“How large is your team?” he asked.
“Eight.”
There was a voice in the background. Ash couldn’t understand what was being said, but it was clearly defiant.
Nyla said into the phone, “Nine, if we count Martina.”
“And how many people does the Project have there?”
“Rough estimate, twenty-five to thirty guards and a couple dozen ancillary personnel.”
“Give us a moment here, okay?” Ash said.
“Sure,” Nyla replied.
Crystal muted the call.
“Do we have anyone we can send out there to help them?” Ash asked.
As Crystal thought about it, her face was already projecting the answer. “We’re stretched thin. We’ve got teams at only ten percent of the survival stations as it is. We could maybe break one of them free, but that would compromise the location where they’re working.”
“No. I don’t want to do that. What about here at the base?”
“We’re already operating at bare bones,” she said. “I’m sorry. We don’t have anyone left.”
“Actually, we do,” Pax said.
They both looked at him.
“We have a hundred twenty-nine people just sitting around over in Ely.”
“The Isabella Island group? But they’re just…tourists,” Ash said. “They’re not trained to do anything like this.”
“None of us are really trained for this,” Pax said.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, but what choice do we have? Besides, they might have been tourists when they went to the island, but they had lives before that. Who knows? Some might even have a military background.” He shrugged. “It’s the end of the world, Captain. All hands on deck.”
Ash considered it for a moment and then nodded. “All right. We can at least ask them.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“Put her back on,” Ash said to Crystal. He glanced at Pax and grinned. “If you recall, I was army, not navy. So next time I’d prefer a more appropriate metaphor.”
Caleb stared at the pad of paper.
“I got it. I…got it!” He looked up. “I got…”
His words cut out as he realized he was alone in Matt’s room. Last he remembered, Chloe had been there, too. He had no idea if that had been ten minutes ago or two hours.
He looked down at the pad again and rechecked his final bit of decryption. Those extra numbers in several of the sets had been the biggest trouble, but everything had finally clicked, making him feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Of course, he still needed to check it on a computer, but as far as he was concerned, that was only a formality.
He grinned at his handiwork. Breaking into Project Eden’s communications network by night, solving encrypted messages by day. Damn, he was good.
Chloe. I need to find Chloe.
As he shot off the bed, several of Matt’s journals and dozens of pieces of paper tumbled to the floor. Ignoring them, he crossed the room and yanked the door open.
“Chloe!” he yelled as he entered the hallway. “Chloe!”
He heard a door behind him open. He swung around.
“What’s going on?” Not Chloe, Rachel.
“Oh, um, I’m sorry, ma’am,” Caleb said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m, uh, looking for Chloe.”
Rachel stepped into the hall. “Why would Chloe be—” She stopped as her gaze fell on the open door to her brother’s suite. “Were you in Matt’s room?” She walked quickly to the doorway.
“I was just…I…I gotta find Chloe.” He whipped back around and started jogging down the hall.
“Caleb! I want to talk to you!” Rachel called after him.
He kept going, not allowing himself to breathe until he turned down the hallway to the main portion of the base.
He found three people in the cafeteria.
“I’m looking for Chloe. Have you seen her?”
Head shakes.
He was about to ask the same question when he reached the comm room, but a quick look through the door told him everyone was busy.
He almost ran past the gym without stopping, but the rhythmic bass throbbing from inside made him stutter step and return to the door. As he opened it, he winced at the music blasting from inside. Chloe was the only one there, keeping pace with the drumbeat on a stair-step machine in the corner.
Afraid his eardrums would burst if he took a step inside, he yelled her name. He might as well have been running around naked in a pitch-black room for all the good it did. Bracing himself, he took a step over the threshold and yelled again, this time waving the pad of paper in the air. That did the trick.
She hopped off the machine, picked a remote off the ground, and hit a button. The music cut out.
“Are you done?” she asked, using a towel to wipe the sweat off her face as she walked over.
“Uh-huh.”
She motioned at the pad of paper. “That it?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Holding out a hand, she said, “Let me see it.”
“There’s, um, something you might want to deal with first.”
They found Rachel kneeling on the floor of Matt’s room, picking up the journals. All the wads of paper had already been tossed in the trash.
“Rachel?” Chloe said.
Rachel turned. “What the hell is going on here? These are Matt’s personal journals. Who gave you permission to go through them?”
Chloe stepped toward her. “Rachel, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” Rachel said, slamming the journal she’d been holding onto the bed. “These are my brother’s things! This is his room! You have no right to be in here!”
It took all of Chloe’s will to maintain her cool. These were not the kind of situations she’d ever been very good at. “We had no choice. We had to come—”
Pushing herself to her feet, Rachel said, “You what? Coming in here was not a choice! You didn’t even think to ask me?”
“You needed your rest.”
Rachel looked between the two of them. “I want you and Caleb to confine yourselves to your quarters. You will—”
“Caleb had nothing to do with this. He was doing what Ash and I asked him to.”
“Captain Ash is in on this, too? What has happened to all of you?”
“What has happened,” Chloe said, her jaw tensing, “is that Matt left us a message and we’ve been trying to figure out what it means. I realize that his death has been very difficult for you, but we couldn’t just stop doing anything until you were ready. We are in the middle of a war we are losing badly. We need every advantage we can get, and if your brother’s message points us toward something that will help, then we need to know what he meant.” A brief pause. “I’m sorry we did not ask your permission, but we didn’t do anything wrong. Matt is dead. There is nothing that will change that. But there are people out there who need our help to stay alive. So, no, we will not detain ourselves in our rooms. And, no, we will not stop looking at your brother’s journals.”
Rachel stared at Chloe, stunned.
“Actually,” Caleb said, “I don’t think we need the journals anymore. I’ve figure out the—”
“Shut up,” Chloe said, her words meant for Caleb but her gaze still on Rachel.
Rachel’s lips parted. After a few false starts, she said, “What message?”