Helios (Cerberus Group Book 2) Read online

  Something was alive down there, moving in the depths of the Earth, like an embryonic dragon squirming through the cracks in its eggshell, struggling to be born.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Geneva, Switzerland

  Felice Carter felt like throwing up. How had she not seen this coming?

  Smoke and mirrors.

  Deception.

  Fallon had invited her into his inner circle and then distracted her with the imaginary external threat of the hacker.

  Even now, confronted with the reality, she couldn’t quite reconcile it with what she had experienced. Why had Fallon gone to such extremes to deceive her, particularly at the beginning, when he had complete control over the Black Knight satellite and the Roswell meta-material fragment? It made no sense.

  She placed her hands flat against the concrete walls and took a deep breath. She didn’t need to see them, and the wall itself posed no obstacle. All she needed to know was that there were two men inside the structure, and one or both of them were going to unleash an apocalypse if she didn’t act.

  A hand touched her arm, distracting her. She looked up and saw Lazarus. His face was impassive, but she could see the question in his eyes.

  Are you sure you want to do that?

  “I have to stop them,” she said.

  “Wait.”

  That was all he said.

  She knew the reason for his apprehension. It had not been concern for the men inside the transmitter building that prompted him to intervene, but rather concern for her. If she did this, if she touched their minds and permanently stripped away their free will, it would be the same as killing them. Two more souls added to her tally.

  The first few times her… ability…had become manifest, it had been something out of her control, an autonomic response to a threatening situation. Yet, knowing that did not assuage her feelings of guilt. Those incidents had prompted her subsequent quest to develop a mental discipline regime to keep the power in check, and had motivated her to spend years of her life helping fight disease in developing nations.

  If she unleashed the ability now, it would be deliberate, intentional.

  But no less necessary.

  Behind Lazarus, one of the large construction robots trundled down the drive. She couldn’t tell if there were more behind it, but this time, she didn’t have a souped-up spy car in which to escape. Not that she had any intention of running.

  Dourado’s fingers flew over her laptop’s keyboard. She muttered as she worked, letting Carter and Lazarus know that she wasn’t ignorant of the threat. “I see it. It’s not recognizing the admin account I set up, but I created a backdoor that he doesn’t know about. If I can… I’m in.”

  Lazarus half-turned to look at her. “Can you shut the transmitter down?”

  “I don’t know that part of the system.”

  “The robots then?”

  “Working on it.”

  Lazarus turned back to Carter. “Let’s try it this way first.”

  She nodded. “Hurry.”

  Lazarus pulled away from her and ran back to the front of the building, where the two electric carts blocked access to the door. She followed, but only as far as the corner, observing from a discreet distance.

  He walked up to the cart blocking the door, dropped to a squat and hooked his hands underneath it. With a howl of primal fury, he stood up, lifting one side of the thousand pound vehicle. There was a tearing sound—Carter hoped it was his clothes bursting at the seams, as his muscles bulged with the effort, but she knew it was probably his tendons snapping. The cart tilted up and then passed the point of no return, tipping over onto its side, clearing the way to the door. Lazarus stood there for a second, breathing heavily, face contorted in pain, then he reached for the doorknob.

  Carter spied movement behind him, but before she could shout a warning, the second cart surged forward, slamming into Lazarus and pinning his legs against the door with a sickening crunch.

  “Erik!”

  She rushed toward him, but he held up a hand, forestalling her. Through teeth clenched against the pain, he whispered, “Cintia.”

  Without retreating, Carter turned back to the computer expert. “Cintia! You’ve got to shut them down.”

  “I’m trying!”

  The construction machine was just fifty yards away, close enough that the noise of its metal treads on the pavement was almost deafening. Despite Lazarus’s earlier warning, Carter moved forward, joining him at the door. She braced her back against the wall, pushing against the cart, trying to force it away from the door. As before, it refused to budge. Despite his injuries and the awkward position in which he had been pinned, Lazarus pushed as well.

  The cart shifted a few inches, but then the wheels began spinning, pushing back. Lazarus howled again, as the vehicle slammed him into the door a second time.

  The construction robot was now just twenty yards away, its spider-like manipulator arms unfolding above its tracked chassis. The large circular saw-blade tipping one arm was already spinning.

  Ten yards.

  “Get out of here!” Lazarus shouted.

  Carter had no intention of leaving. Instead, she turned to face the wall, placed her hands against it, closed her eyes and prepared to unleash her power against the two men inside.

  The noise abruptly ceased.

  Carter opened her eyes and turned to look at the now motionless construction robot, which had come to a complete halt, almost touching the rear of the cart, its manipulator arms stretched out above her. The saw blade was still spinning, but hissing as friction brought it to a stop. The only other sound was the hum of the transmitter on the other side of the door.

  Then she heard a shout from around the corner. “Yes!”

  “Cintia? That was you? Can you back these things away?”

  Dourado stepped into view, her attention still glued to the computer in her hands. “I had to do a blanket shutdown. He’s fighting me hard.”

  Carter tried pushing the cart again. It rolled without resistance, but only for a few inches before bumping up against the motionless treads of the construction-bot. It was enough of a gap for Lazarus, his face twisted with pain, to extricate himself. But it was not enough to get into the transmitter building.

  “Keep trying,” Carter said. “I’ll see if I can distract him.”

  She was relieved that circumstances had provided her an alternative to unleashing her power, but whether this was a true reprieve or a postponement remained to be seen. She pulled the door open a crack and shouted inside. “Fallon! Stop this! Now!”

  The reply was a shout loud enough to be heard over the hum. “I’m afraid Mr. Fallon is indisposed.”

  “Tanaka?” Evidently, Marcus Fallon was guilty of recklessness and bad judgment, but not responsible for activating the Black Knight. “What did you do to him?”

  “He’ll live. At least a little while longer.”

  “Why are you doing this? You know what could happen?”

  When Tanaka didn’t answer, she glanced over at Dourado, who made a rolling gesture with her finger. Keep him busy.

  “Let me guess,” Carter went on. “You saw the potential to turn this into a weapon, but Fallon didn’t want that.”

  “Ha!”

  “Have I got that backward? Is Fallon the one who wants to weaponize it?”

  “He’s naïve,” Tanaka said. “He thinks he can save the world. He’s a fool.”

  “And you? What do you want? To destroy it?”

  Silence.

  “Seriously?” Carter asked. “You want to destroy the world?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  She glanced over at Dourado. A nod. Almost there. “Try me.”

  “The world can’t be saved, Dr. Carter. Not by you. Not by Fallon. All you will do is prolong the suffering. Life is a mistake. A brutal, terrible joke that’s already gone on far too long.”

  Carter recognized the rhetoric. Tanaka was a pessimist. Not merely
a gloomy, glass-half-empty Eeyore, but he was a believer in the nihilistic philosophy that life—all life—was meaningless.

  No wonder his Cerberus recruitment score was so abysmal, she thought. “Seven billion people deserve a chance to figure that out for themselves. You don’t get to make that decision for everyone else.”

  “Seven billion,” he echoed. “A hundred years from now, they will all be dead, and ten billion more will have taken their place, living short, ugly, miserable lives. Billions more after that. Suffering. Dying. I am not destroying the world. I’m putting it out of its misery. I’m sparing untold billions the horror and pain of existence.

  “I thought perhaps I could use HAARP to do it, but the transmitter wasn’t powerful enough. Then, when Marcus approached me about the potential of the Black Knight satellite, I knew I had been given a second chance. I’ll confess, the gravitational anomaly was an unexpected bonus, but ultimately unimportant. The world will not be shaken apart. It will die entombed in ice.”

  “You’re going to stop the sun, is that it? I’m pretty sure it’s going to take more than a couple of minutes of that to have the kind of effect you’re looking for.”

  The hum stopped.

  Carter looked over to Dourado, but the latter shook her head. Not me.

  Tanaka had shut the transmitter off. Was he surrendering?

  She returned her attention to the door. “So why do it? Why go through all this?”

  There was a long silence. Maybe he wasn’t giving up after all. Lazarus got to his feet, his broken legs already healed. He leaned against the side of the car, gathering his strength to shove the remaining cart out of the way and end the threat. Then, Tanaka spoke again.

  “Call it proof of concept.”

  Even before he finished speaking, Dourado let out a dismayed shout. “No! Damn it!”

  Distracted by the outburst, Carter didn’t see the construction-bot’s manipulator arm swinging toward her, but Lazarus did. He threw his arms around her and tackled her out of the way.

  The mechanical arm struck the cart, smashing through the fiberglass housing and knocking the machine sideways. Carter caught only a glimpse of it as Lazarus scooped her up with one arm and scrambled around the corner, dragging Dourado along as well.

  There was a harsh ringing sound, as the robot’s circular saw began spinning again, but it was drowned out a moment later by the clank and rumble of metal treads moving against the pavement. Carter had just got her feet under her when the machine rolled into view, lowering the saw to slice them all apart.

  Lazarus thrust Carter and Dourado away, well outside the reach of the mechanical arm, then spun around, ducked under the sweep of the blade, and leaped onto the base of the robot.

  Carter recalled what Fallon had said, about how the construction robot wasn’t programmed for combat. The same appeared true for self-defense. It lumbered forward, trying to seize hold of her and Dourado, oblivious to the stowaway.

  Dourado stumbled, going down on one knee. The computer flew from her hands and skittered across the ground. Dourado let out another wail of dismay and crawled after it. Faster than Carter could draw breath to shout a warning, the robot arm with the saw blade moved into position above Dourado and then sliced straight down.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  With an indifference only possible for a computerized automaton, the construction robot brought its spinning saw down on Dourado, but in the instant before contact was made, the blade shifted sideways. With an eruption of dirt, the blade buried itself in the ground, just a few inches to her right.

  Before she could move, almost before she realized she was still alive and intact, the manipulator arm reversed, the saw tearing free of the earth. She rolled left, scrambling on all fours to put some more distance between herself and the robot, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  The manipulator arm shuddered, and began moving away from her. The saw plunged down again, burying itself deeper into the ground than the first strike. Then, with an ear-splitting shriek, a six-foot long section of the manipulator assembly broke loose from the hydraulic joint. Lazarus, his arms still wrapped around the other end of the disarticulated appendage, leapt from the base of the machine.

  The damage seemed to have no real effect on the robot. Its other arms came forward, clamps and manipulator claws opening wide to grasp him, treads moving as it lurched ahead.

  Instead of retreating, the big man wrenched the saw blade out of the ground, spun around like an Olympic hammer thrower building up momentum, and then brought the blade down hard on the treads.

  The air rang with the impact. The severed appendage twisted out of Lazarus’s grasp and he half-staggered backward, scrambling to avoid being run down. The blow, however, had done what he intended.

  The robot’s left track came apart, one end flinging about like a decapitated snake, and then the left side stopped moving. The massive machine spun around, its one remaining track causing it to pirouette, and it slammed into the transmitter building, smashing an enormous hole in the concrete wall.

  Dourado, still in full-flight-mode, retreated several more steps before realizing that the battle—man versus machine—was over. What she had failed to do with technology, Lazarus had accomplished with brute force.

  She stopped running and leaned over, resting her hands on her knees until her breath returned and the urge to throw up passed. Carter hastened over and embraced her, but the moment of triumph lasted exactly that long.

  “Heads up!” Lazarus shouted. “We’ve got incoming!”

  Three more of the construction-bots rolled into view and turned toward them. Lazarus bent to retrieve the makeshift axe that he had used to take down the first machine, but Dourado knew the odds of defeating all three were not good.

  She looked around for her computer and found it.

  Both pieces of it.

  Lazarus had spared her from the first swipe of the saw blade, but in so doing, he had diverted the blade down onto the laptop, slicing it in two.

  “So much for that idea.”

  Lazarus hefted the broken saw-arm and stood his ground. “Get to cover,” he shouted. “I’ll deal with them.”

  Carter grabbed Dourado’s arm and pulled her toward the wrecked robot. With her free hand, she pointed to the hole in the building. “In there!”

  Of course! Dourado thought. We’ll force Tanaka to shut the robots down.

  In the subsequent chaos, she had almost forgotten that the man responsible for it all was hiding on the other side of that wall. Her mind still boggled at the insane reasons he had given for putting the entire planet in danger, but his motivation didn’t matter. All that mattered was stopping him.

  Carter climbed up onto the base of the disabled robot and disappeared through the hole. Dourado followed, picking her way through the rubble and dropping down into the dark hole beyond. There were no overhead lights shining, but there was some light from the glow of a computer screen on the other side of the room, right next to the open door. She didn’t see Tanaka, but a prone figure—it had to be Fallon—was stretched out on the floor, partially buried under debris from the collapsed wall. Carter was kneeling beside him, but Dourado hastened to the computer.

  Outside, the low rumble of the tracked machines devolved into a tumult of metal crashing and hydraulic systems straining. An ear-splitting shriek filled the tiny room, and a shower of yellow sparks poured in like rain, as one of the robots began cutting through the wall.

  Carter grabbed Fallon’s shoulders and pulled him from the rubble, dragging him toward the door, but she stopped there. Dourado could see that another one of the robots had moved into position in front of the exit, blocking their escape.

  There was only one way they were going to survive this.

  She gritted her teeth against the horrible noise, and tried to keep her attention on the task at hand.

  The Space Tomorrow access menu appeared on the screen, and she saw the familiar prompt for username and password. She entered i
nformation for the admin account Fallon had shown her.

  User not recognized.

  User name:_________

  Password:_________

  She tried again with one of the backdoor accounts she had set up. The results were the same. She tried another, her last. No good.

  “Porra!” she snarled. “I’m locked out.”

  Carter bent over Fallon again and started shaking him. “Wake up, damn it!”

  Fallon came to, jolting as if startled.

  “Password?” Dourado shouted.

  Fallon nodded.

  “What’s the password?” Carter shouted into his face.

  “Password,” he said. “Cap P. ‘At’ symbol. Dollar sign. Dollar sign. Lower case ‘w’. Zero. Lower case ‘r’. Lower case ‘d’. Username is M-dot-Fallon.”

  Dourado stared at him, gobsmacked. “Seriously? Your password is ‘password’? Are you an idiot?”

  She typed it in.

  Username: M.Fallon

  Password: P@$$w0rd

  The main intranet menu opened. She navigated through the network, found the robotics subsystem menu, typed in the blanket shutdown code she had used before, and said a prayer.

  The tumult ceased.

  Lazarus’s face, twisted with concern, appeared in the hole a moment later, but when he saw that they were alive and unhurt, he relaxed. Dourado slumped against the wall, too exhausted to even remain on her feet.

  Carter however, wasn’t ready to celebrate the win. She shook Fallon again. “Where’s Tanaka?”

  “Ow!” Fallon complained, touching a hand to the back of his head, then looking at his fingertips as if checking for blood. “I’m not even sure where I am.” He glanced around. “Oh. Son of bitch. He sucker punched me.”

  “He did a lot more than that.”

  Fallon blinked as if he was having trouble bringing the big picture into focus.

  “Tanaka was the hacker,” Carter said, speaking as if addressing a child. “He betrayed you.”