“So where are they now?”
“The hive’s moved again. I thought I’d lost them after the oil tanker. We returned to the Bimini Road and discovered no trace of their unique bioluminescence. For a few days I thought they’d naturally died out. It was always a high possibility. By the time a week had gone by and we hadn’t heard of any more accidents I hoped they were dead — but now you are telling me they came after your ship.”
“Yes. My ship! Why the hell would they have come after my ship? It was smaller than most other vessels in the ocean, what made it come after us?”
“There’s a chance… a very small one… I’m sorry, you’re not going to like it very much.”
She paced in her office. “What?”
“There’s a chance that they came after you specifically.”
“Me, how the hell did they know I was aboard? And more importantly, why the fuck would they have come after me?”
“When I originally programed them I included wireless connectivity to their programing, so that they could work as a collective, and so that we could direct them toward a specific ship via wireless transmissions.”
“So? I thought you said that the system hasn’t been working since we used them to kill Luke?”
“It hasn’t. Actually, that’s not technically correct. It appears they’ve been receiving our messages, but instead of acting upon them, they’ve been ignoring them.”
“Ignoring them? I thought you said these were exceeding simple machines.”
“Yeah, well my simple machines appear to have matched up with the collective minds of the other simple plankton in ways that we never could have predicted.”
“Okay, so what does it matter if they are still wireless?”
“It means that they are getting our emails. They’re on the same secret channel that you and I use.”
“Are you telling me they know that I sent you the order to destroy them after the oil tanker fiasco, so that Sam Reilly could save the day?”
“Yes, and it also knew that you were aboard the Coast Guard Vessel — Florida II.”
“Your creatures tried to assassinate me!” She looked furious. “I don’t care how you do it, but I want them shut down, before this becomes one natural disaster for which I can’t deliver a solution to the American people. Christ, do you realize what would happen if all the shipping lanes were closed to American ports?”
I’m about to take Office at the brink of the worst disaster in history.
“I’m sorry Vanessa. I’m so sorry. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”
She heard his sobs in the background and hung up.
Timothy Locke was no longer useful to her.
Chapter One Hundred
Sam picked Luke up in front of the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He’d hired an inconspicuous car. A Toyota Prius. There were a hundreds of them in the Capitol. Everyone trying to look like they’re doing the right thing, while no one actually gave a shit what it cost the environment. Compared with the other cars he like to drive, they were boring. But imitation of the masses is the best form of camouflage.
He opened the door and Luke got in. Sam put his foot down and the car silently drove off. “Tell me you’ve got some hard evidence about your buyer.”
Luke grinned. “I’ve got it. Irrefutable evidence.”
“Good, because yesterday I found out that you were being funded by the Department of Defense.”
Luke went silent. Swallowed hard. “We were never specifically working on fuel sources. We were working on a contract to build a weapon for the U.S. Department of Defense that would keep us ahead of the game for the next century of wars.”
“You were building a rogue wave?”
“Yes, but we thought we were a long way off — apparently not as far as we thought.” He obviously didn’t miss the irony.
“What about Elixir Eight? I thought this was all because you pissed off the oil industry?”
“Elixir Eight was a secondary discovery. One that would prove much more valuable than anything we could produce for the military. I told the truth when I said the nanobots created them and lined the surface of their nest with them. I never could work out why. Then when I tested one and discovered it was a complex thorium-based battery cell capable of providing trillions of AMP hours, I knew we’d hit the jackpot. In terms of research, we’d just won Powerball. Twice.”
“So who made the offer?”
“I thought you knew?”
“Humor me”
“Senator Vanessa Croft.”
Sam sighed. “You mean the President Elect!”
Chapter One Hundred and One
Sam pulled over on the side of Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House stood proud in the distance. He put the hazard lights on and placed the car in park. “Show me exactly what you’ve got.”
Luke reached into his carry bag. A leather shoulder bag seen around college campuses. Inside he pulled a series of documents. “It’s got everything inside.”
Sam quickly riffled through the photographs, financial records, and names of people involved. Some powerful people were involved in the Offer. All funding traced back to one person’s election campaign — Vanessa Croft.
“This was never about saving the planet. Vanessa Croft wanted the ticket. She used this entire thing to fund her campaign. She’s in bed with the Oil Industry. No wonder she beat the Republicans in a landslide win. THEY had bought both sides of the game.”
Luke had tears in his eyes. “No, I believe she wanted to help the world. In fact this entire thing was molded out of revenge. When she realized she couldn’t simply change it by providing evidence of a better way of doing things Vanessa discovered the only way to truly have an effect on the world, would be through politics. And if she really wanted to make a substantial difference, she would need to get to the top.”
“So she sold her soul to the devil in the hope that she could make amends once she reached the top.”
“Yes. Only now she has a long list of companies she ‘owes favors to.’”
Sam flicked through the rest of the papers. “How did you get all this?”
“Timothy and I were best friends. This was our brainchild. We had worked on it for years before we brought Benjamin White in on it. And then he betrayed me for the oldest motivator in history — money. He recently found out that his creation was at war with us — all of us, America and the rest of the globe. He was already intoxicated by the time I reached him.”
“Go on,” Sam said.
“When I showed up, he was so surprised to see me alive he nearly shat himself. We talked. He spoke about a number of things he’d promised himself that he’d tell me if I was still alive. In the end, he handed me all the documents. You see, he’d kept them in a safety deposit box, just in case the group had come for him.”
Luke sighed. “And then, right there in front of me, he hanged himself.”
Sam said, “What would you like me to do about all this?”
Luke unbuckled his seatbelt and then opened the car door. “I want you to fix it. So that I don’t have to hang myself.”
With that, Luke got out of the car and walked away into the night.
Chapter One Hundred and Two
Sam met the Secretary of Defense twenty minutes later in Washington. She looked more concerned about the interruption than about the discovery that President Elect Croft was responsible for everything.
“Show me what you have on her,” she demanded.
Sam Reilly gave her an envelope with all the information she needed. He’d read it all. It connected all the dots. There was no denying her involvement. Or the other names in the list. She read each of them out loud. “There are some powerful men in this list. A Saudi Prince, a CEO of one of the largest oil companies. There was quite a concerted effort to maintain the status quo of global reliance on fossil fuels. A loathsome thing to do.” She virtually spat the words out. “And President Elect Croft is at the foul center of the lot of it.”