The Rising(99)

“The wormhole! Dixon’s pattern plugged into an elementary algorithm to determine the location! Just like Laboratory Z eighteen years ago! It’s going to happen here, the place they’ll be coming through from your world on the other side, hordes and hordes, I’d imagine.”

Donati was breathing hard by the time he reached the dock, his glasses fogging up from the ever-present mist over Alcatraz.

“Can you be more specific?” Raiff asked him, noticing the slightest flicker of lights and motion growing toward them out on the bay. “Because we’re about to have company.”

*

Alex reached the dock next, lowering a hand to help Sam up. She held fast to him when her feet touched down on the moist wood of the dock, felt his knees buckle and clung harder to keep him from spilling over into the water.

“My head,” he managed to say, squeezing his temples as he sank into a crouch.

Donati crouched alongside him. “Is this what the headaches feel like?”

“No, this is worse, different. Deeper, more throbbing.” Alex winced in pain. “Like every time my heart beats, which is a lot right now. Wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin with you, would you, Doc?”

Donati helped Alex back to his feet. “I’m not that kind of doctor, a good thing since I think I’ve got the right prescription,” he said, then turned to Raiff. “I think I know how to find what we’re looking for.”

*

The Zodiacs slowed as the dock to which the life raft was tied came into clear view. The kid’s protector, the man who’d thwarted the efforts of the men Rathman had deployed to the former site of Laboratory Z, had laid waste to all three ladders leading up. No bother, since Rathman had come prepared.

“I’m not comfortable with you being here, sir,” he said to Marsh.

“Nonsense. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was seven years old.”

“Then wait here. I’ll leave two men with you.”

“To keep me safe, Colonel, or to prevent me from following you?”

The three Zodiacs slowed further and Rathman turned his gaze out into the bay, as if to look for a fourth one. “To serve as a last line of defense, sir, just as we discussed.”

*

Raiff brought up the rear, keeping his gaze peeled behind him for their expected pursuit. The twenty-two-acre island seemed like the only chance they had upon skirting away from the toppled tour boat, but now he wasn’t so sure. They’d docked on the far side of the island, directly below the infamous prison, that was now part of the national parks system, and across from the relic of a hospital on the other side, facing east.

Donati remained tight-lipped about what he expected they were going to find inside the prison. The island’s small size when viewed from the water belied its true scope and the difficulty of the climb, especially amid the chill and biting wind rising off the bay.

“What are you looking for, Doctor?” Raiff asked finally.

“It’s not what I’m looking for, it’s what Alex here is looking for.”

They’d reached the downward-sloped patch of land that rode the island’s middle. Not much besides dirt and brush; Raiff realized they were square in the open. He’d moved ahead of Sam to reach Donati and express his concerns, when Alex dropped to the dark earth like someone had ripped the world out from under him.

“Alex!” he said louder than he’d meant to, kneeling on one side of the boy while Donati knelt on the other. “Dancer, can you hear me?”

The boy turned his way, his eyes wandering and skin suddenly pasty pale. “It’s my head.”

“Worse?”

“Better. The headache’s gone.”

“We’re here,” said Donati. “According to the beacon, anyway.”

*

“An excellent strategy,” Marsh said, after Rathman had laid it out for him.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary.”

“You’re as good as advertised, even better.”

“Then you’ll stay behind with a pair of my men. And our hostages.”

“Of course. Just in case.”

Rathman had turned his gaze back on the bay. “That’s good, sir, because they’re almost here.”

*

“What do you mean, a beacon?” Raiff asked, as Donati kicked at the ground with his feet.

“The chip in the boy’s head,” Donati told him. “Something in the electromagnetic waves and energy emanating from the place where we’ll find the wormhole channel. Like a pair of magnets, the one near Alex’s brain and the other somewhere in this area where they’re re-creating the wormhole.”

“Where who’s re-creating the wormhole?” Sam challenged. “The androids we call the drone things?”

“Which were clearly built on this planet as well.”

“Again, Doctor,” Sam persisted, “by whom?”

“Hopefully, Dixon, that’s what we’re about to find out. But first we have to find the entrance that will take us, I fully expect, into Fort Alcatraz.”

A few years before, researchers using the same kind of seismic sensors as the oil industry had uncovered the remains of an old military fort named after the island itself in the mid-nineteenth century. Their work had revealed fortifications extending down farther than the machines’ ability to measure and jutting out into the bay as well. It had been built as a Civil War facility from which no shot had ever been fired and upon its ruins the prison itself had been constructed. No excavation work had been conducted and the researchers could not explain why their studies had revealed a far more sprawling underground structure than that believed to be the original footprint of the fort.