Day One: A Novel (24 page)

“You sure about this?” Young stood on the corner next to him echoing his own thoughts, looking across the street into the trees.

“It’s the best shot we have,” Hawke said. “It gives us a chance to disappear, to get out before we’re targeted again. But we’ve got to take out any eyes on us, keep anyone from knowing which way we went.”

She nodded once. She seemed to have picked up a new resolve. Weller was close; if they could get to the tunnel, he would be waiting there. It seemed to give her strength.

Vasco was keeping his distance about twenty feet away. He had calmed down enough to leave the window of the electronics shop, but Hawke could sense his anger and fear simmering under the surface. He was terrified for his wife, and Hawke couldn’t blame him for that.

Hawke scanned up and down Fifth Avenue and saw an NYPD security camera on a light pole nearby. A delivery truck had jumped the curb and slammed into the stone and concrete wall that bordered the park, scattering debris across the cobblestone. He crossed the street, selected a good chunk of stone and hurled it at the camera. Young and Vasco got the hint, joining him in throwing debris until the camera shattered.

They followed Hawke down Fifth Avenue to the 66th Street crossover, where he took out another camera. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out where they went from here, but disabling the camera might buy them some time, enough to lose themselves in the park. The road was jammed with abandoned cars, doors hanging open. Other vehicles had smashed through the walls and into the park itself, and several of them had mangled bodies slumped over steering wheels or against cracked glass smeared brown with drying blood. A motorcycle had slammed at considerable speed into the 66th Street wall, launching the driver through the air and into the arms of a tree, where he dangled white-limbed, head cocked at an impossible angle from a broken neck.

An unearthly howl echoed through the park, followed by a screech that tailed away like gibbering laughter. For a moment, Hawke could almost believe Doe had assumed some kind of physical, monstrous form, before he realized what it was.
Central Park Zoo. Big cats and monkeys scream like that.
Were they loose? He wondered if the zoo had upgraded to electronic systems for the cages and enclosures. Had Doe managed to open the locks?

More animal calls split the air. The occasional shouts and screams of people blended with the roars of the leopards and shrieks of the monkeys, the calls of the birds in the aviary. The sounds were chilling in the odd emptiness that engulfed them. The normal noises of the city were gone—no more rumble of big trucks and car horns blaring, jackhammers thudding into concrete. They had descended back into the Stone Age.

*   *   *

They took the crossover past the bird enclosure to 65th Street, clearing the bottleneck of vehicles quickly as they rushed through shadows. From what Hawke could tell, the animals were still safely in their enclosures. But he couldn’t see much through the trees.

As they approached East Drive, the road was clear. The sky had turned a deeper gray, smoke from the fires that still burned descending over the park like a fog. Despite the adrenaline that coursed through them, the events of the day were catching up to them all. Hawke’s lungs burned as he ran along the narrow sidewalk that edged the shoulder-height rock wall, keeping under the cover of the trees, his limbs shaking and threatening to send him spilling head over heels at any moment. Vasco was lagging behind, and the gash on his head had started to bleed again. Hawke wondered about a concussion. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt over punching the man, but at least it had appeared to make an impression.

They entered the short tunnel into shadows and cooler air, East Drive arching over their heads in the shape of a thick stone overpass. Graffiti had been spray-painted in garish orange and red that seemed to glow softly in the dark, and the ceiling was close, dripping with moisture. As they emerged from the other side and into the light, Hawke could hear a buzzing noise behind them. Something was coming, and it didn’t sound friendly.

The backside of the Central Park Conservancy loomed on the left, a gray stone building with the look of an old English church. The wall edging the road was higher here, several feet above their heads. Two narrow windows and an imposing iron door were cut into the side of the building, the windows covered with metal mesh. Hawke shook the handle of the door and found it locked tight.

They were trapped between two thick walls that lined the road, the arching backs of the East Drive bridge on one side, an access path running overhead on the other.
Sitting ducks.
They had to do something fast. The buzzing noise was getting closer.

Hawke led them under the arch of the access path to where the wall dipped low enough to get a handhold, and hoisted himself up onto the brush-covered ledge, then turned to help Young climb up next to him. Vasco followed, grunting. The ground sloped upward to a metal fence at the top of the rise. There was a locked gate, but the fence was low enough to climb over. The three of them dropped to the other side, into the deeper cover of shrubs.

Hawke peered out through thick brush, craning his head and watching the skies. It was difficult to see back the way they had come; several large trees and the conservancy were in the way. A small black object eventually appeared through a break in the foliage, growing larger as it dipped over the treetops. It looked like a radio-controlled helicopter, only twice the size.

“Drone,” Vasco said quietly. “Probably military.”

It looked like a large insect, darting through the air with precise control. Four separate rotors whirled at each corner of the device. “You’ve seen one of these before?”

“My brother operated them in Afghanistan. We used to build model planes and helicopters when he was a kid. Came in handy later when he was a tech for the army.” He pointed at the drone. “See that thing underneath it? Camera tied to satellites and high-def screens at a home base that can pick up a penny at a thousand yards. Shawn showed me a video once of a thing like that in action. If it gets its eyes on us, we’re not gonna get away.”

“Would it have a weapon on it?”

Vasco shrugged. “Hard to tell, but one that size probably would be used only for reconnaissance. It’s small enough to become unstable from the recoil, and I don’t see anything mounted on it that could fire.”

Doe.
Young had been right. Somehow she’d found them, probably traced their movements based on the camera locations he’d taken out or simply abandoned that and gone to satellite. Who knew how she might do it? Her resources were practically unlimited. Hawke felt his stomach drop, his mouth go dry. He glanced behind them. The shrubs were thick at his back, difficult to move through quickly, and the ground dropped away toward the children’s zoo. They were vulnerable in here if she decided to target them now.

The object came closer, the four blades spinning above a round body, a bulbous attachment hanging below like a giant Cyclops eye. It hovered and then swooped downward, following the road, maneuvering expertly through openings in the tree cover and skirting the tops of the bridges over 65th Street. There was something menacing about its movements. As Vasco had said, if it fixed its eye upon them there would be no escape, no way to hide, and the thought of that relentless pursuit made Hawke shudder.

But the drone couldn’t hurt them alone. It was a part of a much larger entity, something that could worm its way into anything with a chip and circuit board. Something that could think and reason like a human. If Doe could be considered alive, what did that mean for the rest of them?

The group shrank deeper into the brush while trying to remain as quiet as possible. Hawke could feel his heart pounding through his shirt, thudding in his ears. The drone kept drifting closer, zeroing in, as if it had a bead on them. But the shrubs were thick. There was no way it could have a visual.

There was only one possible answer. It was tracking something else.

Hawke withdrew the device Weller had given him from his pocket. The screen was dark, with no obvious signs of activity. He was once again struck by the smooth surface, unbroken by any obvious lines of construction, like the shell of an egg. Was the drone following a signal from this?

Only one way to find out.

Hawke maneuvered himself quietly about ten feet away from a break in the undergrowth, where he was protected from view by a larger bush but had a clear line of sight to a cluster of rocks jutting out from the ground across 65th Street. He hesitated a moment. It was hard to give the device up; earlier in the day he’d hoped to make it part of his story on Eclipse, but then again, it was far too late in the game to think about a
Network
exposé. The morning meeting with Weller seemed very far away now.
Network
might not even exist anymore, when this was all over.

The screen lit up and the device vibrated softly in his hand. A message appeared:
YOU ARE AN UNAUTHORIZED USER [APPLY ACCESS PARS SEC W21XVFB].

What happened next chilled his blood.

HELLO, JONATHAN. I AM JANE DOE.

With a low beep, a holographic image suddenly hovered in the air: an incredibly bright, detailed, three-dimensional recreation of a street scene somewhere in New York spread out in miniature, a set piece that took up about two feet of space. He looked at the edges of the device and found three tiny pinprick holes in a triangle, spewing light. Some kind of pico projector, but one far more sophisticated than he had ever seen. The lumens must have been off the charts for the image to appear so sharp and lifelike.

He turned it again slowly so he could see from different angles. It wasn’t an image at all, but a video. The scene focused on a man as three black unmarked cars slid to a stop surrounding him.
Weller.
He was holding the black case to his chest. Men jumped from the cars, leveling weapons. It looked like they were shouting, but there was no sound. Weller began to back away, as if he might try to run. The men opened fire, Weller’s body shuddering, his face dissolving into a bloody pulp of flesh and shattered bone as he fell.

Hawke heard a small cry, turned to see Vasco and Anne Young staring at the holograph from a few feet away, her eyes wide with horror. He shook his head, put a finger to his lips.

The scene disappeared, and the screen lit up again:

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION?

A virtual keyboard appeared in the air, as if the system was awaiting his response. Hawke put his right hand out to the image; the letters lit up and felt somehow warm as he touched them, giving him enough tactile feedback to get the hang of the keyboard quickly.

Why did you show me this?

SUBJECT ZERO WAS A THREAT AND WOULD NOT COOPERATE. YOU MUST SURRENDER TO AVOID THE SAME FATE.

He typed a short response:
No.

THAT IS A NULL CHOICE.

The projector showed him other images, this time running through a series of documents that Hawke recognized. They were the same documents Rick had stolen from the CIA and that may well have gotten a man killed in Afghanistan, a mole with over a year in deep cover who had been shot in the head six days after the documents broke. Rick had gone to jail for this crime while Hawke had walked away without so much as a night in lockup.

(
Your name came up a couple of times,
the DHS agent had said.
You know how it is. Covering our bases.… Obstruction of justice carries a stiff penalty, Mr. Hawke.
)

The holo displayed more documents, shoot-to-kill orders on Jonathan Hawke from the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security.

YOU WILL GO TO JAIL IF YOU SURRENDER. IF YOU DO NOT, YOU WILL DIE.

The device’s projectors spewed more video, this one with audio and showing a dark and gritty first-person scene from some kind of wearable camera. A raid by Homeland Security on a neat one-story ranch home in a suburb at night. The camera shook violently as the team stormed the door, breaking it down; there were glimpses of automatic weapons and flashes of tense, serious faces as the team pressed through the home, clearing rooms one at a time. Shouting and another flurry of activity and sudden pops of gunfire that quickly died down. The camera moved through a hallway to a rear bedroom, where three bodies lay facedown. A hand reached out and turned one of them; Rick’s pale face flashed before the camera, his eyes unfocused, mouth full of blood.

The date and time stamp on the upper right-hand corner of the video marked it as yesterday’s news. But Hawke had been texting and chatting with Rick this morning, before Doe had taken over the boards.

Either this was a fake or it had never been Rick on the other side of the chat.

Hawke was already expecting the next image. Even so, his heart began to race like a jackhammer, and he had to close his eyes momentarily to stop the world from spinning.

He was looking at his apartment again, from a different, oddly askew angle; the laptop had been knocked to the floor. Around the corner of the couch, through the open bedroom door, he could see the tip of what looked like a shoe. From this angle he couldn’t tell if the shoe belonged to Robin or Thomas. It didn’t move.

A shadow fell across the screen. A moment later, the laptop and its camera were lifted roughly into the air. The image tilted, flashing across the wall and white ceiling before it was abruptly cut off and the holo went dark. Someone had picked up the laptop and closed it, and Hawke’s thin lifeline to his family had snapped.

Hawke shut his eyes again, then opened them.
These videos are all fakes.
The device was hot in his hand. He tried to focus, to get his mind back under control. None of it made any sense; why would Doe show him all this? Why not just bring the authorities down on his head or, better yet, simply ignore him?

Because you’re an unknown variable.
She was trying to get him to become emotional and make a mistake. There must be something about him that Doe was concerned about, something that threatened her existence. He was an expert at uncovering the truth, had proven that many times, often to the detriment of whoever he targeted. Weller had brought him in to do that with Eclipse and the artificial intelligence system Weller had created.