Killswitch (33 page)

Before he could even think it through, the exoself took out local communications. Then it destroyed the cyber systems of every WR office within a hundred miles. But not before planting reports of multiple sightings of Chase Sterling in Montreal. “I don't care about protecting myself,” he yelled. “Get back my connection to the underground.”

Nothing.

He watched several federal vehicles race away. The smoking drones didn't even slow them down. Were they on their way to hunt him down in Montreal?

He ran into the town. No one remained. Not even local police. Vehicles brought in to haul off misled residents were gone. He entered through the front of the museum. The construction project hadn't changed. Maybe the underground bunker had gone undiscovered and the Feds had left empty-handed. Running down the back hall, he prayed the new wall remained intact.

Every door in the long hall hung open. Plaster dust hung thick in the air. In every room—most of which Chase had never peered into—a destructive force had knocked out the back wall. Littering the hall nearest the room where Chase had first entered the underground was a trail of wires and keypads. A broken monitor. And a bag, ripped open and spilling apples onto the path.

Chase stepped over the debris. A hole torn through the new wall opened into the dark tunnel. Chase rushed in and ran down the spiraling stairs. The bolted door that hid the underground was ripped from its hinges. He didn't stop until he was in the command center.

Every computer was either gone or destroyed. Work stations were overturned, holograph display centers smashed. Above it all,
Ciel Bleu Domaine
hung at an angle, a red
X
painted from one side to the other.

Chase hurried to the closest dorm area and pushed open the door to Mel's room. The gown made from a coverlet lay across the double bed.

“Mel!”

He turned a circle in the hallway. No one remained. He ran to the dining hall.

In the far corner he saw them. Eleven bodies were laid out orderly, all facing upward, their arms at their sides. His eyes moved from one to the next. The pastor who officiated the wedding. An elderly woman with a strand of pearls around her neck—the necklace loaned to Mel.

Molly.

He ran to her and dropped to his knees. He touched her face. She'd been dead for hours. These were the oldest residents of Blue Sky Field. No sign of how they died. Tears fell as he looked over the group of seven women and four men.

He wrenched his head toward the ceiling “How could you?” He stood, his eyes scanning the paintings hung in the room. All destroyed.

“Why?” he screamed. “Where is my wife?”

He stumbled back to the command center and fell into the chair in front of Mel's overturned station. He wept aloud and refused the comfort of the Spirit pulling at him. But a word flooded through anyway.

Don't be afraid.

He dropped his head forward and shook as he cried. Fear could have him. He saw no way out of it.

Hours passed. Darkness fell on the town up top. A skeleton of communication programs the exoself took out had been restored, and intel showed residents were being allowed to return. Forty-seven people were delivered to the detention center where the machine—Bloodless—waited. No identities listed.

He went deeper into the file. They were from a homeless camp. The one near Mist Covered Hill. Had believers there been caught? Chase didn't want to know. They'd taken his people somewhere else. His wife. He let his eyes fall shut.

Hands gripped his shoulders and he jumped from the chair and spun around.

“Switchblade,” he said. He lifted the splintered work station and threw it across the room. Then he lunged at the man and sent him flying. The laserlight Switchblade carried rolled across the floor. Chase jumped him and held him in a strangle hold. “Where were you when this happened?” he screamed.

“Man, let me go,” Switchblade said, his voice barely audible as Chase pressed his airway shut. “You're gonna kill me.”

Chase rolled to the side and sat on the floor. He said nothing before dropping his head to his knees.

Switchblade coughed and gasped for breath. “Mel sent me up, Charlie. I was following orders. I heard what the Feds were telling people and I headed back. They spotted me. I tried to run but I got a laser band around me and they put me in a bus. They set up a camp outside of town. I had to wait it out, man. Just got released. Whatever
you
know is what I know. I can't believe this.” Switchblade sucked in a breath and let out a whimper. “They destroyed it all. There's nobody left? You look around real good?”

“Eleven bodies in the dining hall. All elderly.”

“Molly?”

“Yes.”

“Lord, where are the rest of them? Maybe they got away before—”

“They wouldn't leave people behind.”

“Why would the Feds kill the old folks and take everybody else?”

“I don't know.”

“Melody said she could talk to you now. Right through Sparky. She didn't tell you nothing?”

“She said she needed my help. Then she cut me off. Seems she had a killswitch of her own.”

“Only one reason she would do that.” Switchblade leaned against the wall and rubbed his neck. “To keep the Feds off you.”

“It's more than I could do for her. Before she shut the system down, I found a transport and sent it this way. But the situation was too volatile. I doubt the driver even tried to get into town.”

“Say they got picked up. Where would they go?”

“They got picked up by the Feds,” Chase shouted. “They're in a center. Or they're dead.”

“Sparky would know if that was true.”

“Official reports about killing prisoners are deeply coded. So far I've got nothing.”

“Then we got some hope,” Switchblade said.

Chase swiped his hands through his hair as information rushed in. “They don't want older brain tissue for their research. That's the reason for the bodies. It can only mean one thing for the rest of them. There is no hope.”

“You think what you want, Charlie. I won't stop praying.”

Chase staggered toward the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“To my room. My old room—not the one I shared with my wife for ten hours.” Chase kicked a chair out of his way. “Don't bother me, Switchblade.”

“Man, we can't stay here. We need to get out of town tonight. While it's dark.”

“Go ahead. Best of luck. Sorry I tried to kill you.” Chase continued on his way as Switchblade yelled after him.

“You can't give up. You know Melody don't like that. Come on, man.”

In his room, Chase fell on the bed. He didn't power the night vision. Didn't allow more input from the exoself. Didn't speak to God except to pray for dreamless sleep. He got what he wanted.

56

Long before dawn—the exoself said it was half past three—Chase woke in a start. He powered the night vision. Switchblade lay on the floor in front of the closed door. The man hadn't fled. Would he ever forget about his bodyguard assignment?

WR reports filled his head in a scrambled mess. They were chasing a man in Montreal who remained hidden in a place they'd already destroyed. How many would suffer because of the misinformation Chase planted? Without Mel's four
S
's, he could do nothing to help them.

But something rushed into the void left by the terminated code. Words welled up inside Chase and he let them pour off his tongue.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light—”

“Man, what are doing?” Switchblade sat up and rubbed is face. “You got a Bible in your head or something?”

Tears fell. “Yes.”

Switchblade lit up his laserlight and crawled to the end of the bed. “I don't think it's compliments of the Helgen Institute.” A smile crept onto his face.

“It's a wedding gift. Mel was working on it when I left for Gagnon.”

“Then she's out there.” Switchblade jumped to his feet.

“On one of her old laptops,” Chase said. He tried to contact her, but he knew it wouldn't work. He couldn't send her messages anymore, or receive them from her. But she'd sent this one sign. He bent his head and wept.

“Thank you,” he cried. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Pull yourself together, Charlie. We're getting out of here.”

Chase could barely lift his head. “I don't know where to go. I have no idea where to look.”

Switchblade grabbed him by the arms and lifted him from the bed. “You find anything you been through lately
easy
, Charlie?”

Chase shook his head.

“Then this ain't nothing new. We're going up. We're getting out. And we're praying over every step we take. You got it?”

Chase nodded.

Switchblade led the way through the command center, where Chase gazed one last time at the beautiful painting, now marked with an unbearable message from the WR. He couldn't move.

Switchblade joined him. “We torching the place before we go?”

“We either cremate our people or let them…” Chase took a breath. “You got a lighter?”

“There's one in the kitchen.”

In the dining hall, they said a prayer over the gray-haired patrons of the underground. Switchblade went into the kitchen and came back with an old-fashioned lighter. He handed it to Chase.

They piled the torn and broken paintings in the center of the room, and Chase set them ablaze. Then he followed his friend through the bunker, up the stairs, down the tunnel, and out the hole in the alley wall. No use putting back the refuse bin.

They left Herouxville behind and took a southward direction. Switchblade prayed out loud. Chase searched the Bible in his mind for the verse Mel had recited.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God 
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“That's right, Charlie.”

But the separation from Mel would rip him apart. He'd bleed to death looking for her.

“Don't be afraid,” he said as he wiped a tear.

“Man, I ain't afraid of nothing.”

“Just talking to myself, Switch. But I know one thing you're afraid of. You don't want anybody to know your real name. So face your fears and spit it out.”

The big man puffed a frozen white breath in the pre-dawn twilight. “OK. But you can't tell nobody.”

“Deal.”

“Leslie Honeywell.”

Chase couldn't hold back the laugh. “That's kinda pretty.”

Switchblade punched him in the arm. “Don't you ever…
ever
…call me that. Now concentrate. You think we should go back to Gagnon?”

Chase yearned for that gut feeling he knew must be the Spirit's call. And it came. Mel's last message played in his mind.

…a ghost town like the one we talked about.

A town with no computers. With family.

“We're going to Detroit,” Chase said.

“Oh, no way. Man, I had some trouble there.”

“Come on, Leslie, we've got no choice. God says we're going to Detroit.” The exoself found the nearest westward road. They'd move far past Montreal before heading south. Chase Sterling was still hiding there—so said the reports.

Switchblade gripped Chase's shoulder as the first hint of daylight greeted their path. “I'm right beside you,” he said. “Robot.”

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