She checked the bandage around the man’s leg. He’d sustained the injury when the survival station had been liberated, freeing Ice, Dane, and a hundred and forty-five other captives.
“Food ready in twenty minute,” she told him. “Rice. Egg. Is okay?”
“Sounds great.”
As she started to rise, the speakers that were spread throughout the survival station crackled to life, and the voice of a man speaking English blared out.
Ice caught a few words but the distortion made it difficult for her to understand. “You know what he say?”
Dane looked puzzled but said, “Yes.”
“You can say again for me?”
“Of course.”
As she sat down again, Dane began repeating the man’s words.
The number chosen for the base was supposed to be lucky, but as far as Gordon Belger, the base director, was concerned, it was far from it.
Sure, the base hadn’t actually fallen, but the fighting had lasted for nearly two days, and the strike team had been whittled down to only a handful of men. The attacks would come in waves, the base barraged by gunfire and homemade bombs for an hour or more, followed by a long enough lull that Belger would start to think it was finally over. But always the fighting began again.
Ms. Chen, his assistant, stepped into his office. “Sir, the broadcast is about to begin.”
Finally, he thought.
He switched on his monitor, hoping the directorate would be announcing an aggressive plan to help bases like his.
He was saved from the disappointment of learning the truth.
Most Project facilities were constructed underground, but for some locations that wasn’t feasible. Beijing, being the crowded capital of China, was one. So NB888 had been built largely aboveground, the director’s office on the uppermost floor.
When the image on his monitor switched from the graphic to the man standing in an operations room, Belger only had enough time to mutter, “Who’s that?” before his whole world exploded.
Li Huan lowered the rocket launcher to get a better look at his handiwork.
“Whoa!” Norman Andrews said. “Nice shot.”
Half of the building at the center of the Project Eden base had turned into a pile of rubble.
“Totally worth it,” Huan said.
Several hours earlier, he and Norman had been sent to find more ammunition. In addition to bullets and guns, they had found the launcher and five rockets. Having heard the success other Resistance teams had achieved with similar weapons, they had taken them.
Norman ran back to the truck and opened a case containing another rocket. “Let’s finish that place off.”
Huan smiled. “Load me up.”
30
“My name is Daniel Ash. And I have a story to tell you, one you need to know, because it is your story, too. The story of how our family members and friends were taken from us, and how those of us who remain will begin again.
“Before I start, I ask that you bear with me for a few moments while I address the organization known as Project Eden. Most of you don’t know who they are yet, but you will by the time I finish tonight.”
Ash paused, his previous sympathetic expression turning deadly serious.
“Members of the Project, your organization is no longer in business, and you are hereby ordered to vacate your bases. If you do not, the attacks that have already destroyed many of your locations will continue. There is no chance you will be allowed to finish what you started. If you think that your directorate will find a way to deal with us, that will not be the case.
A photo of a dead man lying on the ground replaced the shot of Ash.
“Directorate member Johannes Yeager,” Ash said. “His headquarters — you would refer to it as NB338—fell early this morning.”
The picture switched to one of a dazed-looking Asian man, blood splattered across his face.
“Directorate member Kim Woo-Jin of NB202. His base was eliminated less than half an hour after Mr. Yeager’s. Lucky for Mr. Kim, we were able to pull him from the wreckage.”
The next shot was not a picture, but a live image of a man strapped to a chair in a pool of light.
“Directorate member Parkash Mahajan of NB551 is our guest at an undisclosed location, and has been very helpful in providing information, much of which we have already put to use.”
Another live image, this one from just down the hall.
“Directorate member Celeste Johnson of NB016, the facility I am speaking to you from now.” The woman’s face and neck were cut and bruised, the look in her eyes hollow and resigned. “Ms. Johnson was kind enough to provide us with some highly sensitive Project data that has also proven very useful.” The shot switched back to Ash. He was holding up the portable drives they’d found in her bag. “The codes these contain mean we can defeat you without firing one more bullet. Of course, there’s no reason for you to believe me, so a demonstration should erase any doubts. ”
This can’t be happening, Director Lahti thought. It must be some sort of test.
The directorate either dead or captured? Impossible.
If not a test, it must be a ruse by the rebels to trick Project members into giving up.
Of course. That had to be it.
He shook his head in disgust. How transparent could they be? The membership would never set down its guns and give up.
Overhead, the lights began to pulse white and red, indicating an alarm of the highest order. Oddly, the siren that should be accompanying the display was silent.
“The air!” someone said. “He’s turned the circulators off!”
Lahti listened. The ever-present hum of the air circulators had stopped.
Everyone flew out of their seats and ran down the hall toward the elevators, but when the first few reached them, someone shouted, “They’re not working! There’s no power!”
NB953, unlike many of the other bases, also had a stairway to the surface, but the bio-scanner outside the door wouldn’t recognize anyone’s palm print.
This isn’t a ruse or a test, Lahti realized.
Dear God.
“That should be enough,” Ash said. “Those of you belowground should be noticing shortly that your air systems are coming back online. Your exits, though, will remain sealed until the end of my broadcast.
“Which brings me to my last point, as far as you are all concerned. There is no comparison in the history of man for the genocide you have committed. Every single death falls on each of your shoulders. We now possess a directory of all Project personnel that includes photos and more personal information than you probably thought the Project knew about you. Soon we will hunt you down, each and every one of you, and you will pay for what you have been a part of.
“If I were you, I would run as far and as fast as I could to the most secluded location I could find, and never come within a hundred miles of another living soul for the rest of my life. I doubt that will be enough for you to escape your fate, but there’s always a chance.”
Ash leaned back against the desk and smiled. “My apologies to the rest of you. I’m sure all of that was pretty confusing. But the story I promised you should clear it up.”
Even condensing things, it took Ash nearly two hours to tell the tale of Project Eden. He talked of the test outbreak in California the previous spring that had taken his wife’s life and sent him and his children underground. He described how the Project sent shipping containers full of the Sage Flu virus around the world, and how the plot was almost foiled before it could begin at Bluebird. He took personal responsibility for the failure to stop it.