Revelation Day (The Fall Book 6) Page 4

  Kell ran a thumb under the seal and read the short message. The contents were no surprise even if the news came a little earlier than expected. He stuffed it in his pocket. “Tell Will I can be ready in ten days. Half that if absolutely necessary. Make sure he knows the first batch is ready to go now.”

  If this cryptic response bothered the runner, he showed it not at all. Emily, who by then was standing next to Kell, knew the score. When the young man jogged off, she threw her own towel around her neck. “Should I start planning for us to leave? We do have a fallback point if we need it.”

  Kell shook his head. “Not unless we hear bad news from Mason. I’m not running again unless there’s no other choice. Looks like vacation is over. I need to hit the lab.”

  Emily sent him off with a swat on the ass.

  When he entered the lab, now occupying most of the hangar floor, Kell was all business. “Jo, come over here. I need you.”

  Jo, who was hunched over a notebook sketching out some new design or another, hopped up and trotted to him. “What’s up, boss?”

  Kell handed her the message. “Mason made it. Our watcher saw him cross the border a few days ago. He should begin negotiations soon. If they’re going to break their word and use him as a hostage, it’ll be then. If they do, they’ll almost certainly have some kind of attack aimed at us, so we’re going to send out the first round of trainees now. Let them know, and get them set up for the trip home.”

  Jo’s body tensed at the idea of Mason being taken against his will. She was the last of her group, who were really Mason’s group, still living in the hangar. The others visited from time to time, but lived in Haven now. The Rebound attack and events surrounding it had been a sort of catalyst for new beginnings.

  Jo nodded and turned to go about her tasks, but Kell held up a hand. “Send Carlos over here, will you? I want to talk to him personally.”

  “Sure thing.”

  A minute later, Carlos appeared at Kell’s desk. He was around Kell’s age, closer to the forty side of thirty than not. He had the perpetually surprised look of a person usually so absorbed in their work that real life always took them off guard. Kell’s long-dead wife, Karen, would have described Carlos as spacey.

  “What’s up?” Carlos asked.

  Kell gestured at the chair and motioned for the other man to sit. “We just got the news. Mason made it, which means you’ll be heading back to Kennedy shortly.”

  Carlos nodded solemnly. His community was one of the furthest away from Haven in the whole of the Union, all the way down in Florida in what had once been the Kennedy Space Center. “We’re ready. I’ve talked to my people back home twice a week since I came here. We’re set to manufacture and distribute the cure at least in the volume we make it in here. And that’s just to start.”

  Kell felt a little trill of relief run through his muscles as they loosened from a tension he didn’t realize they carried. “And you’re confident you can teach others?”

  Carlos shrugged nervously. “If they have the background and brain for it, I think I can. But I guess the real question is whether or not you think I can.”

  “I do,” Kell said, which was true. Carlos was the brightest of his students, though the word implied a relationship that wasn’t exactly accurate. The guy had a master’s in organic chemistry. Showing him how to use a base sample of the cure strain of Chimera to make more was not at all difficult. His education overlapped enough that Kell had long since started using Carlos as a resource rather than treat him like a student.

  Rather than look pleased at this statement, a worried look crossed Carlos’s face. “You’re planning something. You’ve been crazy pushy about making sure Kennedy is ready as a backup. Which is even scarier when I think about how far away it is. We have enough oil being pumped and fuel being refined across the Union to make shipping it possible, but it won’t be easy. Why are you so dead set on having us as a backup for this place?”

  Kell shook his head and waved a hand at the other students working on the various stages of manufacturing the cure across the lab. “Every one of them is just like you, man. A seed. When they get home, they’ll start pumping out the cure, too. If I could magically get them the resources Kennedy has, I would. Florida is an important fallback for the whole Union if something really bad happens, like another war. I just want to make sure we’re ready if something happens to me.”

  Carlos looked at him for a long few seconds before nodding. He didn’t look convinced in the slightest. “Okay, man. Sure. You just take care, all right?”

  Kell smiled. “Of course I will.”

  Which was true enough, if still a lie of omission. If Mason’s predictions were true, and they usually fell into some kind of broad accuracy, the folks at Rebound would have one stipulation to any lasting peace they’d demand absolutely.

  They would want Kell himself. Oh, they’d dress it up as having him visit and spend a month or two getting their own scientists up to speed. Then something would happen. A trumped-up charge, maybe, perhaps a leak to their people painting Kell as the man responsible for the apocalypse even though it was stolen and bastardized copies of his work which had done the deed. Mason had a lot of experience dealing with nation states and the behavior of rulers of every stripe. Kell was inclined to believe any visit on his part would become a permanent stay through some pretext or another.

  Yet he was still going to go.

  He had never seen himself as vital beyond the knowledge of how Chimera worked. Once a solution was created, even if it wasn’t a true cure, his value rested in disseminating that information as far and wide as humanly possible. That task was done. It wasn’t the life’s work he dreamed of as a young man, and the cure was a pebble of good beside the mountain of evil his creation had done, but the fact was unavoidable.

  He was no longer a priceless asset. The knowledge in his head was all written down and saved on disk, copies spread far and wide. He had no desire to be taken captive and certainly none to be enslaved by men who wanted to use his mind and talents for their own aims. But Rebound was strong and growing stronger. They had yet to use even a fraction of their arsenal against the Union and other groups of survivors. If Kell going could prevent or even slow such an eventuality, he would. Full stop.

  Carlos sighed. “It’s a little scary, you know? Thinking of going home and being in charge of this thing?”

  Kell laughed. “I wouldn’t know. I just pull the lever when Emily tells me to, man. She runs everything.”

  Carlos winked at him. “At least I won’t have to worry about managing all the other shit. The teams going out and putting up new defenses, clearing out all the new territory. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to seeing what the cure can do for us and expanding Kennedy. I just think the lab is about the limit of what I can run.”

  “Sure,” Kell said. “I get it. That was never my thing, either. People have this weird idea that being the smart guy means you always know the right thing to do. I always feel like my poor life choices speak volumes about why that isn’t true.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Carlos excused himself to go start putting together everything he’d need for the trip home. Kell felt an unexpected pang of loss as the other man walked away. They weren’t close, but it struck him that the number of times he’d speak to Carlos face to face grew smaller. Soon he would be on his way home, and Kell was unlikely to ever make the trip to Kennedy.

  He briefly considered seeing if Emily was free. Probably she wasn’t super busy yet, and would be willing to sit and talk with him. Strange how even a conversation Kell expected to have could make him oddly lonely, knowing it was the first step to emptying the lab of the people he’d grown accustomed to having around.

  In the end he didn’t call for Emily or anyone else. Other people were handling the details of this phase of the process, the last phase. He’d focus on finishing up the final bits of education with those who still needed it and let the managers manage. Re
ally what he wanted to do was needlessly hash out his reasoning for choosing to go to New America if asked, but that urge was habit more than need. He’d spent months defaulting to that discussion any time he thought about it. Similar to how some obsessive compulsive people repeated a behavior based on a phobia. The human brain did weird things when it wanted to work out a problem it was having trouble with.

  So Kell ignored that urge. Everyone knew the score. They were long past the days when secrets were the bread and butter of keeping him safe. He knew the sudden nervous tension riding the back of his neck like a tiny demon was a product of fear, the fear a product of his choice. He’d do what he had to in order to avoid war. If that meant spending the days or weeks waiting to see if Mason was right with a burning stomach and tension headaches, so be it.

  Kell was done letting people die if he could do anything to stop it.

  Emily

  Haven was enormous, geographically speaking. The walls added to the original structure extended in every direction from those central stone barriers. Encompassed within it were a lot of houses, two school buildings, and a strip of big box stores. Though to be fair, the stores themselves were outside the wall, with only a protected road connecting them to the community proper.

  Yet there was still a need for remote facilities. The hangar was one. Space could have been found inside Haven, but Emily knew all too well how easy it would be for Rebound infiltrators to use that against them. A closed, separate system was better. The control center for the cell net was another, which was where Emily found herself a few hours after the news about Mason came in.

  The building itself was an old fire house about a mile and a half down the road Haven sat on. A handful of small, homemade wind turbines surrounded it along with a scattering of solar panels. The portable emergency satellite cell towers they used to connect digitally with other settlements were critical, which was why they had to be kept off site. The fire house was kept under heavy guard at all times, which made it nearly impossible to sabotage.

  “Anything?” Emily asked the technician, who was staring at the same blank screen she was.

  “Clearly not,” the technician, who was either Gary or Larry according to Emily’s shoddy memory for names, said. “We’re still a little early. And it’s not like check-ins are easy for them.”

  The scheduled burst came a full hour and a half late, but the instant the coded message filled the screen, Emily’s heart felt a hundred pounds lighter. She waited as Gary/Larry ran the cipher and gave her the message.

  The leadership at Rebound required Mason to come alone. And technically, he had. His trek from Haven to their little kingdom in North Carolina was taken with only a horse as company. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would be watched off and on the entire way, so playing it straight was the only option.

  Which was why they’d sent advance teams months ago. One of those teams hid one of the portable towers a good distance outside of New America, with a rotating member of the team checking in regularly.

  “Looks like good news,” the technician said. “Things are going well for them.”

  Emily gave him a gentle punch in the shoulder. “You better knock on wood, Gary.”

  “Barry,” the guy said. “For the hundredth time, lady.”

  “Now you’re just making shit up,” Emily said. She waved the paper. “Thanks for this. Get in touch with me if there are any follow-ups. And let Will know.”

  Barry’s eyebrows knitted together. “Aren’t you going to tell him? I don’t mind or anything, but relaying status updates is usually your thing.”

  Emily tucked the message into her pocket. “I would, but I’ve got shit to do. Your shift is over in like half an hour. Just stop by his office and drop it off.”

  Barry shrugged. “Okay. Have fun, I guess.”

  Her next stop was deeper toward the more dangerous parts of town. She thought of everything east of Highway 127 as wild, even though parts of it were well taken care of, even cultivated. Yet her destination was in an area where neither descriptor applied, even by the most generous standards. To get to the house on the cliff overlooking downtown, Emily had to drive down what was once a road, now barely more than a narrow path through verdant overgrowth and shattered blacktop.

  Getting there wasn’t precisely hard, but it was scary. She was confident enough in herself to admit that much. The dense foliage brought on by the lack of human tending could hide any number of threats, and her current mood was not a kind one toward dangerous things.

  She parked and walked through the open front door, a thing so rare outside the safety of walls that it was functionally alien behavior to her. “Anyone here?”

  “You know I am,” came the instant reply, the voice echoing from the back of the house. “Come on in.”

  The front door could sit open because the rear was impenetrable. Every interior door was replaced with a heavy steel number, the frames reinforced. Rough steel mesh covered the walls. She let herself through one of the security doors and greeted the guard standing a few feet away from the steel cage which turned the fancy dining room into a small prison.

  “Hello, Danielle,” Emily said to the prisoner sitting behind the bars. “You might be getting out of here soon.”

  Danielle was reading a book, seemingly uninterested in her surroundings until that moment. She had a muscular frame beneath light brown skin. Her curly hair was pulled back in a tight knot. Large chestnut eyes rose and studied Emily. “This is a new tactic. It’s not going to work.”

  Emily shook her head. “Not a trick. We just got word that our man made it to your bosses. Since part of the agreement was not to send spies—spies like you—I think we’ll be able to trade you back to them for a concession or two.”

  Danielle shook her head ruefully and put the book down. She rotated to let her bare feet rest on the floor, elbows on her knees. The guard, a woman as all the guards here were, might as well not have existed. “You really think they give a shit about me?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said with total honesty. “But they trusted you enough to send you all this way just to watch us, which says a lot about your abilities. You’re a good asset to have, but you know that already. It’s why I’ve been trying to recruit you for months.”

  What Emily didn’t say was what both of them knew, which was that Haven and the Union at large had their own spies inside New America. Not in the Rebound complex proper. Paranoia and strict protocol made that impossible, but they’d salted the communities across the small nation with as many people as possible. Danielle simply had the bad fortune of being caught while doing the same in Haven.

  A year before, Emily might have felt a little bad about keeping a survivor prisoner. There might have been some guilt over breaking her word and embedding operatives inside a community they were trying to work with peacefully.

  That was a different Emily. A version of her who hadn’t watched another home burned to the ground and her friends die. One whose life experiences didn’t mean enduring even more empathetic pain from people she loved.

  Old Emily would still have done what was needed, regardless of cost. She’d have felt shitty about it.

  New Emily felt no guilt at all.

  The key difference between the world as it was and the world Emily now lived in was planning. Modern convenience, entrenched political and social structures, and numerous other benefits of existing civilization gave the majority of people the chance to adopt a laissez-faire attitude toward both daily life and long-term goals. It was no accident that most successful communities of survivors were those who planned ahead as far as they were able.

  Will Price, soldier and history student and voracious consumer of fantasy novels of every stripe, had a tremendous volume of theory to draw on for his own plans. When Mason reappeared with Emily and Kell’s group and took roost in Haven, Will gave him the role of spymaster. Emily thought it antiquated bordering on absurd for the five minutes it took Will to decide she woul
d be Mason’s backup.

  In reality, it was more of a partnership. Mason had the experience needed to understand the more complex actions and politics of people in large groups. He knew how to infiltrate and destabilize if necessary. Emily was the technocrat. Her mind was able to absorb and integrate huge amounts of information, but also apply it to what she already knew. One of her old jobs was at an insurance firm, and she had been a living encyclopedia of what was in the various policies, how much they cost, comparative coverage, and a host of other bits of data.

  So yes, Mason knew the operational methods, but Emily managed all the details. She knew all the names, what they needed, how to get it.

  In a world where planning is next to godliness, she was one of the best.

  “How do you do it?” said a familiar female voice behind Emily. The sound of it sent a tremor down her spine.

  “Kate,” Emily said. “Didn’t expect you here.”

  Not that many people would have showed up at this particular location. Of the thousands in Haven and the tens of thousands across the Union, only five people had access to it. The space was large, better than a hundred feet on a side. Finding a secure location to store intelligence and strategies wasn’t easy even after the end of the world.

  “Will got your message and couldn’t get away to check in with you,” Kate said. “He sent me so I could catch him up later.”

  Other than the fact that the room was heavily reinforced concrete sitting beneath an old building, the place looked like an office. Ignore the thick steel door and the tables strewn with papers and the maps on the walls could have made it a travel agency. This was where Emily put together every whisper and detailed every move.

  Emily added the message from earlier to the pile stacked neatly on the table. “Nothing new to report. No changes.”

  Kate studied her with hawkish eyes. Emily knew the woman saw more than most. As the head of the scouts, she had to be observant. Calculating. “You know, I’ve never understood why you’re so uncomfortable around me.”