She froze for a moment, but Grady grabbed her arm, pulling her along.
“Damnit! We shouldn’t have been standing here!”
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Run!”
“What is it?”
“Chain golem. Nanotech machine. Don’t let it catch you.”
She glanced back at the horror that was gaining on them. A black spiked ball three feet in diameter. “Oh, no kidding!”
Davis drew her Glock 17 and aimed behind her.
“Don’t waste your bullets! They won’t do anything.”
She lowered her gun and kept running. “Why not?”
“It’s thousands of interacting metal links. And the shots will help the Morrisons find us.”
“Goddamnit!” Davis holstered her pistol.
“There’s a fire door up ahead. Move!”
She followed Grady as they raced through what looked like a magnetically controlled fire door. As they passed through the doorway, Grady pulled, drawing it off its magnetic plates. The door slammed shut just as the chain golem smashed into it—deforming it visibly.
As Davis watched, she heard metallic rattling sounds like a ghost in chains—and then a massive booming sound as the door started to buckle further and bend in its frame. She turned to run but saw Grady rummaging through his backpack.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He withdrew a plastic tube into which he poured white powder—like a muzzle-loading musket. “We can’t outrun it down here.”
A glance back showed Davis that the monstrous black machine had smashed open the top half of the door and was busy swarming around it—re-assembling on their side.
She started running but slowed when Grady didn’t follow. “Mr. Grady!”
To Davis’s surprise, Grady tossed the backpack aside and raised the tube to his mouth like a blowgun. The chain golem rose to vaguely humanoid form and stomped heavily toward him.
“Mr. Grady!”
As the chain golem rose to engulf Grady, he blew through the tube and a plume of white powder billowed into it. Almost immediately the machine contracted—and in doing so, the grit jammed even further between its links. It collapsed to the floor and started writhing as if in a seizure. The abrasion made a horrible screeching sound—like a million nails across a million blackboards.
Davis covered her ears as Grady grabbed his rucksack and motioned for her to follow. The deafening screeching continued as she glanced back to see the monster apparently in its death throes.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Diamond powder. Common industrial abrasive.”
“How the hell did you know to do that?”
Grady raised the video device on its chain. “I read the FAQ. Lots of good advice in here. They warned me they might send a golem. Nonlethal weapon for incapacitating high-value targets.”
As they ran down the corridor, the horrific screeching died away.
“That didn’t look nonlethal to me.”
“Do you believe me now?”
She still felt her heart trying to outrun her. Adrenaline had her hands shaking.
“Keep moving.”
Davis had long since lost any sense of direction as they moved through a series of tunnels—some narrow, some clean and modern, others obviously more than a century old and forgotten.
They also came across locked doors several times, but Grady seemed to have a single key that opened them all. When Davis nodded toward it, he shrugged. “Stashed a master key beneath a flagstone years ago. Stole it from a facilities workshop.”
Given that it had probably saved their lives, she couldn’t bring herself to scold him.
Eventually they clambered over a dusty HVAC duct to emerge from the tunnels onto the basement floor of another university building. Here there were long cellars lined with stacks of building materials.
“This is Pupin—the physics building. We’re far enough away that we should be able to leave unseen.”
“But to where?”
Grady shouldered his rucksack but seemed unsure of the answer.
Davis paced. “I need to figure out how to explain this to my superiors.” She held up a hand. “I know something has happened. I believe that much. I just—”
“Cotton. Cotton is the key.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Get me a private conversation with Richard Cotton—on camera. He’s BTC. He knows who I am.”
“Cotton is BTC?”
“Trust me. He is.”
“He’s facing life in prison without possibility of parole. What could you offer?”
“I don’t believe he’ll really stay in prison. But if the BTC thinks he’s become an informer, he’d be in serious danger—and he knows that. If I can use that threat to turn Cotton—if he thinks they’re after him already—then he might help us.”
“Assuming what you say is true, we’d need powerful political allies.” She pondered it. “I’ll try to arrange the Cotton interview. Although I’m going to have trouble from something I left behind us.”
Grady squinted suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“I lied earlier. Someone did contact me after I ran your prints. FBI senior brass. They sent me here to meet you—with a pair of blond twins from the D.C. office and a whole team I never saw. They were supposed to grab you when you appeared.”
He studied her. “But you didn’t turn me in. Why?”
“I don’t know. Something didn’t add up.”
“So what’s our next move?”
“We separate. For safety—I can’t protect you right now, anyway. And I can’t stay here in New York.”
“But you will help me?”
“Yes. Let’s meet back in Chicago—where Cotton is. Can you get back there all right? Do you need money?”
“I’ve got money.”
“Can you move safely?”
“The Resistors taught me how to evade BTC surveillance. I can be a crazy homeless man. Tinfoil hat—the whole nine yards.”
“Okay. I have a partner—Thomas Falwell. You can trust him. There’s a skid row district just a few blocks from the federal courthouse in Chicago—Harrison and State Streets. My partner will find you.”
Grady tugged at her sleeve. “Don’t trust any electronic communications. Don’t even speak about this inside any federal building.”
“I’ll take extra precautions.”
Grady extended his hand. “I appreciate you taking a chance on me, Agent Davis.”
She shook his hand. “I don’t know if I believe my own eyes, but if all this is true, I will defend you with my life, Mr. Grady.”
A female voice from the darkness startled them. “You’ll never turn Richard Cotton into an informant, Jon.”
Davis and Grady both turned to see a beautiful woman with black hair and piercing blue eyes emerge into the cone of a basement light nearby. Davis had never seen a woman so beautiful before. And the woman appeared to have good taste in clothing, too, because her jacket and slacks draped perfectly on her statuesque frame. She exuded style. Charisma.
Grady stepped back in obvious fear. “Alexa. How did you find me?”
“Reasoned deduction—something Morrisons aren’t very good at. A young Jon Grady was arrested for trespassing in the Columbia University steam tunnels. This is where they found his makeshift tent.”
Seeing the terrified look on Grady’s face, Davis drew her Glock 17 and aimed it with both hands as the woman calmly approached. “Hands! FBI!”
The beautiful woman cocked an eyebrow at Davis.
Grady was still speechless.
“Mr. Grady. Leave. I’ll take her into custody.”
He hesitated.
“Leave, damnit!”