Vapor (17 page)

“Destroy it. Burn it. Break it. Grind it into pieces. Whatever it takes. Or they’ll die.”

“Who? Who will die?”

“Everyone.”

I sat up with a start, gasping for air. Searing pain shot through my body, shocking my brain awake.

I sat still for a moment, letting my memories of Lila’s final moments drift away into uneasy nothingness.

My head started to ache. My legs felt sore. My back felt stiff and tender from lying on the concrete.

I took a few deep breaths of the hot, dry air. My heartbeat started to normalize.

I blinked a few times. My eye sockets felt like they’d been stuffed with dirt. I blinked a few more times. Then I looked around.

Benigno and Akolo lay fast asleep. They’d been dealt a horrible situation. Faced with similar circumstances, most people would’ve cowered away on the island, praying for rescue. But not them. They’d refused to accept the inevitable future as decided by Simona and Eco-Trek. Instead, they were determined to save Rizzalyn and their friends.

Just past them, I saw Graham. He lay on his back, coughing gently. Beverly knelt next to him. She had his head propped up and was trying to pour some water into his mouth.

Seeing Graham reminded me of our earlier conversation. He’d started to tell me about how my dad had traveled with him on expeditions. It was difficult to believe. My dad had died when I was just a kid. So, my memories of him were sparse and lacking in detail. But I’d always thought of him as a businessman, not an adventurer.

I recalled my parent’s old bedroom, one of many rooms in my family’s multi-story Manhattan apartment. A photo used to sit on my mom’s nightstand. It showed my parents sitting on the family room couch. They held a baby—me—between them. They looked so happy, so carefree. Like all was right with the world.

My father, sporting a mischievous grin and reddish hair, looked healthy and happy in the photo. It was hard to believe he was the same man who would later cause so much destruction.

Next to him, my mother smiled at me, a smile I wished I could remember. Growing up without my dad—and later without my mom—had messed me up in more ways than I could count.

I recalled another photo on that same nightstand. It depicted mom and a ten-year old me sitting at the kitchen table. She was clapping as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake. A smile danced across her lips, but her eyes revealed a deep sadness.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but dad’s untimely death must’ve been like a lightning bolt to her heart. Even so, she never complained. Hell, she never said a word about it all the way up to and including the day of her mysterious disappearance. But I knew she loved him something fierce.

At bedtime, she would regale me with stories about his life and his career as a real estate developer. The stories were always entertaining, yet moralistic. Sort of like her personal version of
Aesop’s Fables
.

She painted him as a fun-loving guy who adored his family, his friends, and the rich history of the city we called home. Unfortunately, it was all just a myth, a carefully constructed legend to conceal the truth.

I shuddered as tremendous anger washed over me. A couple of weeks ago, something had compelled me to dig deeper into my family’s past. In one earth-shattering moment, I learned my dad, who I’d practically worshipped, had been no hero. He was a villain, a man who’d waged an epic war on New York’s past. And my mom, who should’ve stood in his way, had let him do it.

His actions had, in a very really way, determined New York’s future. There was no changing that. But the past?

Well, that could still be saved.

That was the reason I’d worked so hard to salvage the reliquary. And it was the reason that, despite everything, recovering the ancient stone box remained my top priority. I was determined to atone for my dad’s sins. To save enough history to make up for that which he’d callously destroyed.

Wincing, I stood up. After a bit of stretching, I made my way to Beverly and Graham. “How is he?” I whispered.

“He just needs some more rest,” she replied. “In a couple of hours, he’ll be ready to go.”

“How about you?”

“You want to talk about me?” She faked a surprised look. “Not the reliquary?”

I exhaled.

“Relax, I’m just kidding. And I’m fine, by the way.”

“Listen, the reliquary is important. Maybe really important. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

“No. You just expect me to play second fiddle to it.”

“That’s not—”

She lowered Graham’s head and grabbed my shirt. Pulled me close and kissed my hard. My lips were dry, but the moment they touched hers, moisture appeared. Hungrily, I kissed her back.

With a sly smile, she pushed me away. “Can your reliquary do that?”

My face flushed.

“Didn’t think so.” Gently, she lifted Graham’s head and tipped a few more drops of water down his throat.

I furrowed my brow. “By the way, you never finished telling me about your trip to that lab. Did you learn anything new?”

“Actually, yes. The technicians told me the nanomaterials mimic the properties of the original chemicals, only on an exponential basis.”

“You mean they’re supercharged?” My face twisted in thought. “Like one nanomaterial particle is equivalent to a whole bunch of chemical particles?”

“That’s the general idea. Also, the individual nanomaterials were bound together into discs. The discs measured ten micrometers in diameter and carried a width of about fifty nanometers.”

“Sounds small.”

“It’s tiny,” she replied. “Each disc contained a core of various nanomaterials bounded by other nanomaterials, specifically aluminum on one end and barium titanate on the other end.”

I cocked my head. “Why them?”

She shrugged.

“Anything else?”

She took a deep breath. “When we analyzed them, the discs were undergoing a very slow process of disintegration.”

“You sound surprised.”

She shrugged. “Why would Simona’s scientists engineer such complex structures only to have them begin breaking down?”

“Maybe they’re trying to keep people from finding out about the nanomaterials.”

“That’s just it. The discs were disintegrating but their contents—the nanomaterials—showed no signs of change.”

“Could it be a design flaw?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. If I had to guess, I’d say her scientists engineered the bonds to weaken over time.”

“Why would they do that?”

She shrugged.

I’d come to Pagan solely for the reliquary. I’d hoped to avoid Simona Wolcott and the rest of Eco-Trek, not fight them. Unfortunately, they’d taken the opposite approach.

Of course, I had no intention of striking back. Recovering the reliquary required stealth, not force. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder about Simona, about her work on Pagan. Why had she taken the reliquary from us? What was she doing with the strange nanomaterials? What other secrets was she trying to protect?

I stood up to my full height. Looking around, I noticed an empty bed. “Where’s Carrie?”

“In the upper cave,” Beverly replied. “She said she couldn’t sleep.”

I wandered back to my satchel. I started to sit down again. But at the last moment, I picked up my satchel and machete and turned around.

I walked to the crevice and slid into the narrow opening. For the next few minutes, I picked my way upward through the thin space. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t stop thinking about the reliquary.

What secrets did it hold? Would I be able to steal it?

And if necessary, would I be able to destroy it?

After what seemed like an eternity, I crawled out of the crevice and entered the cave. Almost immediately, a flashlight beam hit my eyes and I was forced to look away.

“Oh.” Carrie diverted the beam. “It’s you.”

She sat against the far wall, head tilted to the ceiling. Her arms were wrapped around her knees.

With a soft sniff, she brushed a hand across her eyes, leaving a faint trail of wetness on her dirt-smeared cheeks.

I slid along the opposite wall and plastered my back against it. “So, you worked for Eco-Trek?”

She nodded.

“What was it like?”

She didn’t answer.

I decided to take a different approach. “Why’d you try to help the Pagan Nation group?”

She took a deep breath. “It was no big deal.”

“Seems like a pretty big deal to me.”

“Too little, too late.”

I stared at her.

“Benigno’s wife and friends … they aren’t Simona’s first prisoners.”

I frowned.

“I knew something was wrong,” she continued. “But by the time I figured it out, it was too late.”

I could see the sadness in her eyes, the heaviness of her heart. She was stricken with guilt. It was eating at her soul, mangling her in a way that might never be fixed.

“Too late for what?” I asked.

“Too late to save them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t come here to work for Eco-Trek.” She paused. “I came here to spy on them.”

A realization dawned on me. “You’re a reporter?”

She nodded. “I work for the
Saipan Journal
. Digital news has been kicking our butts for years, so we’ve had to get creative. We go the extra mile, take extra risks.”

“How’d you find out about this place?”

“The same way as everyone else, I suppose. Eco-Trek made some headlines with the Pagan lease. Plenty of locals objected to it. And people were even less happy when they learned about the air and sea restrictions. There were a couple of protests, a bit of isolated groundswell. But it ended when Eco-Trek began recruiting from Saipan.” She shrugged. “The press moved on.”

“But not you?”

“At first, I did. But then people started to disappear.”

I cocked my head.

“Homeless people make great sources. They know more about a city’s underbelly than anyone else. I used to talk to this woman named Rowena. One day, I went looking for her in the usual spot. I couldn’t find her so I started asking around. Another source claimed to have seen her. He told me Eco-Trek employees had kidnapped her.”

“And you believed him?”

She nodded.

“How’d he know Eco-Trek was behind it?”

“He recognized their yacht. They’ve got a couple of them, all identical to each other.” She paused. “I reached out to other contacts and discovered other homeless people had gone missing as well. Rumor had it that Eco-Trek, for whatever reason, was behind the whole thing.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“They didn’t care.” Her lip curled in disgust. “Honestly, I think they were happy to be rid of a few homeless people.”

“So, you decided to find Rowena on your own?”

“I guess I wanted to help her. But I wanted the story too.” She shrugged. “Eco-Trek representatives would come around Saipan from time to time, looking for workers. It took a bunch of applications and interviews, but they finally hired me.”

“To do what?”

“Monitor real-time environmental data, mostly. Temperatures, humidity, and plenty of other stuff. It would come in from hundreds of feeds.”

“So, Simona really is conducting weather experiments?”

“Yes. But not the way you think.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “At first, I knew nothing. Everything was very compartmentalized. But I spent my free time snooping around, looking for Rowena.”

“Did you find her?”

Carrie shook her head. “No, but I heard rumors about a strange graveyard near Pagan Bay. I was friends with some of the guards and I’d overhear them talking about it. So, I snuck outside the station to look for it.” She sighed. “That’s when I saw the Pagan Nation group come under fire.”

The more I learned about Simona and Eco-Trek, the more questions I encountered. “Why would Eco-Trek kidnap homeless people?” I asked.

“I never found out. But I discovered something else before I became an outcast. One day, I managed to sneak into a separate computer bank. The screens consisted of these rotating three-dimensional globes. Long dotted lines crisscrossed them, curling in all directions. But they all originated from Pagan.”

“Plane routes?”

She nodded. “What surprised me was the scope of the flights. They went everywhere, all over the world. They didn’t land to refuel. They just flew out and returned. Many of them didn’t even fly over land. They just cruised across the ocean before circling back again.”

“So what?”

“So, I did more digging. I started going places I wasn’t supposed to go, seeing things I wasn’t supposed to see.”

“Like what?”

“The truth. Or at least part of it.” She sighed. “Apparently, the drones are top-secret U.S. military aircraft, capable of flying at extremely high altitudes. They’re dropping an aerosol mixture—internally, it’s known as CN-46—into the upper atmosphere. And not just a little of it. Simona is literally drowning the planet with the stuff.”