Mohammed walked through a replica of a space station found in 2001: Space Odyssey. He had seen the movie many times and the exacting detail of the replica impressed him: the bleach white hallways, the CRT screens for phone calls, the red lounge chairs. Hipsters dressed from various eras were scattered about. Earth and the stars swapped places again and again outside panoramic windows.
He saw the man that he knew would be Xan. He was small and Asian and he had sad eyes. Mohammed walked up to him. Xan didn’t turn. He watched the rolling stars intently.
“That was quite the trick you pulled on me at O’Hare,” Mohammed said. “If I hadn’t gotten so much in return . . .” He trailed off but the tone was threatening.
“I wouldn’t disconnect if I were you,” Xan said with a woman’s voice.
Mohammed immediately understood he had been ambushed. “Why?”
“If you do, you will die. Right now, the U.S. military, with another Tank Major, has surrounded your safe house. We work with them now. If I tell them you’ve disconnected without hearing what I have to say, they will come in and they will kill every last one of you.” Not Xan paused. “Do you know who I am?”
“Cynthia Revo.” He looked around the room as if that gave any measure of his true danger.
“I found your shareware program floating in my space,” she said. “It took a while. Clever.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re an educated man, Mohammed. In many ways I empathize with you. But I know, fundamentally, we’ll always be on opposite sides. Neither philosophy is very good at compromise.”
Mohammed listened.
“I don’t care about you. Right now, neither does the U.S. military. We need you to contact Xan.”
“Am I negotiating a plea deal?” Mohammed asked, disbelieving.
“No. This deal guarantees that you live one more day. You do this and Xan responds, we leave you alone for twenty-four hours. I suggest you use that time wisely and disappear.”
“How can I trust your word when history shows me all the ones that have been broken?”
“I’m not here for a philosophical debate. Today, right this moment, there are bigger fish to fry than you. This deal has a quick expiration. Sometimes you just got to roll the dice.”
= = =
Cynthia snapped awake.
“How did it go?” Sabot asked.
She smiled. “Mohammed will post the message in ten hours. He said it takes up to two for Xan to respond.”
“Perfect.”
There were no military teams around Mohammed’s safe house. A Tank Major didn’t hide in the shadows. For Earl and Cynthia’s plan to work, timing and luck were everything. But for Mohammed, the decision was simple. If the creator of a new universe hacked in and tricked you to meet her, and then she showed up as an exact duplicate of your funder, and then she told you that they knew your location and that you could choose to either die now or get a momentary reprieve for one small betrayal, no matter what cards she may be holding—it could be a pair of twos—you don’t call that bluff and push everything in.
= = =
While Xan used a live host to throw off his digital tail when he met with Mohammed, when he communicated with the shareware for the hundredth of a second it took to confirm location, he used no such precaution. Eleven hours after Cynthia had threatened Mohammed, Xan had replied. Cynthia grabbed the digital tail and quickly traced it back. It originated at an undocumented location in the middle of Beijing. She analyzed the data input and output of the surrounding area and like an x-ray—with fiber optic lines as the bones—she knew that a hidden Colossal Core wore one square mile of that region as a hat.
She contacted Earl and sent him the image file. She transposed the blue cords of data activity with a map of the region. The data paths circled the center like water down a drain.
“That’s a very populated area,” Boen said, concerned.
“No,” Cynthia replied. “It’s the most populated area. And it’s the market hub for that section of the city.”
“Shit balls,” Boen said.
“Shit balls, indeed.”
“I’ve ordered a satellite pass, hopefully that’ll add to what you’ve sent me. We need to know where to get in.”
“An x-ray pulse should show that,” Cynthia said. “You can hide a Colossal Core from peeping eyes by throwing some shacks on it, but it’s still a million tons of concrete and steel. Whatever’s over it is superficial.”
“Roger that,” Boen said. “You ever think about joining the military?”
She heard the smile in his voice.
“There’s no money in it, Earl,” she replied.
= = =
John and the insertion team knew how quadruplets felt. They were crammed into the B-2’s modified bomb bay. Thirty minutes after he had seen his wife and heard his child, he was airborne. They were eleven hours into a thirteen-hour flight to Beijing. Three of the six soldiers that Eric Janis had trained with: Hostettler, Johnson, and Ratny, were on board. Ratny had been on leave when Janis went berserk. Hostettler and Johnson had been in a hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. There was no more room.
They were in a pressurized drop container that had a guidance system like a smart bomb. The toilet was a bucket epoxied to the floor. A small wireless monitor showed their progress. For the last hour, Hostettler had been fidgeting.
“I have to go,” Hostettler said.
“Noooo,” they all groaned, including John.
“Which one?” Ratny asked, optimistically.
“Not the one you’re hoping for.” Hostettler’s stomach gurgled in agreement. “When it gets down to it, probably both.”
“I could have been a pharmacist,” Johnson said, immediately unhappy with his life decisions.
John and the team didn’t have time to train together but they all bonded while Hostettler faced them, ass on a bucket, and crapped his brains out. The ventilation system was ill-equipped.