The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (23 page)

If “normal” can be defined anymore.

The angel red-alerts again, highlighting an object low in the sky to the west. It looks more like a reflection than anything real: seven tiny, faintly glowing pearls arranged in a vertical line with no visible link between them. Seen through the humid air, the lights are elusive—twinkling, shimmering, fading from sight only to reappear again. I have no idea what they are and no way to judge their scale or their elevation—they could be high in the sky and far away or much lower and only a few miles down the interstate. All I know for sure is that they’re too low for me to see directly from my position on the ground.

I capture an image on my overlay and run a search on it in my encyclopedia. In just a few seconds the encyclopedia launches into a verbal explanation:
“The object identifies as a node in the experimental EXALT communications
system, a federal stimulus project launched in January of
this year. ‘EXALT’ is an acronym for ‘Expandable Aerial
Labyrinth Traffic,’ and is intended as a robust, distrib
uted communications system that will use aerial relays to bypass—”

I cut it off, and instruct the angel to ignore any more sightings of EXALT aerial nodes. It’s good to know the feds are working on a new communications infrastructure, but judging by my connectivity it’s not working yet.

Impressive though, that a new project has been funded and launched in the five chaotic months since Coma Day. The US economy crashed after the bombs knocked out critical components of the communications system. Jobs were lost as food and fuel prices soared, and recovery won’t come soon, but we’d all be worse off without the tireless efforts of people both in and out of government to build on what’s left. They are the anonymous heroes of an ongoing story, but there are villains too.

How did Vanda-Sheridan get their nukes?

I think about it, imagining a hypothetical individual: a faceless, nameless link in a nuclear security chain, in this country or another, someone who gave away the ability to immolate thousands in return for a fat payoff.

Hell was made for people like that.

Hell was made at ground zero in San Diego, in Chicago, in Alexandria.

Niamey will have its own ground zero if Vanda’s remaining nukes aren’t found.

I look up at the sky and wonder if a surveillance satellite has marked my position yet. If Vanda is hunting me, he’s
got a hell of a lot of territory to scan, a massive amount of data to process. Is his system capable of it?

I’m distracted by a faint roar of engines, far to the west. At first I think it’s a jet, but then the angel red-alerts again, this time highlighting a long line of eastbound trucks still a few miles away: one of the convoys Tuttle warned me about.

He was right. It’s amazing to hear them. Against the quiet of the night, the slowly building roar of their approach sounds like a prelude to the end of the world.

But it’s not the end of the world. Not yet. I reduce the alert status from red to blue and then walk to the end of the parking lot where I have a view of the freeway’s on-ramps, and of an overpass that spans the lanes. The trucks’ headlights blaze in the distance. I watch them approach, and as they pass I count them—one, two, three, four—and that’s just the beginning.

The drone continues its patrol. As the twelfth truck rumbles by, the drone makes a pass over the parking lot—and flashes a red-alert. I spin around, looking back at the SUVs.

I don’t see anything.

I shift to angel sight, so that I’m looking down on the vehicles in green-tinted night vision. There’s someone in the empty stall between the two SUVs. He? She? I can’t tell, but the intruder is skinny and not very tall—an underfed teenager maybe, with what looks like a crowbar in one hand.

I race back across the parking lot, determined to interfere before any glass gets broken. Joby engineered my padded feet to be quiet, and the little sound I do make is covered by the roar of the convoy—a roar that was no doubt a factor in the timing of this little venture.

A glance at angel sight assures me that the drone has not found any accomplices.

With my pistol in hand, I make a dramatic appearance between the front ends of the two SUVs, boxing the enemy in, with the neatly trimmed hedge blocking a retreat—but the convoy is still rolling past and my appearance goes unnoticed.

It’s a girl—I’m pretty sure. She looks coppery in the glow of the streetlights, her smooth, shoulder-length hair bound up in a little ponytail, maybe five six in height, dressed in long, dirty pants, running shoes, and what looks like a badly worn armored jacket—the kind motorcyclists sometimes use. I can see a faint display dancing in the thin lens of her farsights as she cocks her arm, working up her nerve to swing her crowbar at the window in the passenger door of the gray SUV.

“Not your best idea,” I say, loud enough to be heard over the trucks.

“Fuck!”
She spins around, swinging the crowbar so that it whistles through the air between us. “Touch me and I’ll kill you!”

Definitely a girl.

I step aside, giving her room to run. “Why don’t you get the fuck out of here?”

She grips the crowbar in two hands. “Don’t you touch me!”

“I won’t.”

She edges sideways, watching me through her farsights, a pinprick green light in the corner indicating she’s recording. I expect her to turn and run as soon as she’s in the open, but instead she hesitates, asking, “What’s going on with your eyes? There’s sparks of light flashing in them.”

Angel sight is still running in the corner of my vision as the drone takes in the brilliant headlights of the convoy along with our little conflict in the parking lot. I’m impressed she can see well enough to make it out. “It’s an implant.”

“You’re a soldier, aren’t you?”

“Not anymore.”

“You’re the one they call King David.”

“
Not
anymore.”

She thinks about this for a few seconds, watching me with an anxious gaze. “Sorry,” she whispers, edging away. “Sorry I messed with your stuff.”

“Are you hungry?”

Just the question, the implication that there might be food, and she looks faint.

But I don’t want that crowbar anywhere near me or the trucks. “Go across the parking lot. Wait there. I’ll get you something.”

She backs away.

I open up the gunmetal-gray SUV, find a case of MREs I remember seeing earlier, and extract a dozen packets while watching her with angel sight. She’s retreated thirty feet, toward the opposite end of the parking lot from where I was watching the convoy. Behind her is a vacant lot, overgrown with spindly young trees. I leave the packets on the asphalt between us and return to the vehicles. The last of the convoy has passed, and the night has gone quiet again. She scurries toward the food, setting the crowbar down just long enough to stuff her pockets. Then she turns and sprints for the trees.

It bothers me that the angel missed her presence in its initial survey. I send it to track her, wanting to map her hiding place, but there’s no sign of her—so she must be hiding under the concrete shelter of the overpass.

I resolve to stay close to the vehicles, where I spend my time looking for satellites.

Satellites are seen when they reflect light from the sun, so they’re easiest to spot early in the night or just before dawn. It’s almost
2200
, but I see one anyway, gliding in
stately silence from the west, so big and bright it makes me curious.

I go back to the gunmetal SUV, sure I saw binoculars stashed with the supplies. I find them and get them out in time to study the object as it fades into shadow. The binoculars are electronically amplified and image stabilized, and what they show me is not just a point of light—it has length and width, a glowing rice grain that has to be a space station. I send an image to my encyclopedia, and it returns an audio article. What I’m looking at is a billion-dollar toy. A company called Sunrise
15
is manufacturing orbital pods to serve as private dwellings, high-tech cabins—dragon lairs. A spaceplane services them. One has been sold to an eccentric hypochondriac, another to a socialite because she can. The money invested in the venture is staggering—billions of dollars—while kids go hungry in rural Pennsylvania.

Motion behind the hotel’s glass doors makes me reach for my pistol, but the doors slide open, revealing Nolan coming to take over the watch. He’s wearing farsights and a thigh-length jacket like mine to cover his armor.

I search the sky again, wondering how many satellites have looked down on this parking lot since I’ve been out here.

“You looking for something up there, LT?” Nolan asks.

“I don’t have a rank anymore.”

He makes a low, skeptical grunt. “Shelley, then. Counting satellites?”

I look at him. His farsights cast a faint glow around his eyes. “Did you know there’s a company selling space stations to dragons? They’ve launched six dragon lairs already.”

“No shit?” He looks up.

I pass him the binoculars. “They’re looking down on us.”

“They always have.” He puts the binoculars to his eyes. “We just watched the newest reality show.”

“Yeah? How was it?”

“Like you said it would be . . . focused on the people who protected us. Cops and FBI, but mostly these teenage kids in DC who knew something was up and kept poking at it.” He lowers the binoculars, frowning. “They almost got themselves killed—but then they found an IND, just like the ones recovered on Coma Day. A nuke in a cheap-ass van. The FBI shut down the trigger mechanism less than two hours before it would have gone off. That would have been the Saturday night before the court-martial.”

“That was the night before the president came to see me,” I realize. “So when he talked to me, he knew. He knew how close we all came.”

“Including him,” Nolan agrees.

I think about it. Would the country have survived if that IND had gone off? Our president killed? The government thrown into chaos? I want to believe we would have gone on somehow, with the military remaining loyal to the people, and the people pulling together in support of the Constitution . . . I want to believe it.

But even after the nuke was disarmed, the president kept its existence secret. He knew how close we’d come to disaster, but he didn’t trust the people with that knowledge. He didn’t trust me. He came after me only hours later, asking for an end to the disruption, the chaos, without ever hinting at what had almost happened.

It’s all out in the open now. “Goddamn,” I breathe. “Do you know how lucky we are? Not just us. The whole fucking country.”

“Thanks to those kids. They’re heroes, and not just them. The FBI too.”

“And the seven hundred thousand protesters on the Mall.”

If not for them, today would have been the start of our
sentencing hearing. A lot of people have been saving my ass lately.

“Hey,” Nolan says, “is that one of the dragon lairs?”

I look up to see another bright satellite. For several seconds Nolan studies it through the binoculars. Then he turns to me, scowling. “We’re out here without our helmets.”

“We want to look like civilians.”

“Sure, but we’re standing out in the open. A good surveillance satellite can identify us with facial recognition.”

I nod. “And Vanda-Sheridan specializes in surveillance satellites.”

“
Shit.
You think he’ll come after us?”

“He came after me in New York. He came himself. He didn’t hire the job out.”

“Like it was a personal vendetta.”

“He’s not like other dragons. He came up through the ranks. It’s hands-on with him. And right now it’s unfinished business. The job’s not done.”

Nolan stares at the sky a little bit longer. “I’ve met assholes like that. Guys who’ll go out of their way to finish a grudge match before they transfer.”

I’m betting Carl Vanda is one of those guys, and that he’s as predictable as I am. “If he does come after us, we need to turn it around on him. Take him alive.”

“Alive?”

“Persuade him to tell us all about his nukes. Then we don’t have to wait for the organization, or depend on half-truths leaked by corrupt government moles.”

“You
want
him to come,” Nolan accuses.

I don’t deny it.

“So you think it’ll be soon?” he asks.

“Yes. If he comes at all, it’ll be soon. Probably not tonight, though.”

“But if it is tonight?”

“You have any suspicions, put out a call on gen-com.”

“Roger that.”

I tell him about the girl in the trees, and then I get him set up so his farsights are linked to the angel.

The Red may not be telling my story anymore. That doesn’t mean I can’t tell one on my own.

•   •   •   •

As I head back inside, I’m planning to purchase a replay of the new episode, but that changes when I get to the room, because Delphi isn’t there. There’s no note to say where she’s gone. There’s nothing. Fear hits. Has she been kidnapped? I didn’t hear anything. It doesn’t seem possible . . . and no one left the hotel. I know that. I was watching with angel eyes.

I call her.

The cell network is down so the call doesn’t go through.

I swear to God I can hear Lissa’s ghost whispering,
It’s not
your fault.

Panic sends me racing into the hall. I visualize a link to Jaynie. My skullnet picks up the command and tries to connect, even as I pound on her door. “I need your help! Delphi’s gone.”

The door opens and it’s Delphi. She’s wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms.

Jaynie is right behind her, dressed in a tank top and panties with a pistol in her hand. “What the fuck, Shelley?” she asks me.

I don’t know what to say.

Delphi looks puzzled. “Are you okay?”

“Fuck, no.” My heart is hammering, my hands are shaking, and the skullnet icon is aglow. “I didn’t know where you were, Delphi! Why the hell didn’t you—”

“Stop,” she says, putting her hand against my chest. “Just stop.”

I back up, shaking my head. “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. He took Lissa out of a secure facility! This is just a fucking hotel.”