‘Thanks for helping me,’ Damien said. ‘Get to the subway, before.’
Aviary blinked, then seemed to realize what he was talking about. ‘Right, yeah. Glad you got there in one piece.’
Damien shrugged. ‘They got me in the end though.’
‘Well, you got the rock to Sophia,’ she said. ‘So … any ideas on how I can do this?’
Damien’s stomach dropped. ‘You don’t have … a plan?’
She slowed when she reached the corner of Damien’s invisible box. This motion sensor was active, so she didn’t move any closer.
‘Yeah, I did,’ she said. ‘That was it. Disable the inactive ones.’
‘Don’t go any closer, they’re aimed at each other.’ He indicated to the sensor opposite her. ‘You’ll set that one off.’
‘We got past the sensors in that base on Long Island,’ Aviary said. ‘Last year, remember?’
Damien hadn’t thought of that. ‘Yeah, you could hang a blanket or sheet from the wire.’
Aviary stared at the sensor, then shook her head slowly. ‘They’re more clever than that,’ she said. ‘They take the average temperature at difference points across their field of view — which in your case is a thin barrier. Not very wide but still very long. If the temperature at one point changes past the tolerance level, more than the other points, then it triggers.’
‘Oh,’ Damien said. ‘So you’d need a very long sheet. Well, if it was me I’d just slap duct tape over the Fresnel lens,’ Damien said.
‘But they’re overlapping, genius,’ Aviary said.
‘Yeah, keep forgetting,’ he said. ‘So that works for every scenario except this one.’
‘Do you have an infrared filter on your torch?’ Aviary said.
Damien padded his tuxedo pants pockets. ‘No torch, sorry.’
Aviary frowned. ‘I don’t have one yet. Crap.’
‘They’re wireless, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘I don’t see any wires. You could disable it with your phone—’
‘If I use the right frequency,’ she said. ‘They have onboard batteries though. I need to disengage the battery first otherwise it might trigger the alarm.’
‘Which in our case is not an alarm but a very large explosion,’ Damien said.
‘I’m guessing you don’t have an EMP grenade handy?’ Aviary said.
He shook his head. ‘All out.’
‘OK,’ Aviary said. ‘We can do this. We just have to think.’
‘The sensor is infrared, right?’ Damien said. ‘So you could cover yourself in something to conceal your infrared signature.’
‘Like what, mud?’ Aviary stifled a laugh. ‘Just like Predator, huh?’
‘Predator? Like an animal?’ Damien said. ‘No, the mud would warm up too quickly—’
Aviary sighed. ‘Never mind. Yeah, it’s passive infrared. It triggers on rapid change of infrared energy, not gradual change. Wait, there is a way.’
‘Tell me it doesn’t involve mud,’ Damien said.
‘There’s a joke there somewhere.’ Aviary shook her head. ‘The sensors have a threshold. You know, six hertz and you get radio frequency interference. Like point five hertz and you get the sun moving across the sky. But if I move slowly enough—’
‘I have no idea what you just said,’ Damien said.
‘OK, I need to be slow enough so I’m indistinguishable from the thermal fluctuations behind me,’ Aviary said. ‘Very, very slow.’
She had her multitool’s screwdriver in hand and started moving her arms very slowly toward the active sensor. He could see her trembling.
‘You’re shaking,’ he said.
‘Sorry.’ She stopped, waited for her arms to steady and then continued. ‘So are you.’
Damien looked down. He clenched his fists.
Aviary’s screwdriver-wielding hand touched what Damien was sure to be the invisible barrier. No explosion. She moved again, a fraction of an inch. He realized he hadn’t breathed in a while and slowly inhaled.
Aviary’s screwdriver head reached the first screw on the panel. She held it in front of the screw, waited a moment, then seated the screwdriver into the top of the screw. Then held it. Then applied pressure to make sure it was seated properly. Then held it. Then started to turn her hand slightly.
It was painful to watch. But he couldn’t look away.
Ten more movements and Aviary was unscrewing the panel. One screw dropped and he held his breath. Nothing triggered. The screw wasn’t exactly warm, so its movement wouldn’t have registered. The sensor was designed to identify movement in infrared energy, not the infrared itself. While Aviary’s arms probably burned hot on the infrared spectrum, they weren’t moving enough to register on the sensor. She’d found a weakness.
The panel popped open. Aviary kept her hand in place for a moment, breathed — her face safely out of range — and began the slow, arduous turn of her multitool to shift from screwdriver to needlenose pliers — located right in the center of the multitool. Once she finally got there, she took a few more cycles to get her grip, then raised the multitool fraction by fraction to the panel itself. She moved the needlenose pliers through a red wire until the wire was nestled inside the wire cutters.
Aviary snipped.
Chapter 50
Sophia checked her phone. She’d tried to call Nasira but it didn’t ring. She called Aviary but hers didn’t ring either. She hoped they were just out of range. A new camera feed had appeared, showing a bar of some sort. It was empty. She swiped to another feed and found the Main Concourse inside Grand Central terminal. It was empty. Good.
‘Which way?’ DC yelled. ‘East side?’
She switched back to the map to check for operatives. They were all behind her, although one pair was close.
‘Scratch that.’ DC swerved, taking a sharp left into a narrow road.
‘Here!’ Czarina yelled. ‘Here!’
Sophia looked over to see the MetLife lobby on their left. DC lurched to a stop. Sophia collected her ruck — the meteorite inside — and slipped it over her shoulders. She pulled on the straps, pressing it firmly against her back.
Sophia took it while Czarina opened the rear doors and leaped out. Sophia followed her. Her right leg was tender and she couldn’t put her full weight on it after fighting the operative in the gunner’s platform. DC was already moving toward the MetLife building, carbine in both hands. He left the Marauder on the street. It was no use to them now.
Czarina slowed her pace and fired a short burst from her carbine — shattering a glass pane on the other side. DC saw it and changed direction, crossing to the far left and using the butt of his carbine to smash away the fragmented glass, still bound in place by protective film.
Sophia reached him by the time he’d cleared the glass and stepped through. She tossed the ruck to him.
‘You’re faster,’ she said. ‘Get to the platforms.’
DC slung the ruck over his shoulders. ‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know, the suburban tracks,’ she said. ‘Dining concourse.’
DC moved, carbine in both hands. He’d have to find the correct platform because she didn’t know.
Czarina pulled her pace back to offer Sophia some rear security. Sophia tried to run but her ankle threatened to buckle. She followed DC’s trail, under a jagged glass sculpture, and risked a glance at her phone’s map. Two operatives were very close to them now.
Behind her, Czarina opened fire. Sophia turned to see someone manning the .50 cal on their abandoned Marauder.
Denton.
She could see his shaved head, slick under the rain. His lips curled with delight.
‘Shit.’
Sophia ran behind a marble wall. Czarina was with her, pulling her along. The marble wall erupted beside them, spewing chunks, fragments and a white dust cloud that stung her eyes.