“She’s right, Ishiro.” Fallon had extricated himself on the opposite side and was circling around the wreck. “We’ll get a clean computer. Leave it.”
Tanaka scowled, but threw the tablet through the open window, into the car, without further protest.
Carter spun on her heel — a mistake, as the abrupt movement sent a throb of pain through her upper torso — and then she ran for the tree line. Fallon and Tanaka followed close behind. As expected, the drone appeared to be homing in on the car or something in it, and just before the three fleeing figures ducked into the woods, the flying robot slammed into the car behind them.
The trees marked the boundary of an urban park, with paths and trails, allowing them to slow to a more discreet walking pace. Carter recognized the place as the Conservatory and Botanical Gardens of Geneva, a repository of rare plant species from all over the world. It was the sort of place in which she might have lost herself under better circumstances, both as a biologist and as a tourist. Unfortunately, there was no time to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. While there was no sign of further pursuit from rogue machines, Carter knew it was only a matter of time before the local authorities started looking for the trio who had fled the accident’s scene. No doubt at least a few of the witnesses had captured their likenesses on video.
“We need to keep moving,” she said.
“And go where?” Fallon shot back.
“You mentioned a radio telescope in France. If we could get there, we could build a new transmitter and shut the Black Knight down, right?”
Tanaka shook his head. “We may have only a few hours before another solar event begins. I don’t see how we could get there in time.”
“It might as well be on the moon,” Fallon added. “Tomorrowland is still our best chance. We need to regain control of the network.”
Carter sighed. “All right. I might be able to help with that.”
She found a pay phone outside the small restaurant at the center of the park, and placed a collect call to Cerberus Group headquarters.
A few seconds later, she heard Dourado’s overjoyed voice. “Thank God, you’re safe.”
“I’m not sure ‘safe’ is the right word.”
“Just hang on. Erik is on his way to meet you.”
“Erik?” Carter’s heart skipped a beat. “You’ve heard from them?”
As Dourado brought her up to date, Carter felt some of her anxiety about the situation slipping away. She wasn’t alone anymore. Her friends were safe, and Lazarus was on his way to help her, while the rest of the team was headed to the Sinai Peninsula.
She wasn’t sure what to make of their working theory about the sun chariot of Helios. That it sounded crazy didn’t faze her. She had seen a lot of crazy things, particularly since coming to work for the Cerberus Group. As she saw it, the real problem was time. Finding the sun chariot, if it still existed at all, might take days. Weeks, even. If Tanaka was right, they might have only hours.
“Erik just left Istanbul,” Dourado went on. “He should be there soon. I’ll arrange a safe house and hire a car to pick you up.”
“Cintia, that’s great, but right now, there’s not a whole lot Erik can do to help.” She hated saying it, but it was true. There wasn’t anyone she’d rather have by her side against a human foe, or even a mutant hybrid monster, but his physical strength wouldn’t be much use against robots and hijacked computer networks.
“What do you need?”
“I’m glad you asked.” Carter grimaced, feeling even worse about what she was about to say next. “How would you like to meet your hero?”
EIGHTEEN
Under normal circumstances, leaving the relative shelter of the secret Cerberus Headquarters facility beneath Castel Sant’Angelo would have been almost unthinkable for Dourado. For as long as she could remember, she hated being outdoors, exposed to a world so big that she felt like she might get sucked away into space if she stood too long under the open sky. And then there were all the people, each one a potential predator, just waiting for a chance to pounce on her — figuratively, but maybe literally, too.
People couldn’t be trusted. The world was too big, and she was so small, so insignificant. That was why she preferred the digital world. In the virtual landscape of cyberspace, she was a goddess. That she was able to even think about venturing outside was a testimony to how far she had come since her panic-stricken youth in Belem, Brazil. Indeed, under normal circumstances, her value to the Cerberus Group would only have been diminished by venturing out into the open world, away from the hardware that imbued her with such god-like omniscience.
These were not normal circumstances, though, and that made the experience a little more tolerable.
Getting through the airport was miserable, but probably no more so for her than for everyone else. The terminal was crowded with people who had seen their scheduled flights delayed due to the disruption in air traffic caused by the global earthquake. But at least she was indoors. Her flamingo-pink hair and facial piercings attracted the attention of her queue-mates, some giving her judgmental frowns, but more offering nods and smiles of approval.
The short flight to Geneva wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. The plane’s cramped interior made her feel safe, like a comforting hug, which helped keep her mind off the fact that she was hurtling through thin air five miles above the surface of the Earth. Yet, for all her coping skills, what made the trip endurable was the knowledge that she was on her way to meet Marcus Fallon.
She had not been exaggerating when she called him a hero of hers. If anything, she had downplayed her feelings about him. Fallon was the personification of the future she had dreamed of all her life. Like no one else in the field of robotics, he had bridged the gulf between the limitations of the physical world and the limitless possibilities of cyberspace.
What Fallon did was similar to what Fiona could do with the Mother Tongue. She could create golems out of clay and loose earth and then bring them to life with an ancient language to do her bidding. He created robots out of metal and plastic and brought them to life with binary machine language to do his. The big difference was that, while the Mother Tongue was nearly extinct, computer code was a language that anyone could learn and which Dourado already spoke fluently. And now she was on her way to use that knowledge to help the man she idolized regain control of his wayward creations. She felt like a street kid tapped to play in the World Cup final match.
As she made her way through the Swiss airport, though, she felt a little of the old familiar panic setting in. As excited as she was at the prospect of helping Fallon, she would still have to brave the world outside.
A large figure stepped in front of her and even though the rendezvous had been pre-arranged before she left Rome, Dourado nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Erik,” she gasped.
That was all she could say for a few seconds, but Lazarus didn’t seem to notice. “The pink hair was a good idea. Hi-vis. Easy to spot.”
She wasn’t sure if that was his attempt at humor. Probably not. He didn’t strike her as the sort of person to crack jokes, though in truth, she did not know him very well. Their orbits rarely crossed. Joke or not, he made no further comment as he led her outside to the stop for the shuttle that would take them to the rental car pick-up lot, and that was fine with her.
Thirty minutes later, the ordeal ended with their arrival at the safe house where Carter, Fallon, and Tanaka had gone following the escape from Tomorrowland. The initial meeting with Fallon was a blur, and she was pretty sure she had embarrassed herself by fawning over him, but a few minutes later she was back in her environment, using her laptop to remotely probe the security of the Space Tomorrow mainframe and intranet.