We moved over to the computers. The screens all had the same display. It chilled me to the bone.
KILL SWITCH PROTOCOL
And beneath that was a digital clock.
Yeah. Actual ticking clock? Check.
Shit.
As I watched, the clock went from 14:29 to 14:28.
Harry grabbed my arm. “Wait, does that mean they input the code?”
“Yes,” I said. “It damn well does.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
Akbar had arranged ten laptops in a row, positioned so they could all watch as history unfolded before them. Each screen showed an image sent by a small fixed camera. Each of the video feeds showed cities viewed from a distance. Akbar had written the names of each in ink on the frame of the laptops.
New York
Los Angeles
Chicago
Houston
Philadelphia
Phoenix
San Antonio
San Diego
Dallas
San Jose
Ten American cities. Ten fields to be sown with the seeds of retribution, each by one touch of the fingers of God. On the bottom of each screen was a small digital counter. They were all in sync. 19:01:08. In less than twenty minutes the world was going to change. It was like raising a veil. A different world existed on the other side and nothing would ever—could ever — be the same again.
It made Akbar want to weep.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
His name was Trey Willis and he had worked as building supervisor since the tower opened in 2008. He had a staff of thirty and they kept the building clean, fully functional, and efficient. Trey had worked in maintenance and building supervisions for nearly twenty-two years and taught management courses three nights a week at Philadelphia Community College. He had a wife and three daughters, the eldest of whom was pre-med at Jefferson. His wife was a nurse practitioner in the neonatal unit at Children’s Hospital. Trey had no criminal record and an honorable discharge after serving four years in the air national guard. He paid his taxes, went to church, had middling interest in politics, and planned on retiring to Ocean City, New Jersey, in five years. He already owned a little place there not two blocks from the beach.
Trey was absolutely the wrong person for the job he was undertaking. Which made him the right man.
All day he had felt a little uneasy and wondered if he was coming down with another migraine. He hadn’t had one in years but something was definitely wrong with his head. Concentrating on anything, even little tasks, became increasingly difficult as the day wore on. Eventually it got so bad that he told his assistant to take over and Trey went to his office to close his eyes for a moment. Leaving early was never his plan. He hadn’t taken a sick day in eleven years and wasn’t going to let a headache break that record. So he locked his office door and stretched out on his couch.
It was the wind that woke him up.
Not the breeze from the air-conditioner. It was wind.
He opened his eyes and very nearly screamed.
He was no longer in his office. He wasn’t even inside the building. Nor was he lying down.
Instead he found himself standing on the observation deck many stories above the busy traffic. He was alone.
Except…
Except that all around him were drones. The small kind that they sold at Target and Walmart. What were they called? Quadcopters? Like the kind that caused all that trouble last year.
Just…
… like…
… those.
And all of the little motors were humming.
Trey blinked, more than half sure that this was a dream, that once he woke up he’d still be down in his office. He blinked and blinked.
He was still on the deck but the drones were gone.
Of course they were. Why would he have drones? Where would he have gotten them? It was ridiculous.
Which is when he heard the buzz. When the sounds that were there registered in his stunned and startled mind. Trey turned and looked over the edge of the deck wall. The drones were there. All of them. Hovering like a swarm of hornets.
And then one by one they drifted away, going in different directions, flying to different parts of the crowded city. Trey felt something and looked down. Saw his hands. Saw his hands as they worked the controls of a device he held. He watched his hands move, saw his fingers manipulate the controls.
But try as he could Trey Willis could not stop his traitor hands from sending the drones out into the skies above Philadelphia.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINE
“Stand down!”
Three U.S. marshals came pelting down the hall, guns up and out. Top spun toward them, the bloody fork still clutched in his fist. Montana Parker and Brian Botley stood on the other side of him, each pointing their guns. Sam Imura lay on the floor, bleeding to death. The world had torn loose from its hinges and was tilting, falling, going sideways and down.
Then Montana shifted her gun away from Top and pointed it at the first marshal.
And fired. The bullet caught the man in the chest and knocked him backward. There was no blood even though the marshal wore no visible Kevlar.
“Top!” screamed Montana. “Run — they’re Closers!”
The other marshals raised their weapons and Top saw that these were not ordinary guns. They were MPPs. Microwave pulse pistols.
Tok!
Tok!
The world seemed to explode into flames.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN
I tapped my earbud for Church’s. “Cowboy to Deacon,” I barked.
“Go for Deacon.”
“I am on site and have located a timer for the God Machine. We are on active countdown. Current reading is twelve minutes and fifty seconds.”
“Understood,” said Church crisply. “That confirms fresh intel from overseas.” That was the code for Arklight, for Lilith. “We have a list of targets.”
He read them off. He might as well have shot me. Those were the ten cities with the largest populations. The cities with the largest number of children. Total estimated population? Call it twenty-five million. How many kids? Half that, give or take. How many would be infected? How many would get sick? How many would die if the power was out? My mind did some ugly math. Conservative guess… a million kids. If we were lucky.
Lucky.
Good God in heaven. Ghost caught the fear that had to be surrounding us like a cloud. He whined. I plugged a MindReader patch into an open USB port on the console. The device flashed green.