Split second, p.33
Split Second, page 33
“Thanks,” said Wexler from inside the chamber. “I’ll never forget this.”
Blake nodded, almost imperceptibly.
The door to the room burst open and scores of men shot through. Dozens of bullets drilled into Blake’s body.
But as he was falling to his death, in a last monumental effort of will, he kept his hand on the door handle, turning it the last rotation needed to seal the chamber.
57
Edgar Knight radiated such a delighted glow that he could have been mistaken for a lighthouse. Jenna Morrison had come through, and then some.
He decided he would never understand the mathematics involved in Wexler’s theory, but he didn’t have to. He understood the implications of general relativity without being able to solve the hideously complex mathematics that had taken Einstein so many years to master.
Wexler’s guiding ideas—at least the ideas of one particular Nathan Wexler, now tragically deceased—were beyond genius, beyond elegant. He had found a way of thinking about higher dimensions that was so out of the box that someone tripping on LSD couldn’t twist their mind into the pretzel necessary to arrive there. No wonder none of the other Wexlers, even with identical minds, had found this one extraordinary thread that allowed the rest to be unraveled.
From out of nowhere, an eardrum-shattering boom sounded and slammed into Knight’s head with tremendous force.
He nearly jumped out of his skin, feeling like he had been shot from a cannon.
The entire building shook violently.
An explosion was rocking all twenty-two stories, the concussive blast so ferocious it made even the loudest thunderclap seem tame and whisper-quiet. Knight lost his balance and slammed into a nearby wall, his heart almost bursting from the adrenaline his terrified system poured into his bloodstream.
In one instant he had been in Heaven, and the next in a disorienting Hell. It took five or six seconds after the shockwave had pulsed through the room for him to regain any clarity of thought, whatsoever, his mind having retreated into a fetal position.
“What the fuck!” shouted Knight finally as his senses returned. He noticed on a monitor that several members of security who had been guarding the penthouse had now recovered and were clamoring to get in to be sure their boss was okay.
“Lazlo, what just happened?” he said to his PDA.
“There was an explosion in the building.”
“No kidding. But where and why?”
“I am attempting to retrieve this information now.”
“You don’t need your PDA to tell you what happened,” said Jenna Morrison smugly. “I can do that for you.”
Knight had been so rattled by the explosion he had forgotten Jenna was even in the room, but he turned to her now. She had weathered the earthquake better than he had, as she had been strapped to a chair that was bolted to the floor.
And from the triumphant look on her face, she wasn’t bluffing. She knew exactly what had happened, and why. How could that be?
“Lazlo,” he said. “Tell security outside that I’m okay and to maintain watch.”
“Complying now,” said the PDA.
Knight’s prisoner now had her hands clasped together, her right index finger resting lightly on the only jewelry she was wearing, a diamond ring that Knight knew must have been given to her by Nathan Wexler. “You know what that was?” said Jenna as a smile crept slowly over her face. “That was the signal I’ve been waiting for.”
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“What’s going on is that you’re fucked!” she hissed, her eyes wild with hatred. “You may be the Faraday of our generation, but Cargill just played you for a chump. He orchestrated all of this.”
“Impossible.”
“Really? Why? Because you had a trusted mole inside, Brian Hamilton? Cargill knew you had a mole. He tricked you into revealing Hamilton’s identity before he even had us in his custody.”
“How?”
“He sent eight of his most trusted men a text, telling them he had found me and Aaron, and giving our location. And then telling them that the operation to get us wouldn’t go forward for several hours.”
Knight had fully recovered from the blast, but he still didn’t understand where she was going with this.
Jenna saw that he hadn’t caught on, and shook her head as though she pitied him. “Are you sure you’re smart enough to survive your own eugenics program?” she said derisively. “The eight men each received the same text,” she explained, “except for one detail. Each was given a different location for us.”
Knight finally connected the dots, and he barely managed to stifle a scream.
Cargill had outplayed him, at least in this case. Cargill knew that if one of the eight men were working with Knight, they couldn’t help but take this bait. The mole would tell Knight immediately that Cargill had found the two people Knight most wanted, and he would scramble a team out to the location given, so he could beat Cargill to the punch.
Cargill had unlimited authority and could direct law enforcement, military, and government agents at will to be his eyes and ears in each of the eight locations. When Knight’s team was spied arriving at one of them, and beginning surveillance activities in preparation for an attack, Cargill would know who his mole was: whichever of the eight men had been texted that particular location.
In hindsight it made perfect sense. It explained why Cargill sent this text so far in advance of the planned op, and why he had then sent a second text, explaining that Blake had lied about his location and aborting the op.
“I can tell you’re beginning to catch on,” said Jenna. “As I told you, Cargill had ferreted out Hamilton early on. But he didn’t let on, so he could feed him false information. Manipulate him. The problem was that everyone knew there was a mole, and it would be suspicious if Cargill suddenly pretended to trust Hamilton, or any on his team. So he had to find a way to pretend he had found the mole and was fat, happy, and clueless again. He had to find a justification for trusting Hamilton implicitly again. If not, if he had just begun confiding in Hamilton, you would have been suspicious, and might have guessed your man inside was being played.”
Knight’s lip curled up into a snarl. “So the man outing himself during the polygraph testing, the one saying he sympathized with my views, was just acting,” he said, “wasn’t he? His actions and the gun battle were all staged beforehand.”
Jenna nodded.
As angry as he was at being manipulated, he couldn’t help but admire his old friend’s ingenuity. The polygraph test was a double ruse, and it was nothing short of inspired. It hadn’t been just good fortune that another man had taken the fall for Hamilton, freeing him to operate within Q5 once again.
“Blake and I signed on with Cargill after our second day with him,” continued Jenna. “The first thing he had us do was delete Nathan’s file from the cloud, by the way. Yesterday, after we had perfected our plan to beat you, Cargill briefed four of his men, including Hamilton, which he knew was the same as briefing you. He told them I still wasn’t sure I would join. That I had insisted on being relocated. And making it clear that the file in the cloud still existed. Making sure you thought the bait was still on the hook.”
She shook her head in contempt. “You didn’t think this all played into your hands just a bit too easily?”
“So you expected to be captured,” said Knight. “So what? Now you’re here. But how has this helped you?” he asked, realizing as he did that he was almost afraid of the answer. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that there were more layers yet to come, which he was failing to see. The massive explosion was clear evidence of this.
Jenna didn’t reply. She remained motionless, her hands still folded together.
Another thought occurred to Knight. “Wait a minute,” he said. “If Cargill was the puppet master here, he didn’t do a very good job of it. Because I know for certain he’s dead, along with a number of his key people.”
“Come on, Edgar,” said Jenna, mocking his earlier comments to her. “You are so much smarter than that.”
Knight shook his head in disbelief. They were all duplicates?
Impossible. But what else could she mean?
“Lee Cargill would never allow a human to be sent back through time,” insisted Knight. “He would never allow human duplication. He had a bug up his ass about this the size of a dog. It was his fucking Prime Directive. I refuse to believe it.”
“Believe it,” snapped Jenna. “To stop you, he was willing to make an exception. And he’d still never allow two copies of the same person to coexist, but he knew you’d kill everyone but me and Aaron. He and the men involved all volunteered to be duplicated, beginning with Chris Entwistle, the man who pretended to be the out-of-control Knight sympathizer during the polygraph test. They all volunteered to be kamikazes, knowing that one version of themselves would be killed, but their unique consciousness would live on. Joe Allen had strict instructions to execute any of these duplicates you failed to kill.”
Knight nodded. Knowing Cargill, this made sense. He would allow duplication as a last resort, but only if he was sure the duplicates would have very short life spans. “Okay,” he said, “I believe you. But I still don’t see his end game.”
“Of course you don’t. So let me educate you. Aaron Blake and I knew we would never be safe as long as you were alive. More importantly, the world could never be safe. So I agreed to be the bait. To sacrifice myself to get to you. Aaron volunteered as well. All I asked was that before we completed the mission, we be allowed to do everything humanly possible to try to save Nathan.”
“You knew I had duplicates of him?”
“Not for sure, but we thought it was likely. Dan Walsh was shocked when he learned Nathan had been killed. After Nathan’s death, he had received an e-mail answer to a scientific question he thought only Nathan could have provided. It occurred to us when we learned the full truth about time travel, about human duplication, that maybe Nathan had sent the e-mail after all. Maybe you had made a duplicate of him and put him up to it. Cargill thought this was likely, given how much time you spent fantasizing about copying geniuses when you were with Q5.”
“How did you know I’d bring Nathan into the picture once I had you?”
“We didn’t. That was just lucky. My plan was to offer to give you the file you wanted if you let Aaron go and gave him a thirty-minute head start. He would have tried to locate Nathan from there. Cargill assured me you would take me up on this offer. He was sure you wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to get the file and test your security. By bringing Nathan here, you made it easier for us.”
“If you expected him to be alive, how were you able to weep so convincingly when you saw him?”
“Wow, you really are devoid of emotions and empathy. I thought he was still alive, but I wasn’t sure. And I had seen him killed in front of me. Seeing the man I love alive once again was incredibly emotionally charged. The tears were real.”
Jenna paused. “As good as Aaron is,” she continued, an awed look now on her face, “I thought the chances that he would succeed were one or two percent, at best. But he did it!” she added, beaming. “He is absolutely incredible.”
Knight had been caught up in Jenna’s narrative like it was nothing more than a fascinating puzzle, but this last brought him back to reality in a hurry. Because it wasn’t just a puzzle. Somehow it had impacted him, and could well do so again.
But how? Even if Blake and Wexler had managed to cause an explosion somewhere in the building, they still had no prayer of escaping from the island.
Knight gasped as the truth hit him like a pile driver.
“Cargill found a way to extend time travel beyond forty-five microseconds,” said Knight. “Didn’t he? Q5 used Wexler’s theory, and in a week they were able to do what I’ve spent years working toward.”
“That’s right,” said Jenna. “But there’s more. We’re just getting to the good part. Cargill guessed your security setup exactly. You two spent dozens of hours over the years discussing security issues, after all. He knew exactly how you would set up cell and Internet coverage. So all Aaron had to do was get to a computer and download a file from cyberspace. One that seemed like gibberish but didn’t require a password, so he could get it passively.”
Knight felt like vomiting. He had never changed out Cargill’s password. So Cargill’s people could have easily written a program to take control of any one of his devices and teleport Wexler and Blake to safety.
“How did Blake know where my time travel units were located?”
“He didn’t. He hoped Nathan would know where one was. If not, Aaron made sure to conceal a dark energy sensor in his left shoe before our road trip, when we knew Hamilton would capture us. One that Cargill assured us could detect a device within a mile or two. I have no idea if he needed to use it or not.”
Jenna paused. “We wanted to give Aaron as much time as possible to succeed, so we made sure we restored Nathan’s actual file to the cloud to mesmerize and distract you. Make sure you weren’t on your toes.”
“What makes you so sure he succeeded?”
“The explosion was the signal. It could only be triggered if the teleportation was a success. Aaron had this ready to go also. We used a little explosive that you actually brought to our attention: octa-nitro-cubane. Ring a bell? The most explosive non-nuclear substance known to science, but impossible to make without a time machine.”
Knight saw it all now. Cargill, Jenna, and Blake had played their hand masterfully. And he had no doubt that what he had felt was octa-nitro-cubane in its full glory. It must have come from the ground floor, which housed the only time travel device in the building.
He glared at Jenna in contempt. “Cargill’s plan may have been flawless, and it will set me back, but he still can’t win. I’m sure that the teleported version of Nathan Wexler is telling him where I am, even as we speak. But what Cargill doesn’t know is that I’ve copied the best weapons experts on the planet as well. Half of this building houses my Brain Trust duplicates, and all three buildings surrounding us. And they’ve made breakthroughs the US military can only dream about. This island has anti-plane and anti-missile capabilities more impressive than those of any country on Earth. So Cargill’s first attack wave will fail. And I have the means to escape into the night long before he even begins to breach our defenses.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” said Jenna scathingly. “You poor psychopathic asshole.” She shook her head. “Here’s the thing, genius, Blake and I are duplicates also. The goal was to get Nathan out, if possible, and destroy you. We signed on for a one-way mission.”
For the first time, Knight considered why Jenna had kept her index finger on top of her diamond ring since this conversation had begun. He had thought it was a nervous habit, but now he knew better. It wasn’t a ring Nathan Wexler had given her, after all.
His eyes widened in horror.
“It’s finally dawning on you, isn’t it?” said Jenna. “You think the explosion Aaron triggered was epic? Well, I’m carrying a hundred times as much explosive. I push down hard on this diamond and enough octa-nitro-cubane is triggered to flatten this building and at least the three key buildings around it, which house your Brain Trust.”
“But you’ll die also,” said Knight, using the only card he had left. “Horribly. Your body torn to shreds. Are you really prepared for that? Another Jenna may get to live, but it’s you who takes the full brunt of the explosion. You who gets vaporized. It won’t hurt any less because there’s another of you inside Cheyenne Mountain.”
Tears began streaming down Jenna’s face. “I know,” she said. “And I am terrified. I don’t want to die. I’m not a hero.”
“So don’t do it,” pleaded Knight. “You said yourself I might be right.”
“I only said that to get you to agree to give Aaron and Nathan a head start.”
“The world is a fucked up place. The inmates have taken over the asylum. You know it’s true. I’m the only person who can save humanity from itself.”
“You might be right,” whispered Jenna, now sobbing uncontrollably, fear and dread written all over her face. “But let’s hope like hell you aren’t.”
And with that she pushed down hard on her diamond, and a fireball was created that briefly turned the center of the island into the center of the sun, sending shockwaves for dozens of miles in all directions.
Everyone in all four central buildings was vaporized instantly, save for a doctor named Susan Schlesinger who had just left the island, deciding to listen to the advice of a man who had threatened to kill her repeatedly, but whose decency somehow still managed to shine through.
58
Nathan Wexler suddenly found himself in the most desolate place he had ever been. An ocean of desert receded into the horizon on all sides, and he couldn’t find a single shred of evidence that humanity had ever existed. Judging only by his surroundings, he could well have been thrust back millions of years in time rather than the just the blink of an eye.
One moment he had been inside the chamber of one of Edgar Knight’s time machines, and the next he was here.
He tried not to think of the other version of himself still standing in the chamber, the device now shut down by his transmitter, while armed mercenaries out for blood swarmed into the room like angry wasps.
And he especially tried not to think of Aaron Blake. Whoever he was, the man was absolutely amazing. Creative, bold, and all but unstoppable. Blake’s shoulder and leg had been shredded, and yet he had managed to send Wexler off somehow, especially remarkable since Wexler had witnessed a torrent of bullets ripping through the man’s body as he turned the crank the last quarter revolution to seal the door.
He checked the phone Blake had given him. Sure enough, despite the desolation surrounding him, the wireless signal was strong. God bless America, he thought happily, placing an immediate call to Lee Cargill as he had been instructed.
