Noah was wrong on that score. The signal wasn’t a Soviet-era plot. It was far too sophisticated, even by twenty-first century standards. It was most certainly the product of a very advanced intelligence, probably an alien intelligence, and that meant its potential for disaster went far beyond anything dreamed up during the Cold War. The message was a trigger, activating the mental equivalent of a computer virus that lay dormant in the genetic memory of the clones. That’s exactly what she and her siblings were: a dormant virus, sent in a radio transmission, designed to crash the entire planet.
Jenna wondered if it had been a similar incident fifteen years earlier that had prompted Noah’s mission to terminate Soter’s project with extreme prejudice. Had a first or second generation clone read the message and then tried to destroy the world?
It’s in me, Jenna thought again. Even now, it’s trying to burn its way through my mind.
What will happen if I let it? Will I still be me?
She pushed away from the wall, took a halting step toward the balcony rail, and addressed Noah. “Are you here to kill me?”
“Never.” Noah shook his head vehemently. “They wanted me to. They’re terrified of what you might do, but I convinced them to give us a chance.”
“A chance?”
“Don’t trust him,” Soter repeated. “He’s a killer. He killed your brothers and sisters. He killed my friends. He’ll say anything to stop you from fulfilling your destiny.”
“My destiny?” she repeated, incredulous. Soter’s words were a slap in her face. “Is that all you care about?”
The mathematician realized his mistake. “Of course not.”
“He’s right, you know. That message that you care about so much? It’s an alien Trojan Horse, and you brought it right inside the gates.”
Soter shook his head. “No, no. It’s not true. We just had to refine the genome.”
Noah spoke again. “Jenna, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I will be there for you. I won’t leave you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Jenna felt utterly alone. She wondered what Mercy would do in her situation — Mercy who clearly thought of Soter as a father, and yet had defended Noah, even when Jenna had been ready to reject him completely. But Mercy was still in the control room, and Jenna knew that if she stepped back inside, it would be the same as choosing Soter’s path. Besides, while Mercy might have been able to advise her about which man to choose for a father, she could not understand what was truly at stake.
If I choose to go with Noah, I might get killed. If I stay with Soter, I might destroy the world.
Not such a tough choice after all, Jenna thought, and started moving.
48
She made it just two steps before Soter realized what she was doing. “No!” he cried, and then lurched forward, arms thrown wide as if to seize her in his embrace.
At that instant, something cracked against the control room window, smashing the pane into a million glittering fragments. The unexpected destruction caught everyone on the balcony off-guard, even Jenna. She came to a halt almost as abruptly as she had started moving in the first place. There was something familiar about the scene, but it took a moment for Jenna and everyone else on the balcony to grasp the significance of the shattered window.
Noah however, caught on right away. “No, damn it!”
His exclamation jolted Jenna to alertness. A sniper, she thought. Just like Ken on the roof of the bait shop. But is the sniper shooting at Soter or me?
She felt like she knew the answer, and that led to another, more ominous line of questions.
Was Noah lying to me? Was all his talk just a way to lure me out to where the sniper could finish the job?
Jenna wanted to believe that Noah loved her. Maybe they — Cort or whoever was running the show now — had lied to him, promised him that she would be given safe passage, so that he would flush her out. Or maybe he thinks I’m damaged beyond repair. That I need to be put down, like a rabid pet.
She didn’t want that to be true, but there was no way to know.
A moment later, Soter crashed into her, tackling her to the balcony deck. Cray’s gun was out in an instant, and the report of the distant sniper rifle, only now reaching her ears, was eclipsed by the closer and louder thunder of his answering fire, directed at the only target available.
Noah scrambled away, running for the corner of the building, but even as he broke for cover, more shots began pelting the exterior of the building. Tiny spurts of flame scattered throughout the verdant landscape marked the position of at least half a dozen camouflaged shooters. Noah had not come alone.
Cray dropped into a crouch and lunged toward her. He scooped Jenna up in one hand, Soter in the other, and hustled them through the door as the balcony exploded in a spray of splinters.
Jenna wrestled free of his grip and crawled deeper into the relative safety of the control room. She spied Mercy, huddled behind a desk, and headed toward her. Bullets sizzled through the air overhead, smacking into the walls and ceiling, spraying dust and filling the room with the smell of smoke. But none of the shots came anywhere close to a human target. This was suppressive fire, Jenna knew, designed to keep them pinned down.
Soter seemed to grasp this as well. From his fetal curl on the floor he shouted, “Cray. Get her to safety.”
Cray hesitated, as if torn between his loyalty to the old man and his sense of duty, but he gave a terse nod and reached out to Jenna. “Come on.”
Jenna nodded her assent, then grasped Mercy’s hand and followed Cray’s lead toward the exit to the stairwell. Before leaving the room, he shouted to his partner, Markley. “We’ll try to lead them off. Stay with the doctor, and get the hell out of here as soon as you can.”
“No!” Soter protested. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. You have to save the girl.”
Jenna was not inclined to argue. Cray shook his head and then led Jenna and Mercy from the room, gun at the ready. “Stay close,” he said, not looking back.
Over the mechanical hum of the transmitter, the sound of a pitched battle rolled up from below. Soter’s security detail was putting up a fight, defending the transmitter building, but there were only four of them. Four against at least six shooters. Worse, there was only one way out of the building, and it went right through the middle of the fight. Jenna looked at Mercy, hoping to see some indication that she knew what Cray was doing, but Mercy’s blank look told her otherwise.
Jenna felt a return of the helplessness she’d experienced in Miami when she had boarded Soter’s helicopter. She didn’t even have a gun to defend herself. Her survival depended on Cray’s choices, and that was intolerable.
She was about to tell Cray that when he did something unexpected, turning away from the exit, toward parts of the building they had not visited.
“Where are we going?” It wasn’t simple curiosity that prompted her question.
“There’s another way out,” Cray said. “Through the transmitter room.”
Another way out was good. “Won’t they be watching all the doors?”
“Probably.” Cray didn’t break stride, but kept moving toward the source of the persistent thrumming sound. They passed through a maze of corridors, in and out of rooms lined with strange electronic devices, pieces of machinery and shelves packed with bound books and thick three-ring binders.