“Oh. Um, well, I think it would be fair to say this is the nerve center of the Project.” He looked at Wicks. “Right?”
“Definitely,” Wicks said. “This place has access to priority channels that can reach all the bases. No one else has that. Even better, this place has the capability to shut down the whole communications system.”
“You mean for the entire Project?” Chloe asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“And it’s not just communications that can be cut,” Bobby said. “I’m pretty sure all essential services to any base can be turned off from here. We’d have to find our way around their security codes first but Caleb’s working on that right now.”
“Check these out,” Ash said, handing the flash drives to Bobby. “There might be something here that can help.”
“What are those?” Wicks asked.
“A few items Director Johnson felt important enough not to leave behind.”
“You found her?”
“We found her,” Chloe said.
A silence fell over the four of them.
After a few stunned seconds, Bobby said, “Did we, I mean, is it possible we just, you know…”
“Matt should be here for this,” Wicks said. “He deserved to be here.”
“He is here,” Ash said. “And no, Bobby. We haven’t finished yet.” He pointed at the desk. “Toss me the sat phone.”
January 9th
World Population
700,893,221
29
It took longer than Ash would have liked, but it was important they had all the details worked out and the people in place.
He and Chloe had spent most of the previous day on the phone, consulting with Rachel and Pax and other Resistance contacts around the world. Another hour was taken up arguing with Dr. Gardiner after he’d arrived at Dream Sky and had a chance to assess the situation. The doctor had understood the importance of what Ash was asking, but he was extremely reluctant to sign on with what Ash wanted.
“They’ve been drugged for weeks,” Gardiner had said. “None of them are in any condition to do this.”
When the call ended, Chloe had said, “I’ll go up and make sure it happens. Don’t worry.”
First thing that morning, she had flown back to Dream Sky and, true to her word, worked things out.
Aided by Tamara and Wicks, Ash had spent most of the day preparing, practicing, and revising. And before he knew it, he was back in NB016’s control center, leaning against the workstation Bobby had picked out.
“You ready?” Bobby asked.
Ash looked up from his notes. “Is it time?”
“Ninety seconds.”
No, Ash thought. I’m not even close to ready. I could use another day or even a week. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one doing this at all. But what he said was, “I guess.”
“Can I get you to stand?”
Ash pushed up from the desk. “How’s this?”
Bobby looked through the viewfinder of his camera. “To your left a few inches. Want to make sure the big monitor is in the shot.”
Each screen on the monitor wall behind Ash was filled with shots from different Project Eden bases, with the largest currently showing the message they’d been broadcasting since the day before.
“Better?” Ash asked after scooting over.
“Perfect,” Bobby said. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “Sixty-five seconds.”
Ash took a deep breath.
“Relax,” Tamara told. “You’ll be fine. You’re a natural.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said.
“I do.”
Josie Ash, her brother Brandon, and Ginny Thorton sat front and center in the Ward Mountain cafeteria while the rest of those living at the base found spots behind them. All eyes were on the large television monitor.
For a couple weeks, the only thing coming in on any channel had been static. Thirty hours ago, that had changed. Worldwide, on nearly every satellite station and most major broadcast networks, a graphic had appeared that read:
A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
CONCERNING THE OUTBREAK
WILL AIR
JANUARY 9
AT 2300 UTC/GMT
Josie had been staring so intently at the monitor that she jerked when the graphic cut to a shot of their father.
For several seconds, he said nothing, and then he started to speak.
The Project Eden base in Helsinki was one of the smaller ones. Because of this, there was no corresponding survival station in the country. All Finnish survivors had been ferried over to the facility in Stockholm.
Esa Lahti, the base director, thought size was also the reason their base had not been attacked like many of the others. Still, he and the twenty-seven Project personnel working under him had spent many nervous hours expecting trouble, a fear that only increased when they discovered that the Project’s communications system had gone down.
So, it was with some relief that at seven p.m. local time the previous evening, they received a message from NB016 in New York telling them that the communication issues were being resolved and that a special announcement would be broadcast the following evening.
Lahti expected one of the directorate — probably Director Johnson, given where the notification had come from — would be reporting on recent events.
All twenty-eight members of the base were present fifteen minutes before the broadcast was to start. They filled the time speculating on the cause of the attacks and coming to a general consensus that whatever the problem had been, the directorate had dealt with it.
On the screen was a graphic very similar to the one being broadcast on civilian channels, though the inhabitants of NB953 had stopped monitoring public airwaves and satellite feeds a week after Implementation Day and were not aware of this.
As the seconds ticked down to the hour, conversation stopped and all eyes looked expectantly at the screen.
Throughout the base, monitors played the feed from NB016, the sound blaring from the speakers filling empty rooms and echoing down deserted halls. The only witnesses to the man on the screen were the bodies of the thirteen Project members who had died in the explosion that had ripped apart the entrance to the base.
The other fifty-one people who had been stationed there had fled into the city. Some were brought down by gunfire just steps from the base entrance, and some were captured as they tried to disappear down the streets. More than half escaped and never looked back.
Ice handed a bottle of water to the farang. He had told her his name but she couldn’t remember. Daniel or David or something like that.
“Thank you,” he said.
“How you feel?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess.”
Dane. That was it. Like what Danish people called themselves, he had said, but he wasn’t Danish. Canadian, in Thailand for the holidays with his wife. Ice had not asked what had happened to her. If she wasn’t here with him, the flu had most likely taken her, like it had taken Ice’s family and nearly everyone she knew.