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Pieter Dombrovsky and Meghan Zhang were assigned to cover one of the two rear exits of the station from a well-hidden position on a hillside overlooking the facility. They were equipped with sniper rifles and a large box of spare ammo. In addition, they were in possession of four remotes linked to charges set along the back wall.

Team members on the far side of the compound triggered the first explosions. Then the devices placed close to the front gate went off.

“That’s our cue,” Pieter said.

Meghan nodded nervously. “You first.”

Pieter pushed one of his remotes and was instantly rewarded with a
boom
.

Meghan took a deep breath and then pushed one of hers. The blast was even louder than Pieter’s.

“Together,” he said, holding up his other remote.

She held hers up, too, and on the silent count of three, they pushed their buttons.

Pieter’s blast sent a shard of the concrete wall hurdling in their direction. When he looked over at Meghan, he found her lying on the ground, blood gushing down her face.

“Meghan!”

His immediate thought was that someone had shot her, but a quick check revealed only a jagged cut above her ear from a piece of debris that grazed the side of her head. Using the first-aid training they’d all received, he pulled off his shirt and pressed it against her wound. A check of her breathing and pulse revealed that both were steady.

“Meghan, can you hear me?”

She was out cold.

Forgetting all about the second part of their mission—firing at anyone trying to get out via the rear of the facility—he used some gauze from their kit to secure his shirt to her head and then picked her up and carried her out.

Though he didn’t know it, that little piece of concrete saved their lives. When the blasts began, a two-man Project Eden patrol had been returning to the station and was working its way up the other side of the hill, hoping to get a good vantage point to see what was going on.

When the patrol reached the rocks Pieter and Meghan had hidden behind, they found the used remotes and Meghan’s discarded rifle.

What they didn’t find were Meghan and Pieter.

4

NB016, NEW YORK CITY

1:38 AM EST

C
ELESTE JOHNSON, MEMBER
of the Project Eden directorate, had returned to her rooms less than thirty minutes earlier in hopes of getting some sleep.

It had not been the best of evenings. Something had happened at the survival station in Los Angeles. All communications with it had stopped abruptly after its personnel reported a large group of survivors heading their way.

In an unrelated event, a group of survivors had escaped the station in Chicago. The most troubling part of this incident was that a member of the Project had aided the prisoners from the inside, while another group of people had waited outside and attacked the base with explosives and gunfire as soon as the survivors had fled.

Her office phone rang.

“What is it?” she answered.

“Director Johnson,” Carl Reynolds, NB016’s operations director, said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Did we hear from Los Angeles?”

“Not Los Angeles, ma’am.”

“Chicago?”

“Ma’am, I think you should probably come to the control center.” He paused. “It’s…not good.”

“Just tell me, dammit!”

After a false start, he said, “Attacks.”

“More?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where?”

“Miami, Rome, Madrid, Cairo, Shanghai.”

“What?” She pushed out of her chair. “Five attacks?”

“Um, no, ma’am. Twenty-seven so far.”

That stopped her. “Say that again.”

“Twenty-seven. A mix of survival stations and Project bases.”

“We haven’t lost any, have we?”

He hesitated.

“Jesus. How many?”

“We’ve lost contact with eight.”

She disconnected the call and headed for the door.

__________

N
EARLY EIGHTY PERCENT
of the Project’s bases were built underground. NB016 in New York, however, was not one of these. It took up the top seven floors of a twenty-two-story office building in Brooklyn. Celeste’s office and attached living quarters were located on the top floor, with a multimillion-dollar view of distant Manhattan. The operations center, also on twenty-two, was at the other end of the floor.

On most occasions, the room was filled with calm, whispered conversations and the tapping of keyboards. Such was not the case when she entered this time. There were people rushing between communication stations, comm operators talking loudly into microphones, and others shouting across the room to one another.

She spotted Reynolds in what appeared to be a heated conversation with four other staffers. As soon as they noticed her marching toward them, they fell silent.

“Director,” Reynolds said, stepping toward her. “Thank you for coming.”

“Please tell me you’ve been able to reestablish contact with those eight bases,” she said.

Reynolds exchanged a look with the others in the circle, then looked back at Celeste. “It’s actually ten now.”

“
Ten
?”

“We’ve been unable to reach the stations in Cairo and Tokyo.”

She stared at him. “How in God’s name did this happen?”

“It appears to be a coordinated effort.”

“Oh, really? You think so? What kind of idiotic statement is that? Of course, it’s coordinated! I want to know who the fuck is coordinating it!”

“We…we aren’t sure,” he said.

A woman in the group frowned at Reynolds.

“What?” Celeste said. “You don’t agree?”

The woman hesitated a moment, then said, “There’s only one group it could be, ma’am—the same one that’s been pecking away at us for years. The word is they call themselves the Resistance. I’m positive they’re also the ones who took out Principal Director Perez and NB219. For all we know, they could be responsible for whatever happened at Bluebird, too.”

“With all due respect to Ms. Dalton,” Reynolds said, visibly angered that the woman had inserted herself into the conversation. “There is no proof of that. Besides, their headquarters was destroyed on Implementation Day. It would be impossible for them to regroup quickly, let alone pull something as widespread as this.”

“Think about it, Carl. Do you really believe taking out a building in Montana would cripple them?” the woman countered.

“
Cheryl
, that’s enough.” He turned back to Celeste. “I apologize, Director. Unfortunately, at this point there is no way for us to—”

“You,” Celeste said, pointing at Dalton. “What’s your position here?”

Dalton’s eyes widened. “Um, I’m the, uh, assistant op manager in charge of—”

“Not anymore,” Celeste said. “You are now operations director.”

“What? Wait,” Reynolds blurted out. “You can’t do that.”

“The hell I can’t.
You
are relieved of your duties, Mr. Reynolds. Return to your quarters and stay there until I decide where you’ll be a better fit.”

“This is ridiculous! I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You haven’t done anything right, either.” Celeste looked around until she spotted a guard stationed near the door. “Take this man to his room and see that he doesn’t leave.”

It had been a rash decision fueled by anger, Celeste knew, but that didn’t mitigate the fact Reynolds was too resistant to others’ ideas. What the woman had said made sense to Celeste.

“Ms. Dalton,” she said. “I want you to assign a team to find out exactly who’s behind this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dalton said, still looking stunned.

“And have someone get the rest of the directorate on the line right now. I’ll use the op conference room.”

__________

I
T TOOK NEARLY
five minutes to get Directors Yeager, Kim, and Mahajan patched into a video call.

“I assume you’ve all heard about the attacks,” Celeste began.

“Heard of them?” Mahajan said. “It’s happening here!”

“In Jaipur?”

“Yes! There have been several explosions along our walls.”

“Any ground forces?”

“Not yet. But the last blast was only a few minutes ago.”

“Director Kim? Director Yeager?” Celeste asked. “Any problems where you are?”

Both men reported that their bases, too, were under fire, but felt confident their security teams would get things under control. Unlike most bases, the four with directorate members also housed a specially trained Project Eden strike team.

The conference room door opened. Dalton hurried in and handed Celeste a piece of paper.

“What is that?” Kim asked.

“A list of bases that have been hit,” Celeste said without looking up. “It’s about a fifty-fifty mix of survival stations and Project bases.”

They were all silent for a moment.

“What about Dream Sky?” Kim asked.

Celeste looked over at Dalton, who mouthed, “No problems.”

“Untouched,” Celeste announced.

5

EVERTON, VERMONT

1:47 AM EST

C
HLOE WAS THE
last to arrive at the rendezvous point.

“Trouble?” Ash asked.

“Of course not,” she said. She held out the black Project Eden snowsuit and headgear she’d taken from her target. “This looks about your size.”

As he took the clothes from her, he sensed something amiss. “You all right?”

“Fine,” she answered quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He studied her as she walked off but decided not to press. Mission stress, he thought. God knew they were all feeling it.

After removing his jacket, he was able to pull the snowsuit over the rest of his clothes. Once he zipped it up, he tested his range of movement and was satisfied the security outfit wouldn’t restrict him too much. He then motioned for the others to gather around.

“Phase two will not be nearly as easy as phase one. If you have any questions, now would be the time to ask.” He paused, but no one said anything. “All right, then. Remember, once your group’s in position, no one moves until you receive the signal. Good luck.”

He headed over to where the four who’d be going with him waited. Three men—Edward Powell and two from Powell’s advance team—were also wearing snowsuit uniforms confiscated from other Project Eden sentries. The only one not dressed this way was Curtis Wicks.

To Wicks, Ash said, “You ready?”

“Would it matter if I wasn’t?” Wicks asked.

__________

D
REAM SKY LEVEL
zero was at the very top of the facility, nearest the surface. It consisted of only two rooms—a large open space known as Transition, and the smaller area called the security control center that was accessed through a short hallway.

The transition room was well named. In the center, a ladder led down from the unassuming hut entrance in the snow-covered field above Dream Sky, and at the end opposite the control center were the two elevators that provided the means to reach the rest of the facility.

There was a second entrance, but it had been sealed off a few days after Implementation Day, so with the ladder currently being the only way in and out, securing Dream Sky was not difficult. Still, vigilance was imperative, hence the rotating squads of lookouts in town, and the two men in the control center monitoring an array of security cameras.

The most excitement those on control-center duty experienced was when a new topside squad went out and the old one returned. Other than that, the tedium was nearly unbearable.

To survive their shifts, Morris and Lochmere—the two on graveyard that night—had devised a system where one would monitor the screens and the other would do whatever he wanted for fifteen minutes before they switched.

“Can’t believe people used to read this crap,” Morris said, thumbing through the tabloid magazine one of the other teams had left behind.

Lochmere glanced over and then returned his gaze to the monitors. “
You’re
reading it.”

“Because it’s funny.” Morris grinned. “Even more so now, you know? Their lives were even more bullshit than they realized.” He flipped to a page featuring a young bikini-clad actress walking on a beach. “Wouldn’t mind if she survived, though,” he mumbled.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

As Morris turned to another page, the alarm on Lochmere’s watch went off.

“Time,” Lochmere said.

“You sure you’ve got that set right? Seemed pretty fast.”

“Shut up and give me that.” Lochmere snatched the tabloid from Morris and started the timer again.

Reluctantly, Morris turned his attention to the monitors.

It had been over two weeks since he’d last stepped foot outside the base, and the idea of getting some fresh air was appealing. If it wasn’t so damn cold, he’d volunteer for an outside shift. Maybe when the snow started to melt, he could—

He sat forward. On the feed from a camera hidden on the roof of the hut, he saw several people entering the meadow. From their clothes, they appeared to be security.

He checked the time and frowned. “Did the schedule change?”

“What?” Lochmere said, looking up from the magazine.

“Did Gamma squad go out early?”

“Early? No. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, then why is Omega squad heading in?”

__________

“E
YES OPEN. SIGNAL
if you see any movement,”
Ash said.

His team walked toward the entrance to Dream Sky in a tight formation—Ash and Powell shoulder to shoulder in front, and Sealy and Harden a few feet back on either side. Tucked within them was Wicks, the hope being that they could hide him from any cameras as long as possible.

“Curtis, you doing okay?” Ash asked.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up,” Wicks said.

“We’d all appreciate it if you’d hold that off for a while,” Powell whispered.

“I’ll do what I can.”