“Stick to the subject,” Chloe told him before Ash could say something similar.
“Oh, right.” Caleb glanced at Rachel. “Sorry.” He took a moment to regain his composure before restarting. “Several years ago, C8 changed his tune, and began saying that they’d been wrong. That DS didn’t exist. I mean, he really tried to sell Matt on it. It was like something spooked him and he didn’t want any part of it.” He smiled. “Interestingly, it was around this time he started including the odd stray numbers in his messages.” Caleb gestured at the pad. “Matt asked him about the extras and why they didn’t work into the code. C8 played them off as nothing important, which, as I was first going through them, was exactly what I was thinking.”
“But they weren’t filler,” Rachel said.
Caleb grinned again. “No, they were not. But I wouldn’t have figured it out if it weren’t for the message Matt passed on to Captain Ash. Well, the Augustine part, anyway. It unlocked that last set, where I discovered four more strays. That really bothered me. That was more than any of the previous messages had had. So why were there so many now? I was having a hard time continuing to think they were simply filler. I was missing something. So I put all the strays on a single piece of paper.”
He pulled a sheet out of his pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the table. On it were two rows of eight numbers each. The first started with 43 and the second with 73.
Caleb smiled at everyone expectantly, but after no one responded, he said, “Don’t you see it?”
“See what?” Pax asked.
Caleb rolled his eyes and groaned. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and inked a period after both the 43 and the 73. He then drew a minus sign in front of the seven.
“How about now?” he asked.
“GPS coordinates,” Ash said, surprised. He’d seen plenty of similar numbers while in the army. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure?” Caleb scoffed.
He grabbed a shoulder bag off the chair closest to him and pulled out a laptop. After placing it on the table, he typed something in and turned the screen toward them. On it was a mapping application showing a wide view of the planet. In the text box at the top, Caleb had input the two sets of numbers. He gave them all a second to look at the screen and then pressed ENTER.
The map zoomed in until a blue arrow appeared, pointing at the center of what looked like a very small town. In a floating box above the arrow were the coordinates.
“Where the hell is that?” Pax asked.
Caleb widened the shot back one step and the name of the town appeared.
“Everton?” Ash said. “Everton where?
Caleb zoomed out until state lines began to show. “This one’s in Vermont.”
Ash studied the map for a moment. “Okay. I’ll give you that C8 was pointing Matt here for some reason, but it doesn’t meant that place is Dream Sky or whatever DS stands for.”
“That’s the same thing I told him,” Chloe said. “As strong as it was circumstantially, it could still mean anything.”
“Which pissed me off,” Caleb said. “I mean, it’s obvious. But I get it. God forbid we assume anything, right?
Chloe and Caleb shared a conspiratorial smile.
“What?” Ash asked.
“Devin used the link into Project Eden’s computer network to confirm that there is a Project base at the coordinates,” Chloe said.
“Again, not proof,” Ash said.
“No,” she agreed. “But what he was unable to find probably says the most.”
“What do you mean?”
“She means,” Caleb said, sounding like he felt he should be the one driving the conversation, “that he checked dozens of other facilities in the system, all of which had abundant, accessible information. The base at these coordinates”—he pointed at the map—“had nothing. Not even encrypted info.”
“Then how did you find anything on the base in the first place?” Ash asked.
“Devin was able to locate a map in an old archive that had the base marked. But it’s not on later editions of the same map. Okay, so maybe it’s not Dream Sky, but whatever it is, it seems pretty damn important.”
“Or maybe it’s not there at all,” Ash said.
“C8 was pointing at something,” Chloe said. “Something he felt was important enough to tell Matt about. And Matt felt it was important enough to tell you before he died. We need to check it out and see for ourselves.”
As Ash opened his mouth to respond, Pax said, “Captain, maybe it is something else entirely, but if there’s a chance this place is Dream Sky, and taking it out would severely cripple the Project, how can we pass up the opportunity to at least check it out?”
The room fell quiet.
“He’s right,” Rachel said. “We have to check. We have to check now.”
Again there was silence.
Ash finally broke it. “Caleb, thank you. If we have more questions, we’ll come and find you.”
Caleb looked confused for a moment before his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, okay. Sure. Um, they probably need me back at the trailer anyway.”
After he was gone, Ash said, “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right.”
“We can’t afford to waste time,” Chloe said. “The longer we wait, the more entrenched the Project will become. At some point we won’t be able to topple them.”
“I’m not talking about waiting. If this is as important as we think it might be, then I’m talking about being ready so we can take advantage of the situation right now.”
28
Terrell Fisher shoved his hands into his jacket pockets so Diaz wouldn’t see them shaking. Not that Diaz would have noticed anyway. Terrell was pretty sure the guy was dealing with his own internal repercussions for what they were doing.
“Think we can fit the last two in,” Diaz said, stepping off the back of the truck onto the loading dock. “You get the gurney.”
“Sure,” Terrell said. “Right behind you.”
He waited until Diaz started walking toward the warehouse door before pulling his hands out again. The empty gurney made an awful racket over the uneven concrete floor, but he definitely preferred it to the muted clackity-clack it made when it was loaded.
The warehouse was on the eastern edge of Project Eden’s Chicago survival station. All of the offices — medical, processing, security — were located in the building. The holding areas had been constructed in the large parking area that separated the warehouse from a twin building a few hundred yards away. When the Project had first arrived at the facility to begin the conversion, the lot had been full of semis and trailers. Terrell’s first assignment here had been to help move the vehicles out.
Diaz held the door open and allowed Terrell and the gurney to pass through first. They were basically on autopilot as they headed down the hallway. Someone — a Project psychologist, probably — had labeled their destination as the Reassignment Room. This wasn’t the name by which Terrell thought of it. In his mind it was the Kill Room.
The room was large enough to hold up to fifty people at one time. Five rows of ten chairs faced a wall where a video projector would play a message from Gustavo Di Sarsina, supposed Secretary General of the UN, talking about what survivors should expect when they arrived at the safe zone.