Dave looked to Ethan for help, but the peacekeeper was silent. It was left up to him to bring Olivia back from the precipice.
“Yeah, we’ve lost too much,” he said. “Me, my wife, and sons. You, your husband, and the life you knew. Look at me, Olivia. Will you do that?”
She did, and Dave thought that Olivia’s eyes were nearly dead, her spirit too.
“We haven’t lost each other,” he said. “We’ve got to hang on. If Ethan believes he needs to get to Area 51, then I believe it too. Olivia, we’ve come too far to let go now.” He nodded toward the flare of energy weapons in the clouds beyond. “They win everything if we let go. Please…stay with me…with us…just a little longer.”
“Tell me,” she said, still listlessly, “how we would get to that place? The cars here are wrecked. Our bus is…” She hesitated, trying to think how to phrase it. “No longer useable,” she said. “I don’t know the exact distance, but I’d say that Roswell, New Mexico is a long way from here. So how would we get there, Dave? Ethan? Any ideas?”
“Not just yet. We need to speak to Mr. Derryman.”
They were interrupted by the presence of Jefferson Jericho, who bashed his shin against a piece of broken stone and let loose a curse as he came through the opening. He was pallid and his eyes looked dazed; he was walking like he’d gotten into the bottle of whiskey Hannah craved. “What is that thing in there?” he asked, and then: “The bus…where’s the bus?”
“That thing was the bus,” Dave told him as he reached them. “The Gorgons have a weapon that creates life from—”
“I don’t want to know that,” Jefferson interrupted. “Christ, what a mess!” He focused on Ethan. “Did you kill it?”
“Yes.”
“Vope,” Jefferson said to Dave. “What happened to him?”
“He—it—vanished, or transported away or whatever they do. Where have you been?”
Jefferson heard distant thunder and was suddenly aware of the battle that raged in the sky many miles away. For a moment his attention was taken by the flashes of light. “I was up on Level Four,” he explained. “President Beale and the First Lady are up there. A couple of Marines played a little rough with me, but they got the order to let me go.” He frowned. “Everybody okay? Hannah and Nikki? Are they all right?”
“Both in the infirmary, which I think is on this level but back in the mountain somewhere. They’re okay physically, but their nerves are shot.”
“Yeah, mine too.” Jefferson took a long look at Olivia and saw that she was just hanging on. “How about you?” he asked her.
“I have been better. Ethan’s been talking about getting to Area 51 to find…I don’t know what…something he might be able to use to stop that.” She motioned toward the flares and flashes in the yellow clouds. “I don’t see how it can be stopped, no matter what he can find.”
“Area 51,” Jefferson said to Ethan. “Where the flying saucers are.” Three years ago he would’ve given a good belly laugh and maybe a middle finger to the crackpots who talked about government conspiracies and the dissection of bulbous-headed spacemen in underground labs.
“I want to get into the research facility and see what artifacts are there. Mr. Derryman has told me that the only person who can get me in is your President, but he’s—”
“Pretty much out of his mind, yeah. I met him once, a long time ago, when he was a law student working for Clinton. We smoked weed at a party in Little Rock. I guess we could’ve blackmailed each other.” Jefferson had actually considered that at one point, but he figured an army of lawyers would grind him to powder and investigations into his own past could derail everything he’d built. So, to hell with the autographed picture. His blurry gaze returned to Dave. “They’ve got a weapon that turned our bus into that thing?”
“Inanimate objects into living tissue,” Ethan said. “Highly advanced and rapid creation of cells using the object as a framework. In easier terms, a life beam.”
“Holy shit!” said Jefferson. “And I thought 3D printing was way out there!”
“The President,” Ethan said, getting them back on track. “You’ve seen him.”
“I have. He didn’t recognize me, but then again I look one hell of a lot different than I used to. I’m not sure in his present condition Beale would recognize his own mother.”
“At least you have a connection to him. If we can remind him of that, so much the better.”
“But you have to get through Derryman first,” Dave said.
“Yes.” Ethan stood silently for awhile, watching the battle drift further from the White Mansion, which was a good thing. There was a tremendous blue flash in the clouds, blue streaks seeming to shoot in all directions, and far away a huge black shape came slowly spinning down through the clouds and crashed somewhere beyond the mountain peaks. Score one for the Gorgons, he thought, but the Cyphers would have their revenge. That was another reason their war was never-ending; revenge begat revenge, and so it would be into eternity.
It wasn’t long before one of the soldiers and a Secret Service agent emerged from the White Mansion Mountain and, at the point of automatic rifles, herded the group back inside. Men were in there trying to clean the place up, but it was going to be a Herculean task. What they were going to do about the destroyed entranceway was anyone’s guess. The nearness of the beast’s carcass made Olivia stagger and clutch at Dave for support.
“Can you get her to the infirmary?” he asked the soldier. “She’s in shock, she needs some medical attention.”
“Do it,” said the agent, who was one of the jeans-clad, less formal men who’d brought them in from the bus. He understood shock. He’d been assigned to stand watch over the teenaged girl with the eyepatch, and he’d stayed right where he was supposed to be until he heard shooting in the corridor, and then he’d been shocked into immobility for a precious few seconds by the sight of a man-shaped thing with snakelike arms. He’d been one of the men who had gotten on his belly on the concrete and opened fire at the Cypher soldiers. After he’d thrown up blood and his ears and nose had stopped bleeding, he’d gotten some Valium from the infirmary. There had been a run on Valium. He was more in control of himself now, but his hearing was still muffled and there was a pain in his left ear that shot through that side of his face and down into his neck.
“We need to see Mr. Derryman,” Ethan told him when the soldier had helped Olivia away.
“My orders are to escort you back to your rooms.”
“It is urgent,” Ethan said. “The Gorgons and the Cyphers are going to come again. The next time you won’t be able to survive.”
The agent could not look into Ethan’s silver eyes. He stared at the dead, headless carcass for a long moment. Then he took his comm device from his pocket and keyed in some numbers. “Tempest One One,” he said into it. “Sergeant Akers, is Derryman up there?”
“Affirm that. He’s getting the boss ready. You okay?”
“I’m here. Listen…I’m bringing three of the new arrivals up. It’s on my head. The spooky one wants to speak to Derryman.”
“Ambler’s in bad shape, Johnny. He needs the doc to take a look at him, but he’s wanting to get the speech done.”
“We’re all in bad shape. The spook says it’s urgent and I believe him. If you’d seen what happened down here you’d believe it too. I’m bringing them up. Out.” He put his communicator away. “Let’s go, but understand this: I am empowered to kill any and all of you if I don’t like a single movement you make.” It sounded like a hollow threat delivered from the agency’s manual, because it was clear the spook had saved the installation from unrecoverable destruction. “Walk ahead of me, single file,” he said.