The Rising(97)
Alex shook his head and turned back to Raiff. “You’re supposed to be my Guardian. So what’s the playbook say for this?”
“To save your world, I’d have to find a way to transfer the information the chip is carrying. To save you, I’d have to find a way to get it out of your head.”
“But you can’t do both,” said Sam.
“I don’t know,” Raiff admitted. “With the technology available here, in this world, I just don’t know.”
“The devil’s alternative,” muttered Donati.
“In other words,” Alex said, face starting to tighten into a scowl before going utterly flat, “I’m totally screwed.”
“No,” Sam insisted stridently, when the others didn’t respond, “you’re not.”
“Huh?”
“Remember when you told me you never let the first tackler bring you down?”
“Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“This is the first tackler.”
“No, the first tackler took down my parents, my mom and dad.”
Sam’s eyes searched his, as if they were alone, nothing and no one else mattering. “You said they might still be alive.”
“That’s what the ash man told me. I think he wanted to make a deal, maybe bring me to them if I stopped being a pain in his ass.”
Sam looked toward Raiff and Donati now. “Is it possible? Could they still be alive?”
“Alex just described a second encounter with an astral projection from millions of light-years away,” Donati noted. “I’d say that suggests we shouldn’t discount or dismiss anything whatsoever out of hand.”
“How’s your head feel now, Alex?” Raiff asked, sounding more like a parent.
“Not so bad.” Alex frowned. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“One other thing,” Donati said suddenly, “if there’s some kind of invasion planned, if this enslavement is about to commence, they’ll have to open another wormhole, won’t they?”
Raiff nodded. “One way or another, yes.”
“Because, thanks to Dixon here, I think I know where they’re going to open it. I could be wrong, but—”
And that’s when the first explosions rocked the tour boat.
99
A SINKING SHIP
THE FIRST BLAST ROCKED the boat, left it teetering in the water. The second blast sent it listing heavily toward starboard, en route to toppling over.
Raiff had moved from his seat instinctively to protect Dancer, but the boy had already moved to grab Samantha just before she hit the floor, cushioning the blow enough to avoid any injury.
Langston Marsh …
A single blast could have resulted from something random and mechanical. But two spaced this close could only be sabotage, and professional at that. Raiff came to this conclusion in the moments just before the power died, replaced only by emergency floodlights that did little to break the darkness. The harsh stench of oil and the sight of thick clouds of black smoke flooding the tour boat’s covered area told him the bomber, or bombers, knew exactly what they were doing.
As he moved to help Dr. Donati, who’d slipped out of his chair, Raiff also registered the fact that the explosions had been triggered in the hull, well below the waterline. Divers, then—commandos, in all likelihood, well versed in such things—which again suggested the work of Marsh’s modern-day Fifth Column. Clearly he was upping the ante and, just as clearly, enough information had reached him to suggest that Dancer was no ordinary target.
“What happened? Are we sinking?” a ghost-white Donati managed to ask, as Raiff helped him back to his feet.
“We were attacked,” Raiff said, leaving it there. Then, swinging fast, “Alex?”
“I’m fine.”
The smell of oil was already stronger, the smoke thickening, when the covered area of the boat began to take on water. Raiff couldn’t tell where it was coming from, meaning it was coming from lots of places at once, which suggested a catastrophic hull rupture.
“Lifeboats!” he called out.
But Alex had already surged ahead of him for the stairs, joining those who’d chosen to enjoy the tour without the bother of the biting wind or cool mist rising off the sea. They pushed up the stairs in a pack, needing to cling to both railings with the boat now listing at what felt like a forty-five-degree angle and increasing. Raiff clung as close as he could to Alex without shoving the other passengers forcefully aside. Keeping the boy safe had been his sole purpose for eighteen years, hyper-exaggerated over the last forty-eight hours. So strange to think of little else for so long without needing to act, only to have the tables turned so suddenly and violently.
Once on deck, Raiff had no choice but to forgo his attempt at restraint. An all-out panic had set in, exaggerated further by the boat’s desperate, dying keeling. For all Raiff knew, Marsh’s men had infiltrated the tour and had waited for just these moments of chaos to strike, when their target would be most vulnerable. So his rapid scan of faces focused on eyes filled with precision instead of panic. In the process, Alex drew too far ahead of him in the direction of the life rafts, which the crew were doing an incredible job of readying to abandon ship.
“Stay with me, Alex!” Still holding fast to Donati so as not to lose him to the crowd, Raiff’s gaze captured Samantha as well. “Both of you!” he added, leading them away from the cluttered mass of humanity funneling toward the aft side.