“Neither of us did. Nero saw to that.”
“Nero’s dead,” Neeley said. “Is his hand reaching out from the grave?”
“It always has been.”
“I didn’t think one got to retire from the Cellar,” Neeley said.
“Retire from field work at least,” Hannah said.
“Do you remember when we were in France?” Neeley asked.
Hannah arched an eyebrow at the abrupt shift in topic. “Of course.”
“You told me about your parents.”
The eyebrow dropped and Hannah couldn’t help but shift her eyes ever so briefly toward the mirror. “I did.”
“Do you still believe betrayal is the only love?”
“So you do remember,” Hannah said. “But don’t misquote me. I said sometimes betrayal is the only love left, not the only love.”
“I don’t understand it,” Neeley said. “I thought I did back then. But it makes no sense now.”
Hannah sighed. “I should have been more clear. Sometimes betrayal is the only thing some people are capable of. Your young lover who gave you that bomb. My husband keeping his secrets. My mother. By keeping us ignorant of the terrible things they were doing, perhaps they were showing us all they knew of love.”
“Bullshit,” Neeley said. “They were self-centered assholes using us for their own goals.”
“Is that what I am?”
“If you betray me, it is.”
A long silence played out in the room, the two women staring at each other.
Hannah broke the silence. “I will not betray you, Neeley.”
Neeley nodded. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted it on the table.”
Hannah got up and walked around the table. Neeley stood also. Awkwardly, Hannah put her arms around her taller operative.
“I love you,” she whispered in a voice that couldn’t be picked up by the microphones hidden all about the room.
Neeley’s mouth opened, as if to say something, but no words came. The two stood like that for a moment, Neeley’s arm limp at her side.
Hannah let go and went back to her seat. She sat down and composed herself.
Neeley sat down and picked up her coffee. “Something strange happened in Tennessee.”
“Go ahead.”
“Burns’s eyes changed color,” Neeley said.
“I thought you came up behind him,” Hannah said. “How did you see his eyes?”
“I violated Protocol,” Neeley said.
“That’s why we’re having this discussion,” Hannah said.
Neeley waved off the misdirection. “They turned golden. And…” She paused.
“Go ahead.”
“His face changed.”
Hannah waited.
“I knew about the scars from the mission briefing,” Neeley said. “But his face smoothed out and then it became Gant’s.”
Hannah tapped a finger on the table for a moment, a sign of extreme agitation. “How could that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“We don’t know what Burns is,” Hannah said. “So let’s assume he’s capable of changing his appearance.”
“I don’t think it’s just appearance,” Neeley said.
“What do you mean?”
“I think there’s Burns and there is something controlling Burns. And they’re not the same.”
Hannah considered that. “All right. How would he know about Gant?”
“From me. I felt a slight shock when I put the suppressor up against the back his head.”
“Another violation of Protocol,” Hannah noted, but almost as an afterthought. Both women were off their game, something unprecedented.
The door to the room swung open and Dr. Golden walked in. She nodded at Neeley but went to Hannah’s side of the table and slid a piece of paper in front of her. Hannah read it and a frown creased her face.
“Burns opened a Rift,” Hannah said. “The Nightstalkers shut it but have lost containment on an unknown number of Fireflies and Burns.”
“A cluster fuck,” Neeley summarized. She stood. “I’ll go and deal with Burns. Sounds like the Nightstalkers will have their hands full tracking down the Fireflies.”
Golden finally spoke. “I haven’t cleared you for duty.”
“You can come with me,” Neeley said. “Evaluate me en route and on the job.”
Hannah glanced between Golden and Neeley and then nodded at the latter. “Go. We’ll finish this later.”
Moms had the air force airdrop two F470 Zodiacs into the river. They were layered with Armorflate, an inflatable bulletproof system, and powered by a fifty-five-horsepower, two-stroke pump-jet propulsor.
The team was gathered on the dock, the Snake sitting in the circle at the end of the drive, and a fleet of FEMA personnel were evacuating the inhabitants of Scout’s neighborhood with dire warnings of a train derailment nearby. There were chemicals and bad stuff and enough mumbo jumbo that taillights were making an exodus out of the area.
In fact, Ms. Jones had already had a train “derailed” on the line so that overhead imagery would back up their cover story, and it also closed the rail line in the area to further traffic.
So far, Support was having a better mission than the Nightstalkers.
“All right,” Moms said, surveying her battered team. “The golden glow was going with the river, so let’s assume Burns and the Fireflies are also doing that. I know the clock is ticking, but we’ve already lost containment. We go racing off in the wrong direction, we’re just wasting time. So let’s focus here and hash this out before we move. Everyone feel free to put in their dime’s worth. What’s the target?”
“The Watts Bar nuke plant,” Doc said. “It’s the most obvious.”
“Next most obvious?” Nada asked.
“The dam is closer,” Scout said. “Seems like this Burns fellow would have opened the Rift closer to the nuclear plant if that was his target.”
“Score one for the girl,” Eagle said.
“I am a young woman,” Scout corrected him. “Not a girl.”
“Correction,” Eagle said. “The young woman.”
“Perhaps,” Doc said. “But this golden glow originated here. From Scout’s toothbrush. Originally from the Rift in North Carolina. The question is, how is that connected to Burns, the Rift here, and the Fireflies?”
“And Scout,” Kirk said in a low voice, but Nada heard him and so did Moms.
Nada spoke up. “Is Burns trying to complete what they attempted in North Carolina? Expand a Rift into a Portal?”
Doc held up his pack. “I’ve got the computer Burns used. How is he going to open a Rift, never mind a Portal, now?”
The sound of a chainsaw roared from where the Snake was parked, indicating Support removing the wooden pole from the cargo bay by the most expeditious manner. The pained look on Eagle’s face indicated what he thought of that.
“He might have the program in a thumb drive,” Doc said. “Ivar was working on a remote site from the computer that opened the Rift in Scout’s neighborhood in North Carolina. He shoves a thumb drive in any computer powerful enough, it can generate the algorithm.”
“This doesn’t feel the same,” Scout said in a low voice, which pretty much everyone ignored, especially since it was barely audible above the roar of the chainsaw.
Except Nada. And Moms. And Kirk.
“You know,” Ivar said, “there’s another potential target in this area. Perhaps an even more likely one, and the entire river thing is a diversion.”
“Speak,” Moms ordered.
“North of here,” Ivar said. “Oak Ridge. When the Manhattan Project was formed in 1939, they picked three main sites. Everyone thinks of Los Alamos, but actually Oak Ridge and Hanford, in Washington, were more important in a way because they produced the fissionable material used in making the bombs.”
“Maybe the river isn’t a diversion but a route,” Eagle said. “Oak Ridge is on the Clinch River, which flows into this river down by Kingston. And part of it borders Watts Bar Lake.”