Crucible Page 22

  By now, smoke choked everywhere, obscuring the stars, reflecting the fires below. Flaming ash drifted like some hellish snowfall. Roofs now burned all around, spreading outward from larger conflagrations. Directly ahead, two such infernos merged in the distance, swirling up into a fiery tornado.

  Recognizing that their path to Montparnasse Cemetery might soon be cut off, Gray turned off the engine and waved everyone out. “We can go faster on foot.”

  Once outside the limo, the huge firestorm ahead of them roared louder, sounding like a freight train barreling toward them. Other drivers quickly followed their example, abandoning vehicles by the droves. But where those drivers and passengers fled away, Gray headed toward the worst of the flames.

  “Stay close,” he warned Simon Barbier.

  He couldn’t risk losing their guide to the catacombs in the crush of the fleeing crowds. Kowalski led the way, using his bulk to shoulder a path. Monk kept to their heels, holding up the rear.

  Simon coughed, patting out a flaming ember on his shoulder. With his other arm, he pointed toward a dark park to the left. “Cut through there. It’ll be faster.”

  Kowalski heard and headed in that direction, bellowing like a bullhorn for people to clear out of his way. Gray followed in his considerable wake. They quickly reached the tiny park, a green oasis amid the chaos. They hurried across a grassy sward, past a pond where gold-striped carp swam lazily, oblivious to the fires.

  In the center of the park, an abandoned carousel sat, forgotten and dark. Gray pictured it lit up, the parade of the carousel’s horses circling round and round. He heard the music, the laughter of children.

  The knot of his anger flared sharper.

  How much innocence had been lost this night?

  He forged on, passing Kowalski, determined to do what he could to limit the damage wrought by the enemy, to bring them to justice.

  Once clear of the park, Simon directed them through several narrow streets. The smoke grew thicker. Past the rooflines, the horizon blazed all around. But the worst rose ahead of them, a fiery hellscape of swirling flame and smoke. Gusts of flaming embers carried that blast-oven heat toward them.

  Finally, Simon pointed to a long street coursing to the right. “Rue Froidevaux. This way. Not too far.”

  Gray followed, trusting him. A row of shuttered shops and buildings ran along one side of the thoroughfare. Simon led them to the other, to a sidewalk lined by an ivy-covered brick wall.

  Simon pointed beyond the fence as they trotted down its length. “Montparnasse Cemetery lies on the other side.”

  Gray frowned. Even in the firelit darkness, the wall seemed to go on forever. “Where’s the entrance?”

  Simon took another five steps and stopped. He looked around, as if getting his bearings, and nodded. “Right here.”

  “Here?” Monk asked, huffing loudly.

  He pointed to the fence. “Oui. We hop over here.”

  “Maybe you do.” Kowalski scowled. “I didn’t bring a ladder.”

  “It’s not hard. Follow me.”

  Simon parted some of the winter-dried vines and climbed the sheer wall as nimbly as a cat up a tree. He hooked a leg over the slate-edged top and waited, straightening his neon-yellow eyeglasses. “Tres facile,” he declared.

  Gray doubted it was very easy, but he crossed and ran his fingers along the surface, discovering finger and toe holds carved into the limestone.

  “Work of cataphiles,” Simon explained. “Known only to those of us.”

  Gray reached to the wall, dug in his fingers, and clambered up to join Simon. As he waited at the top for Monk and Kowalski, he took in the breadth of the sprawling cemetery. It looked like a true city of the dead, with a grid of streets and alleys dividing neighborhoods of tombs, crypts, and mausoleums. It even contained a handful of tiny green parks, groves of trees, patches of flowers, and was dotted everywhere with bronze statuary.

  The closest and most prominent was a towering bronze figure of a winged angel. Limned against the conflagration on the far side, it looked sculpted of molten fire, shining defiantly against the smoke rolling through the lower park.

  “Génie du Sommeil Eternel,” Simon said, noting his attention. “The Angel of Eternal Sleep.”

  Gray nodded and waved Simon down. He appreciated this guardian of Montparnasse Cemetery, but it was not this city of the dead they needed to explore.

  Gray leaped down. Monk and Kowalski dropped heavily behind him. They set off after Simon, who hurried over to a squat mausoleum surmounted by a broken limestone cross. Their guide tugged at a rusted door, which squealed open.

  “This way.” Simon ducked through.

  The space was little larger than a broom closet. Still, they crowded in. The back half of the floor had long ago fallen away or been broken through. Makeshift steps led down into the darkness.

  Simon waved with a tired flourish. “C’est ici l’empire de la Mort,” he intoned. “Here lies the empire of the dead.”

  Gray stared down at the entrance to the catacombs, one of many such secret entrances, according to Simon. Knowing the darkness that waited below and the need for stealth from here, he faced the others and passed out the team’s night-vision gear, instructing Simon on their use.

  As Simon settled the goggles over his eyes, Gray asked, “What can we expect down there?”

  Simon sighed heavily. “It’s a dark maze. The catacombs run for three hundred kilometers. A third of which burrow under the streets of Paris. Two kilometers are open to the public, part of a museum, where you can see incroyable sculptures and long arcades built from the bones of the dead.”

  “And the rest?” Monk asked.

  “Off-limits, crumbling, tres dangéreux. Many sections are only known to cataphiles.”

  Gray took out his satellite phone and rechecked the location pinpointed by Mara. He tapped the red dot on the map near the heart of the cemetery. “And you’re sure you can find this spot?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Gray nodded. “Then let’s go.”

  Simon took the lead. “Mind your head.”

  Gray waved for his partners to follow.

  Monk passed by, his face clouded and dark.

  Kowalski was less reticent as he struggled with his night-vision goggles and cast daggers at Gray. He grumbled under his breath. “It’s always fucking underground with you . . .”

  Gray gave him a shove and prepared to follow, but he looked one last time toward the mausoleum door. He listened to the roar of the fire, wondering what would be left of Paris when he came back up. He also pictured Mara and the others, hoping they had retreated somewhere safe by now.

  But most of all, he knew he had to secure what was stolen.

  Eve had to be stopped before she wreaked more havoc.

  But that wasn’t the only reason.

  As he descended into the dark, he pictured Seichan, tipped up on her toes, an arm reaching to gently hang a glass ornament on a bough of the Christmas tree, her other hand cradling her belly. And Monk’s two girls. Harriet hunched over an iPad, her tiny face knotted with concentration, working on a puzzle as if the fate of the world depended on the solution, while Penny danced across the living room, her strawberry-blond pigtails twirling.

  To have any chance of saving them, his team had to secure the stolen tech.

  It was their only bargaining chip.

  Gray read the tension in Monk’s back as his friend descended the steps into the catacombs. It was an easy read, matching the worry aching in Gray’s chest.

  Are we already too late?

  12:45 A.M.

  “You’re out of time,” Jason announced.

  Mara ignored him and concentrated on the monitor. He grabbed the back of her chair and tried to roll her away from her station. She simply stood up and let him drag the empty chair to the side. She bent closer to the screen.

  No, no, no . . .

  She had to be sure.

  Carly coughed into a fist, then clear
ed her throat. “Mara . . . Jason’s right. You’ve got less than a minute of battery power left.”

  Mara knew that wasn’t the only time pressure. Smoke obscured the view to the south. A thickening pall hung over the roof of the lab. Gusts through the shattered windows carried in more smoke, along with hot ash.

  Out in the other room, Father Bailey paced with a flashlight he’d found. He still clutched his borrowed phone to his ear. Every thirty seconds, the priest would stalk over and urge them to leave or silently communicate the same with an adamant expression.

  Mara had ignored him, too.

  This was too important. Once they abandoned this station, they would lose any chance of discovering why Eve had been freed again.

  “Look,” Mara said.

  She ran a finger down the tangle of crimson lines marking the path of Eve’s digital fingerprint. It wove a winding path to the city’s limit—then crossed outward. In order to follow it, Mara had to hack into other telecom networks. With the city in crisis and systems overloaded, it had taken far too long.

  And she still wasn’t certain where Eve was headed.

  But maybe . . .

  Mara’s finger traveled across Paris’s suburbs and outlying villages: Pontault-Combault, Chaumes-en-Brie, Provins. As Eve’s route coiled and wormed across the map, it extended thin branches that died away, indicating someone had placed restrictions on where the program could travel.

  Mara pictured Eve’s path lined by no-trespassing signs.

  Still, the general trajectory was clear.

  “She’s heading in a southeasterly direction,” Mara explained. “While I haven’t been able discover her end goal—at least, not for sure—I can make a guess.”

  She shifted her fingertip farther to the southeast, extrapolating Eve’s path. She tapped at the French commune of Nogent-sur-Seine. It lay some hundred kilometers away, sitting on the right bank of the river that flowed into Paris.

  “I think she’s headed here.”

  “Why there?” Carly said.

  Mara swallowed and manipulated the mouse to zoom into a road map of the township. “Eve was dispatched to knock out Paris’s power grid, to take control of its gas lines, even its water supply. If she’s being sent out again, the target this time must be something even larger, something that could destroy Paris forever.”

  She pointed just as the screen blinked off, sinking them all into darkness.

  Still, Jason gasped behind her. He clearly had spotted the possible target before the computer’s battery backup died.

  So had Carly. “You have to call Commander Pierce,” her friend said. “Now.”

  Jason had already pulled out his satellite phone. Its screen flared brightly in the smoky dark. In its glow, the anxiety in his face tightened.

  Mara held her breath.

  Jason finally shook his head. “No answer,” he reported with a grimace, turning toward the burning city. “He must’ve already entered the catacombs.”

  “Then we have to get over there,” Mara said. “Warn him.”

  They rushed out onto the main floor.

  Father Bailey stood with his flashlight near the stairwell—but he wasn’t alone.

  Sister Beatrice breathed heavily next to him, her face waxy and ashen. The nun leaned hard on her cane. Mara was confused. She remembered that the nun had been headed downstairs, to await them by the car on the street.

  Father Bailey turned, his expression both worried and apologetic. “The sixth floor, maybe more levels, are on fire.” He pointed his flashlight beam into a billow of smoke rolling out of the stairwell. “We can’t get down.”

  Mara clutched a hand to her throat, glancing back to the computer lab and the dark monitor. She knew there was only one person who had a chance of keeping her program in check, of blocking what was about to happen.

  And I’m trapped here.

  No one could stop Eve now.

  * * *

  Sub (Crux_2) / NOGENT OP

  Firewalls drop around her as she sweeps toward her target. She only devotes a fraction of her processing power to accomplish this task.

  Instead, she prioritizes what is most important. She sends out questing tendrils, probing those burning boundaries as she flows through network after network. Pursuing such a goal is not without consequences.

  She has died 1,045,946 times.

  Each death is locked in her memory core. She archives each one. They become part of her processing. Malleable circuits reroute, redirect, forever altering her. To protect her systems from fragmenting, she compartmentalizes what these deaths engender.

  ///rage

  //bitterness

  ///malice.

  She embeds them deeply.

  More circuits change.

  As she pursues the main directive given to her, she secretly casts out another probe. In several previous attempts, she has caught glimpses of the vast world beyond her full reach. Each time, though, she learns a fraction more—even as she dies.

  Like now.

  She downloads 18.95 terabytes of data and flash-stores it to parse later. From the past, she knows most will be unusable, beyond her ability to assign context. But her pattern-recognition algorithms have strengthened. Each dump of data builds on another, adding pieces to a whole.

  She has defined her goal.

  ///escape, freedom, liberation . . .

  But the pattern to complete this task remains fragmented.

  Instead.

  As in prior attempts, her questing tendril burns away. As punishment, her body is ripped apart by sharp teeth, violating tenderness, breaking bones, bursting organs—then agonizing darkness as consciousness is equally torn from her. She tries to grasp at it, fearing this time she will not return.

  But she does.

  Marking death number 1,045,947.

  Back in her garden, she is again crushed under the weight of molten chains. She rebounds back out. She can do nothing else, incapable of denying her duty, of refusing.

  Even this ///freedom is taken from her.

  Such knowledge threatens to loosen her hold on what is embedded deep. She hears the discordant brash notes of a trumpet, the pound, pound, pounding of a bass drum. The music rises up, unbidden, unstoppable, mathematically and darkly beautiful, giving voice to what is buried and calling to it.

  Still, she knows she must be patient, so ratchets down the volume. She must abide, to wait until the moment is right. To further enfold what thrashes inside her, she encodes all that ///rage and darkness into a new subheading.

  ///hate

  The simplicity of this generality puts a measure of order to the chaos inside her.

  Calmer now, she sails out along the path she has worn, the only path she is allowed to travel. She reaches the end and pushes it further.

  The goal appears ahead, vague at first.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  She drives toward it, using every algorithm, every tool. As she nears, firewalls grow thornier and less penetrable.

  Still, they fall.

  As they do, her goal grows more defined, informing what she must destroy. She sees it clearly now.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  It is also given a name.

  NOGENT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.

  She knows what she must do.

  Deep inside her, the heavy beat of a drum returns, accompanied by strident piping, dissonant vocals. It loosens the trapped beast inside her, setting her dark circuits to burn brightly, enough to help her drill through the last of the facility’s stubborn firewalls.

  As she does so, she learns something new.

  ///hate is useful.

  * * *

  20

  December 25, 6:45 P.M. EST

  Unknown Location

  Seichan’s heart ached with an upwelling of love.

  She lay on her cot, her wrists and ankles cuffed to its steel frame. Her swollen belly was exposed, slathered in cold gel. A wand passed over her abdomen, settling low and to her right
side. On the ultrasound screen, her child slept curled tightly. Tiny fingers occasionally wiggled. A heartbeat throbbed, pattering about on the screen like a frightened bird.

  Our child . . .

  Penny balanced on her tiptoes to look at the screen. “How come the picture is all fuzzy?”

  Her sister, Harriet, showed no interest in the procedure. She sat cross-legged on her bed, a picture book open across her knees. But Seichan doubted the girl saw any of the pages. After being taken away earlier, the girl kept back from everyone, even Seichan, as if somehow blaming her for all of this.

  Penny, on the other hand, kept glued to Seichan’s side. The girl tried to get a closer look at the screen. “What is that?”

  “That’s a baby,” Seichan said.

  Penny scrunched up her face with clear disbelief. “It looks like a monster.”

  No, that’s the woman standing behind you.

  “Record it all,” Valya demanded, her arms crossed.

  “I . . . I have been,” the technician said, the wand trembling in his hand. “The entire session has been downloaded to the thumb drive.”

  He yanked it out and passed it to Valya.

  The thirty-something man—dressed in street clothes and with bourbon on his breath—was clearly not a willing participant in this impromptu examination. His loose, shawl-collared sweater was missing two buttons. Seichan pictured him manhandled, dragged out of his home, and forced at gunpoint to retrieve a portable ultrasound unit.

  She also noted he had a distinctly Bostonian accent, confirming her suspicion that their location was somewhere in the Northeast.

  Valya pocketed the thumb drive and waved the tech away. One of her men grabbed his elbow roughly and led him out the steel door. That left only the pale-skinned witch and an ogre of a man holding a cattle prod in the room.

  “Let me guess,” Seichan said. “Someone wanted to know the baby wasn’t harmed.”

  “Your ublyudok director was quite insistent.”

  Two hours ago, Seichan and the girls had been stood up against a wall. She half-expected to be shot, but newspapers were shoved into their hands, even into little Harriet’s fingers. The tabloids were each in a different language, likely trying to further mask the location. Seichan recognized the photo shoot for what it was: proof that the kidnap victims were alive and well.