spun and saw Ward pointing a gun at her. She was standing in front of the server, her hands held out.
Ward stepped closer to her. “Get out of the way, Avery.”
Desmond trained his rifle on Ward and stepped closer. “Ward, you shoot that server, and those four people could die. Give me five minutes.”
Ward kept his eyes on Avery. “I can’t take that chance.” A pause. “Get out of the way. I’m warning you, Agent. This is what we signed up for.”
Desmond crept closer, to within four feet.
He lunged just as Ward pulled the trigger.
Chapter 76
From the plane window, Conner peered down at the Gulfstream jet on the runway. “They beat us here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Yuri said. “What’s important is who leaves.” He pointed to his laptop. “The tracker says she’s ten miles away.”
“At the hotel.”
“Likely.”
Conner activated the radio and instructed one of the three planes they’d brought to land and clear the habitat of hostiles.
The ballroom was a hundred feet wide and long, with a thirty-foot-high glass ceiling and an ice floor. The crack of the gunshot was earsplitting in the space.
Desmond collided with Ward a split second later. The older man’s head cracked against the ice floor when they landed, Desmond on top. He punched Ward hard in the face, his knuckles crunching into the bone and soft flesh, the sound like boots digging into the snow. Ward’s head rolled to the side. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was close.
Desmond chanced a glance back. The two women and Jung were gone. The programmers remained on the cots, as if nothing were amiss. And Avery lay still, a pool of blood spreading out around her.
“Jung!” Desmond screamed.
The doctor’s head popped out from the corridor.
“Help her!”
The man walked out briskly, knelt over Avery, and gently rolled her over. His eyes went wide.
Desmond was so focused on Avery he didn’t see the blow coming. When Ward connected with his side, Desmond realized the pain wasn’t from a fist, but from a knife, buried deep.
Over the snowcat’s idling engine, Peyton heard the crack of a gunshot. Her hand instantly went to the door handle.
Her mother grabbed her arm. “Peyton.”
“I’m going.”
Lin smiled. “I know. I’m going with you.” She reached in her pocket and handed her a pistol. “You may need this.” Lin grabbed the backpack she had guarded since the Cave of Altamira. “Inside, follow my lead.”
“Mom.”
“Do you trust me, Peyton?”
Peyton didn’t answer, only stared at her mother, wondering if she actually did trust her.
“Everything I ever did was to protect you—and your brother and sister.”
Peyton opened the door, and they jumped out.
They raced to the hotel, Peyton with the gun in her hand, her mother close behind. The handheld radio crackled with Peterson’s voice.
“Mr. Hughes, there’s another plane landing.”
Chapter 77
Ward jerked the blade from Desmond’s side. Blood flowed from the wound like a dribbling faucet. Ward drew back to stab again, but Desmond caught his hand and pinned it to the ice floor. He balled his other hand into a fist and brought it down on Ward’s face, but it never connected. Ward kneed him in the balls.
Agony radiated from Desmond’s abdomen and up his chest. The shock nearly made him gag, but he held on to Ward’s knife hand. Ward rolled Desmond over and brought the knife to his neck. Desmond’s arm shook as he strained to stop the knife pressing into him. The wound in his side gushed blood and spewed pain. His abs ached, and the blade inched closer.
It touched his skin. Cut. Blood trickled. Desmond kicked, but his legs were useless. He punched Ward in the side. Once. Again. Three times. But the knife continued digging into his skin.
Yuri listened as the operative questioned the foreman of the construction crew.
“I told you,” the bearded man said, “there were only five of them. Two men and three women.”
“Desmond Hughes.”
“Ya,” he nodded. “He was with them.”
Conner took Yuri aside. “We could send the spec ops ahead and have them clear the hotel.”
“No. You and I must see this through. It’s too important.”
Blood flowed down Desmond’s neck. His strength was gone. David Ward had won—had killed him the moment he stabbed him in the side. But Desmond held on. He would fight for every second of life.
Ward’s head snapped to the right, and blood streaked the floor. The echo of the gunshot seemed to arrive a second later. Ward’s shoulders sagged, and he toppled to the side as Desmond released him.
In the back seat of the snowcat, Yuri turned to Conner. “He will be there.”
Conner said nothing.
“He is the last of your family,” Yuri said, pressing.
“We all make our choices.”
Chapter 78
Desmond threw Ward’s dead body off of him. A few feet away, Avery’s hand was shaking, holding a handgun, the barrel smoking in this frigid chamber.
Desmond crawled to her on elbows and knees. Inspected her wound. A shot to the chest. Out the other side. Bleeding. Too much blood. His hands were soaked in red—from both his own wound and the pool he had crawled through. He didn’t care. He reached up and took her face in his hands.
“Thank you.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled.
He let his face fall into her abdomen, just below her breasts. “I’m sorry.”
Her fingers ran through his hair, then tightened, lifting his head up. She stared into his eyes. “I’m not. Not if you finish this.”
Peyton followed her mother through the ice hotel’s front door and the empty lobby. In the ballroom, Desmond lay on top of Avery, looking down at her. Their words echoed in the domed room, muddled, too hard to hear. A pool of blood spread out around them, red flowing to black.
Peyton rushed forward and gripped Desmond’s shoulders, turned him over, and saw the gash in his side.
“I’m okay,” he breathed. “Avery. She needs you.”
Peyton’s eyes scanned the younger woman. Gunshot wound to the upper chest. Barely missed puncturing her lung.
A white-haired, heavyset man was hovering, eyeing Avery with concern. “Keep pressure on the wound,” she said to him, and got up and ran back toward the entrance. Behind her, she heard her mother saying, “Help me extend the antennae, Dr. Jung. Yes, that can wait. This is far more important.”
Outside the hotel, Peyton ran to the snowcat and threw the door open. The freezing temperature stung at her face, but she didn’t bother putting her hood up or goggles on. She pulled the med kit from under the passenger side seat, then stopped. In the distance, she heard a buzzing sound. An engine. She released the med kit and grabbed the binoculars from the dash, raised them to her face. Another snow machine. Two. Moving toward them.
Chapter 79
Peyton grunted as she pulled the hotel door open, still holding the med kit.
In the rotunda, her mother was bent over an open suitcase that lay on the floor. The pack she had carried after Altamira was open, discarded nearby.
Desmond, with a shaking, bloody hand, was holding a smartphone, tapping away.
Peyton stopped at his side. “What are you doing?”
“Opening Rendition.” He motioned to the four cots that held the programmers. “I need to bring them out.”
br />
“How long will that take?”
“I don’t know.” He looked over at Avery. “Help her. She saved my life, Peyton. Please.”
Peyton gripped his forearm. “Okay.”
She applied bandages to Avery’s wound, front and back. It would slow the bleeding, but the woman needed to get to an OR soon—and there wasn’t one within a thousand miles. Not good odds. “Hang on, Avery,” she whispered.
Her mother was typing furiously on the keyboard inside the suitcase. She unsnapped a corded phone and held it to her ear. It reminded Peyton of a bag phone from the nineties.
“Head of watch, please,” Lin said.
A pause.
“This is Lin Shaw, Miss Whitmeyer. I’m initiating an upload.”
Peyton didn’t understand. Who was she calling?
“Mom.”
Avery wiggled. Reached for her gun.
“Don’t,” Avery called to Lin. Her voice was weak, and her hand trembled.
Lin saw the gun in Avery’s hands. “Stop her, Peyton.”
Avery steadied the gun.
Lin didn’t even blink. “My authorization was issued by Yuri Pachenko. Access code Alpha-Omega-Sigma-4828-47-29. Verify.”
“Put the phone down,” Avery said. She tried to sit up, but fell back to the floor, still holding the gun. Her entire arm was shaking now.
Lin moved the mouthpiece to her neck, but held the phone to her ear. “Would you like to see your father again, Miss Price?”
Avery blinked.
Peyton stood. “Mom, what are you doing?”
Lin squatted down, her face inches from the gun in Avery’s hand. “This is your only chance. He’s in Rook right now. Waiting on you. Uploaded with the first cohort—advanced stage Alzheimer’s patients.” Lin studied the younger woman. “That’s why you joined Phaethon Genetics. Or so you said in your interview. You said you wanted to help him, and others like him. Was it true, or just a cover story? The best cover stories are true, aren’t they? Like telling an asset you love him…” Lin’s eyes darted to Desmond, who was now lying still. “… when you really do.”
Peyton backed away. Her mother was a monster. A manipulator playing a game Peyton didn’t understand.
“He’s waiting,” Lin said. “And millions of others. You stop the upload, and they die forever. You took an oath to protect those people.”
A boom echoed in the vast space.
Chapter 80
The Rendition instance wasn’t what Desmond expected. The simulations they had tested during development had mimicked the real world, which was the entire point of Rendition: to create a virtual world indistinguishable from real life. For those in the Looking Glass, it became real life.
This place was like nothing he had ever seen in real life—but he recognized it all the same. Rolling green fields surrounded him. Ahead lay a round door to a home built into the earth. It was a smial, or hobbit-hole, in the town of Hobbiton. The residence had a name, too: Bag End. In the Lord of the Rings series, it was home to Bilbo Baggins and then Frodo Baggins.
So, Desmond thought. This was where, at the end of the world—during the end of the world—the Rendition developers had chosen to spend their time. They were certified geeks. There was no denying it now.
Desmond pushed open the round wooden door and stooped to enter.
A likeness of Bilbo Baggins was smoking a pipe, telling a story to Raghav, Langford, Kevin, and Melanie, who sat around a table.
Langford threw up his hands. “Okay, who programmed Des in here?” He looked at the other three. “It totally breaks the illusion.”
“I’m not an illusion. I’m here, in Antarctica. Lying three feet from your cot in the ice hotel.”
They all froze.
Kevin burst out laughing. “Oh my God, seriously, who did that? Okay, I don’t care. How did you do that? Camera on the server? Program it while we were offline? Just tell me—”
“Shut up, Kevin. I’m here. I—”
Desmond saw movement through the open door—another figure coming up the path toward Bag End. It couldn’t be.
The visitor stepped inside, stooping just as Desmond had, and glanced at the programmers around the table.
“All right, who is this?” Raghav asked. “Someone’s grandpa?”
Desmond addressed the visitor. “How are you here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was in the administrative building, with you, on the Isle of Citium. You left the server room. I tried to buy you some time, but I was captured. Yuri took me to a room and scanned me. Where’s Peyton?”
“Here, with me,” Desmond said, his mind racing. “In Antarctica. Your daughter’s safe.”
William Shaw nodded. “Good. What happened after I was scanned?”
“You died.”
“Then that means…”
“You’re in the Looking Glass,” Desmond said. “Somehow, the main Rook array has been connected to the Rendition instance here, in Antarctica. It’s live—all of it. Someone has done it. It’s over.”
Chapter 81
Peyton turned at the booming sound of the hotel doors flying open. Soldiers in white camouflage parkas rushed through the lobby and poured into the rotunda, fanning out, covering all three exits, rifles at the ready, the green dots of their laser pointers dancing on Peyton, Avery, Lin, and Desmond. Peyton counted at least twenty of them. Too many.
Avery shifted her gun to point at the closest soldier.
Peyton put her hand on Avery’s wrist. “Don’t. There’s too many.”
Lin Shaw raised her hands. Her voice rang loud and clear in the rotunda. “Stand down. We’re on the same side.”
One of the soldiers touched his collarbone. “We’re secure.”
Footsteps echoed in the lobby. Two men entered and came to a stop. They were mirrors of each other: posture rigid, expression blank. Yuri Pachenko and Conner McClain silently scanned the room.
The last time Peyton had seen Conner, he had been interrogating her on the Kentaro Maru hours after he had killed Jonas and her EIS agents. She hadn’t known then that he was Desmond’s brother. Now, as Peyton looked at the scars on his face, she had a new understanding of the pain he had gone through. But that didn’t change how she felt about him. He was a monster.
Yuri was the same. He had killed her father and kidnapped and imprisoned her brother. He had taken so much from her.
Below her, she felt Avery struggling, trying to raise her arm, to point the gun at Yuri, like a zombie reaching out to take a life. Peyton held her down. They were outnumbered—and a firefight would damage the Rendition server, possibly killing Desmond.
Avery looked up at Peyton with fire in her eyes.
Wait, Peyton mouthed.
“I’ve fulfilled our agreement,” Lin said.
Yuri drew a sat phone from his parka and held it to his ear. “Does it work?”
“What agreement, Mom?”
Lin said nothing.
“You led them here, didn’t you?”
Her mother’s silence was all the confirmation Peyton needed.
“In return for what? What did he promise you, Mom?”
No response came. Lin’s gaze was fixed on Yuri. A cold, confident smile crossed his lips.
“I told you,” Lin said, “I did my part. Rendition is yours. The Looking Glass is complete. Now honor our bargain.”
“Very well,” Yuri said. He moved the phone back to his mouth. “Miss Whitmeyer, it seems Dr. Shaw has had a change of heart. Reinstate her privileges as a full member of the Citium.”
Lin exhaled. Finally, her gaze shifted to Peyton. “I did it for you.”
“No.”
“It was the only way out of that cave, Peyton. The only way to save you.”
“You freed him.”
“It was the only way.”
Conner walked to Desmond’s side. “He’s inside?”
“Yes,” Lin replied.
“He may already know that Rendition has been uploaded to the main Rook array, not just this portable instance. Either way, he’ll know soon enough that the Looking Glass is live.” Lin’s voice grew soft. “And he will change then, Conner. He’ll know it’s over. And so is your disagreement—that’s all this was. Brothers fight. That’s what they do.”
Conner nodded, still looking at Desmond.
Yuri glanced at one of the troops nearby. “Turn it off, Colonel.”
“No!” Peyton yelled. “You’ll kill him.”
The Citium officer marched toward the server rack.
Conner held up a hand. “Stop.”
The man hesitated, glancing back at Yuri, who said, “You have your orders, Colonel.”
“I remind you,” Conner said calmly, “that I’m the head of Citium Security.”
The colonel nodded and took a step back.
Yuri slipped the phone into his parka. A gun was in his hand when he drew it back out.
“Gun!” Peyton yelled.
Conner spun to face Yuri. “I want to talk to him.”
“We’ve discussed this, Conner. We have a plan.”
Lin’s voice was just loud enough for Conner to hear. “Desmond will see now that he made a mistake. You’ll regret it your entire life if you don’t at least talk to him.”
Yuri raised the gun.
Conner stepped toward Yuri.
The older man pointed the weapon at Desmond and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 82
The shot shattered a pane of glass on the rotunda’s dome. Shards of glass fell around Peyton like rain. Cold air rushed in, like a freezer door being opened. Conner had caught Yuri’s arm just before he pulled the trigger, forcing the shot up and away from his brother, who lay unharmed—for now.
Peyton drew her own pistol, but her mother held a hand out. “Don’t.”