The Rising(81)

She and Alex continued to follow the tunnel’s irregular path, the twists and turns likely spawned by the need to dig around deposits of rock and shale that would otherwise have to be blasted through. If this were only an escape tunnel, their trek would end with a pile of earth and rubble at the other end. But both of them sensed there was something else down here, something more. Most of Laboratory Z itself, after all, was contained on subterranean levels beneath one likely reinforced with plate steel and concrete. So it wouldn’t just offer escape in the event of an emergency, it might also provide storage for huge reams of records before the Cloud was a thought in anyone’s mind along with vital equipment, so they might survive such a catastrophe too.

And, sure enough, they rounded a final corner to find the tunnel continuing in one direction, while a heavy steel door that looked like the entrance to a bank vault seemed to open onto another. There was no visible latch and the steel was cold to the touch, almost icy, forcing Alex and Sam to keep pulling back their hands as they checked for a knob, button, or keypad.

Alex slapped a palm against the cold steel in frustration, and lurched back with a start, dragging Sam with him as the door, incredibly, started to slide open. Both figured Alex had stumbled on something that did the trick, until they spotted a shadowy figure standing just beyond the now open door.

“I thought you might find your way here,” said Raiff.





81

PINGS

THE MACHINES HUMMED. THE machines whirred. The machines spit out data at speeds beyond comprehension, at least Langston Marsh’s.

Fortunately, the same could not be said for his army of technicians, who lived their lives hunched over keyboards in front of LED screens following the constant scroll of readouts. They worked out of a cavernous underground structure amid tons of limestone and shale layered beneath the Klamath Mountains of Northern California, a bunker within a bunker lined with workstations laid out east to west, and north to south, in a manner mirroring the country. So the upper left-hand corner of the room represented the Pacific Northwest, the upper right, New England.

And so forth.

Hits, or “pings,” as Marsh preferred to call them, were far too rare and uncommon. When they came, though, as subtle as the blip on an animated bouncing wave, they unleashed a fury of Marsh’s making. For just as his monitoring room was laid out according to the geographical composition of the country, so too were the teams of Trackers already in place to hunt every single ping down and shut off the signal.

Every ping that registered on the vast array of monitoring machines tuned to electromagnetic frequency discharges represented another of those in league with the forces behind his father’s death. His father had once had a part-time job as an exterminator and Marsh figured he had taken that baton from the great man he barely remembered as well as this mantle of responsibility. His father had fought the aliens in the sky, very likely giving his life to forestall an invasion. Marsh had never flown a plane in his life, but his charge was still much the same: to face down another coming invasion.

Rathman had already departed to the San Francisco area to pick up pursuit of the boy. He was marshaling his supplemental forces, comprised of special operators, and had explained that the arrival of dozens of them was already imminent, just hours off. Marsh didn’t know the place of Alex Chin in all of this, only that his presence had unleashed the firestorm that had left severed robotic limbs all over a FedEx Office outside San Francisco the night before.

Ping.

It was Marsh’s favorite sound in the world, but right now the chirping of his cell phone claimed his attention, a number given out only to a very select few. Marsh answered and listened to the man’s fervent report on what had just transpired.

“I thought you should know immediately,” the man finished.

“And right you are, more right than you can possibly realize,” he said.

“We’re in this together, but it’s partially my fault we’re in it at all.”

“You’ve more than redeemed yourself, Professor,” Marsh told him, hitting END on his phone so he could call Rathman.





82

THE CAROUSEL HOUSE

“THIS USED TO BE storage?” Sam said, running her gaze along the sprawl of Raiff’s lair and his mismatched furnishings.

“For what, I can’t say. It was probably emptied out as soon as the site cooled enough after the fire.”

“And you turned it into a home,” Alex said, as he followed Sam’s visual sweep.

“It can never be home,” Raiff told them both flatly. “I’ll never see home again, Alex. Neither will you.”

“This is my home.”

“I was talking about where you were born.”

“Same place as you, right?”

“Same planet, yes.”

“Sure. Because that would explain why we both have the same, or pretty similar, DNA to humans, right, Sam?”

“Right,” she affirmed. “Almost exactly.”

“So how can that be, Raiff?” Alex asked him, his tone making it sound more like a demand. “If we’re from another planet, if we’re not human.”

“Because we are.”

“Are what?”

“Human, Alex. We’re human too. In every way, shape, and, especially, form.”