Infinity Rises (12 page)

“I’m n-not sure what else I c-can do?” he stammers.

“Well, you can start by taking those kids downstairs to a safe place.”

“But . . . surely you can call the authorities now. All we have to do is wait for them to arrive.” I can tell by the look on his face that George is less than keen on the prospect of being a babysitter. I can relate.

I slowly shake my head, feigning concern. “This complex is in the middle of nowhere, George. It’s dangerous out there, and it’s gonna take time for help to get here. You must know of somewhere nearby where you can all barricade yourselves in. They’ll be safer with you.”

He thinks for a second, then slowly nods. “Well, we might be able to . . . Hey, wait a second. It doesn’t sound like you’re coming with us.”

“Let me know where you’re going, and we’ll join you soon. There’s something else we need to take care of first.”

“And what might that be?” George asks, his eyes narrowing.

I begin searching my brain for a half-believable story that doesn’t involve me murdering his employer when Otto thankfully saves me with a welcome interruption.

“Our teacher, Professor Francis, our classmate Dean McCarthy, and our tour guide, Percy. We need to rescue them. They’re all trapped over there in Dome—”

The loud clatter of computer slates hitting the floor startles even me, and I turn to see Otto staring out the window, her hands pressed against the glass. “Otto, what is it?” I ask, peering out across the complex with absolutely no idea of what I’m supposed to be looking at.

“Dome Two,” she murmurs.

“What about it? Which way is it? Point it out,” I ask, scanning the buildings and structures down below.

“I can’t point it out, Infinity . . . ,” Otto says, “because it’s not there.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, squinting out the window.

“I don’t know why I didn’t notice when we first came in,” she whispers. “I should’ve noticed it right away.” Otto turns to me, her eyes filled with confusion and distress.

“Dome Two . . . It’s gone.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I’ve seen the classified satellite photographs of this complex. From above, Blackstone Technologies is three perfect black circles surrounded by bone-white buildings, snaking footpaths, silver-topped towers, and massive black-and-gold transport hangers. It’s almost impossible to judge the height of anything from looking at satellite pictures, so actually being here, creeping around this top-secret facility at ground level, I find myself at a loss. Structures block each other, buildings overlap at the edges, trees conceal pathways, and bearings can get skewed. But, despite what magicians would have you believe, things can’t just disappear.

“Are you sure it’s gone?” I ask. “Maybe it’s behind those—”

“I saw the model!” Otto barks. “Dome Two would be at least a hundred meters high. Of course it’s bloody gone!”

My limited knowledge of this complex counts for nothing right now, so it doesn’t exactly boost my confidence to see the person I’m relying on to guide me through this place freaking out like a frizzy-haired, hyperventilating squirrel.

“Where did it go?” Otto screeches.

I grab her hard by the wrist and pull her away from the glass wall. “Hey. Try and calm down, OK? There must be an explanation. George, what’s happened to the dome?”

“Power . . . The power must be out in Sector Two. The domes need it to stay constructed. Without power, the quantum grains come apart and a dome would . . . dissolve.”

“Dome One is still standing,” I mention, pointing to the far glass wall.

“Yes, I saw that,” George says, scratching his chin in thought. “The mainframe must be rebooting systems one sector at a time.”

“How long until the whole place is up and running again?” asks Otto.

George shakes his head, walks to the window, and surveys the buildings below. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before. I don’t even have the faintest idea of what could’ve caused it; there are so many built-in safeguards and backups. Before today, I never would’ve thought something like this could be possible.”

“Look, whoever caused this probably feels bad enough without you two talking about it all the time,” Otto says angrily.

I can recognize remorse from a thousand paces. I’ve seen it on the faces of soldiers in far-flung places as they’ve stood over the freshly steaming wounds of the innocent dead, and, right now, Otto might as well be broadcasting her guilt through a loudspeaker mounted on her head between two flashing lights. With one eye on George’s back, I silently mouth the words, “Did you do this?”

Otto backs away from me, her expression sad and silent as she walks over to the glass wall beside George. Suddenly it dawns on me. She isn’t freaking out over concern for the people who survived; she’s being eaten alive by the possibility that she’s responsible for the ones who
died
, and she’s trying her best to stop it from getting worse. It’s a problem she has to deal with; I don’t care either way. But I still have to admit, Bettina Otto is certainly chock-full of surprises, and one of them is much darker than I would have thought possible of her.

“Mr. Parsons, what would happen to someone inside a dome when it dissolves?” Otto asks, the taint of anger in her words doing little to disguise the shame.

“Well, I think they would probably be fine,” replies George.

“You
think
they would
probably
?” squawks Otto. “I hope you realize that’s not really an answer.”

George looks awkwardly uncomfortable. “I’ve never seen a dome deconstruct before,” he says, leaning away from the leering, fist-clenching teenage girl. “But if the quantum field went down, the grains would revert to their original state. I’ve seen it in the labs; it kinda looks like that gray kinetic-sand stuff that kids play with. As long as your friends can dig their way out before they suffocate, they should be OK.”

“Are you saying that they could have escaped already?” Otto says hopefully.

“Well, they’d have to wade through a chest-deep pool of inert grains, but apart from that, there wouldn’t be anything stopping them from leaving the boundary of the dome.”

Otto begins fishing through one of the satchels. “I might be able to find them . . . ,” she says as she pulls her computer slate from the bag and presses a button on the edge. “If I can just zero in on Percy’s command module.”

“The command modules are off-line,” George says as he pulls up one of the sleeves of his coveralls. A silver band with a black diamond-shaped stone set in it is wrapped around his left wrist. The instant I see it, my fingers automatically touch the pendant beneath my shirt, and for a fleeting second, the strangest unexplainable feeling of sadness ripples through me. “It was the first thing I tried when I got stuck in the lift,” George says, tapping at the stone on the wristband. “The modules are routed through the computer, and we’re cut off from the mainframe. There’s no chance you’ll be able to access the tour guide’s module.”

“His name is Percy, and I don’t need to access it,” Otto says as she swipes and taps intricate patterns on the screen of her slate. “All I need to do is scan for its power signature.”

“Not with that, you can’t,” George says, frowning down at Otto’s slate. “That’s a Blackstone Nero 10, by the looks of it. It’s the fastest slate there is, but it can’t do what you just said.”

Otto flicks her finger up off the slate, and a glowing green holographic line follows behind the tip. She splays her hand, and the line expands into a panoramic rectangle of lines and symbols, peaks and valleys, numbers, spheres, and rainbow-colored globs. “I’ve been designing circuits since I was four years old,” she says, waving her finger through the holograms like a witch casting a spell. “And I’ve been modifying computer slates since I was in primary school.” Otto flicks and scrolls through the holograms with a self-satisfied smile. “A factory-standard Nero 10 is like an abacus compared to my turbocharged baby right here.”

The frown on George’s face deepens as he leans in, eyeballing the lines and patches of light hovering over the slate with a new and curious interest.

“See!” Otto blurts as she points out a particular spot on a circular graph. “That small red dot in the center is this computer slate; the tall peak over it is the Security Station’s power signature. And if I zoom in . . .” Otto spreads her finger and thumb over the line, and hundreds of little peaks appear. “These are the data hives, and this little bump is your command module.” She shoves the slate toward George. Judging by his arching eyebrows, I’d say it’s safe to assume that George is suitably impressed.

“Even this close, your module’s signature is weak,” Otto says, scrolling through the glowing peaks and valleys. “I’ll have a much better chance of picking up Percy’s signal at ground level.”

“That’s incredible. You’re some kinda genius,” whispers George.

“I just understand computers; that’s all,” Otto says, blushing. “I’m not a genius.”

“Well, if you’re not, you’re pretty darn close,” George says, studying the slate even closer. “What else can it do?”

Obviously flattered, Otto grins and begins swiping at the air above the slate, the urgency of the situation momentarily forgotten. “Well, I also upgraded the Nero’s pathetic frequency scanner,” she says as George nods along with every word. “Now, not only can it pick up every electromagnetic signal in a two-hundred-fifty-meter radius, but it can also detect changes in temperature and microdisturbances in the air, then combine and enhance that data to accurately extrapolate and convert residual vibrations into audio and visual from adverse surfaces up to fifteen centimeters thick.”

“It can do what now?” I ask.

“It can see through solid walls,” George whispers, blatantly staring at the slate as if caught in some kind of goofy daze.

“And not just a thermal image with garbled noises, either,” gushes Otto. “I’m talking real-time, high-resolution holographic projection.”

George’s expression suddenly hardens. “That type of application is reserved for government intelligence only. It’s illegal for a civilian device to have those capabilities.”

Otto nods and grins. “Yeah, I know.” I can’t help but be amused by her prideful flaunting of the law, but right now I need more than a computer with X-ray vision.

“Seeing through walls is one thing . . . ,” I say, “but please tell me you can also shut down the Drones with it.”

Otto swipes and pokes at the holograms. “There’s some kind of signal block. The mainframe is jamming and intercepting outgoing transmissions. I can’t send anything out; I can only receive, so I can’t shut down the Drones. But that also means that I can’t send a distress call, so . . .”

“No one is coming to help us,” I say, and Otto slowly nods. “Good, that suits me just fine. The police would just get in the way.” I turn and set off the way we came. Otto quickly gathers the dropped slates at her feet, stuffs them halfway into an already-bulging satchel, and hurries to fall in step beside me, her eyes glued to her own slate as she walks. “I’ll help you find your friends like I agreed,” I say to Otto. “But then you and I have an appointment with you know who.”

“Who the hell
are
you kids?” George asks with understandable suspicion.

“She’s the best hacker in the world,” I say, jabbing a thumb at Otto.

“And she’s a highly trained assassin,” Otto says with a smile in her voice.

“No, who are you,
really
?” George asks again, hurrying to catch up with us. I turn and smile at Otto, and she shares our private joke with a cheeky grin.

At the intersection, we take the path back to the elevator. George pushes past us, taps a button to open the door, and steps inside. I follow right behind him, but when I turn around, Otto is nowhere to be seen. “Otto?” I say, peering from side to side out the open door.

“Here, Infinity! Hurry!” Her voice is coming from behind the elevator shaft. I skirt around the side of the cylinder and spot her. She’s standing at the end of another narrow path between the data hives on the other side and is looking down at the ground through the tall glass of the third wall.

I rush toward her. “What is it?”

“I’ve picked up more power signatures,” she calls over her shoulder. “The signals are weak. I never would have noticed them if they weren’t so grouped together.”

A knot tightens in my gut. “Are they Drones? How many?”

“I don’t think they’re Drones,” she says as I arrive at the window. “I think they’re command modules . . . a lot of command modules.”

“Are they Blackstone employees?”

“I don’t know. But these readings show that they’re at ground level right outside the Security Station.”

Out the tall windows, I see the buildings bordering the empty courtyard, the tops of trees, and the tented spread of the white plastic canopy below. I press my nose against the cold glass, but I can’t see the ground at the base of the building from this height and angle. George joins us at the window. “There are only a few of us who work on the weekends . . . ,” he says, studying the computer slate over Otto’s shoulder. “Maintenance, a couple of med staff, a few tech researchers, and a skeleton crew of security, so a large, widespread signal like that could only belong to—”

“Soldiers!” Otto blurts, pressing her finger to the window. “There are soldiers over there! By the corner of that building!”

I look to where she’s pointing, and sure enough, in the distance, two soldiers in camo-patterned helmets and uniforms are cautiously stalking forward across the courtyard, their automatic rifles angled at the ground in a low, ready position. Two more soldiers appear from the alley between two buildings approximately thirty meters away from the base of the Security Station, and those four soldiers are soon followed by two more pairs. The eight soldiers quickly fan out and then hold their positions. They slowly and methodically turn in every direction as they survey the open expanse of the courtyard. The soldier leading the squad calls something back over his shoulder, and the empty space behind the eight men suddenly bursts alive with activity as nearly a hundred armed soldiers come streaming out from the line of buildings to the left.

“Wow!” exclaims Otto.

George sighs with relief. “Blackstone Technologies works very closely with the government’s armed forces. Select groups often train here to test the latest weaponry before it’s deployed in the field. Whatever is going on here, I’m sure they’ll sort it out.”

“I’m glad to know you have so much faith in the military,” I mutter. “But those soldiers are on alert. They already know this is more than just a power outage, and they’ll be assuming it’s some kind of attack until they can prove that it’s not. If the computer sends armed Drones to engage with those troops down there, somebody is going to die.”

“Why would the computer kill United Alliance troops?” asks George. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It already tried to kill
us
with Drones, so I don’t reckon the computer is thinking sensibly at all right now, George.” I turn and stride back along the path. “I don’t know about you two, but I don’t want to be caught in the cross fire if the shooting starts, and I don’t want to be trapped up here if the robots win. We need to go, and we need to go now.”

With George and Otto right behind me, I skirt back around the silver tube and through the open door of the elevator. After George presses his thumb to the plate and jabs the ground-floor button, we stand in tense silence as the lift descends. With a gentle jolt and a quiet ping, the elevator door slides open.

“Don’t move!” shouts a voice as three gun barrels are shoved toward our faces. Otto shrieks, and George drops his case of tools with a clattering thud as I slowly raise my hands. Standing in front of us are three large camo-uniformed soldiers wearing black visors and combat face masks. “Two more students and a technician,” says the soldier in the center. “Just like the blonde girl said. Stand down.” The soldiers all lower their rifles as the one who gave the orders points at George. “You. I need you to shut down all three of these wall displays,” he says, motioning at one of the huge floor-to-ceiling screens. “We need a clear line of sight to outside.”