“Evac team early?” he said sarcastically.
“Did you hear the chopper?” Donnelley said. It should have been clearly audible, even over the howling of the storm.
“No. Did you-”
There was another violent knock.
Donnelley turned and put his cheek against the small round circle of the observation port. He could feel the impossible cold, even through the two plates of half-inch lexan and the insulating layer of inert gas between them.
There was a hunched, hooded figure in the entrance alcove-a single human shape. Pellets of rock-hard ice peppered the figure like a hail of white ball bearings. Each one of them, Donnelley knew, was sharp enough to cut, traveling fast enough to leave a bruise.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “He’s not even in a suit.”
“Then he’s a dead man,” Brad said.
“Well at least he can die inside.” He shifted to the left, put his eye to the retinal scanner, and thumbed the broad latch-panel.
Parkinson jumped up. “Wait a minute, Donnelley! We don’t even know who he is!”
The panel beeped just as it was supposed to. “Who cares?” he said over his shoulder. He put his hands on the huge, old-fashioned wheel and spun it, cursing the design. Damn engineers, he thought as he dragged at it. “There aren’t two hundred people left on the whole damn continent, Brad. It’s not exactly a home invasion robbery!”
It took all the strength he had to pull the door open six inches. The man outside pushed as well, using his shoulder with tremendous strength. A moment later, the opening was just wide enough to let the visitor spill in and tumble to the floor. Donnelley reversed his effort and struggled to get the hatch shut and locked. He barely managed.
After the latch chunked home and the panel gave its happy beep, he leaned against the cold door to recover his strength. “Son of a bitch,” he said again, panting from the exertion. “What the hell were you-”
Something jerked at the collar of his suit, right at the nape of his neck, and pulled him back hard. A fist slammed into his face as he fell, hitting him just below his nose and driving him even more painfully to the ground. An instant later, the man who had knocked on the door was on top of him, knee on his chest, holding him down.
His attacker’s entire head was covered in a twisted mass of silver, heat-insulating Mylar, duct tape showing at odd corners and sealing a pair of goggles over his eyes. There was a tiny slit where his mouth should have been. His hands-the ones pinning Donnelley’s arms to the floor-were covered in two pairs of gloves, one inside the other.
“Shut up,” the man said. His voice was rough with cold and desperation.
He freed one hand long enough to reach inside the massive black peacoat he was wearing. Donnelley barely had time to think, that shouldn’t have worked; he shouldn’t have gotten ten feet in that get-up, before the glove came out again, holding a huge, slab-sided Glock 17 hand gun.
He pointed the pistol at Robert Donnelley and shot him in the forehead-one 9-millimeter bullet, dead center. After a long moment, a bubble of blood welled up in the hole and dribbled thickly down one temple.
The taped head came up and pointed its black lens at Brad Parkinson. The gun came up with it and pointed steadily at a single, small spot on the researcher’s chest. “You don’t have to die,” the visitor grated, his voice muffled by the wrapping. “Listen carefully.”
Parkinson stared at him. He could barely comprehend what had just happened.
“I’ll take this man’s suit and ID. You will stand in the corner and watch me. When the chopper gets here, we will fly out together. If you tell them I am not who they think I am, I will kill everyone.”
“You’ll just kill yourself if you do. We’ll all die.”
The man didn’t answer. He just stared at him. After a long moment, Brad nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
He backed into a corner and stretched his hands high over his head. Then he watched in mute horror as the man stripped his friend’s body, peeled off his own makeshift thermal suit, and switched clothes. The corpse of Robert Donnelley fit into one of the empty storage containers-one of the many that were going to be left behind.
Brad didn’t see the man’s face. It didn’t matter. He was too much in a state of disarray to even care.
When the man was fully clothed and Donnelley’s body was safely hidden away, he said, “You can put your hands down.” Parkinson lowered them with a silent sigh of relief and sat on a data cube, as far from the other man as he could. They did not speak again until the chopper arrived.
After carefully scanning the small outpost, the man quickly recognized what he had come for and opened a small box that contained a tiny book and a digital microchip. He quickly grabbed the contents and shoved them it into the pocket of his jacket. He knew that it would change everything. He needed to do this for his friend, even if it meant his life. The helicopter barely made it through the storm. It wallowed like an airborne rowboat piloted by a drunk, shoved and battered by the freezing wind. But it managed to touch down thirteen minutes after the stranger knocked on the outpost’s door-exactly on time.
The pilot didn’t check IDs-why bother? Donnelley and Parkinson were the only two humans in a five hundred-mile radius. With just two new passengers and so little to carry, the pilot was able to lift off at 12:56-two minutes early, despite the storm.
The trip to the evac station passed without incident. They did not speak to each other or the pilot. Shortly after they debarked, they went into separate rooms for processing and left on separate transports three hours later, returning to different parts of the United States. Brad did not see the other man leave; he heard much later that Robert Donnelley “disappeared” at some point along the daisy-chain of multiple connecting flights that were supposed to take him back to Roanoke, Virginia.
He didn’t care. All that mattered to Brad Parkinson was that he made it home to his wife and daughter.
And he never spoke of the incident to anyone. Ever.
PART ONE:
OXFORD, ENGLAND
Simon's Apartment
Simon Fitzpatrick gazed into his tumbler of thirty-year-old scotch and thought about where he was, what he was doing-and, most important, what he was not doing.
“Jake,” he said to his constant companion. “You’re a son of a bitch.”
Jake regarded him with weary resignation. Clearly, he had heard it all before.
“But I knew that the day we met, didn’t I?” He tapped the glass against the polished surface of the burl wood side table and shook his head. “You’ve never been anything but honest with me.” He sighed. “No, what I actually have learned, after thirty years on the planet and ten years in this place, is something more: you have an excuse for being a son of a bitch-you have to deal with me every day. The rest of the world acts that way for fun.” Jake sighed again, making a show of his boredom. Then he hopped off the large ottoman that he had claimed as his own and padded into the kitchen to see if anyone had remembered to fill his food bowl. After a short pause he returned, looking disappointed but unsurprised.
Simon smoothed the fur on his Great Dane’s broad brow. The fire in the hearth was lovely; the scotch gave him an inner glow that was undeniable and terribly welcome. But it did nothing to relieve the cold, clenching anger that had been burning in his belly for days.
He couldn’t forget the look on the face of the UNED officer who delivered the news about his father’s fate. He had come to the door of the flat on a sunny day, hat in hand. “He was at his laboratory in…a classified location,” the officer told him, sounding oddly hesitant. “There was an accident. Unavoidable. Unexpected. And I’m afraid he sustained terminal injuries.”
Terminal injuries, Simon thought. The phrase kept repeating in his mind. As if he understood it. As if it meant something. Terminal injuries.