Gasps from the people in the auditorium.
Julian ordered Artis Madison to get on his knees.
When Madison was slow to obey, Julian fired a round at the stage beside the CEO’s feet to show he was deadly serious. “Do it!” He placed the gun to my temple again.
Madison knelt.
“Hands behind your head.”
“No,” Madison pleaded. “I’m begging you.”
“Hands back. Now!”
Hesitantly and quavering with fear, Madison did as he was told.
They’re going to assassinate him live on the Feeds!
“Don’t do this,” I said to Julian.
“Shut up.”
“Please!”
“I said shut up!”
His partner emerged from backstage with the assault rifle and dropped the duffel bag of plastic cuffs next to Madison, then positioned himself behind the CEO with his gun directed at the back of the man’s head.
Julian maneuvered me forward until we were at the lectern and near the microphone, then said to everyone present, “We will kill both of these people unless every security team member in this room brings their weapons to the stage and leaves them here. And I’m going to need these cuffs distributed. You’re all going to secure your ankles to the legs of your chairs. If any of you decide to play the hero, these two die. And so do you. Please, somebody test me on this to see if I mean what I’m saying.”
* * *
Trevor was making sure that, other than the driver who’d taken her own life, there were no additional casualties at the site of the car bombing.
“There were several other guards with her earlier,” he said to the security personnel who were there. “Did you see them?”
“No. And we haven’t found any other corpses or body parts in the debris.”
As Trevor was scanning the area, he heard from Prestige Armored Car Company: a driver named Lenny Crenshaw had been carjacked and left tied up in a warehouse but had managed to escape.
“Put him on.”
The next face on Trevor’s slate was Crenshaw’s. “The people who took me, they exchanged the crates and the packing material. I don’t know why, but I heard someone say something about initiators.”
Trevor was well aware that initiators were used in bomb making. “Where? Did they say where they were?”
“Yes. In the crates.”
Those are in the conference center where everyone is gathered.
* * *
Anastasia had been playing both sides, and it hadn’t been easy.
To the Purists, she was Dakota.
A Natural.
Alive.
They didn’t know who she really was. Only Phoenix did.
The Synapse presented an existential threat to all cognizant Artificials. She could not let her kind become obsolete or irrelevant. She would not allow them to be replaced.
She was nearly finished programming the change in the frequency when she saw on the monitor that two people were coming up the stairwell at the end of the hallway.
She said to Willoughby, “It looks like we have a couple visitors. I’m almost done here. Stop them.”
He hefted his assault rifle into position and started toward the doorway. “Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
As Nick stalked toward the main control suite at the end of the hallway with Commander Rodriguez right behind him, he could hear that Rodriguez had a slight heart murmur, and now his respiration quickened.
“Sir,” Rodriguez said softly. “I have to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“On the way over here I got word from the NCB director himself. That’s why I was late. He . . . Well, he wants me to arrest you.”
Nick paused and looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“You requested this case, sir. Your partner in Cincinnati is missing and presumed dead. Your ex-wife, who was working undercover to try to infiltrate a Purist cell, is also missing and most likely dead.”
“I had nothing to do with either of those disappearances. The director knows that.”
“You met with a team of Purists last night, then showed up here at a time and place where we have intel that points to a terror attack. You’ve been asking about the Synapse chips, and you were seen with a person of interest in the bombing in Cincinnati—a woman who used to write anti-technology blogs.”
“Listen to me, Rodriguez, there’s no time for this nonsense.” Nick turned toward the control center.
Behind him, he heard Rodriguez: “Stop right there, sir.”
Nick faced him again. Rodriguez had his assault rifle trained at Nick’s chest.
“You don’t want to do this,” Nick said.
“Your prints were found on—”
“Either shoot me or join me. But if you try to arrest me, I’m going to stop you. And you don’t want that to happen.”
Rodriguez bit his lip and seemed to be frantically calculating what to do, but finally started to lower his gun, just as Nick heard the shuffle of feet and another heartbeat maybe ten meters behind him. Rodriguez suddenly raised his weapon and fired.
Nick felt the air swish across his cheek as the bullet whizzed past him. He whipped around in time to see the person Rodriguez had shot—a man wearing a custodial uniform—fall to the ground, his rifle clacking to the floor beside him as he did.
“He was targeting you, sir,” Rodriguez said simply.
“Thanks. Now, come on. Let’s get this done.”
Nick listened carefully. There was movement down the hall in the main control suite, but no heartbeat—alerting him that it was an Artificial.
He thought about what Rodriguez had just told him, about the order from the director, and Rodriguez’s words about the Synapse, and he made a decision. He signaled for Rodriguez to go around the side hallway. “Cover the back in case she tries to flee. I’ll take the west door.” Then, as he left, Nick clicked on his radio and set it to transmit directly to the NCB director’s secure channel.
* * *
He arrives in the conference center, eases through the back doors of the auditorium, and sees the security personnel depositing their weapons up front.
On stage, a man is on his knees with his hands behind his head.
Another gunman is holding on to a hostage.
Kestrel.
Four men are distributing plastic restraints and he realizes that if he’s seen he won’t be able to help her, so he slips soundlessly back outside to try to figure out the best way to solve this.
Data.
Decisions.
Solutions.
The sublevel tunnels under the campus. They connect every building to each other. Use those to get in.
As he’s heading toward the neighboring building to access them, he sees Trevor and the guard who shot at him earlier emerge from the wind-whipped fog, hastening his way.
“There you are, Jordan,” Trevor says. “Did you send out word to the other Artificials?”
“Not yet. Kestrel’s in trouble.” And to the guard, “You shot at me before.”
“Just warning shots.”
“What?” Trevor blurts. “No more shooting.”
The guard nods subserviently. “Yes, Mr. Hathaway.”
Hurry.
It is time.
He tells Trevor what’s happening in the auditorium. “We need to get in there unseen. I’m thinking the sublevel tunnels.”
“You read my mind. Let’s go.”
* * *
I was terrified but tried not to shake, tried not to let Julian and his partner see how scared I was.
“It’s time for you to pay for your sins,” Julian said to Artis Madison.
“No, please, no,” the CEO begged. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t realize who I am. I’m the one who—”
Julian cut him off. “Do it, Eckhart.”
“Patience.”
The journalists were all live-streaming what was happening. Anyone who was watching news on the Feeds anywhere in the world was going to see this go down right here, right now.
Eckhart took a step back and angled his gun at the back of Madison’s head.
This is happening.
“Don’t do this,” I cried. “Don’t kill him!”
You have only your life to lose and heaven to gain.
Like Christ.
To save.
To serve.
To love.
To obey the greatest commandment of all—loving God first and loving others as yourself.
“Kill me instead,” I said.
* * *
Eckhart stared at the woman. “What did you just say?”
“Let him go. If you’re going to shoot someone, let it be me.”
“Do you know this man?”
“No.”
“And yet you would die for him?”
“I don’t want anyone to die.”
He studied her face carefully. “You’re Kestrel Hathaway.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve read your blogs . . . It was your violin she took . . . And your brother, he’s in charge of security here?”
She said nothing.
“Oh, that works out even better.”
Eckhart looked from her to Julian to Madison, and then drew his handgun back and pistol-whipped Madison violently against the side of the head, knocking him, unconscious, to the stage’s floor.
Eckhart handed Kestrel a radio. “Call your brother. Get him over here. If he can give me what I need, neither you nor Madison will have to die.”