Alive.
All Kate’s thoughts had been pushed from her mind to make room for that one word.
Alive.
Entropy existed at all times. Her high school English teacher, Mr. Herlihy, had assigned her class a report on the great poets of history, choosing one poet at random for each student. She had gotten Yeats and thought she would hate every minute of the task, until she had started reading.
Things fall apart, Yeats had written. The centre cannot hold.
The words had stuck with her—so powerfully that she had once shared the poem with her father, hoping to make him understand her—and they had come back to her when she had lost her legs. For her, they were a reminder to appreciate what she had in any moment, because that moment would pass. Entropy eroded everything. Time wore on and the world—and all that existed within it—wound down like an old clock, never to chime again. The Pulse had sped entropy forward toward the disintegration of human society. It might not be too late to slow it down again, but that would depend entirely on people. The future of the human race would be defined by what they did next. What they did now.
Sailing across the Mediterranean, she had thought a great deal about entropy and come to the conclusion that her father must be dead. The president had Secret Service agents and Tin Men around him, their sole purpose being to keep him alive, but Felix Wade had only himself. The idea that he might survive a full-scale assault on the G20 summit had begun to seem like a fantasy.
Yet here he was.
“This way,” she said, taking his hand and guiding him toward a side street full of hotels that backed up to the marina.
Gunfire ripped the air and she heard a bullet zip past her head. With a single motion she stepped behind her father, shielding him as they hurried onward. She felt bullets strike her back and she moved even closer to him, matching his steps. Then they were in that side street and he was out of danger. Kate guarded him with one protective arm and took a look around. Torres, Hawkins, and Birnbaum were back with the president’s two Tin Men, killing anarchists as fast as they could, trying to stem the flow of the attack. Trav had reached the side street before Kate, and he still carried the blond woman with the gunshot wound. Danny had the two presidents up against the wall a few feet away, using his guide light to examine the wreckage of Kazimir Rostov’s eye. Rostov would never see out of it again but if he could keep it from getting infected, he would live.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” her father said.
Kate laughed. “I can’t believe I found you.”
“Chapel said something about a signal,” he said.
Ping, Kate thought. If not for that signal—if Zuzu hadn’t used it in Haifa—she’d still have been searching for her father. For the first time, she realized the enormity of the task they’d set for themselves in coming to Athens in the first place. It might’ve taken them days to find the president if they had found him at all, yet here they were.
President Matheson grimaced, and for the first time Kate noticed the way he’d been clutching at his arm.
“Sir, are you injured?” she asked.
Matheson twisted around to show her the bloodstain on his shirtsleeve.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just a graze. Now’s not the time—”
“Agreed,” Kate said. She pointed at the second hotel along the street. “We want that door—the Agamemnon. Let’s move!”
Danny covered them, watching the rooftops and the main street from which they’d come, waiting for the battle to reach them. The hotel doors opened and the two presidents ran inside. Kate had her weapon ready, watching for trouble as Felix followed.
“Woman’s lost a lot of blood,” Trav said as he carried the blonde past her.
Kate shouted for Danny and then went in behind Trav.
“Woman can hear you,” said the blonde in Trav’s arms. “Woman has a name.”
Felix smiled as he went to her, but Kate could see the worry in his father’s eyes.
“You’re all right, Syd,” her father said to the blonde. “You’re too mean for one bullet to do you in.”
“Damn straight,” Syd replied, teeth gritted.
Danny came through the door. Bullets shattered the glass behind him.
“Our guys have thinned them out some, but they’re still coming,” he said.
“They’ll keep coming,” Kate said. “Till they’re all dead.”
“Fine by me,” Trav chimed in. “Let’s oblige them.”
Kate spun around, frowning. Someone had opened the door for them but she hadn’t spotted anyone.
“Broaddus?” she called.
Movement in the shadows behind the concierge desk. Alexa Day stepped out into the moonlit gloom of the lobby.
“It’s me,” the girl said.
“Who the hell is this?” President Matheson asked as he tore off a strip of his shirt for Danny to use as a tourniquet on his arm.
The girl didn’t give Kate time to answer. “Alexa Day, Mr. President. My father was your ambassador to Syria.”
Matheson’s expression darkened. He understood the implication of the past tense. “I’m sorry.”
“Enough talk,” Rostov said, turning to Kate with his bloody ruined eye still uncovered. “You said you had a boat. Why are we standing here?”
“Broaddus!” Kate shouted, ignoring the Russian.
“Here, Sarge,” Broaddus said, coming out of a side corridor with her guide light on.
Broaddus had Hanif Khan by the collar, gun against the anarchist’s back. He’d been shot full of morphine to deal with the pain of his wound, but still looked sweaty and pale with pain and trauma.
“Our friend had to piss,” Broaddus said. “Ready to go now, on your word.”
A rocket exploded nearby and the building shook with the blast. More gunfire punctured the darkness outside and she hoped the rest of her squad would be safe as they tried to destroy the rest of the anarchists.
“Mr. President,” Kate said. “Sergeant Kate Wade, sir. This is Hanif Khan. He led the Bot Killers who came after us in Damascus. They were working with the anarchists behind the Pulse. He may know something useful to you.”
“Son of a bitch,” Matheson said, glaring hatefully at Khan. For a second, he looked like he might be sick.
Rostov smiled. “My cat, Igor, likes to catch birds and bring them to me, drop them at my feet. You remind me of him, Sergeant.”
Kate looked at Matheson. “We can just shoot him, sir, but if you want to keep him around, we’ll bring him with us.”
Matheson strode over to Khan, eye to eye. Kate tensed, thinking Khan might attack him despite the gun at his back, but the anarchist only stared at the president with his crocodile eyes.
“Bring him,” Matheson said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
A fresh torrent of gunfire made them all flinch. Too close, Kate thought. She turned and saw a pair of anarchists racing through the moonlight toward the Agamemnon’s front doors and then a burst of gunfire stitched into them as they stumbled and flailed through the doors. Dead, they slid and tumbled just a few feet into the lobby. One dropped a handgun that skidded across the floor toward Alexa Day, who scooped it up.
“Alexa,” Danny said.
The girl looked up at him. “I know how to shoot.”
“As long as you know who to shoot,” Kate said. They didn’t have time to argue about it. “Go! The marina’s right outside, Mr. President. Go left. Our boat’s at the end, beyond the sea wall.”
Trav and Broaddus led the way, making Khan run ahead of them. Trav still carried the blonde, though she protested that she could walk. Kate figured she’d lost too much blood, that she’d slow them down. She hoped the same wasn’t true of President Matheson. If Rostov didn’t make it, that was no skin off her nose.
“There are gonna be a lot of injuries on board,” Danny said as he came up behind her, running with Alexa. “I hope the first aid kit’s got what we need.”
They reached the glass doors at the rear of the lobby and shoved through. The marina lay before them, its huge circumference dotted with docked pleasure craft, all bobbing dead in the water. A handful of sailboats remained, sleek toys for wealthy owners.
Trav had gotten ahead of them on the circular track that ran alongside the marina. Broaddus had Khan by the back of his shirt and marched him forward like a puppeteer, faster than a wounded man ought to be moving. The wind had picked up and Kate could see the hydroptere bobbing in the water at the far end of the circle, out past the sea wall. Still there, she thought. That’s something, at least.
Alexa appeared beside her. “Come on,” the girl said to Kate and her father. “Let’s keep up.”
They increased their speed, but both presidents were wounded and they had started to lag.
“I’ve got POTUS,” Kate told Danny, her father, and Alexa. “You three catch up with Trav.”
Danny took Felix’s arm and the two of them raced on. Alexa gave Kate a worried glance and then moved faster.
“You all right, Mr. President?” Kate asked. “I can carry you if—”
Matheson shot her a dark look. “I’m good. But Kazimir. His depth perception—”
“Is fine!” Rostov snarled. “Go!”
Kate wanted to leave Rostov behind. She could pick Matheson up and double her speed. Danny could carry her father and Alexa if it came to that, and Rostov could fend for himself. Except POTUS seemed to want the Russian president to live, and she couldn’t question the orders of her commander-in-chief.
“Trav, slow down!” Danny shouted. “POTUS is priority one!”
Exactly, Kate thought, wondering if the blonde had brought out Trav’s damsel-in-distress syndrome.
They hurtled along beside the water and a kind of glee began to glow warmly in Kate’s chest as they ran past dock after dock, the echoes of gunfire chasing them all the way.
Then the gunfire became more than echoes.
“Move it, Sarge!” a voice shouted.
She glanced back and saw Birnbaum appearing from the street where the battle was being waged—a street that ended on the eastern edge of the marina, dovetailing right into the circular drive around it.
The battle followed Birnbaum. She turned and fired and then the fight spilled out into view. Hawkins and Torres and one of the president’s Tin Men had run out of bullets and were killing anarchists with their bare hands. With their inhuman strength, they crushed skulls and broke arms and shattered ribs, but still there were twenty or more anarchists flooding around them, all armed and taking aim. For the moment they were shooting at Hawkins and the others, but in a second they would see the presidents—their prey—and realize how close they were to fulfilling their mission.
Kate scooped President Matheson up in a fireman’s carry and kept running, leaving Rostov on his own. Both men roared at her to stop but her focus was on Danny and her father and Alexa, straight ahead, and Trav with the blonde in his arms. They had to make it to the boat.
Bullets sprayed wildly, hitting the dead boats and plinking into the water. Kate glanced back and saw that the enemy’s numbers were dwindling. She hesitated a second, thinking she should tell POTUS and the others to take cover, that the Tin Men together could easily kill the remaining anarchists…that she’d been going about this all wrong.
Then she saw the way Birnbaum had stopped to stare up at a rooftop, followed her line of sight, and saw the three rocket-men perched there at the corner of the roof. Birnbaum tried to take a shot but she was out of ammo.
“Get down, sir,” Kate said, setting the president on his feet. “Take cover.”
She lifted her weapon, targeting system locking on the nearest rocket-man, and fired. Her bullet struck him dead center and he fell backward, dropping his launcher. The one next to him fired before Kate could sight on him. She shouted and ran forward as the rocket streaked down from the roof, headed for the marina.
Trav turned, wounded blonde in his arms, and then the rocket struck him, blowing him apart and rupturing his power core. The blast also tore at the Secret Service woman he’d been carrying, and hurled Alexa and Kate’s father off the path and to the water’s edge.
“Goddamn it!” Kate screamed, running to the place where Trav had been.
All that remained to show he’d been standing there were ravaged bits of metal, a burnt bit of pavement, and the splash of the woman’s blood. Syd, Kate remembered. Her name had been Syd.
“Damn it, Trav,” she said, staring down at the blood and the scorch mark. He’d been a good friend and an honorable soldier, a man she’d always trusted to have her back.
“Kate!” Danny called.
“Go!” she said, waving him onward. “Get them to the boat. I’m going to help kill the rest of these fuckers.”
Then Danny called her name again and this time she heard something in his voice that drew her attention away from the dwindling battle in the street. She turned and saw the expression on his face. He glanced to the right, toward the water, and she followed the look.
At the water’s edge, in the shadow of a rich man’s pier, Alexa knelt over Kate’s father.
Numb, Kate ran to them, splashing into the water and kneeling there.
Alexa looked at her, bereft. “I’m so sorry.”
“Daddy?” Kate said quietly, hating the sound of the word coming from her robot mouth, spoken in a voice that was hers but not hers.
A broad, jagged piece of Trav’s chassis jutted from her father’s chest. Blood soaked into the ground and spread into the water, diluting, ebbing and flowing with each small wave.
Yet his eyes still had a light in them.
“Katie,” Felix Wade rasped.
Still alive.
Her heart darker than it had ever been, she turned toward Danny.
“POTUS is yours. Try to keep Alexa alive,” she said, with the girl still staring at her.
Kate lifted her father in her arms, his blood dappling her carapace, and she turned and ran for the sea wall. Ran for the boat, ignoring the dwindling sounds of gunfire.
She had always loved to run.
Until now.
They were going to make it.
Danny ushered the presidents onward. Kate had gotten way ahead of them, no longer waiting for anyone. He saw her sprinting along the arc of the marina’s circle and knew she had hope in her heart. But he had seen the size of the shrapnel in Felix’s chest and the severity of the wound, and he knew her hope was only delusion. Broaddus had her gun on Hanif Khan, nudging the anarchist forward without getting too far ahead of the wounded presidents.
Alexa ran in front of Danny for a few steps and then paused to look back at him. Felix Wade’s blood stained her hands. The dead anarchist’s gun looked large and heavy in her grip.
“Go,” he said. “Get on board. I’ll be along.”
“Come with us,” the girl said. “They don’t need you. It’s over.”
Danny glanced back across the marina and saw that she was right. Torres, Birnbaum, Hawkins, and one of the president’s Tin Men had been brutally effective. Only nine anarchists remained. So many others had been killed that the survivors had given up their objective of killing Matheson and Rostov and instead were attempting to defend themselves with assault rifles and handguns against the robot soldiers. Danny scanned the rooftops and saw no more rocket-men.
Over, just as Alexa had said. Yet he felt as if their struggle had only begun.
He turned to Alexa. “Let’s go.”
The girl began to run, quickly catching up to the wounded presidents, and Danny kept pace with her. Alarmed by the sound of their approach, Rostov turned, stumbled, and fell. Cursing, he rose shakily, and Danny saw the smear of blood that painted his cheek below his ruined eye.
“Kaz!” President Matheson called, returning to help Rostov to his feet.
Rostov glared at his American counterpart for a moment and Danny thought he would refuse the aid. Then some silent communication passed between the presidents, a grudging respect, perhaps a recognition that they were more powerful together than each was alone. It occurred to Danny that these two men led lonely lives, that each might be the only person in the world who could truly understand the other. Whatever politicking and posturing their jobs usually entailed had become obsolete. Whatever treaties were made from now on, they would take shape due to mutual interests…or mutual fear.
As Danny and Alexa strode up to them, and Broaddus shoved Khan back in their direction to make sure POTUS was safe, Rostov allowed Matheson to help him up. The president winced at the pain in his wounded arm.
“We’ve got a long journey ahead, Peter,” Rostov said, and it was clear he was not talking about the trip back to Germany.
Matheson only nodded. For a moment all sounds of gunfire died away, echoing across the waters of the marina. Then the two presidents turned to make their way to the sea wall and Danny nudged Alexa to follow. Ahead of them, Broaddus began to turn, but Hanif Khan stood motionless, hatred and misery in his eyes.
Khan roared and slammed into Broaddus hard enough to stagger even a Tin Man. He lunged forward and struck Rostov in the face, just inches from his injured eye. The Russian reeled in pain and Khan grabbed the gun in his hand, twisted hard, and stripped it from him.
Danny shouted, taking aim, but Rostov was in the way.
The whipcrack of a gunshot echoed across the water.
“No!” Broaddus barked as she brought her own weapon up too late.
They were both too late.
President Matheson staggered back a step, staring down at his chest, but no blood appeared there. It made no sense until Broaddus reached for Khan and the anarchist collapsed, his legs failing him. Khan spilled to the ground with one hand over his heart, blood pumping out between his fingers.
Confused, Danny looked around.
Alexa Day stood off to his right, a dead man’s gun clutched in both hands, still aiming at Khan just in case she needed to shoot him again.
“Holy shit, kid,” Danny said.
“I’m not a kid,” Alexa replied.
“Apparently not,” President Matheson said.
Alexa looked at him, her eyes hard. POTUS or not, it was clear she didn’t need his approval. She walked over to Khan, gun aimed at his face. The anarchist tried to speak but no words passed his lips, only a froth of blood as he gasped for air.
“It’s like you said, asshole,” Alexa rasped, her eyes filling with tears but her hands rock steady. “We have to make our own choices about justice now.”
Danny went to her and gently placed his hand on her gun. “Why don’t you let me have that?”
Alexa shot him a dark look. “I think we’ve got a long way to go and chances are good that I’m going to need it.”
Broaddus and Rostov watched them, but President Matheson only stared down at Hanif Khan as the anarchist died, a last expulsion of bloody foam dribbling from his lips.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Danny said. “We really believed he had information that might be vital to figuring out who was behind all of this.”
Matheson looked up at him. “Does it matter? It’s a level playing field now, soldier. All the power is gone, and the race is on to see who can be first to get it back.”
“Kelso,” Broaddus said, gesturing inland.
Danny turned to see the rest of the squad jogging toward him. The ruin of Torres’s missing eye was an echo of Rostov’s wound. Birnbaum stayed with her, Hawkins and the Secret Service bot bringing up the rear. They carried a multitude of weapons—assault rifles they had retrieved from dead anarchists.
“Mr. President,” the Secret Service bot said, “if we’ve got transport, it’s time to go. We dealt with the group that attacked us, but there are likely others in the city.”
“We’re going now, Chapel,” Matheson said. “What about Bingham?”
“Rocket launcher,” Chapel replied.
“One of ours, too,” Danny said, glancing at Hawkins, Torres, and Birnbaum. “Trav.”
“Fuck,” Hawkins muttered.
Birnbaum took Torres’s hand and squeezed.
“We lost a lot of people today,” Broaddus said, turning to the president and Rostov.
Cradling his wounded arm, Matheson walked to Alexa.
“We all did,” the president said.
After a long moment, Alexa glanced up at him and nodded. Matheson turned to glance at Danny and Chapel.
“I’d like to never see Athens again,” he said. “How fast can we get out of here?”
Danny gestured toward the sea wall, beyond which the hydroptere bobbed and rolled upon the sea.
“Faster than you think.”
Distant gunfire made him flinch. They all froze a moment, expecting another attack. When it did not materialize they quickened their steps, rushing together to the end of the circle and onto the sea wall. Zuzu had tied off the trimaran with a pair of lines but Kate hadn’t been able to get her father on board by herself. She had set him down on the rocky wall and waited for them, stroking his hair and talking softly to him.
Hawkins and Broaddus took the lines, braced themselves, and began hauling the hydroptere toward the wall. Birnbaum, Chapel, and Torres were there to help Alexa and the presidents over to the boat, but he only half-cared about any of them right now.
“Hey,” he said softly, going down on one knee beside Kate and her father.
Felix had gone dreadfully pale, his features slack. His breath hitched in his throat and his eyelids fluttered as if he was attempting to keep himself awake.
Not awake, Danny thought.
Then Felix went still. His eyes ceased their fluttering and his breath its hitching. His body seemed to relax, the peace of death upon him.
Danny saw Felix die, saw the sorrow on Kate’s features, and a sudden understanding came upon him, so powerful that he felt helpless in its grip. For so many years he had fought the idea that he might ever need someone. Even before his father’s death he had seen love and real compassion as weaknesses that the universe would exploit if he ever indulged in them. His dad’s cancer had only cemented that view. Danny had told himself that he had to be a shark, had to keep swimming or he would drown.
Now he saw Kate’s pain and he knew that his own fears no longer mattered. He might not have wanted to need anyone, but he hadn’t been able to prevent her from needing him.
“I hate it,” Kate rasped, head hanging as she held her father’s right hand in both of hers.
“I know,” Danny said.
She turned to him, robot eyes gleaming. “I mean the bot. I hate this!”
Anguish turned her voice into a wail and she released her father’s hand and began to beat at her chest.
“I hate this!” she said again, gazing desperately at Danny. “I held him, but not in my own arms. He said he was so happy he got to see me, but it isn’t me he saw! Not me, but this! I wanted to comfort him but…when I touched him…”
Danny reached for her and Kate slipped into his arms, metal on metal, emotion trapped inside.
“He cried,” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the sound of the wind and the sea. “But I couldn’t.”
They stayed that way, frozen together like some sculptor’s idea of metalwork lovers, until Birnbaum called to them that everyone else was aboard except for Broaddus and Hawkins, who were holding the boat close to the sea wall, waiting for them. Danny told Kate he was sorry. He would have kissed her if he could.
“Let’s get back to base,” he said.
Kate nodded. She extricated herself from him and knelt to take her father’s corpse in her arms.
“Once we’re back,” she said, standing, “I never want to be in a bot again.”
“I’m here,” he said, helping her over to the gap between sea wall and boat. He could think of nothing else to say.
Waves slapped the hydroptere’s floats and crashed against the wall. On the boat, Zuzu and Torres leaned out, reaching toward them. Carefully, Kate and Danny handed her father’s body across the gap and the others carried him on board.
Once everyone had cleared out of the way, Kate jumped onto the boat and Danny followed. Broaddus and Hawkins untied the lines and ran over, making the leap before the hydroptere could drift too far from the sea wall. The starboard float bumped the wall, pushed by the waves, but then they were all on board.
Birnbaum began shouting orders. Danny glanced at President Matheson, who sat with President Rostov at the front of the central float. He might be the commander-in-chief, but he knew to let them do their work. On board this boat, Private Naomi Birnbaum was captain.
The squad began to raise the sails. Kate sat down on that starboard float, the hydroptere’s right wing, Felix’s body draped across her lap. Alexa sat behind her, legs dangling over the side, gun stuffed in her waistband. Her eyes were cold and distant.
Danny went to join Kate, walking carefully along the float as the sails began to unfurl overhead and the hydroptere slid away from the sea wall. As he approached them, he could hear Alexa speaking quietly to Kate, words meant to be private, shared between one grieving daughter and another.