Finally, on day five, I demanded to see the Nova. I didn’t need to demand, but I was too on edge to say it with a please or thank you.
Avian was out with security detail, along with West and Vee. So Graye had returned to take me to the building where they were constructing the transmitter.
“How is the perimeter holding up?” I asked. The vehicle we rode in was electric, which meant it felt too quiet inside.
“We’ve been getting a few Bane coming inside the borders,” he said, not looking away from the road in front of him. “Nothing extreme, but there’s getting to be more.”
“How long until they start coming in larger numbers?” I formed it as a question, but knew there was no way Graye could answer it.
“This is it,” he said instead, bringing the vehicle to a stop. I looked out and up. We’d driven five blocks and stopped at a towering building.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said. I climbed out and Graye drove away.
This was the highest building for a long ways around. The very center of the city had the tallest buildings, but this was the tallest within five miles. I opened the doors and walked across to the elevator. I glanced over at the door to the stairs and debated on which option to take. Deciding I had nervous energy to burn off, I opted for the stairs.
All thirty floors of them.
I was annoyed that I wasn’t even breathing hard or sweating when I reached the roof. Even more annoyed when I got there and it started drizzling. There was a massive cone-shaped object sitting to the side of a tent. There were a dozen other cone-shaped objects spaced evenly all across the roof. I crossed the space to the hulking tent that sat in the middle of everything.
Throwing the flap aside, I stepped in. No one noticed I was there for a while. Dr. Beeson, Addie, Royce, and half a dozen others worked in murmured voices. Dr. Evans stood off to one side, standing in a glass box.
There were three panels standing in a circle. They were shiny silver on the inside and flat black on the outside. Several boxes were stationed on the outside of the panels—controls and monitors.
Thin bands connected the three panels, except for one side, and I could only assume that was where I walked into it. Atop each of the three panels was a rod, and the three of them connected into a point. That had to be where the big dish attached.
On a table to one side of the tent, lay Dr. Evans notebook. But now it had been torn from its spiral binding. The pages were smudged with grease and pencil dust. They were well used.
Dr. Evans looked over at me then and I saw thin metallic veins fractionally growing in his left eye.
As soon as he saw me, the others turned their attention to me as well. They shifted to the side, giving a clearer view of the device.
“So this is it?” I asked, looking once again at the Nova. “This is the thing that’s going to save the world?”
“Technically you’re going to save the world,” Dr. Beeson said, looking at me intently. That was when I noticed the reverent looks on each of their faces. Like I really was their savior. “But yes, this is the amplifier and transmitter.”
“Will you show me how it works?” I asked. My voice came out quieter than I wanted.
“Of course,” Dr. Beeson said. The other scientists shuffled back from it and watched with nervous attention. Royce stood to one side, his arms crossed over his chest.
Dr. Beeson held his hand out, inviting me to step inside. I did.
“It’s quite simple, really,” he began. “You stand inside here. When we take the block off your kill code, these panels both absorb and amplify the signal. They’ll be sent up here,” he said, pointing to the rods that connected at the top. “And in a day or two we’ll connect the transmitter. Each of those other transmitters outside is connected to the Nova. They will all then send the signal up to the receiving satellite above us. From there it bounces off to every other satellite still floating above this planet. They reflect the code back to Earth ten times stronger than we sent it up. And then…”
“And then they’ll be dead,” I finished for him.
Dr. Beeson nodded.
My eyes flickered to Dr. Evans. He’d be dead too.
“And there is no chance that Vee and Creed will be affected by it?” I said.
Addie stepped forward, a clipboard in hand. “We’ve never said they wouldn’t be affected in any way. This has happened before, after all. It did cause major damage to Eve One the first time, but it did not kill her.”
“We’ve built a lead box,” Royce spoke up. “You probably didn’t notice it when you came up, but it’s here on the roof as well. Nothing can penetrate its walls. It’s effectively a dead zone. They’ll be perfectly safe inside.”
“And the outside of these panels,” Addie said as she indicated the black coating on the outside of them. “They will stop the signal from coming back at you.”
“It didn’t affect me at all the first time,” I pointed out. “Is it even necessary?”
“It’s just a precaution,” Royce said. There was complexity behind his eyes that told me he was the one who had insisted on this.
“Okay,” I said, nodding as I scanned everything once more. “It looks like you have everything under control, right?”
Dr. Beeson, Addie, and Royce nodded.
But I looked at Dr. Evans.
There was no way he could guarantee that the satellites in orbit would still work. And if they didn’t work, all of this was pointless. It would be the end.
“Everything has come together exactly as I planned it all those years ago,” he responded. Everyone but me probably missed the way the veins in his eye grew fractionally, even as he spoke. “There are just a few more minor details to attend to and check. We are on schedule to set it off in four days.”
“Four days,” I breathed. That should have felt like no time at all. We’d survived over two-thousand of them since the Evolution happened. But that was four entire days we had to hold our breath. We just had to hope a Bane sweep didn’t fall upon us before those four days were over with.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I think we’ve missed one important detail.”
Royce jerked awake, his arms twitching where they had lain over his eyes. He rolled over onto his stomach and glared at me with groggy eyes.
I’d actually never been in Royce’s room before. It was on the sixth floor, just down from his office. He had a real bed, a big one. Heavy drapes were drawn over the windows. The only light in the room spilled in from the hallway behind me.
“I should have you detained for waking me at this hour,” he growled, his eyes fluttering back closed.
“It is nine in the morning, sir,” I said simply.
Royce gave a heavy sigh, the sigh of knowing the weight that was upon his shoulders, the work that was required of him, and the consequences of what would happen if he couldn’t meet the high expectations.
He rolled into a sitting position and sat on the edge of his bed. I looked away when I realized he was only in his underwear.
“And what is this detail we’ve overlooked?” he said as he started pulling on a pair of jeans. I could finally look at him again.
I had never seen Royce with his shirt off, and I was impressed with how fit he was. Royce was closing in on fifty, but he was just as muscled as Avian, perhaps even a bit more. He had a heavy scar on the lower left side of his abdomen and I wondered where he’d gotten it.
“We are going to want to know quickly if the transmitter works,” I said, meeting his steel gray eyes. I wondered if my father’s eyes had been the same color. My own eyes were blue-gray. “I think we ought to have two test subjects close at hand when this device goes off; otherwise we’re going to have to drive who knows how long to look for fresh bodies, or Bane who still try and attack us.”