Fear (Gone #5)(85)

“If you trip in the dark, Brianna, it’ll be all over for you. Trip at a hundred miles an hour, hit a rock? It’ll kill you. If it doesn’t, I will.”

He still held Justin aloft.

“Let me down,” the boy cried pitifully. “Please let me down. I’m scared up here.”

“Hear that, Brianna? He’s scared. He’s scared I might let him down too fast. Ouchie.”

Brianna nodded like she was considering this. Stalling. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Stalling.

Diana saw her eyes dart to her right. Who was coming? Who was she waiting for? Brianna must have passed them on her way here. She must have chosen not to take Drake on alone and instead moved to block his path while reinforcement was on its way.

That indicated someone a bit wiser than her. Sam. Or maybe Dekka. Not Orc. Sam or Dekka, they were the only two who could help Brianna in a fight with Drake and be smart enough and carry enough influence to convince her to wait like this.

Diana dared to hope. If it was Dekka, she could stop Justin from falling. If it was Sam maybe, at long last, he would rid the universe of Whip Hand.

There came a sound.

Coming from the gloom on the ghost town’s long-forgotten main street.

Diana saw the wicked smile of triumph on Brianna’s face.

Brianna drew her machete.

And from the darkness walked—limped—a small, barefoot girl in a sundress.





OUTSIDE

“PROFESSOR STANEVICH?”

“Yes.” The voice was clipped. Annoyed. Heavily accented. “Who are you? This is a private number.”

“Professor Stanevich, listen to me, please,” Connie Temple begged. “Please. We appeared on CNN together once. You probably don’t remember. I’m one of the family members.”

A pause on the other end. She was at an ancient, graffiti-tagged pay phone outside a gas station minimart in Arroyo Grande. She couldn’t use her own cell phone for fear of betraying Darius. She hadn’t used Stanevich’s office phone number for fear that it, too, might be tapped.

“How did you get this number?” Stanevich asked again.

“The internet can be very useful. Please listen to me. I have information. I need you to explain something to me.”

Stanevich sighed heavily into the phone. “I am with my children at the Dave and the Buster. It is very noisy.” Another sigh, and sure enough, Connie could hear the sounds of video games and clattering dishes. “Tell me your information.”

“The person who gave me this information is in very serious trouble if it gets back to him. The army has dug a secret tunnel; it’s on the eastern edge of the dome. It’s very deep. And security is very, very tight.”

“They are presumably drilling to see the extent of this recent change in the energy signature—”

“No, Professor, with all due respect. There are nuclear response teams here. And the tunnel they’ve drilled is thirty-two inches in diameter.”

Nothing but the sounds of Dave & Buster’s.

Connie pressed on. “They don’t need a shaft that size to send down a probe or a camera. And my source says there is a rail descending.”

Still no response. Then, when she was sure he’d decided to hang up: “What you are suggesting is impossible.”

“It’s not impossible, and you know it. You’re one of the people who warned that breaching the dome might be dangerous. You’re one of the reasons people are so scared of this thing.” Connie held her breath. Had she pushed too far?

“I was discussing various theoretical possibilities,” Stanevich huffed. “I am not responsible for the nonsense from the media.”

“Professor. I want you to discuss the theoretical possibilities of this. Of a nuclear weapon… Please. If it will release the children, then that’s one thing. But—”

“Of course it will not release the children.” He snorted a laugh into her ear. “It will do one of two things. Neither of them involves peacefully releasing the children inside.”

“The two things. What are they?” A highway patrol car pulled in and she gripped the phone hard. The car slid into a parking place. The patrolman looked at her. Recognizing her from TV?

“It depends,” Stanevich equivocated. “There are two theories of the so-called J waves. I won’t bore you with the details—you wouldn’t understand anyway.”

The patrolman got out. Stretched. Locked his car and went into the minimart.

“A nuclear device would release a great deal of energy. Which might overload the dome, might blow it up. Think of it as a hair dryer, let us say, yes, a hair dryer that runs on one-hundred-and-ten-volt electricity. And suddenly it is plugged into ten thousand volts.”

He sounded as detached as if he was lecturing a room full of undergraduates. Pleased with his hair dryer analogy.

“It would be blown apart. Combust.”

“Yes,” Connie said tersely. “Wouldn’t that also blow up everything nearby?”

“Oh, certainly,” Stanevich said. “Not the device itself, you understand, not if it is buried deep. But a twenty-mile-wide sphere that suddenly overloads? It would likely obliterate everything inside. And perhaps, depending on various factors, destroy an area around the dome.”