He tried 886 next. This time there was a delay of several seconds, but the number turned out to be another dead end.
Crystal’s terminal began emitting a soft bong-bong-bong. She checked her screen. “It’s Matt,” she said as she donned her headset and clicked the ACCEPT button. “Hey, Matt. It’s Crystal…she’s right here. Hold on.”
She gave her headset to Rachel.
“Are you back on the road?” Rachel asked her brother when the headset was in place.
“Not yet,” Matt replied. His voice sounded as tired as hers must have sounded to him. “Had a little incident last night.”
“What kind of incident?”
He gave her a quick rundown of what had happened.
When he finished, she asked, “Is Chloe going to be all right?”
“Just a few bruised ribs and a sprained wrist. Physically, she’ll be fine.”
“Physically?”
He hesitated a moment before replying. “Something happened to her while she was up there. I don’t know how, but I think she’s starting to remember.”
Rachel almost asked, “Remember what?” when she realized what he meant. “You’ve told me yourself that’s not possible.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
My God, Rachel thought.
She caught sight of Leon and the others. They all had their eyes on her, no doubt trying to figure out what Matt had said. “Hold on,” she said into the mic, then put her hand over it. “Can you guys give me the room for a moment?”
Crystal looked at her terminal, obviously not comfortable with the thought of being away from it.
“If a message comes in, I’ll come get you,” Rachel assured her.
“Okay,” Crystal said. “Sure.”
“No problem,” Dennis said.
Leon stood up. “If you need us, we’ll be right outside.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said. “Shut the door on the way out.”
Leon looked disappointed, but he nodded and followed the others out.
Once alone, she said, “So what has she remembered?”
“Nothing definite. It’s, well, the girl we found last night — she’s about Brandon’s age. Her name’s Ginny. I think that might have triggered something.”
Though Ginny was not Jeannie, the name was very close, and if the girl was Brandon’s age…
Oh, Lord.
“What did she actually say?” Rachel asked.
“Nothing, really. It’s more that she knows there’s something there to remember.” He paused. “I’m sure it’s going to be fine. I’ll keep a closer eye on her.”
“My God, Matt. If she remembers, and starts to ask questions—”
“We’ll deal with that if that happens.”
“You need to keep me informed.”
“I will, but like I said, it’s going to be all right,” he said. “Tell me where we are with the interventions.”
She gave herself a moment to lock away her concerns about Chloe, and then said, “We’ve identified seven more groups overnight. And have told them we’ll bring them vaccine, so most have agreed to stay where they are for at least another twenty-four hours.”
“Can we get people to all of them in that time?”
“We think so. It’ll be tight. One of the groups is in Nova Scotia. They’re really itching to get over to the survival station in Montreal. I have a plane that can get to them after a stop in Pennsylvania, but I’m concerned the Nova Scotia group won’t stick around.” She paused. “Matt, people are really buying into the whole UN angle. A couple times we’ve even had to pretend we’re with the UN, too. I don’t like lying like that. Could be a problem for us later.”
“If that’s what it takes, then it’s a problem we can live with,” Matt said. “Have you heard anything from Tamara and Bobby?”
“She checked in yesterday,” Rachel said.
“And?”
“They found the NSA monitoring facility.”
“Thank God. Can they pull it off there?”
“Tamara says Bobby thinks so. He’s got some of the equipment running, but he’s having problems with the uplinks.”
“He’s got to get it working, and it needs to happen now.”
“I know how important it is. They know how important. They’re doing everything they can.”
“I realize that, but it’s….Listen, tell them the minute they’re ready to go, they shouldn’t wait for the okay from us. Just do it.”
“All right. I’ll tell them,” she said. “How long until you get here?”
“The storm has really messed things up. We were able to tap into a NOAA satellite a little while ago. We’re not getting hit too hard here anymore, but it’s still pounding the Rockies and continuing to head south. I’m thinking we’re going to need to dip down into New Mexico to get across, and it’ll probably still be pretty slow going even then. If we can get to Nevada in three days, it’ll be a miracle.”
Rachel frowned. “Don’t lie to me, Matt. I know what you’re thinking.”
“What are you talking about?”
“New Mexico?”
“Don’t know if you’ve looked at any satellite images, but that storm’s pretty bad.”
“I know the storm is bad, but you’d be heading for New Mexico anyway, wouldn’t you? That’s why you want Tamara and Bobby to hurry up. You need their distraction.”
In the silence that followed, she knew he was regretting showing her the message from C8.
“Matt, it’s too dangerous. You don’t have a large enough team. Besides, we haven’t done the necessary recon.”
“I’ve been there before,” he said.
“A long time ago.”
“And nothing will have changed since then,” he said.
“Except that they won’t be welcoming you at the door.”
“You never know,” he said, trying to make a joke.
“If you have to go through New Mexico, you damn well better stay to the north. Albuquerque straight into Arizona. Las Cruces is off limits.”
“You’ve seen the message, Rachel. He’s there. NB219. Cut off the head and the body dies.”
“Bullshit. It didn’t work at Bluebird. Why would it work now?”
“Because of what happened at Bluebird. They’re already weakened. If they lose their second leader in a few weeks, it will rip them apart.”
“Can you even imagine how much security he’ll have in place?” she argued.
“Less than you think. In his mind, who’s going to come after him?”
“Us.”
“He doesn’t even know who we are.”
“He knows exactly who you are,” she countered.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. And as far as anyone at Project Eden is concerned, I’m buried in the past. Rachel, don’t you see it? This could very well be the only chance we will ever get. They’ve pulled off their eradication plan; there’s nothing we can do about that. What we can do is stop them from being the ones who benefit from it. Someone is going to have to lead the human race into this new age, but I’ll burn in hell before I let it be any of them. Right now, they’re still decentralized. It won’t be long before this new principal director and his puppet directorate are buried beneath layers and layers of protection. We have to take advantage of this situation and you know it.”
As much as she wanted to argue that point, she couldn’t.
“Have you told the others?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“They might not be happy you kept it from them.”