Dutton dismissed everyone but Desh, Kolke, and Jake: the only three men on board who knew about the gellcaps. They stood beside the helicopter, eyes outward to make sure they were not interrupted.
Desh wheeled Griffin to the desk they had set up beside the Sikorski so he could reach the wireless keyboard and mouse. The hacker immediately scrolled through screen after screen filled with incomprehensible symbols—which he must have converted from inputs he had coaxed from the nanites—faster than a normal human could even follow, let alone read and digest. But Griffin just stared, unblinking, at the monitor; drinking from a fire hose without missing a drop. After a few minutes his fingers began to fly over the keyboard, and he toggled between several screens at a blazing pace.
Desh checked the watch Jake had issued to him, along with clothing, before he had come on board. “Ninety-seven minutes and counting,” he said grimly to the colonel standing beside him.
Jake nodded woodenly but said nothing in reply. There was nothing to say.
Six minutes ticked by. The slowest minutes Desh had ever experienced. And the fastest.
“I’ve got it!” shouted Griffin triumphantly, startling all three men. “You fucking little bastards,” he growled. “You can kiss my fat ass.”
“What?” said Dutton, his face wrinkled in confusion. The words had been shouted so quickly they were incomprehensible.
Griffin, as exhausted as he was, still glared at Dutton with superhuman intensity and superhuman disdain. “Sending,” he said pointedly, and hit a single button on the keyboard.
Dutton’s eyes widened hopefully. He may not have understood Matt before, but the word sending had a nice ring to it. “Liz,” he said into a phone, “Matt has transmitted the self-destruct sequence. You should be receiving it on your computer now.”
There was a brief pause. “Got it,” said an American molecular biologist from her stateroom twelve levels below. “I’m transmitting it now from my computer as a radio signal.”
The moment this was complete she peered through the eyepiece of an expensive microscope at dozens of nanites she had placed on a slide.
Her breath caught in her throat.
They were coming apart.
The nanites separated into five discrete pieces and lay dormant, unmoving. While she watched, the intricate biological portions of the bugs dissolved, like sugar after water had been applied.
The self-destruct sequence had worked.
Screaming, whooping, and other unmistakable sounds of celebration came over Dutton’s phone loudly enough to be heard by everyone nearby. Griffin’s face remained impassive, but Desh closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and blew out a huge mouthful of air in relief. The tight faces of Jake and Dutton relaxed for the first time since Griffin’s discovery of the nanites’ true mission, and tired smiles appeared on all three faces.
The molecular biologist finally stopped shouting and described to Dutton what she had seen under the scope. Even before her description was completed she had forwarded the code to every computer on the Copernicus. Within minutes it would be distributed to governments back home, and then uploaded to satellites, cell phone towers, radio stations, and nuclear bunkers around the world.
Jake extended his hand toward Matt Griffin. “You magnificent bastard,” he said in awe. “You did it!”
Griffin ignored the outstretched hand. “Of course I did,” he said haughtily, as though Jake’s enthusiasm was insulting because it suggested he had previously had doubts.
Dutton stayed behind while the four others boarded the Sikorski, an exclusive model used by titans of industry that was much like a limousine inside. While Kolke, who had been an experienced pilot in a past life, started up the engine, Desh helped Griffin take a seat in one of the leather captain’s chairs and hung his IV.
“I’m inducing sleep now,” declared Griffin the moment he was situated, and seconds later he was unconscious.
Desh was fascinated. Griffin would still be in an enhanced state for almost forty minutes, but his superior mind must have calculated that while he couldn’t snap himself back to normalcy to spare his overtaxed system, he could at least put his brain in idle.
Desh checked his watch once again. If everything worked as hoped, they should be able to avert the crisis with ten or twenty minutes to spare. But worst case, if they missed a few nukes, at least the destruction and mass death would be local—the world would still survive. Still, Desh knew he would feel a whole lot better in seventy-two minutes. And better still in seventy-two hours.
Jake and Desh donned headphones as the helicopter lifted off and banked to the east. Desh took one last look at the magnificent Copernicus, lighted up like a massive firefly against a blanket of endless darkness, a fitting testament to mankind’s creative genius. Like everything else about the past month, the situation was surreal. If someone would have told him a month earlier that Matt Griffin would save the world from alien nanites—from the deck of world’s largest luxury cruise liner—and that rather than being heralded as a savior, he would be whisked away as though fleeing the scene of a crime, Desh would have laughed his ass off—just before having whoever had spouted such nonsense institutionalized.
The Sikorski continued on a southeasterly heading toward South Africa; the ride smooth as silk. The interior of the craft sported lacquered wood cabinetry, mirrors, and inlaid video screens, along with a fully stocked bar, and was largely empty since it had a passenger capacity of ten.
The men gazed out of the windows in silence as the clock counted down to zero, alone with their thoughts. Griffin was still out cold, having doubtlessly made the transition back to normalcy some minutes before.
With five minutes left until time zero, Jake rose from his chair, walked the short distance to the bar, and poured two glasses of Champaign into delicate crystal goblets. He returned to his seat and handed a glass to Desh.
Desh took the glass and nodded. Just when he thought things could not get more surreal, here he was in a decadent helicopter, flying over the South Atlantic with a sworn enemy and an unconscious friend, seconds away from the end of the world, holding a glass of champagne like it was New Year’s Eve.
Desh placed the glass on the armrest beside him, glanced at his watch, and once again peered out the window. Would the sky suddenly turn crimson? Would the fire of man-made suns turn night into day, and Earth into a lifeless hell? How many seconds would they have before a nuclear shock wave shattered the Sikorski like a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen?
Griffin’s code should work. But should and would were too different things.
“We’re through!” declared Jake excitedly beside him. They had hit time zero while Desh had been lost in thought.
Desh nodded, not allowing himself to be excited. Not just yet. “Let’s wait for the celebration,” he said. “Until you get your report.”
They had to wait five additional minutes until the report came in over Jake’s headphones. He lifted his glass of champagne and faced Desh. “No explosions reported anywhere. Looks like your friend’s code worked like a charm.”
Desh grinned from ear to ear and clinked glasses with the colonel. Griffin had done it, thought Desh as he drank. If not for Kira, the world would have ended. Her treatment to boost the human IQ had staved off total disaster. But at what cost to her?