Chapter Fourteen

Jane

“That went better than planned,” Jane said. She and the girls lounged in the classroom while they waited for Zachary and his brothers to arrive. Anna kicked back in her seat, long legs stretched in front of her, obviously comfy in her sweat pants and hoodie. Her long ponytail poked through the back of a Chicago Bears ball cap. Mina wore skinny jeans and a long-sleeve flounce top that punctuated how petite she was. She sat with her legs folded beneath her on the desktop.

“Mission definitely accomplished.” Mina took her bun out and let her curly hair drop around her shoulders. “But…”

“Do you think I went too far?” Jane asked.

“Not at all,” Mina said. “I would say that slapping Zachy in the face, leaving him stranded in the parking lot, and scaring us all half to death by invoking radio silence is totally rational. Y’know?”

“Do not call him that.” Jane’s face heated. “Piper was watching. I had to push her. Anyway, I let Mr. Parker know what was going on. He was okay with it.”

“I hope Zach is,” Anna said. “He totally panicked when he found out we had lost contact with you.”

“And I feel terrible about it.” She did, too. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, and certainly spawned the proper reaction from Zachary to convince Piper. But now, after the dust had settled, she wished that she had warned him.

“He did pretty well for a caveman, didn’t he?” Mina said. Then her eyes sparkled.

“He’s not a caveman,” Jane said. “He’s actually a gentleman. Never saw that coming.”

“I wish we had seen Benson coming sooner,” Anna said. “Are you okay?”

Jane took a breath. “It all came back when I saw him. I started to have a panic attack, but when Zachary put his arm around me, it helped. Another thing I never expected. He can actually be very calming.”

“He’s so protective of you, girlfriend.” Mina leaned in close.

“He’s not,” Jane said. “He just doesn’t like Benson.”

“You couldn’t see his body language like we could. He protected you like a neutrino blast shield. He all but threw himself between you and Benson. I think he’d take a bullet for you, girl.”

“I doubt it.” Jane frowned and shook her head. “I called him a Neanderthal.”

“Did he club Benson?” Mina chuckled.

“No.”

“Then he’s not a Neanderthal.”

“That was his argument.”

“Tell him you’re sorry,” Anna said with a sly grin.

“Kiss and make up!” Mina knuckle-bumped Anna.

Jane’s face grew warm. “He kissed me on the cheek.”

“We saw!” they said in unison.

“It was just part of the act.”

“Of course it was,” Mina said. “You keep telling yourself that.”

“I noticed you got a little touchy over Piper Dane,” Anna said. “Should I read anything into that?”

“That was the plan.” Jane closed her eyes and smiled. “There’s nothing to read.”

“Maybe a little between the lines?” Anna rubbed Jane’s arm.

“Like Zachary to the rescue?” Mina’s voice got high. “That is so hot! Y’know?”

“I know, right?” Anna high-fived Mina.

Just then, Zachary and his brothers burst through the classroom door.

“Are you all right?” Zachary said, and he headed straight for Jane. Before she knew what was happening, he lifted her out of her chair into a quick hug.

“I’m fine,” she said after he lowered her into her seat. Wow. That was unexpected.

Mina did a side glance at Jane and whispered, “You’ll have to slap him more often.”

Jane blasted a look at Mina, then, “Zachary, I’m sorry I left you stranded like that. I can explain—”

“It’s okay, Parker told me what happened,” Zachary interrupted as he took a chair beside Jane. He didn’t seem angry.

Her father called Zachary? He didn’t say anything to her about it.

“I never saw Piper following me,” Zachary said, “but I guess you did. You left the parking lot without telling me so I would panic and she’d think it was all real. That was…that was a brilliant move. I hope it worked.”

“Don’t worry, Zachy won’t lose track of Jane again.” Nolan sat by Mina and jerked a thumb at his brother.

Zachary grunted. “Ignore him.”

Michael plopped down next to Anna. “We purged him. It’s a procedure Nol and I developed. Sometimes Zach’s brain builds up too much stupidity.”

“Shut up,” Zachary said. But he was smiling.

“He’s got this one section between the hypothalamus and the medulla oblongata called the Meatball Zone. When it fills up, Zach acts like his brain’s been replaced with ground beef. We have to flush it for him.”

“The therapy is intense, but effective,” Nolan said. “And fun. For Mike and me, at least.”

“They reamed me for not following you home from the parking lot.” Zachary turned to Jane. “What’s the plan now?”

“Same as it has been.” Jane smiled. “You did well, Zachary. Piper took the bait. She’ll be in contact.”

“I gave her my number,” Zachary said.

Jane had absolutely hated watching him do that. “I know. Nicely played. Anna, any luck hacking HAVOC’s system?”

“Oh, yeah,” Anna said, jumping right in. “Michael and I found a tiny little hole in their firewall. We still don’t know what the weapon is, but it looks like they plan to use it before the end of this month.”

“How do you know?” Zachary asked.

“Found a timeline on their system.” Anna stretched out her long body and faked a yawn. “Thought they had it in a secure place.”

“Didn’t count on the Dream Team,” Michael said, fist-bumping Anna.

“That gives us three weeks,” Jane said.

Zachary glanced at her. “Piper said they’re building a machine to heal the ozone. I know she’s lying, so—”

“But what if she’s not?” Jane interrupted. “What would that mean?”

“The profile was right. She’s a liar. There’s no truth to her story.”

“Zachary, we’re all scientists. Scientists test hypotheses, right? Not truth. Truth doesn’t need to be tested.”

“You want to test the hypothesis that the hole in the ozone is still growing?” Zachary shrugged. “All the data says just the opposite.”

Jane shook her head. “Pretend that Piper is telling the truth. I want to test that hypothesis. I make connections better when I hear all the possibilities.”

“Assuming that there is a particle of truth in what she told me, they would have to wait until conditions in the space atmosphere were perfect before they could heal the ozone. That’s not something that can happen using only the Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Why?” Jane asked.

“Ozone is produced in the stratosphere when highly energetic solar radiation strikes molecules of oxygen and splits the atoms. It’s called photolysis.”

Jane thought for a moment. “So what do we know about changes to the space atmosphere in the next three weeks?”

“Big solar flare in five days,” Zachary said. “Enormous. They’ve named it MegaFlare. The geomagnetic community is all over it. It’s unique because it’s happening during a routine meteor shower.”

“Routine?” Anna asked.

“Yes, meteor showers are common because of the way the asteroid belt moves through the galaxy. But a solar flare of this magnitude is rare. And potentially dangerous. When a solar flare happens, it disrupts every layer of the solar atmosphere. If it’s accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, it will trigger geomagnetic storms that can disable satellites and knock out electric power grids. Plasma is heated to tens of millions of Kelvin. Cosmic rays are accelerated to near light speed. Two days later, it hits the Earth’s magnetosphere and produces streams of super-energized particles in the solar wind. But the geomagnetic community already knows how to handle that. It’s no big deal.”

“What if the super-energized particles were concentrated into a beam?” Jane thought back to Professor Reddington’s presentation. “Could a Large Hadron Collider do that?”

“With the right quark generator.” Zachary was silent for a moment then his eyes widened. “Wow. The pulsed particle beam would have a gigajoule of kinetic energy.”

“Meaning?”

“It wouldn’t heal anything. Just the opposite. That’s how you build a proton cannon.”

Jane glanced up at the classroom cameras. She knew her father would be watching. She hoped that he would see clearly now that Zachary was the perfect addition to this team. Maybe he would change his mind about him. Maybe he would change his mind about her. “And if you fired it into the ozone?”

“I don’t like where you’re going with this,” Zachary said. “HAVOC plans to build a machine to burn a bigger hole in the ozone, not heal it. They want to blow a hole in the sky. We’re talking teraelectron volts of concentrated energy. Not even a nuclear warhead can do that.”

“But an LHC would certainly have the power,” Nolan whispered.

“They’re building a proton cannon,” Jane said. “What will that do?”

The color drained from Zachary’s face. “By the time the unfiltered sun rays hit the Earth, it would be like a magnifying glass on ants with a fifty-mile radius of total destruction.”

“Are you serious?” Jane felt numb.

Just then the teacher waltzed into the room. “Hello, class. I hope you’ve read your Canadian History homework. It’s pop quiz time.”

Jane barely noticed him. A fifty-mile radius. Not a small village off the grid this time. She winced as she made the connection. We have five days to save a city.