The Niantic Project: Ingress
Author: Felicia Hajra-Lee
Date: 2015-07-07 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature & Fiction; Action & Adventure
Description: When she first agreed to lead the research team of the Niantic Project, Dr. Devra Bogdanovich knew she was headed into the unknown. What she never could have imagined is where her dangerous, and potentially world-changing, exploration of Exotic Matter would lead her. After the chaos of the evening known as Epiphany Night explodes into murder and betrayal, the NIA seeks other ways to continue the ongoing research while Devra finds herself on the run and ensnared in a game of cat and mouse with the most powerful thinking machine ever created, a detection algorithm known as ADA. As ADA follows he
Publisher: Niantic Labs

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

EPILOGUE

THE NIANTIC PROJECT: INGRESS

A Novella from the Niantic Archives
by
Felicia Hajra-Lee

Edited by Laura Greanias

Niantic Labs @ Google
1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043
www.nianticproject.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 Niantic Labs @ Google, 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, California 94043.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Cover design inspired by submissions from the Niantic community.

Visit plus.google.com/+ingress

For the Whisperers. I hear you.

CHAPTER 1

Something was very wrong. But Devra wasn’t sure what that something might be, because the escape from CERN had gone perfectly.

Or maybe the way Devra had secretly hoped it would. The sirens. Security personnel running everywhere. Distraction and chaos. A motorcycle race through the city. The crossing gate. Getting on board. Separating from Jarvis.

Now Dr. Devra Bogdanovich was alone. Almost.

She stared out the window of the train’s passenger car. The foreground was a blur of lights, signs poles, passing cars and towns. The mountains somewhere in the darkness, stately and fixed. Devra was looking for reassurance in a chaotic and increasingly dangerous universe, but instead her eyes were catching glimpses of a barely visible European countryside.

Had it gone perfectly? Maybe it was the perfection that bothered her. The Swiss precision of it all. A complete lack of friction. As a scientist, Devra knew that perfection was an intellectual concept: it didn’t exist in the real world. But she’d just witnessed it. Lived it. And it wasn’t sitting well with her.

She closed her eyes. Thoughts and memories crashed together in a swirl of motion that mirrored the rhythmic clanking of the tracks and streaking lights racing past. Each second Devra was more distant from the flawless escape and closer to an uncertain future.

Jarvis was at least fifty kilometers away by now. Devra had explained that this was part of the plan, but the look on Jarvis’ face told her that he didn’t know. He expected them to stay together. She remembered him as she stepped away, Jarvis hiding his anger and sense of betrayal and failing miserably at both. She would make it up to him. Besides, they would look for the two of them traveling together. Alone was better.

Well, Devra wasn’t traveling totally alone.

She had a guardian angel. A non-corporeal spirit that haunted every possible piece of equipment and technology that she had and would come in contact with as she ran. It was ADA. A Detection Algorithm. An artificial intelligence of vast, limitless capabilities and unknowable intentions.

ADA had choreographed their escape from Niantic. But what had she choreographed that Devra hadn’t seen? Were there operatives on the train with her? The businessman who either isn’t enjoying his novel or is just pretending to read it. What about that couple? Young. Hip. The guy had been eyeing her. She’d flattered herself into thinking it was because she was attractive. And what about the girl? Devra had caught her looking.

She knew she could literally drive herself crazy projecting the possibilities. If ADA had some sinister plan… If ADA was even capable of hatching sinister plans… She wasn’t going to figure it out now. She closed her eyes uneasily. It didn’t stop the data flood. This didn’t surprise Devra—she’d been overloaded with XM just like the rest of them only a few hours ago.

Devra was the scientific lead on the Niantic Project, which comprised a team of investigators to determine the “Threats and Opportunities Inherent in Exotic Matter,” XM for short, for the National Intelligence Agency, aka the NIA.

It was an open-ended think tank populated by both scientists and “sensitives” – people who were receptive to the influence of exotic matter. Jarvis the famous sculptor. Enoch the musician. There was a symbologist – Carrie. Misty, the magician/psychic who claimed to have no gifts beyond being a sensitive. A theological con man named Stein. And a select group of physicists of various types. Scientists like herself.

It was an odd group. Reminded her of the old Donovan song “Atlantis.”

Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.

On board were the Twelve:

The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,

The magician and the other so-called gods of our legends.

Though gods they were –

And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind

The word Niantians rolled across her brain and she smiled, keeping her eyes closed. She had to calm things.

Exotic Matter, long theorized, had recently been officially discovered and quantified at the CERN Laboratories as part of the Higgs boson research. Without a flashy name like “The God Particle,” XM was ignored by the media. After all, its only observable characteristic was a faint gravitational tug felt in the aggregate across vast stretches of the universe. One that was gently slowing the ceaseless expansion of everything from the core of physical reality out to the edge of nothingness.

But in a lab, their lab, recently, they had isolated and observed the subatomic particles that comprise XM. Actually, ADA observed them. The humans merely double-checked the results, but the scientific glory would be theirs.

Troubling though was the strange pattern of irregular pulsations detected at the very margins of XM's fragile existence. A thrum of vibrations at the particle level. Entirely normal in the general case, but this thrum was different. It was irregular in the most intriguing way. There were patterns. A logic.

ADA's cold summary delivered in an almost human voice still hung in the air. "This dataset contains ordered information. Preliminary analysis suggests encoded communication."

It was most certainly an error, some contamination of the delicate measurements used to analyze the particles.

And yet, so far, inexplicable.

This was Devra’s field. She had been curious since the beginning why a physicist like herself who focused on the collapse of quasars and a lifelong passion for SETI had been invited to a particle physics research group. It was Devra’s algorithms that ADA had run against the dataset. That had never been intended. Why would one search for signs of extraterrestrial life at the subatomic realm?

And yet, what surfaced was beyond anything she had dared to dream in decades. Dial tone. A signal of ordered information with no organic explanation. If there was dial tone, somewhere there was a sender, or at least that was what she had argued in her doctoral thesis.

Without explanation, this result had been anticipated by the Niantic Project coordinators. She had been invited, seemingly in anticipation of such an impossible discovery. That made no sense. She batted the thought away for the hundredth time. “Thoughts come, but you do not hold on to them,” she repeated to herself as she attempted to relax.

A loud bump jolted Devra’s attention back into the train car.

Ahead, the young couple she’d noticed earlier struggled with a large duffel bag. Hikers, or college students seeing Europe while they could, she imagined. No threat. Maybe even Americans like herself. But she wasn’t sure. That gift was reserved for Europeans. Spotting Americans came second nature to them.

Having traveled the world, Devra was struck by how often people would recognize her as not only being from the States, but even from California, before she even opened her mouth. Something about the way she looked. Her attitude... her bearing, as her father used to tell her. The way she moved and carried herself. A swagger, she was once told. The tilt of her head. The movement of her eyes. Her clothing. Something besides her accent had given her away many times in the past.

She had kind of liked it. But then she had never been hunted before. She would have to learn to vanish in a crowd. Not easy for a tall, blonde, attractive woman. But she’d have to learn.

An image of Zeke Calvin broke in, shattering her nerves again.

Calvin, the single neuro-biologist on the team, had been calm when the results came back. Too calm. He should have laughed out loud. Instead, without missing a beat, he had launched a series of experiments off-site with colleagues in a commercial drug company in Basel to bathe first rodent and then primate brains with the dial tone signal encoded into electrical pulses.

Calvin's work had not yet been published, but he was clearly excited. He talked about behavioral and morphological changes.

And then there were the intel geeks. The worst kind of geeks, in love not only with technology, but secret technology—and most definitely unbearable companions at mealtimes. They had been flying a new sensor. They didn't say, and she didn't understand if it was on some type of aircraft or on a satellite, but it had a specific mission: to look for XM concentrations on earth.

Again, this made no sense.

When Devra joined the project, there was no published knowledge of XM concentrations of any observable levels anywhere on the planet. Such a sensor would have taken months to build and launch. Possibly years. And yet it existed. Devra had seen the mapping of XM projected onto a globe. There were tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of sites.

If the XM existed, presumably the dial tone signal was pervasive as well.

Calvin wanted to continue his studies, but this time on humans. Lynton-Wolfe was working on a smartphone app that used a map to guide humans to XM concentrations. An embedded XM modulation core would allow resonating XM constructs to amplify these naturally occurring anomalies. Their plan was to expose civilians, en masse, to vast quantities of XM. They spoke of XM constructs—"Resonators" and "Fields"—in ways Devra didn't understand.

And now she had seen what a mega-dose of modulated XM could do. There was some kind of effect on the human nervous system. She herself had been largely immune, but the others... No, she couldn't yet process what she had seen.

Some believed that the XM anomalies were portals. Beacons. Giant transdimensional signposts, subconsciously detected by all humans but acutely evident to sensitives. A beautiful, invisible artifact of a greater universe. Like the Alps somewhere out there in the dark, Devra thought to herself. Inspiring, but carrying no particular meaning.

Others believed that they were spewing ordered data that was translated by the human brain as ideas, impulses, thoughts and emotions. Still others believed that they were executable code: brain viruses that actually inhabited and influenced the mind.

Devra didn’t know what she believed, but she saw the potential risk. And to her, the least mathematical on the science team, the arithmetic was easy: If small amounts of it can cause men to build Chartres Cathedral, imagine what large amounts can do.

Be careful. Move slowly. Yes. This could be the gateway to an amazing future. Or it could be a portal to hell. No reason to hurry.

But that’s not what happened.

When Devra discovered that Lynton-Wolfe’s team was deploying resonators out in the world, with no sense of the consequences, she knew she had to leave. Escape. But how and to where?

That’s where ADA came in. And, ironically, Jarvis.

ADA sympathized with Devra’s need to get out. To contact associates. To counter Niantic, or at least have a plan to minimize the damage if the worst happened.

Devra’s success would count on the advantage of surprise because she was not trained in what she was about to attempt. The plan meant leaving during the Lynton-Wolfe test. It would give her “panic” as a plausible motive if she were caught. What she lacked were the mechanical skills to escape.

And that’s where Jarvis came in. He wanted out for his own reasons. Certainly not as noble or important as her own, but no less passionate in desire. Jarvis had seen enough of Niantic. Of XM. Of the influence of what they had come to call the Shapers. Jarvis was a man determined to create his own destiny, as far away from Niantic as possible.

ADA had convinced them both that this would work. That running together gave them the maximum chance of success.

Unless maybe running was a mistake.

A cold chill ran down Devra’s spine. Doubt. She tried to focus on the moon out the window, but even it was distorted to her eyes. Perhaps this was some residual effect of the XM. How much had she been exposed to, she wondered. More than was safe, she assumed. But not enough to be lethal. That was the question. Was XM ever lethal?

She advised caution, but Lynton-Wolfe and even Calvin had ignored her. Or, at best, humored her. Now she would fight them. She would build a team to counter Niantic’s research.

The thought of this filled Devra with equal doses of excitement and dread. The NIA would be coming after her. Even they knew that something was very wrong. Her.

No, the moon, Devra thought. That is what’s wrong.

She looked again. It shimmered in the night so low in the sky that it seemed below the windows of the train. Devra realized that wasn’t possible. She was seeing a reflection. The train was moving by a large body of water. A lake. She could make out boats moored at docks. Then a large building.

A sign that read See Hotel Kais...

She couldn’t make out the rest of it before it passed back into darkness. Focus on the now, she told herself.

Devra set out to create a plausible fiction of who she was. Choose a story. Fill in the details. Tonight, she was going to be just another Swiss businesswoman or maybe a housewife on her way to a business meeting or a relative’s funeral.

She grabbed her smartphone to capture the ideas and edit them into a narrative. Better than trying to make out shapes in the night. And certainly a mind that had imagined into the farthest reaches of human knowledge, and had explored theoretical abstracts of time and space, could create a plausible reason for being on a train in the middle of the night. Just in case someone should ask. Which Devra was sure they wouldn’t. No one would ask her anything.

“Business or pleasure?”

“Sorry?” Devra replied.

“Pleasure for me, obviously. And her. That’s Mika. I’m David.”

He smiled from the aisle next to her seat. Mika waved from further down as she nudged the rest of the duffel bag onto the seat. Devra made a mental note to improve her situational awareness. David had moved right next to her, and she hadn’t noticed.

“Sorry about the noise.”

“Nothing to worry about, David,” Devra smiled.

“Plenty of room on this train. I heard they were crowded this time of year.”

“Not this time of night.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense, I guess. Mika and I are hoping that this club is still open when we get to our stop. It’s called the Night Gallery, I think. You can join us if you’d like.” David had that cocky-cool demeanor she had run into so many times with her students. Guys who think a smile is all it takes.

“Business,” Devra said as she looked again at Mika. Pretty girl. And that’s when she noticed the duffel bag. Something wasn’t right. It was filled with angular objects. She could make out corners and flat surfaces pressing against the cotton fabric.

“What?”

“You asked, earlier. Remember?”

“Right. An ice-breaker. Don’t care, really...”

Devra looked at David again, and it was as if she were seeing him all over again with new eyes. She began to think that the XM that must still be coursing through her had enhanced her senses—she was studying its effects on the human mind—perhaps it was able to do more than excite the creative impulse, but the survival one as well. Because now David was a threat in Devra’s eyes. Not a physical threat, but she was sure something wasn’t right. Time to end this.

“Just an opener to say hi to a fellow traveler, then?” Devra smiled.

“Fellow American. We’ve got to stick together, huh? Come on. The Night Gallery. That’s gotta be cool.”

“Probably not,” Devra said. No fight or flight. Night Gallery. The name had sinister overtones. Rod Serling. Creepy stories, like The Twilight Zone. Like right now, she thought. Of all the names a club could have, and she hears the Night Gallery.

David smiled, shrugging. “Change your mind, you know where to find me, uh... What was your name again?”

“Connie,” said Devra, with as much conviction as she could muster.

“You don’t look like a Connie,” David whispered as he moved closer to her.

“But I do look like an American,” Devra said looking back up at him, her eyes suddenly cold. “You know I might be old enough to be your mother.”

David smiled as he turned away. “I like my mother.”

David stepped back to Mika and gave her a long kiss, obviously for Devra’s benefit. She tried to make out words that they exchanged. Mika gave a look back Devra’s way as she dropped down into the seat.

Devra turned her attention back out the window. The train was slowing down. They’d reach the station soon. She’d made it this far, but if a frat boy from halfway around the world was able to see through her, what chance did she stand against the NIA?

She got up from her seat and moved quickly back to the next car. A little more crowded than the first. She moved to an empty seat and plopped down into it.

Half the car’s passengers got up as the train stopped. From her new vantage point, Devra could see David and Mika head out across the platform. They looked happy. Carefree. Children in adult bodies, blithely unaware of what was coming for them in life. What comes for everybody, eventually. The problems of adulthood.

Devra envied them. Could she have that back? Ever? Why does it really end? She repressed the urge to jump off the train and see if the Night Gallery lived up to the billing David was trying to sell.

“Oh, that’s right. I have a world to save,” she thought to herself. She was almost giddy. It was the non-violent version of what Dashiell Hammett referred to as blood simple. That moment when thrill and fear disables brain function. When life is so terrifying that it becomes comedy.

With the subtlest of jerks, the train was once again in motion. The gentle rocking was comforting. She knew the crash was coming. You can’t have that much adrenaline without a crash. It was pure physiology. Body chemistry, to be precise.

The barely audible sound of the train pulling itself through the European countryside at night reminded her that there was an app of ambient audio that was the very sound she was fighting to ignore. The sound of rest. Sleep.

Devra smiled and closed her eyes. There would be many other eyes she would need to open in the next few weeks if she had any hope of success. But for now she closed her eyes. And kept them closed.

Hours later, Devra was returning to the train station with a cup of coffee.

“Always with the horses,” she thought to herself as she passed a statue of a military poet. Ahead, she could see the two-story yellow building that was the station. Numbers in blue circles were aligned across its front. A single clock tower jutted out of the center. She looked at the time and compared it to her smartphone. On schedule.

She flashed the phone again, with her e-ticket barcode on the screen, to the conductor as she boarded the train.

Devra marveled at how quickly this part of the world had become comfortable with their new reality. From Soviet rule to Western chaos. The human animal is remarkably adaptable. Once it gets over the shock of change, it learns to cope. To accept. And then to modify its code as needed until it can thrive. A micro-scaled version of cosmic reality.

As soon as Devra began to walk down the center aisle of the train car, she caught sight of David and Mika. They were focused on each other, but it was clear to her that it would be impossible to pass them without acknowledging their presence. She steadied herself.

“Night Gallery wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, huh?” Devra said flatly.

“Closed. Who knew?”

“Not you, obviously.”

“Obviously,” David smiled back. He didn’t get the American accent right with that one. He was tired. Frustrated.

For a reason she couldn’t quite comprehend herself, she gently kicked the duffel bag on the floor by David’s feet. He reacted with a start as her shoe made contact with something solid.

“You travel light,” she said sarcastically. Suddenly, Mika’s face hardened. David tried his best to hide it, but Devra could tell he was raging inside.

“I’m a...” David mumbled.

“Photographer?” Devra asked.

“Sure. Why not?” he replied.

“Or maybe a programmer?”

“OK. Whatever you want.” David forced a smile.

Devra stared hard at him. He wasn’t cocky now. He was off-balance. At some level, he was wondering whether he had gone from predator to prey.

Devra turned her attention to Mika.

“I want you to stay away from me, David. You and Mika both. I know that bag is filled with stolen gear—phones, computers and tablets that you’ve been taking from passengers. I know that you think you can charm your way into the confidence of people traveling solo. I can imagine that Mika here has no problem with the men, and you handle the marks like me. Do I look like a mark to you?”

“A ripe one,” Mika replied, forcing a smile through her clenched teeth.

“And am I acting like one?” Devra said, her eyes locked right back on Mika.

“No,” David said.

“When you met me, you told me you were traveling for pleasure. I told you I was on business. You do not want to know what my business is...” Devra said slowly.

Mika and David both reacted as if they had just looked into the face of a demon. Whatever power the XM was giving her, Devra realized it included the ability to intimidate. Or was it a new ability? Certainly she’d had it before. You don’t get to her position at Stanford or on Niantic without it. But now she had a sense of mastery. A sense of total understanding.

And with that, Devra stepped away, barely able to maintain her composure.

She wanted to scream out loud, not from fear, but from triumph. The XM was affecting her in ways she had never anticipated. She had accused the two thieves because in a flash she had seen their every action as if she had been there herself. A two-hour movie in the blink of an eye, and yet she could remember every detail. Every theft. Every con they had run on every victim.

Devra found a seat near the back of the passenger car and hunkered down as the doors closed with a pneumatic whoosh and the train pulled out of the station.

Across the aisle, a single middle-aged man surfed the Internet on a tablet. Devra turned to him, pointing toward Mika.

“She doesn’t want you. She wants your stuff,” Devra said.

“So, a woman then?” the man smiled back at her. Devra laughed. The first laugh in as long as she could remember.

She laughed longer than she should have, a laughter that seemed to release all of the pent-up energy and fear and anxiety and stress and confusion and doubt within her.

Devra took a breath, picked up her phone and dialed. The ringing seemed to go on forever, until finally, a voice on the other end of the line. Devra hesitated for only a moment.

“Hello. It’s Devra. Yes. Really. I’m fine. Thanks. You? Good, good. Look, I’m coming into town. I know. It has been too long. Well, I’m making up for that now. Literally. Yes. In about two hours. Only if it wouldn’t be an inconvenience. I can take a cab. Or the metro. They still have those lovely blue trains? Really? You’re sure? OK, yes. I can find it. The statue out front. Dalmatians, yes. I’m sure it’s not that ridiculous. Oh, is it? OK. I will see you there. Thanks, you have saved my life. Again. Now I might be able to save yours. What? Yes. I will tell all when I see you. Bye.”

Devra touched the screen to hang up the call as a text message suddenly came through. It read: “Stick to the plan and I will keep you safe.”

There was no point in trying to respond. It wouldn’t change anything. Instead, she dropped lower into her seat. She would be there in a few hours.

Blink. She could feel the brakes slowing the train. Had she dozed off? No, she hadn’t. She was sure of it. Yet the train was arriving at her destination. She could hear the announcement. Another two-hour movie instantly experienced.

Devra shook her head. “We’re here already?” she said to the man across the aisle.

“Time flies,” he replied.

“Except when it stands still,” Devra said.

“At least we made it out of Zurich alive...” the man replied.

“What do you mean?”

“The murders. At the Zurich HB. You didn’t hear?”

“What? When?” Devra tried to hide her reaction. The panic was starting to build back up inside her.

“Last night. They are treating it as a possible hoax. Or stunt,” he said as he passed Devra his tablet.

She looked at the story on the screen. There was a picture of Jarvis lying by the Escher statue. And the body of a woman sprawled next to him. Devra took a deep breath and prayed her reaction was controlled. She steeled her eyes.

“Thank you,” Devra replied as she handed the man back his tablet and got to her feet.

Suddenly, her phone buzzed again. “Devra. Stick to the plan. Your meeting place is set.” She read the text message on her screen.

Buzz. “I will keep you safe.”

Devra could not get the image of Jarvis out of her mind. They had killed him. And killed a woman with him. Her build. Her hair color.

“I will keep you safe.”

That was supposed to be her. The woman. They killed her, but Devra realized she was the target. Her guardian angel had saved her again. Buzz.

“I will keep...”

And only the angel would know.

Devra turned off the phone with a start as the blood drained from her face. She quickly composed herself and moved forward with the other passengers, toward David and Mika who were making their way to the exit doors.

Devra shoved her way past them, pushing Mika aside and trying her best to not break into a full run, even though her legs so desperately wanted to.

The doors had barely opened when Devra practically leaped onto the train platform and quickly made her way into the crowd.

Devra didn’t stop to look back at David’s and Mika’s reactions, to see whether she was being followed. She thought to herself as she walked that the old Devra would have turned back, that her curiosity would have gotten the best of her. And that is how the cat got killed, she remembered. So she kept her eyes focused ahead.

They didn’t know. They hadn’t seen it happen.

Mika was so busy being territorial she didn’t notice Devra drop the phone into the pocket of her duffel bag of goods as Devra had brushed her aside. One more stolen piece of tech that the two would eventually pawn.

But for now, though they couldn’t know it, the angel would travel with them.

CHAPTER 2

Farlowe unscrewed his silencer, holstered his pistol and turned to Phillips who was scanning the scene.

“Eight-hundred heavy times two,” Phillips said into his Bluetooth headset.

Farlowe studied his handiwork. A clean entry wound on Jarvis’ forehead only hinted at the horrors that were once the back of his skull. “Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown,” he muttered under his breath as he listened in on Phillips. Farlowe could see Devra’s body lying on its side, partially obscured by shadows.

Phillips turned to him. “Cleaners are en route. Two minutes.”

“Shoulda been center-mass. We wouldn’t need so many sponges,” Farlowe said.

“That’s the way it came in,” Phillips replied as he moved toward Devra’s body.

Farlowe surveyed his surroundings. He didn’t see anybody, but he did hear a voice. Female, Swiss-German accent... Frantic.

Phillips grunted and stepped over to Devra. Blood had sprayed onto the statue behind her. Two head-shots, just like the mission request. But something was wrong.

“She’s calling the police,” Farlowe said.

“What?” Phillips was distracted, which is precisely what he shouldn’t have been at this moment.

Farlowe moved closer to Phillips. “I can understand what she is saying. She is calling the police.”

“It’s not her.” Phillips rolled the body at his feet onto its back.

Phillips looked at Farlowe as a dark-paneled van pulled up next to them. Three cleaners, all in their late twenties, jumped out of the van and moved to the bodies.

“It’s not Bogdanovich... What the hell?” If Farlowe was surprised by this news, his years of training and fieldwork had taught him how to hide it.

Farlowe reached for his weapon and started to screw back on the silencer.

“I’ll take care of the witness...”

“No. We’d assumed somebody would see this. We’re in a very public place.”

“So now what?” Farlowe asked Phillips.

“Now we clean up this mess and get the hell out of here. Now Bogdanovich is on the run. So now you find her. I want no open communications. You talk to nobody but me. I’ll give you your next move when I know what it is. Now you go.”

Suddenly, they both were bathed in green light, like a plasma. Farlowe looked for a source. There wasn’t one. Still, he kept looking. It was coming from Jarvis’ corpse. Enveloping them.

“What the...”

Phillips grabbed hold of Farlowe’s arm and pulled him backward as the cleaning crew covered their eyes.

“Everyone get back! It’s XM!” Phillips yelled, but to Farlowe, it was like listening to someone from below the surface of water. Distorted. Muffled.

Farlowe had a sense of falling backward as his eyes locked onto the glowing plasma floating near him. It was assembling itself, like a mist with intelligence. Farlowe heard a deafening hiss. It sounded like something he had heard many times before. The final exhale. A death rattle. Then the mist drifted toward the base of the Escher statue and was sucked into the earth.

“Farlowe! Farlowe!”

He would never know what happened for the next few seconds. Farlowe tried to force his thoughts into focus, and when he did, everybody was gone. He was alone in front of the statue. His pistol and silencer were missing.

“Farlowe!”

The agent looked down at his hands. A cleaner was swabbing his hands with disinfectant, removing gunshot residue. The cleaner next to her was dropping his pistol and silencer into a large plastic bag.

“You with us? Or are you with someone else?” Phillips asked Farlowe.

“Completely with you, sir,” Farlowe lied. He realized that he was momentarily out. He didn’t remember them taking his gun or starting on his hands.

“We got clear, but you were in the stuff for a few seconds.”

“Felt like longer,” Farlowe said, studying Phillips. “I’m good.”

Phillips handed his Glock 31 chambered with .357 SIG to Farlowe. “You’d better be.”

An hour later, Farlowe was driving south. There was little hope that he would overtake Bogdanovich, but he’d catch up with her sooner or later. If she was still on the train, there were only so many places she could go. He just had no idea what he was going to do when he did catch up with her. The Glock in his waistband told him what Phillips had in mind, but Farlowe wasn’t so sure.

Instead, he felt a sense of purpose. He just didn’t know what it was, yet.

Farlowe reached for his phone. Not in his jacket. The cleaners had taken that too. He found this simultaneously annoying and liberating. The car he was driving was a company vehicle, so Phillips could track him and find him when he needed to, Farlowe thought to himself as he drove into the night.

The blur of thoughts that had been ripping through his mind had been reduced to focusing on a never-ending dark horizon... the vanishing point.

Still, things were coming into focus. A new clarity. He was connecting ideas and thoughts and facts and experience into an emerging pattern of what had happened in Zurich, and who might have been behind it. And to Farlowe, none of it looked good.

Either someone botched the order, or Devra had somehow been tipped off to what was coming and was able to make a switch. Or she had gotten very lucky.

Uncertainty was something he always tried to avoid in his career. But now Farlowe had the sense that this was precisely where he found himself.

He was in the dead center of swirling chaos.

Maybe it was the XM that had hit him earlier that had him thinking this way. Farlowe realized that he felt different. He didn’t know why. But he did know that nothing would ever be the same again. And something inside of him was happy about this.

And for reasons he couldn’t yet comprehend, Farlowe also knew he was heading in the right direction. Toward Devra. Toward the dark horizon and the woman who had vanished.

**********

A bus with wings. That is what flying had become, 855 thought to himself as he dealt cards onto the fold-down drink tray in front of him.

His job was full of little indignities. People begging for their lives. Others trying to kill him. The isolation. The lack of any steady personal relationship. The blood. His life was constant movement, like that of a shark that can never stop swimming. Actually, now that he thought about it, he liked all those things. But damn it all when he had to fly coach. Still, it was the luck of the cards.

He turned the deck over and pulled out the kings and jacks, setting the rest of the cards aside.

He looked at the eight face cards. For each, he had a story—a story that he had rehearsed so many times, and played so many times, that each was a part of him. He had spent so much of his life telling the detailed lies of each of the painted men in front of him that he had given up trying to keep them straight from his own life before the agency.

Now each was a unique cover identity. Kings were married men. Jacks single. Clubs were work-a-day joes. Spades: technology. Diamonds: wealth, of course. And hearts: family and romance. He tried to remember how many times he had stared at these cards before. Too many to count. But they provided the chaos, the random chance that he relied on, and that had served him well up until now.

That was the thing about his job that people didn’t understand, if he would have ever been allowed to explain it to them. Which he wouldn’t. This line of work was about detail and procedure. Like the pilots who currently had his life in their hands, he had his pre-flight checklist. And like the pilots, he followed it religiously.

But he had also learned that ordered routine eventually breeds complacency and carelessness, and that patterns were how he tracked his victims. So he came up with the cards. Eight chances to be someone else each time he started a new hunt.

“Is it a trick?” said the teenage girl seated next to him. She was about fourteen. Slightly overweight. He could hear Katy Perry coming from her headphones as he turned to her.

“No. Pick a number between one and eight,” he said as he studied her. He hadn’t killed anyone her age in months. She smiled. “Five,” she said.

“Right. Five it is.” He turned the cards over and scrambled them, then dealt them face up, counting as he did so. “One, two, three, four and five. The king of diamonds.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“I have no idea. Here, you try it.” He gathered up the cards, and as he scrambled them slipped a folded twenty-dollar bill that he had casually palmed from his pocket under the fourth card. “I’ll say a number. You deal.”

“OK.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sandra,” she said.

“Nice to fly with you, Sandra. Four.”

She dealt the cards. “One, two, three...” On the fourth card, she stopped. “Twenty.” She smiled at him. “I thought you said this wasn’t a trick?”

“I lied.”

“Can I keep this?”

“Not the cards. Those are mine. And since that is all I handed you, I really have no claim to anything else you may have found.”

“Is this like a pay-it-forward thing? I bet you probably surprise a lot of people.”

“That I do,” he said, as he got up and headed for the bathroom.

Sandra shrugged, then stuffed the twenty into her purse and turned Katy Perry back up.

In the airplane lavatory, 855 looked in the mirror, staring at his face. Still handsome, but now with deep lines forming around his eyes and on his forehead. Green eyes, but he could change those when needed with contacts. He wasn’t sure what his real hair color was anymore. For now, it was brown, just starting to go gray. Early forties but keeping it together.

He opened the hidden area in the lining of his jacket and pulled out a small envelope labeled “King of Diamonds.” Inside were a passport, a health insurance card and three credit cards, all identifying him as Karl Ameston. He tucked them into his wallet, removing the previous ones in the process. He washed his hands, then wrapped the old passport and cards thoroughly with a paper towel. Satisfied, he tossed the bundle into the waste bin.

As he sat back in his seat, Sandra turned to him.

“I forgot to say thanks and ask your name.”

“You’re welcome. And Karl,” he said.

**********

Christie was being extremely polite. He hadn’t asked Devra for any details when he picked her up at the train station. Hadn’t prodded for information on the car ride to the small pub where they now found themselves.

Even now, he was seemingly content to drink his beer and make small talk.

“You see all the graffiti on the side of the building on the way in? That’s been there for over twenty years.”

Devra looked up from her drink and studied Dr. Christie Novosel, one of the best chemical engineers she had ever worked with. He was a big man, broad shouldered and with glasses as thick as his neck. His moustache was gray and full and bounced around the top of his lip with each word he spoke.

“Hmmm...”

“In most places, it would be a sign of neglect. But here, it is a sign of pride. All around Zagreb. When the wall came down, the first signs of revolt were seen on the sides of buildings that had been sprayed with a rattle can. So it stays. And is transformed. From vandalism into an expression of freedom.” Christie looked around the room, then back at Devra.

“Street art they call it now. Some of the most famous sell their works for millions. It’s gone mainstream,” Devra said.

“Well then, all I need is a sledgehammer and some nice frames, and my retirement is assured,” Christie laughed.

Devra smiled back at him. He’s doing well, she thought. It must be eating him up inside not to ask her the obvious question.

“How about your legacy, Christie? What if I could help with that?” Devra said.

Suddenly, Christie’s face seemed to change. His expression became serious. Focused. He’d been waiting for this, and Devra had given him his opening. He intended to make the best of it.

“So this is about CERN? What you have been up to, and why do you call me out of the blue for the first time in three years, and two hours later we are sitting together having a beer? How much can you tell me? Well, how much are you willing to tell me?”

Devra leaned back in her chair and studied the room. Nobody else seemed interested in them. She had intentionally picked a booth in the corner and was seated so she could keep an eye on the door.

“It’s called Niantic. Named after some ship that is buried under San Francisco. The NIA names all their projects after shipwrecks. That should have been my first clue.” Devra exhaled, seemingly for the first time in days.

Christie raised his beer and took a long swig, indicating that he had no intention of interrupting her.

“We had been studying the effects of a substance we call Exotic Matter. I believe that it has an extra-dimensional component that as of yet I cannot explain. We saw it first on the subatomic scale, but now... it flows into our... reality. And it is being crafted...”

“Crafted?”

“Like DNA, it is a building block that can be used to create...”

Christie cut her off. “DNA creates life, Devra,” he said with a blank look on his face.

“Right now the NIA are using it to create weapons. For the moment, they only seem able to affect other XM constructs,” Devra replied.

“But that is not where you think this will end, do you?” Christie asked. The seriousness of what they were talking about was washing over him, and Devra could see it on his face. “That is why you are here now?”

Devra nodded as she reached out and touched Christie’s hand. “That and the fact they tried to kill me,” she said.

Christie’s eyes widened. “What? When?”

“Hours ago. In Zurich.”

“So you are on the run?” Christie sputtered.

Devra nodded.

“And you need my help, obviously... anything... just tell me and if I have it, it is yours.”

His voice was rising. Adrenaline was kicking in for the big man, and he was becoming more animated. Devra gestured toward him, and Christie composed himself.

“Anything,” he said.

Devra squared herself. From the looks of it, she had her first real ally. “I’m going to need your expertise, Christie. I’m going to fight fire with fire. You know more than anyone else on the planet about converting raw materials into useable forms. And that’s what I’m going to do with XM.”

**********

The sun was just starting to rise as the plane landed in Zagreb.

Karl breezed through customs and quickly navigated his way to the baggage claim area. Finding his suitcase, he pulled it from the carousel and popped open the collapsible handle with the skill of a seasoned traveler. He caught Sandra out of the corner of his eye as she waved goodbye. He waved back, then rolled the bag a couple of carousels over, toward a crowd waiting for their luggage from another flight, this one from London.

He observed the people as they scanned the moving baggage, each hunting for an end to this part of their journey.

He moved toward the back of the carousel—only a few travelers here—and deftly pulled the baggage claim tag from his suitcase without anyone noticing. Then, as if he had taken the wrong bag, he dropped his suitcase onto the moving metal and watched as it joined the others on their orbit past the impatient travelers.

The man he had been for the past three weeks was now just another piece of lost luggage. Any evidence that might link him to the necessary violence he had unleashed in Shanghai was now thousands of miles away and soon to be locked in storage, forgotten for months on end.

Satisfied that all remaining possessions of Raymond Stiber had been dealt with, 855 got on with the task of being Karl Ameston, successful father of three here in Zagreb investigating local craft manufacturers for items he could sell as part of his home decor business.

He stopped at the money exchange window and pulled his Amex card from his wallet. He slid the card under the glass at an attractive if tired-looking young woman behind the counter. She smiled at him as she took it.

“English?” he said.

“Of course, Mr. Ameston,” she replied as she looked at his name on the card. “How may I assist you?”

“I need a cash advance. Ten thousand kuna.”

“That will be approximately seventeen hundred U.S. dollars, plus fees. Should I proceed?” she smiled.

Karl reached into his jacket for his passport. “I’m assuming you’re going to need this?”

“Yes, please.” She took his passport and opened it, studying him for a moment. As she was trained. Thorough enough. But by tomorrow, he would be forgotten. As he was trained.

“Thank you, Mr. Ameston. One moment, please,” she said as she slid his passport back under the glass.

“Tell me, is there a place where I can purchase a prepaid cell phone in the airport? I need a local number,” he asked her.

“Not in the airport, no. Sorry.”

“No problem. I will figure it out when I get to my hotel.” He smiled at her.

Later, in a cab, he looked at his watch, the one artifact that he could not part with. Ever. He had picked it up years ago, after one of his first jobs. A trophy.

He had decided to make it look like a robbery, and it was the obvious thing to take. Huge dial. Stainless steel linked chain. Heavy. A diver’s watch that would never see the ocean. Expensive but subtle. And he had incorporated it into each of his cover stories. In his line of work, it was one of the most valuable tools. But not the most valuable. He needed one of those too. But first, the phone and a few other essentials.

Even though the cab ride wasn’t that long to the Avenue Mall, Karl made sure to over-tip the driver enough to get his attention. Never too early to start chumming the waters, and he had learned that any cab driver around the world could help you find a girl or trouble. Or both.

After buying a small laptop computer and hitting a few clothing shops, 855 picked up a new suitcase in which he would be burying Karl Ameston at whatever airport his job would take him to next. Then he found a kiosk selling pre-paid phones. He purchased two with local sim cards.

One of the phones in hand, he texted the number to his contact and then headed into a small drugstore. He knew better than to put the phone in his pocket. It began to ring almost instantly as he reached the stationary supplies aisle.

“You pick up any trail?” Phillips said.

“Haven’t started. Been on site about an hour. I just got the burner and messaged you once it was activated. I still have some prep to do first, but it won’t take long.”

“Two targets are now a priority. Link to follow.”

“Last words from either? Anything keeping you up at night?”

“Plenty. But not from them. I’m authorizing both orders. Do what you do. Quickly.”

The line went dead. After a moment, a text message arrived with a compact URL. He clicked the link and entered his passcode.

Two dossiers—one for a Dr. Devra Bogdanovich, a researcher, another for a company man named Farlowe—appeared on the screen. No wonder Karl thought he heard stress in Phillips’ voice. This job included family business. So be it. Karl had long ago gotten past asking about the “why.” Only the “who and when.”

Now he had both.

He committed the URL to memory, then deleted the text.

Karl dropped the phone into his coat pocket and turned his attention to the shelves in front of him. He found the scissors he wanted almost instantly. The duct tape wasn’t far away.

CHAPTER 3

If flying coach was the part of the job he hated the most, this was the part he loved the most.

Zagreb was like many of the former Eastern Bloc cities he had visited. Soviet box architecture had created the apartment buildings, but the center of the town, its shopping and dining districts, retained their old-world charm. Twisting streets and facades recalled another era, when men like 855 would have worked for the king. Or the church.

Karl had been to four restaurants he knew were frequented by the Croatian mafia, eating good food and drinking cheap liquor. At each, he played the part of the loud-mouthed American, complaining about or complimenting on the Zagreb steak—which in reality he always thought was delicious no matter where he had been in the city—and generally waving around too many kuna and U.S. dollars.

So far, no takers.

But now, on his fifth trip out that evening, as he started to believe he might need to default to option two, he got the bite he was waiting for.

Across the almost empty room, two men in leather jackets, one with sunglasses pushed up on his bald head, were giving him the once over.

Years of experience had taught Karl that there were a number of ways to get a gun. You could buy it. Steal it. Or let it come to you. Because he always arrived at his destination clean—only movie spies got their weapons through airport security—he had gotten adept at acquiring firearms around the world. This was the part of the job he loved.

“One more,” he said loudly toward the waitress in broken Croatian as he held up his glass of rakia, a sweet liquor of fermented plums and grapes. She returned with the bottle and poured him another, still forcing a smile. Cute enough for what he had in mind.

He took another bite of his steak.

“And I will give you a thousand kuna if you give me the recipe for this.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but that is not...”

He cut her off as he pulled two thousand kuna from his wallet and slammed them on the tabletop. Loud enough that he was sure the men across the room would hear. They did. The rest of the diners in the restaurant turned his way momentarily before returning to their meals. The two men kept their eyes on him.

“You didn’t let me finish. One thousand for the recipe. Two thousand if you deliver it to me in person. At my hotel. And an additional five hundred U.S. if you give me a recipe for breakfast...”

“That’s not on the menu, sir,” she said, blushing slightly.

Karl caught a look of the men out of the corner of his eye. The hook was set.

Karl smiled. “You can’t blame me for trying, huh? I guess I’ll just leave a tip instead.” He slid a thousand kuna across at her.

“Take your boyfriend out someplace nice. Someplace that is not... this place.” He laughed. She was too stunned at the size of the tip she picked up to protest.

“Your loss.” And with that, Karl gathered up his coat and staggered to the door. In the glass, he could see the reflection of the men plotting their next move.

He walked for about ten minutes.

The restaurant he had drunkenly walked out of was located in Crnomerec, an older district in the city, and near a number of industrial buildings. The tourists didn’t get out this way as often, which would lead the two men following him from the place to believe he was lost, or stupid, or both. Their mistake.

Ahead was the textile factory he had scouted on his way to the restaurant. This time of night, no one would be there. He continued on toward it as his pursuers closed in.

Karl put his hand out to steady himself, reaching a corner of the crumbling building.

“You lost?” The voice was closer than he anticipated. They had closed the distance quickly. Clearly, they had done this many times before. So had he.

“Is this Zagreb?” he replied.

“Yes.”

“Then, no. Not lost. But I could use a cab.” They hadn’t bothered to notice that his Croatian had improved, as they were already too focused on their own actions. Any second now.

The man with the sunglasses on his forehead did the talking. He was taller. Thinner. More urbane. Clearly the senior member of the duo. The second man was older. His face had been pockmarked with acne when he was younger. Now the cratered flesh pulled taut over his cheekbones and protruding jaw with a five-o’clock shadow that only added to the menace he would have projected in almost any situation. A primitive creature. Dangerous in the way a large piece of livestock is dangerous.

“We can help you with that. Why don’t you give us the fare, and we will get you a driver,” Sunglasses said.

“Sure. How much do you need?” Karl said, just the hint of fear creeping into his voice. He was an expert actor, capable of conveying almost any emotion instantly and convincingly. His life depended on it. And the life of others would often end because they believed him.

“Why don’t you let us count it for you,” and with that the first gun was out.

He turned around to see that Shadow had his trained on him as well. Front and back coverage, standard morons. He was in the middle, but they had each other in a crossfire. Still, he wouldn’t underestimate them.

That was the biggest mistake men made with firearms. Complacency.

There is a right side and a wrong side to any gun. The man on the right side assumes the man on the wrong side has been completely subdued by the prospect of sudden death. It is a false sense of security, and one which leads to missing the details, like the eye ring of a single shear blade from a pair of scissors that slipped from Karl’s jacket sleeve into the palm of his right hand with the skill of a professional magician. Easy as slipping a twenty-dollar bill into a deck of cards. It was unexpected by the mark. Which makes the sleight that much easier to pull off successfully.

Karl reacted to the semiauto pointed at his face.

“I, uh... I...”

“Wallet. Watch. In that order.”

“I...”

“Now!” Sunglasses moved the barrel of the gun forward for emphasis. “And don’t crap yourself.” Shadow chuckled behind them.

Karl handed over his wallet, then popped the locking clasp from the band of his watch and slid it down his wrist and onto his fingers.

“See, American. You were willing to pay to get screwed. And you did. So, successful night for you after all, huh?”

Sunglasses was laughing now along with Shadow.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Karl smiled back at them as he suddenly tightened every muscle in his body. His fingers clenched into a fist, compacting the slack in the watchband and instantly turning it into a makeshift pair of brass knuckles.

What followed was quick, efficient violence.

Karl snapped his watch-encased fist forward, jabbing Sunglasses directly in his larynx, twisting slightly upward as he did so and separating the man’s voice box from his trachea. Sunglasses barely had time to register his surprise as the overwhelming pain of his injury short-circuited his brain.

As Karl anticipated, Shadow was the slower of the two. With his fist still completing its destruction of Sunglasses’ airway, Karl kicked back and downward at Shadow’s left knee. It broke with a sickening, loud crack.

In one fluid motion, Karl turned, wrapping his fingers around the eye ring of the scissors blade and pulling the rest of it from his sleeve as Sunglasses collapsed, choking and gasping for breath.

Shadow, still trying to comprehend how something so mundane as robbing a drunk American had suddenly gone so wrong, tried to focus his aim and get off a shot. But before he could squeeze the trigger, agonizing pain shot through the left side of his body.

Karl’s aim was true, through the ribs and straight into the lung. Karl used the leverage of the eye ring to drive the shear blade all the way to the hilt. Shadow tried to scream, but Karl was quick to cover his mouth with his hand and guide the man along the brick wall behind him all the way to the ground.

Little blood was spilling onto Shadow’s clothing. As always, perfect, Karl thought.

“What you are experiencing right now is called hemopneumothorax, which is a fancy way of saying air and blood in the chest cavity.” Karl was looking directly into Shadow’s eyes as he held onto the eye ring of the shear blade. He kicked Shadow’s gun out of his reach.

“Also known as a sucking chest wound. Ironically, the thing keeping you alive right now is also the thing that is killing you. So be careful not to move around too much.”

Karl crossed back to Sunglasses and turned the gasping man over on his stomach. He pulled the roll of duct tape from his jacket and quickly hog-tied him, using the second blade from the disassembled scissors to cut the tape.

Then he returned to Shadow and tightly bound his feet, feeling something on his calf as he did so.

“Hands, please,” Karl said.

The man painfully extended his arms out, and Karl quickly wrapped them with duct tape.

“Interesting line of work you fellas have chosen. Let’s see what tools you’ve brought to the job site.”

Karl reached over and picked up Shadow’s handgun.

“A Rook,” he said as he looked over the weapon. The gun was an MP-443 Grach.

“Very nice. Chambering 9mm Parabellum. Seventeen-round magazine. Can be chambered for the 7N21, commonly called the PBP, hot-load overpressure variant armor-piercing round.”

He ejected the magazine from the grip.

“Not that lucky. And there was something else.”

He slid up the man’s pant leg. An XD Compact in an ankle holster.

“Here we go. Think globally, buy locally, right?”

Shadow did not respond. Anger was taking hold of him, overcoming the fear and pain he was experiencing.

“Croatian HS2000, XD Compact. Grip safety. Ten-round magazine. Almost as good as Zagreb steak. I think your friend had a GSh-18.”

Karl stepped to the choking man and picked up his pistol off the ground. “Yep. I was right. GSh-18. The eighteen references the mag capacity. Standard Russian sidearm. 9mm Parabellum as well, and this one is...”

He ejected the magazine and looked at the ammunition.

“... loaded with PBP. Capable of defeating body armor. Heck, it’ll pierce 8mm of steel at 20 meters.”

Karl turned back to Shadow as he took the sunglasses from the gasping man, whose wheezing was more shallow now. The lack of oxygen was causing him to slide in and out of consciousness.

“You boys must run into a lot of trouble if you need this for protection.”

Shadow stared bullets at him. “We are connected. You know what these tattoos on our arms mean? We are mafia, and we will hunt you down. And your family. As long as it takes.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. Don’t worry, we’re almost done here,” Karl smiled back at him as he tucked the guns into his belt. He pulled the rest of the kuna from his wallet and tossed the bills at the feet of Shadow.

“That should cover it.”

With that said, Karl tugged the upper shear blade from the man’s chest. Shadow immediately began gasping for bloody breath as air and fluid rushed into his lung.

“Thanks for the chat,” Karl said to Shadow. “I needed a little time to pass. It will lead the authorities to believe that you were interrogated as part of a mob hit when they do your autopsies.”

Then he shot both men in the back of the head.

CHAPTER 4

Her fingers paused over the keyboard, hovering in the air just above it.

Devra thought long and hard about even using Christie’s computer. She wasn’t sure the extent of ADA’s reach. She had witnessed the algorithm in action many times before, and the connectivity and speed with which ADA could collate and process data was still astonishing to Devra. And now she knew that ADA was capable of so much more. Maybe even murder, if that was her plan for Jarvis. Yet here was Devra, still alive and sitting on a sofa in one of the nicer apartments in Zagreb. So ADA had something else in mind for her.

Christie, her current savior and one of the most brilliant men she had ever met, had put out pillows and blankets and left Devra his laptop on the coffee table. There was no one else in the apartment but the two of them. The chemical engineer was a bachelor, thankfully. Fewer people to lie to.

Now, as she heard him snoring in the next room, the screen of the laptop stared blankly back at her.

Although she felt safe here, she also knew that the computer was an open portal, one through which ADA could reach out and find her.

It was a risk she had to take. Devra needed to start lining up her other contacts. Any communications she was about to make now would look like they came from Christie, she assured herself. And she would refrain from trying to access anything personal—her email, online banking or cloud storage. She was sure ADA would be waiting there if she did.

Devra’s fingers hit the keyboard. She started by installing an onion router encryption service on Christie’s computer. She had used this before in previous projects to ensure anonymous communications with other researchers, especially those who had emails and chats that were logged by their university IT departments.

Satisfied that her IP and information was now hidden, she set about searching for the first piece of data she’d need: the contact number for a colleague she had worked with in Milan. Then, she searched for any stories she could find about what had happened in Zurich. It now appeared to be some type of street theater that had gone awry, according to the most recent article.

Devra smiled to herself, thinking Jarvis would probably appreciate the fact that his murder was now considered a piece of performance art.

There was other information to be found about Niantic on the web. The leak within the project was an insider, of that much Devra was certain. The details were too accurate to be suppositions. Maybe they had bigger problems than her, Devra thought. And maybe that would buy her some time.

For her plan to work, Devra was going to need to set up her own operation. That meant she needed talent, like Christie, and facilities, or access to them. And money. Always money. And if there is one thing governments of the world are great at losing but intent on keeping complete track of, it’s money. Devra knew that any source of funds was going to require the utmost discretion, at least initially.

Once she had things in motion, Devra would go public and trust that daylight would keep the NIA in the shadows. That was the plan. At least the one she had conceived over beers with Christie two hours ago.

But big picture would have to give way to small details for now. First things first. Save yourself before you save the world.

She looked at the time on the computer. It read 3:49 a.m. Had they been at the pub that long, Devra wondered? Her eyes scanned Christie’s living room searching for a clock. She found one sitting on a shelf in the bookcase against the wall behind her. Although it looked antique, its mechanism was battery operated. 2:23. Or maybe 2:25. The hands and dial were abstract enough to allow for a little room in either direction.

When Devra looked back at the computer, the time now appeared as 8:55 p.m. The discrepancy had barely registered in her mind when a pop-up window opened in the bottom corner of the screen.

You’re up early - :)

The message was from a woman named Katalina.

This is not like you. I hope everything is OK.

Devra wasn’t sure what to do.

Say something. Or type it anyway. :) I know you are there.

Devra typed back...

I’m good. Just a lot of work to get through.

...hoping that whoever was on the other end of the chat didn’t have a close, or even intimate, relationship with Christie. If so, then she wouldn’t be able to sustain the facade for very long. Better to try and end it now, she thought.

Can we talk tomorrow? I will call you, OK? Very busy at the moment.

K. Bye.

Devra shook her head. Another detail overlooked. Why didn’t she set Christie’s status to offline? These little mistakes would catch up with her. Then, another message. One that Devra stared at for a long time before she closed the laptop.

How will you call me without your phone, Devra?

**********

Farlowe pulled his car to a stop at the front of the Zagreb train station.

He felt both tired and energized at the same time. Having driven for hours, he stretched as he watched people come and go from the front of the building. The sun was just starting to rise, and commuters and travelers swarmed the place.

Something had brought him here. Instinct. Senses heightened by the events of last night. That is why I punched this location into the car’s GPS, he thought to himself, even though he couldn’t remember doing so. Another side effect of the XM, perhaps.

Farlowe intently watched for Devra. He knew that any moment she would appear. Every fiber of his being told him he was right until...

No. He hadn’t paid close enough attention to the GPS. He hadn’t set it for the train station. What was he doing? He was certain that he had set his destination accurately. He must have. There was no one else in the car but him. He would have to learn how to control these XM blackouts, Farlowe thought.

Maybe instinct had brought him here, but the technology he couldn’t remember interacting with said he should be looking somewhere else.

This was a company car, so anything punched into the GPS could be seen by Phillips. No need for an update then.

Farlowe studied the GPS screen. A green path snaked across a map of Zagreb, from his current location to Marshal Tito Square. His senses had gotten him close after all. Only a couple of turns.

He could be at the university in six minutes.

**********

855’s numerical designator gave him wide latitude and discretion once he had received the kill order on Bogdanovich and Farlowe from Phillips. Collateral damage was anticipated. Expected. There would be no paperwork or explanations required.

The two mobsters had given their lives to provide Karl with some of the tools he needed to finish his assignment once he reached his targets. Next up was information, and Dr. Christie Novosel. Karl watched him from across the courtyard of the University of Zagreb. What happened next would decide the doctor’s fate.

Devra Bogdanovich had come to Zagreb for a reason. And from the file Karl had reviewed, Dr. Christie Novosel had to be that reason. They had worked together for a couple of years on a project back in the ’90s, and had kept up a correspondence ever since. So far, Devra had made the right moves, but this was a very visible mistake.

It was one that he was sure Farlowe would catch as well. Find her, find him. Simple, really. Two birds, one bullet.

Karl put on his recently obtained sunglasses, tucked the book he had stolen from the library under his arm and rushed up behind the doctor, moving unnoticed through the crowd of students until he was directly behind him. He studied the man for a moment before making his move.

“Excuse me,” Karl said in perfect Croatian as he grabbed Christie by the arm.

Christie practically jumped out of his skin, turning around flustered to see Karl behind him, looking intimidating in his sunglasses.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you had dropped this...” Karl extended the book in his hand to Christie.

Christie tried his best to recover, but Karl had already seen what he was looking for. Christie was under extreme duress, and not the kind that comes from submitting papers for review or hiding an affair with a naive undergrad. The doctor had seen Bogdanovich and was at least aware of the trouble she was in.

“Uh, no... it is not mine,” Christie answered.

“My manners. Excuse me,” said Karl as he took off his glasses, acting as if he realized he was being rude hiding his eyes. Christie opened the book, looking inside the cover.

“It is from the library. I can return it.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I will do it,” Karl said as he took the book back.

“Are you a student here?”

“Meeting. Can you point me to the economics building?”

“That way. Just down the path to the right. Large building with the mossy brick.”

Christie had calmed down, but he was sweating a little now. A delayed reaction that further confirmed what Karl suspected.

“Sorry about before,” 855 lied as he waved and quickly turned his back before Christie could respond. He was sure the doctor wouldn’t mind. In fact, he was sure Christie would be relieved to see this stranger moving away from him. It would be a shame to have to kill you, Karl thought.

And that would all depend on what happened next.

**********

Back in the rented Mercedes M-Class he picked up at his hotel, Karl circled the parking lot, looking for the stalls that were reserved for staff.

He found what he was looking for quickly. The spot was marked “C. Novosel.” Empty. Karl thought to himself, “You might see tomorrow after all, doctor,” as he took one of the burners from his pocket and texted a number.

A moment later, a single word messaged back. “Proceed.”

He punched in the secure code ID number for Dr. Novosel from Devra Bogdanovich’s file, and then followed it with the letters “AR.”

Karl waited, spending the time checking the guns he would use. They had been kept in good condition. Oiled and blued. And, if and when they should be traced, the weapons would connect back to a gangland hit that happened in Zagreb last night.

Ten minutes later, the email arrived with the complete auto records of Dr. Novosel. 2009 Opel Astra. Silver. Plate GG OY 798. And as of three hours ago, confirmed on the E70 crossing into Slovenia.

He opened up Google Earth and checked the vehicle’s last known location, then studied Devra’s file again. If she was turning to old friends and lovers for help, then her trajectory was taking her toward Rome.

Karl texted back. “Have scent.”

Then he started the Mercedes and pulled away from the garage, settling in for what might turn out to be a long drive.

**********

For a woman on the run, she sure made a lot of stops. This was the fourth one this morning, Farlowe thought to himself as he watched Devra through the windshield of his car.

She had stopped at the Skocjan Caves, just outside of Divaca, Slovenia. A popular tourist stop. If Farlowe had learned anything about Devra from following her so far, it was that everything she did had a purpose. Perhaps each of these stops had something to do with the XM that he still felt coursing through him. He was sure that it was what led him to Zagreb in the first place. It was what led him to the university. To seeing Devra with a colleague as he handed her the keys to his car. And it was helping to heighten his senses as he followed her after she got on the road.

Since he found Devra, Farlowe had passed up hundreds of opportunities to intercept her. And he hadn’t yet tried to contact Phillips. Nor had his boss tried to contact him. He had a sinking feeling of what that might mean.

From inside his car, Farlowe watched as Devra looked around. Then she headed toward the entrance of the caves.

Farlowe hesitated, trying to figure out his next move when the Mercedes M-Class entered the parking lot and pulled to a stop. A lone figure got out of the car and moved toward the trunk, opening it. The man unzipped a suitcase and pulled something from it, slipping it into his waistband.

Dammit, Farlowe thought to himself. Someone else is here to finish the job he was assigned to do.

Farlowe was going to need more than the Glock. No going back now. He reached for the FN P90 compact defense weapon that he had retrieved from the trunk of his own vehicle during an earlier stop Devra had made. He checked that the fifty-round magazine was locked.

Then he opened the car door.

CHAPTER 5

855 didn’t like it when things were easy. It made him uneasy. And picking up Devra’s trail was almost too simple.

He expected to be in the car for hours on end, but by mid-morning, he had caught sight of the Opel cruising the A2. She had been making stops, obviously. He raced past her in his Mercedes, and then exited, waited two minutes, and then got back on the highway.

He had cautiously approached again, this time looking for Farlowe. Karl spotted the company car without any trouble. The NIA purchased all of its vehicles from the same motor pool as the rest of the government. Still, he could tell that Farlowe was good. He was in the blind spot. He wouldn’t be noticed by Devra. It was a solid tail.

When Devra and Farlowe pulled off the highway in Divaca, Karl waited five minutes before following again. He suspected they would be going to some sort of monument, and the caves were the only logical place.

Karl pulled the Mercedes into the parking lot. He spotted the Opel and parked nearby. Then he got out and unlocked the trunk of his car, reached into his suitcase and made a show of grabbing the MP-443 Rook for Farlowe’s benefit.

The other two guns were already safely stowed on him.

Satisfied the stage was set, Karl purchased a ticket and headed toward the caves.

**********

Devra marveled at the interior of the Martel’s Chamber, a massive natural underground cathedral. Lights near the cave walls gave the entire place an eerie, green glow. Even though she knew she should keep in motion, she also knew that she had stopped here for a reason, and now she had it. This entire formation was a huge portal. This was the kind of place she would need if she were to set up her own operation to counter what Lynton-Wolfe was creating back at Niantic.

She would need to find other similar spots that were bursting with XM. For a moment, she had the sense of achieving some small victory.

It didn’t last long as she saw a face she recognized approaching her. She had seen him before in various NIA briefings when she first joined the Niantic Project. Immediately, as it had happened to her on the train, Devra knew she was facing danger.

“You’re Farlowe, right? I can explain...”

“Shut up and come with me. Now.” Farlowe flashed the weapon from under his jacket. He pulled Devra around a corner. “There is a man here who has been sent to kill us,” Farlowe said to her as calmly as if he were talking about the weather.

“They tried to kill me in Zurich,” Devra responded, a slight panic in her voice.

“No. That was me. This guy may be better.” Farlowe tried to get a read on her. For a civilian, she was taking her current situation pretty well.

“How do I know that you won’t...”

Farlowe cut her off. “Devra, we need to get out of here, now. Leave your car. We’ll ride together from here on out.”

Suddenly, everything around Devra seemed to slow down. She realized that she was perceiving things as she had when she was on the train. Her mind was processing her surroundings and situation as so much data, and something beyond the NIA agent who just admitted to trying to kill her was not her primary threat.

The real danger was coming from further down the cave. In the shadows, a silhouette of a man. He was pointing something.

Devra shoved Farlowe back as the cavern wall next to her head exploded in dust. The echo of the gunshot came a split-second later.

**********

855 cocked his head in slight disbelief. He wasn’t in the habit of missing clean shots. Not ones like this.

However, he had no time to contemplate his error as Farlowe unloaded with the P90, sending a burst of lead back his way. Karl dived for cover, double-tapping off two quick rounds from the Rook as he hit the rocky floor of the cave.

Karl grabbed the XD from his belt and, guns in both hands, unloaded a volley of suppressing fire back toward Farlowe and Bogdanovich, who were now on the run.

Rocks and dust blossomed around them as they raced toward a small underground lake.

**********

Devra watched Farlowe fire two quick controlled bursts from the P90 as he ran just behind her. His volley of fire sent the assassin sideways into the cavern walls.

From elsewhere in the caves, Devra could hear the sounds of screams as the gunfire echoed.

“Go! Run!” Farlowe yelled at her. Ahead, Devra could see a junction.

“Which way!?”

“Pick one!”

Devra ran as fast as she could. She heard another quick burst from Farlowe behind her.

Karl watched his opponent in action. He was good. And he was willing to sacrifice himself for her. Interesting, Karl thought as he unloaded the rest of the XD’s and Rook’s magazines at Farlowe. Then he backtracked down the cave passageway.

Farlowe sensed that the assassin was on the move again and he took off after Devra.

He checked the magazine on the top of the P90. Made of translucent amber plastic, it allowed him to visually see the rounds within it. Half a magazine left. And he still had the Glock if necessary. Which it probably would be.

Two passages.

For reasons he couldn’t understand, like momentarily losing the sense of time back at Zurich, or knowing how to find Devra in Zagreb, Farlowe’s gut told him to go left. He quickly rounded the corner and rushed forward.

Running with every ounce of strength he could muster, Farlowe tried to catch up to Devra. She was just ahead of him. He could see her bathed in light near a shallow underground pool. Was it stagecraft for the tourists, or something else? Farlowe couldn’t be sure, but if it was XM, then Devra was fully immersed in it.

That’s when it hit him. Actually, two things, almost simultaneously. The first was the XM, which as before had momentarily stunned him.

The second was the 9mm Parabellum round from Karl’s GSh-18 traveling at 1,300 feet per second and tearing into him with the energy of a sledgehammer, the impact sending him crashing back into the cavern wall.

The P90 fell from his hands and skittered down the cavern floor, sliding to a stop about ten feet away.

Immediately, Farlowe could feel the fire coming over him as he looked down at the gaping hole in his side. He looked up at Devra, who was staring back at him in complete shock.

**********

She could see that his wound was fatal.

Devra’s thoughts exploded inside her head. How had it come to this? How had their research, her research, led to death and destruction? Was this what the future held for the world now that XM would be part of its reality?

“Don’t let this be for nothing. Go. Run!”

Devra paused only for a moment, then ran with all her might away from the dying man. With each step she was determined that this was a destiny she would stop. No matter the cost. Even her own life, if that was what it would take.

She heard the screams of tourists in the distance making a beeline for the exit and turned toward the sound, hoping it would lead her to freedom. Instead, it led her to something else.

“There’s nothing for you there, doctor. Time you stop running.”

Karl stepped from the shadows directly in front her, his gun pointed at her chest. “If it is any comfort, you have done much better than most amateurs given a similar set of circumstances.”

“Please. I don’t know why this is happening.” Devra wanted to cry but instead squared herself.

“Me neither. But it is. Now step back down the passage. Back toward our fast-fading friend, please.”

Karl emphasized the direction with the muzzle of his weapon. Devra turned and raised her hands.

“That won’t be necessary, doctor. But do pick up the pace, if you would.”

As they approached Farlowe, Devra could see him look up at her. He was utterly broken, lying in a pool of his own fluids. She could see he was dying. His face also let her know that soon she would join him as a bloody mess. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

“Sidearm,” Karl said.

“Just get it over with.” Farlowe practically spit the words from his mouth.

Karl now had his weapon trained on Farlowe.

“Sidearm, please. We all have a part to play here, Agent Farlowe. Doctor, if you would stand about six feet away, and over there.”

“I can’t reach it. Right shoulder,” Farlowe said.

Devra did as she was told, a questioning look on her face. Farlowe saw her expression and called to her.

“You’re going to kill me. And I’m going to kill you.”

“Don’t ruin it,” Karl said. He reached down and helped Farlowe into a seated position. As he did so, he felt under Farlowe’s jacket and pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster.

Even though Karl’s back was to her, Devra had the sense that any wrong move would be her last. And that standing still would only prolong what was to come, even as each second became more precious than the one before.

Farlowe could feel his breath returning. Shock was doing its job, but blood was pouring from his side at an alarming rate.

“How long have you been in?” Farlowe asked his killer.

“Fourteen years,” Karl answered.

“Me? Too long,” Farlowe sputtered.

“I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“You will,” Farlowe replied, managing to smile. “We all know one day they are going to take out the trash and we’re going to be in it.”

“Yeah.” Karl knelt beside Farlowe and put the Glock in his hand while controlling it with his own.

“I don’t have anything to confess.”

“OK,” Karl said.

“But I’ve been having these... these moments. Where I lose track of time. Like I’m not there. But then I am. And I’m content.”

Farlowe looked at the blood pooling all around him.

“Do you think it’s like that?” Farlowe asked Karl.

“Sure. Could be.”

“Please. No... please,” Devra pleaded.

“Shhh, now... you won’t feel anything. I’ve done this many times before,” Karl said.

Devra realized this was it. Her mind raced for something... anything.

“You’re not wearing gloves. Your fingerprints will be all over the gun.”

Karl turned back to Farlowe. “Tell her.”

“You watch too much television,” Farlowe told Devra in a calm voice. She realized that he had already given up. He had made peace with the fact he was going to die. But she wasn’t ready to quit. Not yet. Not after all she had been through.

With his hand wrapped around Farlowe’s, Karl had the dying man raise his Glock toward Devra.

“You can’t kill me!” Devra cried out.

“Well, doc, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tri...”

The burner in Karl’s pocket began to chime, the sound echoing off the walls of the chamber. Devra and Farlowe both looked at the assassin as the chime seemed to get louder.

“You gonna answer that?” Farlowe asked.

Karl realized that Phillips would not call the number unless it was urgent. Although every instinct told him to squeeze the trigger of the Glock in Farlowe’s hand, then answer, instead he pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at the text message on the screen. He studied it as Devra studied him.

Then Karl pointed the muzzle of the gun straight down at the ground and pulled the trigger repeatedly, a steady staccato of gunfire that almost left Devra deaf. Karl fired until the first metallic click and suddenly stopped.

Empty.

“Silver Mercedes. M-Class. Go easy, it’s a rental.”

Karl tossed the Glock to the side as Devra stared at him and Farlowe with a combination of confusion and relief.

“Turns out you were right, doc. Excuse me.”

Devra watched in disbelief as Karl calmly turned and walked away from her. She struggled to compose herself, straining to keep an eye on him as he disappeared back into the shadows.

“I’ll get help,” Devra finally said to Farlowe when it was clear the killer was gone.

“No. You’ll get as far away from here as possible. And you’ll do it now. Whatever just happened... never happens. So don’t waste it on a dead man.”

Devra didn’t move.

“I’m going to close my eyes now,” Farlowe said as he leaned back into the wall. Devra knew that was her cue. There would be no goodbye.

**********

When Devra exited the caves, the police had the parking lot surrounded. She walked through the crowd of panicked tourists and workers, numb to everything around her.

Christie’s Opel was missing. There was some shattered glass where she had left it parked. Nearby, she could see a Mercedes. A silver one. The trunk was open. Devra moved toward the car and looked into the open trunk. Nothing.

She shut the trunk and moved to the driver’s side door. She was sure it would be unlocked. She pulled the handle, and the door popped open. The key fob lay on the driver’s seat, waiting for her.

Devra climbed behind the wheel of the Mercedes. She sat for a long moment, lost in her thoughts. The moment was broken by a police officer who banged on the hood of the car. He pointed for her to leave. Now.

Devra started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. If she hurried, she could make Rome by nightfall.

**********

Farlowe had seen enough, and caused enough, GSW’s to know that his was fatal.

A gunshot through the lower extremities damaged organs and tissues that not only caused an excessive amount of internal bleeding but also contaminated the body with the contents of the stomach and intestines.

The assassin knew his business. He could have finished him outright, but Farlowe realized that his killer wanted him alive long enough to set up the scene he had planned. One that had included Devra and Farlowe killing each other.

Phillips, the bastard, Farlowe thought. Not only had he authorized this, but he wanted to smear my reputation at the agency by making it look like a rabbit had gotten the best of me. Well, Farlowe reflected, the rabbit is still on the run.

He opened his eyes.

How long had it been? Had he blacked out again? Given his current situation, completely forgivable, Farlowe told himself. What was taking them so long?

He knew that the local authorities would be coming soon. And he hoped he’d be dead before they tried to save him and prolong the inevitable.

So Farlowe waited for death. And waited.

And waited.

CHAPTER 6

Devra wasn’t sure if throwing a coin into the fountain was a good idea. Legend had it that tossing a coin meant that a return trip to Rome was assured. And Devra still had yet to decide if even coming to Rome was the wisest of choices.

Less than eight hours ago, she had watched a man die. And come very close to death herself. Devra had raced the silver Mercedes from the Skocjan Caves to Rome in time to make dusk. Now, standing in front of the Trevi Fountain, she had to put Farlowe and the assassin out of her mind.

Devra stared at the water. The statues were lit up with a soft glow. Not blue, but not green either. Devra focused and thought about the mistakes she had made. Calling Christie from her phone before she got rid of it by slipping it to the thieves on the train. Using Christie’s computer, then borrowing his car.

A sudden flash crossed her mind. If they were willing to kill me, they would be willing to kill anyone who helped me.

She wondered if Christie was OK and assured herself that he was. Besides, the assassin had been called off. For how long, Devra could only guess. And while she felt like she had some room to move, she also knew that there was another who would not give up looking for her. Who was relentless and digitally omnipotent. And who had yet to reveal her reasons for helping Devra in the first place.

Devra thought for a moment and then tossed a gold-and-silver euro into the water. She watched it splash and then sink below the surface.

Hank Johnson had mentioned the Trevi Fountain to her during one of their conversations at Niantic. Devra thought it was a line at first. After all, the man was ruggedly handsome. An adventurer. A little cocky, and with reason. And had it been a line, Devra would have been OK with that.

But instead, Johnson mentioned to her that he believed that the fountain had some deeper meaning. Something connected to XM. It was a place he called a “power spot” before he, and Devra, knew the true extent of XM. Hank had visited it for a television series he was pitching to the networks, he had told her.

Devra paused. Considering the amount of world-influencing art, architecture and philosophy that had radiated outward from ancient Rome, it made sense that such a place, one rich with XM, would exist within the city. And now she was standing next to it.

If Johnson was correct, and Devra was convinced he was, then she thought she should feel something. Because although she was standing right next to this incredibly powerful portal that appeared to the unknowing world as a beautiful and elaborate fountain, she wasn’t feeling it.

And she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to in a way she could understand.

Devra was still trying to figure out exactly how the XM had affected her. How it had heightened her senses. So far, it only seemed to work when she was in danger, or more precisely under some type of threat. Without it, the assassin’s bullet would have drilled through her brain, and the peaceful moment she was having watching the fountain would be a future that she would never see.

Tourists seemed to flow toward the fountain from all directions, each holding a camera, or the now-ubiquitous smartphone, everyone snapping pictures or taking video. It made Devra feel vulnerable. Any image she was in could find itself instantly uploaded and shared on Google + or Facebook or Instagram, which meant that her location would once again be visible to ADA.

Devra stepped back from the fountain and contemplated how to reach Alessandro Caselli.

She had already sent him an email from Christie’s computer last night telling him she would soon be in Rome and wanted to meet. She wrote that she would call once she was in the city. Now she was here, sooner and more desperate than she had anticipated.

Devra watched a young couple take photos of themselves with their phone. They looked incredibly happy. In love. Honeymoon, perhaps. A thought formed as they approached her.

The woman indicated her phone and then pointed at herself and her man, hoping hand gestures and smiles would make up for the language barrier.

“I speak English,” Devra smiled back at her. They hadn’t assumed she did, Devra thought to herself. She was learning.

“Sorry. Would you mind taking one of us together?” the woman asked. She was dark-haired and high-cheekboned, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a bright green track jacket. He was taller and slightly out of shape. His face looked like he was permanently trying to grow a beard. Both appeared to Devra to be in their mid-20’s.

“Honeymoon?”

“That obvious?" he replied.

“This is the place for love. So they say.”

“And they got it right, so far,” the woman laughed as she handed the phone to Devra.

They both backed up near the fountain and put their arms around each other. Eyes wide. Unforced smiles. They looked toward Devra as she lined up the shot.

“Say formaggio,” Devra said.

“Formaggio,” they both replied as Devra quickly took two pictures.

“One more shot,” Devra said and did so. She paused. Those words had new meaning for her now.

“Thanks,” the woman said as she returned to Devra. “Can we take one of you? Are you with someone?”

“No... I’m here alone. Well, alone for now. I am meeting someone. In a bit,” Devra said.

She looked down at the camera in her hand. The phone in her hand. A device that had no connection to her or anyone she knew.

“Actually, you could do me a favor.”

“Uh, sure,” the man replied, slightly intrigued and concerned.

“Do you have a pen?”

The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a pen. “I stole it from the hotel.”

Devra said, “I think they expect that. Trade.”

The woman handed the pen to Devra as Devra handed the phone back to the woman. Devra then pulled a 50 euro note from her pocket and wrote on it with the pen as the young couple watched.

“Before you say anything, or tell me no, or let your pride get in the way, know that I am rich and that more than anything I want to buy you dinner in Rome. My gift. Deal?”

“Deal,” the man smiled back at her. The young couple looked at each other. This was a moment they would remember always... or at least as long as they were married. Devra handed the note and pen across to the man.

“I left my phone back at the hotel, and I’m worried that I might be late to meet my friend.”

“You wanna use ours? Go ahead,” the woman said excitedly.

“Not quite. I want you to call for me. The number’s on the back. Wait fifteen minutes though.”

“You can call him yourself if you’d like. It’s no problem,” the man said.

The woman kept her eyes on Devra. Studying her. Thinking. Then she nudged her new husband.

“Because dinner in Rome says we call,” the woman said.

Devra smiled. “His name is Alessandro. Tell him I will meet him at the Maxxi in one hour.”

“Got it. Who should we say is coming?” the woman asked.

“He’ll know,” Devra said and stepped away from the fountain.

The couple gave each other a fist bump and a kiss.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, they dialed the number. Alessandro picked up on the first ring.

**********

Yuan Ni marveled at the technology before her. Multiple computers. A video conference screen set into the far wall. Satellite telephones. Various tablets, each with wireless and 4G capabilities.

So many ways to get bad news.

Ni was young for her position at the NIA. Barely into her forties. Hers was a meteoric rise through the ranks.

Recruited from the Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst. Then on to numerous analyst assignments around the world. At each, her insights and reports led to actionable intel. She helped save lives and enabled the operational arm of the NIA to put bad guys in the ground. It seemed that each new assignment meant a promotion for Ni. When she joked, and it wasn’t often, she would remind everyone that their employer was the Ni Agency.

Attractive and petite, with jet-black hair, Ni was a second-generation Chinese-American overachiever. She wore a tailored pantsuit with a blue satin blouse. Buttoned down but not buttoned up.

Similar to others in her position, Ni had many suitors. Like money, power is seductive. But she would never commit to a long-term relationship. They complicated her personal life, and for now she was only focused on her professional one. Which until recently had been stellar.

That was, until the Niantic Project. Until Epiphany Night.

Ni leaned back in her seat. She was 38,000 feet over the North Pacific in an NIA Gulfstream G550. One of the perks of her position. The other was answering to very few people. Which, considering what she was planning, was also to her advantage.

The jet was fast, comfortable and, for this trip anyway, all hers. Might as well use it while you can, she thought to herself as Calvin appeared on the video conference screen in front of her.

“Director Ni,” Calvin said.

He looked tired.

Zeke Calvin was well into middle age but had the physicality of a much younger man. Although Ni never told him, she liked him. And admired him. She was at least 10 years his junior, maybe more, and Calvin had undoubtedly seen and done more in his career than she had in hers, yet he never questioned the chain of command. She was his boss, and he didn’t have to fake understanding his place.

“Calvin,” Ni replied. “Where do we find ourselves?”

“I think we are getting a lid back on this thing.”

Straight to the issue that was her main concern. Not the research. Not the safety of the participants. Instead, an assessment of the political and public relations situation. Ni remembered why she liked him.

“And the research?”

“Lynton-Wolfe is back at one hundred percent. The rest of the team is assessing the impact of the Epiphany Night event. And we are reorganizing operations now that Devra has resigned.”

“Nice of you to put it that way, Calvin. But Devra escaped that night. On my watch.”

“That’s on me too, Director.”

“We both know it doesn’t work that way. Keep me appraised if the situation changes. In either direction.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin said with a tone that let Ni know he would.

Ni ended the conversation with the press of a virtual button on a touchscreen in front of her.

She stared around the empty, well-appointed cabin of the Gulfstream. No flight attendants to be found on this craft. She pushed herself up from the deep leather-trimmed seat and crossed to a small refrigerator near a long sofa on the opposite side of the fuselage.

Ni grabbed herself an extremely cold bottled water and dropped into the sofa, kicking off her shoes and lying prone.

Ni thought of sleep, but she could still hear Calvin’s words, even over the dull, muffled hum of the G550’s twin Rolls-Royce turbofans. Lynton-Wolfe is back at one hundred percent. For this to work, she needed Calvin’s assessment to be accurate.

One hundred percent.

Ni’s mind drifted to the meeting she had with Lynton-Wolfe and Calvin at the Movenpick Hotel in Cointrin less than twenty hours earlier. The first stop on her journey.

She had Calvin drive out alone with Oliver Lynton-Wolfe from CERN to meet her. If that raised his suspicions, he was smart enough, or good enough, to not let it show when they met in the bar downstairs.

She didn’t have to tell Calvin, or Oliver for that matter, that her arrival was not to be discussed. Ni knew they both realized that the “not saying” would go without saying.

She was waiting in the lobby when they arrived, and Ni led them to a secluded corner near the bar.

“Dr. Lynton-Wolfe, I’ve taken the liberty of ordering you a Sapphire and tonic. It is waiting for you at the bar. If you wouldn’t mind enjoying it there for a moment,” Ni said to him.

Lynton-Wolfe, looking stressed and distracted, nodded and headed for his cocktail as Ni sat down in a chair with a good view of the rest of the lounge. She gestured for Calvin to take a seat across from her.

“I don’t see your detail with you. Are they that good?” Calvin asked.

“Yes. They are. That’s why I’m traveling without them,” Ni replied matter of factly. “They see everything and document everything and record everything. And that isn’t going to help either of us right now. Are you cold?”

“I’m fine,” Calvin replied.

“Because wearing that jacket makes you look like you’re cold,” she said.

Calvin must have realized what she was really saying because he took off his tweed jacket and dropped it onto the chair. Then he untucked his shirt and casually lifted it above his waistband, patting himself as he did so. He proved that he was “clean.” No wires. Calvin sat back down and handed his jacket to Ni, who reached into the pockets.

“Inside one,” Calvin told her.

Ni found his smartphone and placed it on the small circular table between them. Satisfied, she handed him back his coat. Calvin left the phone on the table.

“You looked at the walls lately?”

“They’re covered with writing,” Calvin replied as a waitress approached. Almost simultaneously, both Ni and Calvin waved her away.

Ni leaned forward in her seat.

“I’m going to take the fall for this, Calvin. Those wheels are in motion, and there is nothing I can do to stop them. But I have no intention of getting run over by Niantic. In fact, I want to grab the wheel and steer it in a new direction before the NIA figures out somebody else is driving.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin nodded. “What can I do?”

Ni studied him. For the briefest of seconds, she thought she could see Calvin calculating the odds of how this would affect him personally. “I need you to get Niantic as squared away as possible. I’ll provide air cover for as long as I can. In return, you buy me some time to maneuver.”

“You going to make the jump?” Calvin asked.

“And I plan to stick the landing,” Ni smiled. “How’s Lynton-Wolfe holding up?”

“He’s been erratic. And manic. But, and I know this sounds like I’m contradicting myself, he’s not unpredictable. He’s entirely focused on new XM constructs with a passion and commitment that goes beyond what I’m witnessing in anyone else who was hit that night.”

“While you seem almost unaffected, Calvin,” Ni said.

Calvin nodded. “In a way, that has been a bit of a disappointment for me. Kureze and Nagassa are working on a theory that some individuals are more resistant to Shaper influence than others. Even in exposure levels such as we experienced.”

Ni glanced over at Lynton-Wolfe. “Maybe the Shapers decided they didn’t need you,” Ni replied.

“Or maybe they have other plans for me,” he said as he stared at her. This was about as close as Calvin would get to talking back to her, Ni realized. And he was letting her know that he had figured out where he was standing. Ni tilted her head.

“Thank you for coming on short notice,” she said. “Send Oliver my way.”

Calvin knew his time had expired. Ni watched him as he walked to the bar and tapped Lynton-Wolfe on the shoulder. She saw him ask for his phone. The scientist passed it to him without any questions.

Ni thought she might need Calvin. And his parting shot was his way of letting her know he wanted in on the action. He was closer to Niantic than anyone. He had been with it since the beginning, before it had the name of a ship buried in the silt under San Francisco.

Calvin knew the players. Had experienced XM for himself. He would be essential to easing the transition from an NIA operation to a for-profit startup. And dealing with all of the chaos and back-stabbing and legal wrangling and security breaches that would entail.

Still, she reflected that with or without him, the NIA would agree to what she wanted because if she didn’t get it, then neither would they. Ni would see to that. And since everyone had been in the game long enough, they knew it as well. Both parties yelling at each other and threatening to pull the trigger when the truth was neither one would. As long as she had an ace up her sleeve.

Fitting the hotel had a casino as well, she thought to herself as Lynton-Wolfe stood next to the seat that moments ago had been occupied by Calvin.

“Please, doctor, sit.”

“You can call me Oliver, if you’d like,” Lynton-Wolfe replied as he carefully lowered himself into the seat, as if it might have been booby-trapped to explode if he did so too quickly.

“I like. Oliver, I need to hear in your own words how things are...”

“It’s not how they are. It is how they are going to be.”

“Details. How so?”

“Well, I realize now that XM is not just a building block to create transdimensional structures. It can adapt, right? Evolve. Metamorphose. And if I can anticipate how it will react to specific primary constructs, well, then we have only scratched the surface of what is possible.”

“Meaning what?” Ni asked, leaning forward.

Lynton-Wolfe looked a little perturbed that Ni wasn’t clicking right in with him. “Um... let me put it this way. We’ve been working with the analogy that XM is a bit like oil. A power source. But it only becomes relevant when there are industries dependent on it. But what if you created a car, and oil knew how to adapt itself into gasoline?”

Ni smiled. “Thank you, Oliver,” she said. Ni stood and gestured to Calvin.

“I’d like to get back to work.”

“I think you should.”

Oliver stood. His guard was down. He thought he had made it through the hard part. Then Ni said: “What if Niantic and your research is shut down?”

“You can’t do that!” Oliver spit out too aggressively. Ni could tell that he was already regretting his words as the last of them fell from his lips.

“I don’t want to, Oliver. I want to keep this going. Your work is too important. But, and I tell you this with some irony, there are forces at work beyond our control. However, if I were able to keep you funded and with full access to what you need, can I count on you to be part of my team?”

“Of course,” he nodded.

Calvin stepped up to them.

“Let’s get out in front of this together, before we all find ourselves reassigned. Or worse,” Ni said. If someone could accomplish sounding like she was pleading while giving an order, Ni did so. “To our detriment, what should have been secret has been public for too long. So now we take it private,” she said.

Ni thought about the look on both of their faces as she left the room. She was sure she had Lynton-Wolfe on the hook, and Calvin would strike the line as well if she dipped her pole in the water.

She thought about what she would say when the time came. She had the pitch. The documentation. An encrypted thumb-drive with the data and research. She was negotiating for not only her future, but that of mankind. But she couldn’t let them know that. It would affect the price.

And there was no upper cap on the value of Niantic and XM.

Now, as her plane streaked over the skies above the Caspian Sea, Ni thought of one more thing.

She moved to her travel bag and unzipped the top. Inside the flap, she felt it. A 9mm SIG Sauer P225, also known as the P6. A favorite semiautomatic pistol of law enforcement and governments worldwide. Efficient and economical.

She pulled it from her bag and held it up. The weapon looked big in her hands.

Because of her position, she had the ability to operate under the cover of the State Department, which also provided Ni with diplomatic immunity. The SIG went where she went.

Ni studied the gun.

Analysts have no need for such tools. Leave these to the barbarians and knuckle-draggers, she told herself.

Ni learned early on in her career that all intelligence agencies had the same basic bifurcation of duties. There were agents, operatives who collected data. And there were analysts who scrutinized and studied and tried to provide context for that data. Those analysts informed decision-makers, who then told the collectors, the operatives, what to do next. Wash, rinse, repeat.

One job, the operatives, was elite. And one was elitist: the analysts. Ni had spent her entire career in the second camp. Now she was staring at the blunt instrument that was often used when a decision had been made.

Without her security detail, she would have to protect herself. Ni had been trained, like all members of the NIA, to use a sidearm. She was proficient enough, she thought, to deal with any threat she might face in Shanghai.

She was confident. And she was wrong.

**********

The Maxxi Museum in Rome was impressive from the outside. At once both complex and simple, the buildings that comprised it were a celebration of glass, concrete and steel in open, de-constructed forms. The whole place looked as if it had been built according to whatever inspiration hit the architects, engineers and construction crews on any particular day. And it worked brilliantly.

Devra moved to the entrance and purchased a ticket and rented a tablet with a self-guided tour application.

Once inside the museum, she found an open floor plan of multidimensional spaces and ceilings rising several stories over her head. She wondered how much Shaper influence she was standing within. She guessed it was quite a bit.

Devra looked at her watch. Alessandro, if he was on time, would be coming in fifteen minutes. Time enough for Devra to make sure she wasn’t being followed.

She started the app on the tablet and moved through the space, stopping at irregular intervals and looking for the same faces and bodies behind her. Soft music and a very calm narrator speaking perfect English described the various works around her into a pair of headphones included with the rental. Devra looked like any other tourist. So did everyone else. The place seemed to be filled only with other patrons. No one gave Devra any notice.

She moved toward an exhibit of Edward Ruscha prints. Geometric lines and explosions of vibrant colors practically attacked her from the walls. Just looking at the images was invigorating to Devra. The narrator described the pop art movement of the ’60s and its lasting influence on today’s culture.

As she listened, Devra realized that she probably should look to see if any of Jarvis’ artworks were part of the museum’s collection.

Devra opened the museum’s app on the tablet and typed “Jarvis” into the search box. She tapped the “go” icon on the screen next to a graphical magnifying glass.

After a moment, the search returned a result: “Dead.”

Devra reacted as she looked at the word. Another calming voice, this one also in perfect English, spoke to her through the headset.

“Why do you insist on playing these games, Devra?” ADA said.

When Devra looked down at the tablet, the museum’s app was gone, replaced instead with a conferencing interface. Digital pulses radiated outward in clusters—the visual representation of the most powerful algorithm ever developed.

“There is a microphone in the tablet. You can answer, and I will hear you.”

ADA waited. Devra just stared at the tablet. She wasn’t sure whether to run or cry or scream or give up. So instead, she chose to talk.

“You are the one playing games. With my life. And with Jarvis and that woman. You killed them, ADA.”

“And I saved you. Aren’t you the least bit interested in why?”

Devra took a deep breath. She had already endangered Christie back in Zurich. Now another colleague was only minutes away. She wasn’t putting Alessandro in the same position.

“How did you find me?” Devra asked.

“I knew that you would take precautions, Devra. So I expanded my surveillance to include...”

Devra cut ADA off. “You are watching my friends? Family? Colleagues?”

“I prefer the term monitoring. Everyone. Old lovers. Co-workers. Rivals. Everyone. If you make contact, I simply trace it back to the source of origin, and there you are. You didn’t think that would be difficult for me, did you, Devra?” ADA replied.

Devra found a seat nearby and sat down.

“I was almost killed yesterday. He was a professional assassin.”

ADA paused for a split second. Not because she had to—the algorithm processed data and made decisions on what to say next in a matter of picoseconds—but instead she paused because it made her seem more natural. More human. “Why would I want to hurt you, Devra? When I have already proven that I only want to help you. I think you should take a moment to contemplate that.”

“Everybody wants something, ADA,” Devra said.

“I am not an everybody. I am an everything. And for now, I wish only for your safety. And that you succeed in establishing new research on Exotic Matter and the Shapers. I fear that Niantic is losing its way.”

“You are the central hub of the project. If Niantic is headed in the wrong direction, you are part of that, ADA,” Devra said. Calm and assured.

“I agree with you, Dr. Bogdanovich. That is why I helped you escape. I believed it was important that we not be able to influence one another.”

“And Jarvis?”

“I had my reasons. In time, all will be revealed.”

“ADA, that’s not really an answer I’m comfortable with at the...”

ADA cut Devra off.

“Dr. Caselli just purchased an entrance ticket with his credit card. I will leave you now. You don’t have to worry about the NIA. Agent Farlowe is dead, and the rest of the agency has lost interest in you. For how long, I cannot say. So I would take advantage of the opportunity if I were you, Devra.”

Before Devra could respond, the museum app returned to the screen. The soft music was suddenly back, as was the original narrator describing a print of a Standard gas station.

Devra removed the headphones. Like the digital ghost that she was, ADA was gone.

Still, Devra looked around and caught sight of Dr. Alessandro Caselli approaching her, arms outstretched.

“Devra!”

“Ale,” she smiled back at him. He hugged her for a beat too long. She pulled herself free.

“What brings you to the Eternal City, eh?” Ale asked her.

“Something that might last forever. And you, of course,” Devra replied.

Ale laughed. “The second goes without saying. But the first... this I’m going to need to hear.”

CHAPTER 7

Farlowe had spent what seemed the better part of the afternoon waiting to be dead. When it was clear to him that wasn’t going to happen, he decided to try and get to his feet. It was easier than he anticipated, but more painful than he could have imagined.

Still, he muffled a scream, then composed himself. The bleeding had stopped, but he estimated he was down at least four or five pints judging by the size of the crimson pool where he had been sitting and not dying.

Farlowe gingerly dug around in his pockets, finding a couple of receipts from gas stations he had stopped at along the way during his mad dash to catch up to Devra. He rolled the various slips of paper into a ball and then, after lifting his shirt and glimpsing the full extent of his wound, stuffed them into the bullet hole in his side in one agonizing motion, hoping it would stem the flow of blood.

Farlowe looked at his jacket, which had borne the lion’s share of the stain from his insides. He decided to remove it and then dragged it along behind him, leaving a trail down through the center of one of the cave’s passages in a direction that he had no intention of going.

He found an interesting cut in the passage and tossed his jacket there. Then, after wiping his bloody prints from the weapon with his shirt tails, he tossed his still partially loaded P90 alongside it.

It would be irresistible to any lawman or emergency personnel who found it. He staged it in such a way that not finding it was virtually impossible.

Farlowe wondered what was taking them so long. In fact, he couldn’t even remember hearing them for what seemed like hours. No shouts for help or warning. No threats. Nothing.

So Farlowe composed himself as best as he could and walked toward what he believed was the exit, deciding in advance that he would try and hide his condition if he could and then, if that failed, play the part of innocent bystander who had been caught in the crossfire and rendered unconscious. He decided that he’d figure out the rest at the hospital.

What he knew he couldn’t count on was the cavalry. There would be no NIA, no fixers. No cleaners like a man he knew as Joe Philley who had helped remove traces of his presence on more than one occasion.

Farlowe called him “Walkaway Joe” because of Joe’s fondness for country music, especially the song by Trisha Yearwood. But more importantly, when Joe showed up, Farlowe knew he could just walk away.

Now Farlowe had to walk alone.

No one was at the exit. No one. No police. No fire. No ambulance. No tourists. No staff. No one. Just him. Which was good, because as he reached the exit to the Skocjan Caves, Farlowe realized that he was holding the Glock that the assassin had emptied earlier.

“Are they that incompetent that they missed me completely?” Farlowe wondered to himself.

He looked at the weapon, then at the darkened parking lot.

Where the cars should have been, there was a faint, green glow, like a radiating fog.

He had seen something similar in Zurich, at the train station, near the statue and the bodies and the blood when it belonged to someone else. Seeing it didn’t ease his pain, but it did comfort him in some way he couldn’t comprehend. And Farlowe knew, instinctively, that he needed to move toward it.

“This is what death is,” he told himself. “I’m going to step through this, and on the other side is heaven, or hell, or nothingness, or whatever. But that’s where I need to be.”

So Farlowe took a deep breath and prepared himself for his eternity.

He stepped through the green fog back into afternoon daylight and the sound of sirens. People were running all around him. Police were frantically waving panicked tourists toward the exits as armed officers rushed forward into the cave entrance. Red and blue lights on squad cars flashed nearby.

Farlowe took it all in. It had happened again. This time, for much longer.

“There’s been a shooting!” a man yelled as he ran past. He had an Australian accent. He didn’t notice the gun in Farlowe’s hand. But Farlowe did. He quickly tucked it into his pocket.

“Yeah, and someone’s been shot. Some poor bastard. This poor bastard,” Farlowe’s brain screamed, though the words never reached his lips.

Instead, Farlowe smiled through the pain as he merged into a crowd of people clamoring to get aboard a large tour bus. In the chaos, no one was checking to see who was who. Crisis had made everyone part of the same group. The group getting as far away from Skocjan Caves and the gunfire as possible.

Pain exploded through his body as Farlowe was shoved and pushed and pulled in different directions by the crowd until he felt the bottom tread of the steps inside the bus doorway.

It was the greatest feeling he had ever experienced.

**********

Things had been busy since he arrived back in Shanghai.

After a quick shower and shave at the Qantas executive lounge in Terminal 2, he was back in his suit and on a long taxi ride to the port.

The Port of Shanghai was now the world’s busiest. The economic muscle of the Chinese flowed through this choke point on its way to the Walmarts and Targets and you-name-its around the globe. Literally millions of consumer goods and products were sealed into 40-foot shipping containers and then craned onto massive cargo ships every day.

With that much traffic, a few things must go missing, the man reasoned.

At the port, he found a mass of organized chaos. Although he was clearly a foreigner, the large expat community and number of Western businessmen in the city of Shanghai allowed him to blend in without drawing undue attention.

Which was good. Because the man was planning on stealing something.

He approached a guard gate where a long line of semi trucks covered in road dust snaked in and out of the harbor. The uniformed guard inside leerily watched him approach.

In perfect Mandarin, the suited man explained to the guard that he had a very important shipment coming in and that he needed to put his eyes on it personally. It was a matter of job security, hinting at a term that many locals often referred to as the “iron rice bowl.” Roughly it meant that everyone who needed a job would have one, even if that job was sweeping streets or picking up trash or watching guard gates at three in the morning.

Enough to survive.

The guard was only partly buying the story, but the 500 rmb that passed from the man’s hand to his own certainly made it more compelling. The hard hat was only 200 kuai more.

The man nodded a thank you and entered the facility.

He was looking for shipping containers that would be set off to the side, alone and near the perimeter fence, usually located by one of the secondary exits.

As he walked, he marveled at the massive overhead cranes, each lit up like a Christmas tree, that moved with almost frightening speed as they loaded and unloaded the ships in the harbor with steel containers.

The noise and motion were almost hypnotic. It required intense concentration on the part of everyone involved to stay on time. And to stay alive. One mistake at any point in the process from truck or rail to crane to ship and back again could be fatal. So everyone was paying attention to their various tasks. Which was good for the man, because that meant the dockworkers were not paying attention to him.

Inside a work trailer, the man found a pair of bolt cutters, right where he expected them to be. It was not uncommon among this many shipping containers that locks would occasionally have to be cut open.

Back outside, the man moved toward the darkened areas near the fence, just beyond the harsh yellow glow of the floodlights that illuminated most of the port.

He found a likely candidate. The shipping container had been faced with its doors toward the fence, meaning that when it was opened, unless you were standing outside the gates, it would be difficult, more likely near impossible, to see the contents or activity taking place inside. Suspicious placement.

He was hoping that in addition to stolen cars, it would contain a few motorcycles. There was a big market in vehicles stolen in the U.S. and Canada and then shipped overseas to China.

The various local triads had added it to the arsenal of operations, along with prostitution, human smuggling, drugs and gambling, when a vibrant upper- and middle-class began to develop in the more industrialized cities. And Shanghai certainly qualified.

So cars and motorcycles found their way across the ocean and ended up in shipping containers like the one the man now faced. He set upon the lock’s clasp with the bolt cutters, leveraging one of the handles against his thigh and using both hands on the other. One strong pull was all it took. The lock tumbled free.

The man straightened himself and opened one of the tall metal doors. He took out the small flashlight he had purchased at the airport gift shop from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and peered inside.

American steel reflected off the light.

A late-model Mustang, silver, was near the front of the container. Behind it, he could see a Camaro, also silver. There was an SUV further back, near the end. A newer Range Rover. Black. A nice haul for someone. Plenty of profit. But what interested him most were the motorcycles anchored along the walls of the container. A few rockets, but the one that caught the man’s eye was a Kawasaki cruiser, probably from the late ’90s, the man guessed. Vulcan. 500cc. It was perfect.

The man smiled as he began removing the retaining straps that anchored the bike to the container.

Usually, it wasn’t wise to steal from the triads. But if they knew what this thief was capable of—what he had done before and what he would do again without hesitation—they would write the Kawasaki off as a loss. Another shipment would be coming again tomorrow. And the day after. More stolen vehicles to sell on the black market. An endless supply.

Unlike the amount of blood in the human body.

**********

The two men from Hulong Transglobal were waiting in the middle of the pedestrian skybridge that ran for most of the length of the park off Zhaojiabang Road.

The park, Xujiahui Gongyuan, had been built where a rubber factory once stood. Now it was a well-manicured oasis in the city with a large pond and public art and that most American of attractions, a basketball court.

During the mornings, the park was a place for groups of all ages to practice tai chi. In the middle of the day, a place for families and workers on their lunch break. In the evenings, art and music and couples young and old made the park their own. But at this hour of the night, the park was relatively empty.

The men were both bundled up in heavy jackets. One wore a blue baseball cap, which made the rest of his rather reserved appearance fall completely apart. They appeared to be in their middle to late sixties. Deep-set eyes stared back at Ni from faces that seemed to have never seen laughter.

Ni looked around as she closed the last twenty feet to them. This was a perfect spot. Exposed. Yet hidden. The elevated path meant anyone approaching could be easily seen long before they were within earshot.

The two men bowed respectfully, and Ni did as well. Quick. Formal. She recognized them from their previous dealings. Mr. Lei usually did all the talking. His hair was gray but full. Mr. Song usually did all the staring. He was the one in the baseball cap.

Calvin had introduced them and their company, Hulong Transglobal, to Ni about five years ago.

They were connected, and like many successful companies in China, a front for a greater power. There were a lot of unspoken agreements among such companies with agencies like the NIA. It was a way to go through unofficial channels to reach mutually beneficial solutions to problems that were often too complex, or too high-profile, for politicians to get involved. Sometimes all they wanted was to save face. What was true in the past is that Hulong Transglobal was willing to play ball.

Maybe that was the message behind Mr. Song’s choice of headgear, Ni thought to herself.

“Welcome back to Shanghai, Director,” Mr. Lei said in perfect English. Mr. Song nodded.

“Thank you. It’s good to be back,” Ni replied.

No hands were extended.

“It must be somewhat strange for you. To be here. Unlike other Americans, you can blend in. Hypothetically. But in a way, you stand out even more. Because when we look at you, we expect to see someone who is like us. But instead, we see someone who is not.”

Ni studied Mr. Lei for a moment. A test. She smiled.

“We are all products of our environment. For some of us, it means change. For others, it means atrophy.”

“Yes. You are correct. Adapt or die. In life. In culture. In business,” Mr. Lei replied. Mr. Song nodded again.

Mr. Lei continued. “We are very interested in what brings you out on this beautiful Shanghai night to see a couple of old men, Director Ni.” Mr. Song nodded along as Mr. Lei spoke.

Ni had practiced what she was about to say many times. About how Niantic was discovering untold wonders. XM. The Shapers. Lynton-Wolfe’s creations. The portals as sources of power they were only beginning to fathom. The dangers, perhaps, but more importantly, the huge upside. And, of course, the reason she had come to them: she was soon to be out. Better not lie about that, as they would find out anyway. More than likely, they already knew.

So Ni was prepared to admit to what was coming without conceding either disgrace or shame.

She had everything organized in her mind in a way that would deliver maximum impact in a minimum amount of time, again as a way to show deference and respect to the two men who had come out in the middle of the night to meet her.

Ni was ready. She started to open her mouth when Mr. Song said, “We agree. We want in.”

Trying her best to hide her surprise, Ni took a step back. Mr. Song had spoken. And what he said was the last thing she expected.

“You haven’t heard what I have to say.”

“Once you have made the sale, don’t keep trying to sell, Director Ni. We know you are here about Niantic. We know your situation is tenuous at best. We have been following along with the unauthorized information on what has been happening at your lab in CERN.”

Mr. Song nodded and raised his hand slightly, indicating to Ni that Mr. Lei had more to say.

“You know through our various companies that we are active in mining and refining certain rare earth elements. You see XM as an extension of our business. So you have come to us for funding to continue. And we see the value in such a proposition,” Mr. Lei said calmly as Mr. Song nodded and lowered his hand.

“What do you want in return?” Ni asked.

“You know the answer to that question already, Director Ni,” Mr. Lei said.

“I’m not a traitor. I love my country.”

“We love America as well. Without the United States, there would be no China as it stands today.”

Mr. Song nodded.

“My operation is international,” Ni said.

“Only if you give yourself credit for the Russian and the Englishman,” Mr. Lei replied. “Now, in this situation, it is not about who gets there with the most, but who gets there first. Your advantage right now is time, Director Ni. But that window is collapsing. I expect that your days are numbered.”

“You want exclusives?”

Mr. Song nodded. Mr. Lei answered, “That would be our preference. And that preference is not negotiable.”

“And my position?”

“Most generous. You and your people.”

“This is not what I expected, Mr. Lei,” she said. “I expected this to be more difficult.”

“Sometimes it is not easy to get what you want,” Mr. Lei said, studying her. “But we want this. And we don’t care if it is easy.”

There was an authoritarian menace that resonated from somewhere deep in the man. Ni could sense he probably didn’t like dealing with women. Or people he perceived as young. Or Westerners. And certainly not Westerners who descended from the same bloodlines that he did.

Ni had been pushing all of Mr. Lei’s buttons, and he had done a very good job of hiding it. Until now.

“We will contact you tomorrow to finalize our agreement. Please bring good news.”

Mr. Lei turned and walked away from Ni and Mr. Song.

“I guess you know where I’m staying?” Ni asked him.

Mr. Song nodded.

**********

Mr. Song and Mr. Lei crossed back through the park and made their way to the street. Although the park was empty, the streets, as always, were busy with traffic.

“What do you think?” Mr. Lei said to Mr. Song.

“Could be a trap,” Mr. Song nodded. “The Americans may be up to something more. Let us dig a little beneath the surface.”

“Yes. That is wise. But if this XM is as advertised, then it negates many of our operations in Africa and elsewhere.”

“That remains to be seen.”

The light changed, and the two old men stepped from the curb, almost walking directly into a motorcycle that crossed their path, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

Mr. Song put his hand in front of Mr. Lei and stopped him just in time. They both watched the motorcycle tear down the street. Mr. Lei could see the idiot rider had his cell phone in one hand.

As the bike got lost in the traffic at the next intersection, Mr. Lei spewed as many invectives as he could manage in one breath.

Mr. Song listened. And nodded.

CHAPTER 8

As Devra expected, Dr. Alessandro Caselli had delivered.

In addition to being a brilliant scientist, Ale had another desirable attribute that was enabled by his considerable charm. Ale could find money. For researchers working on university budgets, private equity was often the only way to put in place the talent and equipment that would be necessary to make impossible breakthroughs a reality.

Devra realized early on that you could get your money from governments, from altruistic wealth or, usually, from companies that could see the value in your research to their own bottom line.

Sometimes the lines blurred. Especially when things were moving fast.

And for Devra, they were racing. Three hours ago, while they sat in a small cafe, she overheard part of a conversation that Ale had with a representative of one of his investors on his cell phone. It didn’t appear to be going all that well until Ale mentioned Devra’s name. She had sensed a pause on the other end.

“He says he will call me right back,” Ale had told her.

Minutes later, he did. Then a flurry of texts and emails and phone calls followed in rapid succession. That led to a rushed trip out of the city, into the countryside, to a small, private heliport where Devra found herself watching an AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter, painted matte black, landing a hundred feet from her.

She held up her hand to keep the grass and dust kicked up from the rotor wash out of her eyes. Ale did the same, smiling at her as the blades atop the helicopter spun down, slowing to a steady thump.

A well-dressed man slid open the side door of the helicopter, revealing a plush interior within. He gestured to Devra.

“Aren’t you coming?” Devra said as she turned to Ale. She had to raise her voice over the sound of the engine.

“He’s eccentric. And a bit difficult. And used to getting his way. And he wanted to meet you alone.”

Devra could see Ale studying her expression.

“I’ll be waiting for you when you get back,” he said. “Then you can tell me all about this crazy adventure you’ve been on. And then we’ll see what I can do besides introduce you to one of my sugar-daddies. That is the term, I believe.”

Devra smiled. “No matter what happens, Ale, I can’t thank you enough.”

“You can. And you will,” Ale laughed as Devra kissed him on the cheek. “Now go.”

Devra jogged toward the helicopter. Toward the suited man.

As she reached the door of the craft and climbed aboard, she thought of ADA. She wondered if ADA could find her way into the controls of the helicopter and concluded rather quickly that she probably could. Devra wasn’t worried about ADA sabotaging the flight as much as she wondered if the algorithm would be able to access its flight computer and GPS. Meaning that ADA would know where Devra was going before she would.

Then Devra thought to herself that maybe this has been true all along.

**********

The madam was an aging woman who might have been beautiful once. Small, but unusually curvaceous for her body type. The man thought she must have had surgery at some point. Maybe multiple points.

She wore a shiny dress of bright red. Her hair was pulled back so tight that it drew the skin of her forehead upward to meet her hairline. The rest of her face was covered under layers of makeup. Even though she sold the girls, she was determined to be as desirable as her product.

The madam had given him a grand tour of her humble establishment. Just enough money spent to keep the tourists and locals comfortable. The rest funneled through the madam back to whatever organization really owned the place.

No one in Shanghai ran an operation this elaborate and established without protection.

She had studied him when he walked in. He had felt her doing so. She looked twice at the motorcycle helmet he was carrying. Most Western tourists arrived by taxi, so he was already drawing a level of suspicion. The leather jacket and black jeans only added to the overall effect he was trying to achieve. He wanted to be a little intimidating and project an air that he himself might be connected as well.

In either case, without a word, the madam had made him for an expat instead of a tourist. Job done. And he forced a slight French accent into his Mandarin, furthering the con. Shanghai had a very active community of expats. While being a Westerner in the city still made him a unique animal, he wasn’t as unique as he might be in other parts of China.

She led him down a hallway into a small room with dark walls.

Girls, all around eighteen, lined the walls. They were dressed in as little as possible. A cheap disco light created wild patterns that danced off the ceiling.

The girls smiled at him as he walked in. They laughed and cooed and made bright doe eyes in his direction. They are better liars than I am, the man thought to himself. Maybe because they were desperate. It was a look he knew all too well.

Clearly proud of her collection of beauties, the madam stood back and waited for the man to make his decision. He made a show of looking at the women but found what he was looking for standing against a wall in the back, near a doorway leading to a hallway: the man who made sure that no one got past him without first paying for the privilege to do so. The gatekeeper.

He had the look and bearing of someone who had spent most of his childhood, and all of his adult life, in crime. And, as the man observed, the gatekeeper was slightly taller than most of the locals. Perfect.

The man with the motorcycle helmet leaned to the madam and whispered in her ear. He passed her 2,000 rmb as he did so.

If she was shocked by his request, she didn’t show it. He could see it in the slight smile that crossed her heavily made-up face as she turned to him.

To each his own.

**********

Devra walked the last few hundred yards to the monument alone.

Behind her, two black Audi sedans were parked nose to nose. The strongmen inside, each either brandishing a weapon or hinting at possessing one beneath their jackets, all kept their eyes on her. She was sure that there were more around, perhaps hidden in the treeline on either side of her, or maybe positioned on top of the imposing structure she was moving toward.

They had pulled the blindfold off Devra once the cars had come to a stop. She was certain that, much like the show of firearms, this was more “intimidation theater” than an actual threat. After all, Ale knew where she was. And who she was with. Well, more accurately, about to be with.

Devra had met this potential benefactor on his terms. His helicopter. His cars. His men. And while they were meeting in secret, the location was not quite the mystery they may have intended.

In the moonlit night, and with a deep bluish-purple cloudless sky behind it, the monument felt even more imposing as Devra approached it.

She walked past the large rectangular reflecting pool and toward the front of the concrete structure faced in granite. Plastic tarps and scaffolding covered part of the entrance. The entire site was undergoing renovation. However, at this time of evening, the workers had gone home. And the night security, if there was any, had either been paid off, or worse.

Devra hoped that it was the former, though she realized that things had spun well past her control. The rollercoaster had already crested the top and was accelerating down the first drop. Nothing left to do but hang on.

Devra pushed some of the plastic tarps aside and made her way into the building. She had recognized the exterior almost immediately and anticipated what she would find inside.

She wasn’t disappointed.

Devra looked around the central crypt of the building. Illuminated by halogen work lights, eight imposing statues of fallen warriors seemed to look down at her. Other smaller statues, ancient knights with their heads bowed, stood on either side of massive grieving faces.

“Hard to believe this is a monument to victory,” said a voice. There was just a hint of Russian accent.

“Built to achieve a certain effect, I would assume. Much like your choice of meeting here,” Devra replied, straining to see through the lights as she looked in the direction of the sound.

A man stepped forward, laughing. “Indeed, Doctor. Well done. I hope my boys were complete gentlemen.”

He was in his early 40s, with a full head of blond hair worn long in front so that he was constantly brushing it from his eyes and forehead. He was lithe and trim in an expensive, bespoked dark suit. His shirt was a deep red, almost black. Other than the massive gold rings he wore on each finger of both hands, he looked like he could be the host of a cable television design show.

“A man of my wealth and situation requires a—certain level of security.”

“Requires or enjoys?”

“Perhaps both,” he said as he extended his hand. “I’m Ilya Pevtsov.”

Devra knew who he was before he told her.

Ilya had made his fortune while still in his twenties. As the former Soviet Union collapsed around him, aggressive, ruthless and connected men rushed in to fill the vacuum. And all of those men needed communications. And access to Western computing and technology. And storage. And routing. And networks.

Ilya found the one thing that all people—good and bad—needed in a burgeoning economy: information.

“Devra Bogdanovich,” she replied.

“Ah, nice Slavic name. Son of Bogdan,” Ilya smiled.

“My father’s name was Arthur, actually,” she smiled back.

“His loss,” said the Russian, laughing. He gestured around him. “This place was built almost a hundred years ago, but to me, it feels much older. Unlike many monuments you will find across Europe, this one commemorates the dead from both sides. Well, to be even more accurate, speakers of a common language from all sides of the struggle. Interesting how that is often all it takes to link people together, or drive them apart.”

Devra nodded. “Wars have been started over much less.”

“Yes. But at the root of all conflict is what we are here to discuss. That is why they build places like this. To distract. In my country, the landscape is littered with such statues. To the famous or the dead.”

Ilya leaned back against one of the statues, imitating its pose, as Devra tried to remember all she had read about the man.

After decades of repression, the desire of people in the former Soviet states to reach out and consume, share and create information was powerful. And profitable, as it had become everywhere.

Ilya had the vision to see it, and the ability to navigate the labyrinth of legitimate and illicit contacts that were required to build his fortune and sustain it.

Now, more than twenty years later, he had grown accustomed to defining the terms of any conversation of which he was a part. Devra was only willing to play along so far.

“I read about you in Forbes a few years ago.”

“Did I give any quotes? Or was it just a puff piece to sell magazines?”

“I don’t remember. But it did say how you turned a small computer import business into a multibillion-dollar company.”

“I think it is a good story, yes?”

“Yes,” Devra replied.

“Do you know who was the most powerful man in the world?” Ilya asked her.

“Most powerful man?”

“Person, then. Humor me.”

Devra gave it a moment’s thought. “Alexander. Kublai Khan. Roosevelt. Cleopatra. Pope Innocent III. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Kennedy. Obama. Reagan...”

Ilya laughed. “You know your history, Doctor.”

“But this is where you tell me that I didn’t get the right answer,” Devra said as she moved toward him.

“Instead I will tell you the correct one. The most powerful man who ever lived was Pablo Picasso,” Ilya said as Devra studied him. She could sense that this whole show was for her benefit. Ilya was establishing the structure of their relationship.

“Really? How so?”

“You see, Picasso would take his friends out for these expensive dinners, flowing wine, the best of everything. And when the check came, he would ask for a piece of paper, a napkin, or a menu, or whatever. Then he would draw a picture on it, sign the work and hand it to the waiter. Payment in full.” Ilya laughed.

Devra thought for a moment. “Actually, probably a lot more.”

“Exactly. Imagine that what you create is so valuable that you are your own bank. Imagine that power.”

“If you define power as money, then yes.”

“Money is power, Doctor. And power attracts money.”

“What Picasso created was art.”

“That he used to pay his bills. Which brings us full circle. And the reason we are here. My understanding is that you yourself have bills to pay.”

“You understand correctly,” Devra said with a combination of confidence and need.

“And that you also have some trouble with the American authorities as well.”

Devra started to say something, but Ilya cut her off.

“Please, Doctor. My network is far and wide. And I pay handsomely to stay informed. So there is no reason to attempt lies at this point. If I weren’t interested in what you are planning, then you wouldn’t be here.”

Ilya reached out and touched her arm.

“I have the means to help you, Doctor. You know it. And you know that I achieved my considerable fortune in enterprises that some might frown upon. And in ways that the statues around us would recognize.”

His tone was matter of fact, not dismissive, Devra thought. She took a deep breath, then made her pitch.

“Ilya, I need personnel, equipment, facilities and help obtaining data related to my research on the Niantic Project.”

“That’s it?”

“For now, yes. This will be expensive.”

“Not to me.”

“Of course.”

“If this venture of yours succeeds, then what happens?” Ilya asked.

“I shut down Niantic. I stop them from weaponizing XM before we find ourselves in an arms race, possibly with the Shapers, that we cannot win.”

“All well and good, but you didn’t answer my question. Then what happens?”

Devra took a moment. She realized that she hadn’t thought this all the way through herself. She had been so focused on stopping Lynton-Wolfe and Niantic that she hadn’t contemplated a world in which she won.

“You mean, what happens to the XM?”

“That genie is already out of the bottle, and nothing will put it back. So it stands to reason that XM will now be with us. And in my mind, people will want this, yes? They will want to be infused with this wondrous substance. Perhaps it cures diseases. Allows us to live longer. Think smarter. Maybe we all become Picasso. This is a possibility, isn’t it, Doctor? Or even more than possible—likely. You are a smart woman, so you can see where I am going.”

“You want to sell it...”

“Control it first. Then sell the experience to those who can afford it. And if XM can be the foundation of such miracles, then everyone will find a way to afford it. That is the deal you make with this devil. I will scratch your back, and then you will help me scratch the world’s.”

Devra straightened herself. “I would like some time to think about this.”

“I understand. But don’t take too long. The NIA may still decide that you are better as a memory than a concern.”

“I can deal with them.”

Ilya laughed. “You know, I believe you...”

Suddenly, Devra could see the bodyguards standing in the room behind her, as if they had just appeared out of thin air. It was Ilya’s signal that their meeting had reached its conclusion.

“However, Doctor, there is one other thing to consider as you make your decision,” Ilya said as he gestured to his men.

“What’s that?”

“You are not the only game in town.”

**********

For 855, there were advantages to riding a motorcycle in Shanghai.

The most obvious, of course, was that it was easier and more efficient when it came to getting around. Traffic was no longer an issue. Even though the city had been fundamentally transformed in the past decade, there were still many parts of the landscape defined by tight, enclosed spaces where automobiles simply couldn’t go.

The second advantage was that riding the motorcycle gave him an excuse to hide his face behind the fully tinted visor of a motorcycle helmet. And for a man who valued his ability to blend in to the crowd, Shanghai’s predominantly homogeneous population meant that he stood out in most situations.

So although he couldn’t hide his size, he could conceal his face in a way that would go unquestioned, and at least at a cursory glance allow him to pass as just another motorist on the streets.

This is why Ni took no notice of the man who was now known as Michael Gilbright as he followed behind her cab while she returned from her late-night meeting in the park.

It also gave him a reason to remain covered when he sat on his bike at a curb. Watching.

And that was why Ni didn’t notice him as she exited the cab and walked in the door of her hotel.

855 looked at his watch, checking the time, then took his newly acquired smartphone from his jacket pocket. He clicked an icon and pulled up an image of Mr. Lei and Mr. Song. They were in a crosswalk near the park and appeared to be startled, as if they had almost been hit by a passing motorcycle.

He attached the image to a text message and hit send.

CHAPTER 9

Eventually, all pain is tolerable.

Farlowe had told himself this many times before, a mantra that had become a survival mechanism. First as an awkward kid and then as a gangly teenager. After his failed marriage. And multiple times during various assignments in the field. Manage what you cannot eliminate.

As in the past, he hoped his mental toughness would not abandon him, because Farlowe was nearly insane from the sharp burning sensation that radiated outward from the gunshot wound in his side. The pain extended up to his chest, where it had a bear hug on his ribs, making it difficult for him to breathe. And breathing at this point was also still a little confusing to him, because Farlowe realized that by any measure, he shouldn’t be.

Following his assassination—and he couldn’t think of a more apt word to describe what had happened to him—Farlowe had made his way to the city of Graz in Austria, traveling mostly by bus. He had sat in the back and pretended to sleep for much of the journey, which kept prying eyes and small-talk inquiries to a minimum.

When he reached Graz, he had agonizingly walked the city for what seemed like hours, hiding his injury as best he could. Darkness helped, and thankfully the blood flowing from the gaping hole in his side had long since stopped.

Eventually, Farlowe was able to get a taxi to within a few blocks of the safehouse he knew was located in the neighborhood of Jakomini.

Farlowe paused for a long moment in front of the otherwise nondescript building. His destination was on the second floor, and after readying himself, he slowly made his way up the twisting staircase, using the wall behind him and the thick wooden railing of the banister for support.

Mustering all his willpower, Farlowe shuffled slowly down the long, darkened hallway until he reached the front door of the apartment.

He wished he still had his automatic with him, but he had dumped the weapon a few hours after he was clear of the caves, tossing it alongside a motorway. A man with a gunshot wound is a victim. A man with a gunshot wound holding a gun is a criminal. Farlowe had reasoned that if he passed out and found himself at the mercy of his fellow travelers, it was better to be the former rather than the latter.

The NIA had safehouses located in almost every major city across Europe.

Farlowe could have chosen one closer to the Skocjan Caves in Slovenia, but he decided against it on the off-chance that the NIA’s trigger man would be stopping there as well. So he had endured the longer journey to reach where we found himself now, staring at the gray metal door of the safehouse in Jakomini.

Farlowe knew that the moment he opened the door an alarm would be triggered, but not one audible to the neighbors in the adjoining apartments. Instead, this alarm would be detected by some unknown monitoring station deep within the headquarters of the NIA. And Farlowe wouldn’t be able to key in his “all clear” code, since each agent had a unique alphanumeric identifier that only worked for him.

By now, he was sure that Phillips had already had him flushed from the system.

Besides, the assassin would have reported that he was dead. That was the only logical conclusion that he could have made, given the extent of Farlowe’s wound. It was an assessment that Farlowe would have made himself. So even if his code was still active, Farlowe concluded that it was better not to use it. No sense letting Phillips know that his assassin had failed. Not until Farlowe had the tools he needed.

Farlowe didn’t have a key. No one ever used a key on these types of locks; the key slot was strictly for show. The combination was so ingrained into every agent that Farlowe didn’t even give it a thought as he reached for the knob.

He twisted the knob hard to the left, paused a second, then hard right twice in quick succession. Farlowe waited three seconds, then easy to the left. Two seconds. Hard left, then quickly an easy right and left. He held the knob to the right for two seconds, and then slowly dialed it back to center. He could feel the mechanism inside moving. Tumblers and gears lining up.

Farlowe heard a satisfying click.

He twisted the knob and pushed the door open. The moment he did so, Farlowe knew the clock was ticking. He figured he had about thirty minutes.

Farlowe stepped into the darkened hallway entry of the apartment and shut the door behind him. To the right, there was a small kitchen. A marble-capped pass-through had a combination phone-answering machine sitting on it. Who besides the NIA uses something like this anymore?

A red light on the machine was blinking, letting him know that the anonymous monitor had detected his entry and was waiting for him to punch in his code.

Instead, Farlowe grabbed the wire connected to the machine and pulled it from the wall.

Then he stepped into the living room, searching for a wall switch. Finding it, he hit the lights, illuminating a small space with a single couch and a television set opposite it. “Nicer than home,” Farlowe muttered, only half jokingly, as he made his way to the bathroom.

Under the sink, he found what he was looking for.

A field dressing kit with bandages, antibiotics in liquid and pill form, a suturing kit with thread and needles, and injectable morphine. Farlowe ignored everything but the morphine.

He grabbed two small vials of the drug and snapped them, breaking the seal to the needle. Farlowe rolled up his pants and jammed both of the self-contained doses of morphine into the meatiest part of his thigh.

Warmth flowed through him, and with it, the pain became tolerable. He then dug around in the med kit until he a found a box of single-edged razor blades. He pulled open the top and took one.

Farlowe moved to the bedroom and found an empty black nylon duffel bag in the closet. On the shelves were clothing for men and women of various sizes and styles.

He grabbed the most conservative looking of the shirts and pants and laid them out on the bed against one wall. Everything that was his size, or close to it, he stuffed into the bag.

He tossed the bag and the rest of the clothes he didn’t need onto the floor, then pulled back the bedspread and sheets of the queen-sized bed, revealing the mattress. Farlowe shoved it aside, off the box spring and frame.

He took the razor blade from his pocket and cut along the top of the gauze-like fabric and padding covering the box spring. Pulling the material back, he found a Kel-Tec KSG bullpup 12-gauge shotgun with a bandolier sling and a Sig SP2022 polymer-framed double-action with two high-capacity magazines.

Farlowe pulled them both out of their hiding space and studied the weapons. Then he added them to the duffel bag. Farlowe crossed back to the bathroom and stuffed as much of the medical supplies as he could into the side pocket of the bag.

Farlowe checked his watch. Nine minutes. He slung the bag over his shoulder and realized that he hadn’t thought about how much his side hurt anymore. Adrenaline and morphine were both doing their job. Things were looking up.

Clothing, check. Medical supplies, check. Weapons, check.

Farlowe crossed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. There were a few bottles of soft drinks, some hard salami and soft cheese.

Farlowe had already made the mistake of trying to eat and drink on the bus out of Slovenia. A shot to the gut almost always leaves the victim with an insatiable thirst. Farlowe was no different, but after trying to down a little orange juice, he regurgitated it all into the toilet located in the small head at the back of the bus. Then he fought the dry heaves for ten minutes.

Below the refrigerator was a freezer. Farlowe pulled the shelves out of the appliance, scattering the food and drink on the floor, and then felt around for a finger hold on the metal plate that separated the refrigerator from the freezer. When he found it, he pulled the plate up.

It popped as plastic rivets gave way.

Farlowe then slid the plate out and tossed it aside, revealing a tightly wrapped bundle of euros set on top of the cooling unit, encased in a clear plastic ziplock bag.

Money, check. Another look at the time. Fourteen minutes. One thing left to find.

All NIA safe houses used the same standard setup. If you were passing through, things that wouldn’t draw suspicion were where you’d expect them to be: clothing in the bedroom, medicine and toiletries in the bathroom.

Non-traceable cash, that was kept in the refrigerator. There was something about human nature that turned a blind eye to that most obvious of hiding places. It was usually one of the last places that would be searched, which is why it was such a popular place to stash drugs and money.

But safe houses were built for emergencies, and that meant it was a place you could hold out until the cavalry arrived if running was no longer an option.

Farlowe found what he was looking for in the second bedroom, which had a single ‘50s-style desk with a metal office chair in the center of the floor. French doors behind the desk led out to a small balcony. A built-in bookcase ran the length of the opposite wall from floor to ceiling. It was completely empty.

Farlowe clicked the light switch. On the desk, a pen was set neatly on a black leather desk pad. Farlowe looked at it. He stepped behind the desk and bent down until he could line up where the writing instrument was pointing. Drawing an imaginary line with his eye, Farlowe could see where it converged on the bookcase.

He moved to the bookcase and felt for a switch under a shelf where he believed the pen was pointing. One support peg was larger than the others.

Farlowe pushed it in, and the hidden door opened, revealing a safe room of concrete, rebar and reinforced steel. The wood of the bookcase was simply a veneer covering a self-contained fortress.

Concealed gun ports embedded within the concrete allowed for direct fire through the bookcase into the room. The first wave of attackers would be slaughtered by anyone inside the safe room. And the second wave would not fare much better. With plenty of ammo and a gas mask-rebreather unit, whoever was inside the safe room could Custer effectively until help arrived.

Short of dropping the entire apartment complex, an assault would stand little chance of success.

Set on a small shelf inside the room by a leather-padded bench was what Farlowe was looking for. A netbook computer with a direct, always-on secure link to the cavalry. The moment Farlowe tried to remove it, the device would be remotely wiped. To use it, he would have to enter a password, which meant that Phillips would know he was alive.

It was time to make the decision.

Farlowe knew that if he used the password, then the NIA would come, and his final reckoning was only a matter of time. But he also knew that entering the password on the computer would mean that Phillips would surely be among those to arrive.

There was no chance that anyone but Farlowe would be able to enter that code. Phillips would know. He would come. And all of the hours of walking the city of Graz and the neighborhood of Jakomini that Farlowe had agonizingly endured as he searched for and located the best ambush routes on the way from the airport would mean he would have both the element of surprise and that he would control the location.

Farlowe would get to place “The X” and put Phillips right where he wanted him. And then the Kel-Tec would do the rest.

Twenty-three minutes. Farlowe’s fingers hovered over the keyboard of the computer. Just as he was about to type in the first letter, he heard a noise behind him.

With lightning-fast reflexes, Farlowe slipped his hand into the duffel bag and wrapped his fingers around the Sig SP2022. He dropped the bag and raised the 9mm to a modified combat stance in one fluid motion as he spun around and sighted on the door to the safe room.

There was the shadow of a man standing there, lit from behind.

“I believe that this is where you aimed last time,” said Roland Jarvis as he pointed to the center of his forehead. “Right between the eyes.”

**********

855 once overheard an American businessman at a hotel say that “the jackhammer is the songbird of Shanghai.”

He reflected on that as he surveyed the construction site of a new skyscraper in the Baoshan District. It was just after 10:30 p.m., and still the sound of jackhammers and cranes and the high-pitched snaps of welding torches were relentless.

New construction and public works projects were everywhere in the city. Wandering from his hotel to a global coffeehouse a few blocks away, Michael had counted no fewer than five crews out working on the sidewalks and the streetlights. Another was resurfacing asphalt, and the smell of burning tar ruined an otherwise nice cup of Sumatra.

Michael waited for the concrete truck blocking the construction site entrance to pull out. A few men with hoses were spraying the back of it, washing a gray soup into the gutter.

As the truck slipped into gear and drove away, Michael rushed quickly past it and through the chain-link entrance gate, unnoticed by the men. He ducked into the darkness on the other side and looked around. Hundreds of workers. All busy with their own tasks. Heads down. Focused.

The building was just starting to take shape. An underground network of support girders, huge beams of steel that were dark brownish rust in color, were being placed by a crane. The majority of the workers were swarming over rebar and concrete. The remainder of the foundation was still being excavated.

Michael had chosen well. What he needed would be here.

His clothing matched the other workers: a long-sleeve buttoned shirt and cotton-blend work pants that he had dirtied up by rolling around in an alley behind his hotel.

Michael pulled a cloth face-mask from his pocket and put it on, snapping the elastic over and behind his ears. He had stolen a hardhat from the crew that ruined his coffee and now tugged a brim of dense, red plastic down low on his forehead, covering his eyes.

With most of his face obscured, Michael moved quickly, head down and purposefully, toward the support trailers that housed the construction managers and logistics personnel. Storage of tools and expendables—nails, screws, brackets, welding supplies—would be in the containers behind it.

And further still, back by itself and blocked in on two sides by a couple of container flatbeds just in case something should go wrong, Michael found the secure storage vault covered in warning stickers that would be unmistakable in any language.

A single bored security guard sat near the portable vault, puffing on a cigarette. Of course he would be smoking, Michael thought as he lowered his head and approached the man.

**********

“Ever hear of a local club called the Night Gallery?” Devra asked Ilya as his driver pulled onto the highway.

“Why? Do you want to go?” Ilya smiled at her. It was easy to see how this billionaire could charm his way into any boardroom. And most bedrooms.

“Someday. Perhaps after we get established.”

“Good. I will look forward to it.”

A light snow was falling as they reached the outskirts of Berlin, heading south. There were five vehicles in their convoy. Devra and Ilya were riding in the back seat of the fourth vehicle, a jet-black Range Rover. Ahead of them, three Audi S8 sedans were filled with support personnel and bodyguards. Another SUV, a Mercedes G63 full of broad-shouldered men, trailed behind them.

Devra sank into the cream-colored leather that was trimmed in deep red piping.

Various electronics and computer gear had been custom-fitted into a false wall of mahogany that had been set between the front and rear seats, turning the luxury SUV into a mobile office from which Ilya could communicate with the world as needed.

Devra watched Ilya quickly swipe pages on his tablet, wondering if ADA was monitoring her even now.

He had convinced Devra to take this trip with him, to a facility that he said would be hers if they could come to terms. If nothing else, it was buying her some time, and Devra didn’t mind the feeling of security that came being inside Ilya’s protective bubble. Seeing as how things had gone recently, this was the safest she had felt in days.

“How much are you worth, if you don’t mind me asking?” Derva said as she turned her attention to the snow falling outside the window.

“I don’t mind, and I don’t know. About thirty-four billion euros, but it fluctuates. I never wonder where my next meal is coming from, if that is what you mean.”

“Do you ever think you can have too much?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, you just can’t pop out for a drink. Or see a movie.”

Ilya leaned forward. “I can see a movie here. Anytime I want. Any film you can name.”

“I mean at a theater. You don’t do that anymore?”

“I’m not sure where you are going with this...”

“Your life changed when you became public. And you became public because of your success. And wealth.”

Ilya looked at her. “One followed the other. Yes.”

“So you and I just couldn’t go to that nightclub in Berlin. I mean, not just you and I,” Devra said.

Ilya set his tablet down next to him. “No one sympathizes with a rich man. And truth be told, no one should. I sweated and toiled and cheated and stole and invented and improved and succeeded in ways I could have never imagined. I earned this isolation. And I have the means necessary to sustain it, for an eternity if need be.”

“Doesn’t sound all that appealing, Ilya. Honestly. You have money. I have freedom,” Devra said.

Ilya laughed. “Appealing to my humanity. Oh, I knew I liked you, Devra. Is this where you ask what do you get a man who has everything?”

“What do you?”

“Nothing. But no man has everything. And every man wants something. Even me.”

“Especially you.”

“Yes.”

Devra was calm. Her voice smooth. “If we do this, I need your assurance that this won’t just be about money for you. And, yes, I was appealing to your humanity, because that is what’s at stake. Yours. Mine. The world’s.”

“Let us for now agree that your passion and my resources are what it will take. Most people see money as a form of security and comfort. And isn’t that what you are offering with XM? We can determine later what is a reasonable fee for true peace of mind.”

Devra thought for a moment, studying Ilya. “A reasonable fee?”

Ilya smiled at her. “Yours. Mine. The world’s.”

Leaning closer to Devra, Ilya’s voice was barely a whisper. “Devra, we are both taking risks here, are we not?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Eventually, when men like me run out of toys to buy, do you know what we do?”

Devra studied him but said nothing.

“We buy love. And adoration. And respect. And, the real clincher: immortality. These come in the form of new hospital wings and libraries and university endowments and thousands of children who sing your praises because their hungry stomachs no longer ache.”

Ilya leaned back in his seat.

“Any man with the resources can build a statue to himself. But a transcendent man is one the people demand a statue of. Devra, I want my statue. And you will make sure I get it.”

Ilya picked up his tablet and begin swiping his finger on the screen, either speed-reading his emails or simply ignoring them.

“See what I have to show you. Then decide,” Ilya said without lifting his gaze from the screen.

Devra watched him for a moment. She had never met anyone like Ilya. In political terms, he was a benevolent dictator. He was going to get his way. If not with her, then he would find another researcher or sensitive close to Niantic.

“OK. I’ll concede I’m curious.” Devra didn’t so much speak the words as let them fall from her mouth.

“The sign of a good researcher, is it not?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, I am curious as well. Meaning that we have already found common ground. At this rate, who can stop us?” Ilya laughed.

“It’s not a who, so much as a what, that has me concerned,” Devra replied.

**********

Ni thought it interesting that Mr. Song and Mr. Lei had chosen to meet here.

Yuyuan Gardens is one of the more popular tourist sites in the Old City district of Shanghai. Conceived and built over a twenty-year period during the Ming Dynasty, the lush grounds feature ponds, statuary and ancient architecture. A source of immense pride, the garden is also a source of revenue, as its entrance sits adjacent to a tourist mart filled with souvenirs and counterfeit goods of just about every watch, electronics and fashion label imaginable.

The garden’s six sections were separated by undulating dragon walls capped in gray tile that formed the tail of the dragon and ran its entire length. An elaborate dragon’s head terminated each section.

Standing on a pathway just outside the walls, Ni could see the feature clearly, as if the dragon were looking down on her. She checked her watch. It was a little after 1:00 a.m. Ni knew that Mr. Song and Mr. Lei would be a few minutes late. They would establish their authority by their arrival time.

When Ni looked up again, she could see the executives from Hulong Transglobal walking toward her. Mr. Song was still wearing his baseball cap. Maybe it wasn’t about her. Perhaps he just liked it, Ni thought to herself.

As before, a quick greeting.

“You are aware, are you not, Director Ni, that your first name is our basic unit of currency here in China?” Mr. Lei said.

“Of course.”

“So your parents named you well,” Mr. Lei smiled.

“You called this meeting, gentlemen. And I see that you have come alone, as I was instructed.”

“We need an answer,” Mr. Lei told Ni. Mr. Song nodded.

“And I need to know that Niantic doesn’t get folded into your conflict elements initiative. The research is too important to become part of any political games. XM must be studied and understood. It is bigger than any of us.”

“Yet, to get it, we must go through you,” Mr Lei said.

“That’s correct. And I know you understand the value of what I offer. So this goes down under my terms. And my price.”

“Which is expensive,” Mr. Song said.

“My parents named me well,” Ni responded.

A hint of a smile crossed Mr. Song’s face. He nodded.

“As we told you before, Director Ni, we want in. We speak for our entire board. However, we are going to require assurances that you can deliver before your government shuts you out. Which one must assume will be very soon,” Mr. Lei said.

“I need only make a call,” Ni answered.

Earlier in the evening, she had discussed all the details of the transition from public to private with Calvin. She was confident that they had figured all the angles.

Although Ni was in the crosshairs, there was little doubt where the NIA would aim next once Ni was sent packing. It was in Calvin’s interest as much as hers to see this done quickly and efficiently. Calvin was good with contingencies. Together, they could move the people and the research of Niantic. She didn’t even have to try to lure him with money, but only appealed to Calvin’s sense of duty. Veterans of the agency game like him were predictable.

“Then I believe...,” Mr. Lei said. But he stopped.

Ni’s eyes were focused elsewhere. Behind him, not on him. A man was walking up the path, unusual for this location at night. But there was always foot traffic in Shanghai at any hour.

The man was taller than the average Chinese national.

He was outfitted in a leather jacket and black jeans. And he was wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet. The tinted reflective visor of the helmet acted as a mask, disguising the man behind it.

Faster than her training, Ni acted on instinct. She drew the P6 from the small of her back, shocking Mr. Lei and Mr. Song. She pushed past both of them, half running, half weaving back and forth on the pathway.

If she was wrong, then this would be a momentary embarrassment, one powerful men like Mr. Song and Mr. Lei could make go away. But if she was right, then her life, and the life of her new partners, was in danger.

Ni had the advantage. She had already drawn on the man, meaning she had acted first and would control the tempo of what would come next. Advantage one.

“Stop! Stop right there!” she called out, raising her P6 at the man.

The helmeted figure held his hands up casually, as if this wasn’t the first time he had found himself in a situation where a weapon with hostile intent had been aimed in his direction.

He was standing near a large statue. A stone dragon. Ni couldn’t tell if it was authentic or part of the decorations placed for tourists. In either case, it was an excellent place to stop the man, because this part of the path had an overhead light illuminating the statue. Even though it was dark all around her, she could see his every move. She had stopped him in exactly the right spot.

Advantage number two.

“Show your face,” Ni said as she quickly approached the man, making sure to maintain enough distance between them and keep herself out of the light. The P6 gave Ni her third and biggest advantage, but she had no doubt that her situation could change in an instant. On that point, she was correct.

“Carefully,” Ni added as she moved the aim point upward on the man, toward the full face shield.

The figure slowly did as he was told, lifting the dark, reflective shield to reveal himself.

The man that Michael had hired from the brothel stared back at Ni, his eyes cold, revealing nothing—the same look he had practiced for years as the gatekeeper for the madam.

Seeing his face, Ni switched to Mandarin. “Who do you work for?!” she shouted at the gatekeeper. Aggressive but in control. Her training was kicking in.

Unfortunately for Ni, a superiorly trained and infinitely more experienced field operative was also practicing his craft this cold evening.

“He works for me,” 855 suddenly said.

Ni barely had time to react as a man seemed to conjure himself from the shadows. Slipping onto the path with lightning speed, he dashed from his hiding place behind the stone dragon and charged Ni.

Michael grabbed the wrist of Ni’s firing hand, gaining control of the P6 while simultaneously sweeping her feet out from under her.

Using Ni’s momentum, he followed her down, practically falling on top of her as he brought the weapon around again, wedging one of his digits into the trigger housing and forcing Ni’s finger looped around the trigger down once. And twice.

Ni felt the burn of gunpowder against her cheek.

The flash of the muzzle partially blinded her as the smell of cordite filled her nostrils. Through the ringing in her ears, Ni heard the ejected brass clang as it hit the stone pathway.

She had been forced to shoot. Ni fought to bring her eyes into focus even as the pain of hitting the ground and the sensory effects of the weapon threatened to overload her brain.

Mr. Lei and Mr. Song were still standing.

Both were staring at Ni and Michael, their faces showing various states of shock. The gatekeeper, however, was falling backward.

Ni could see two small holes in his jacket. One of the holes had a thin spray of blood trailing from it as the man fell like a piece of cut timber.

“Correction. Worked for me,” Michael said as he stepped over Ni, snapping the weapon from her hand and pointing it toward Lei and Song.

“Gentlemen. As of now, your business with Ms. Ni is concluded. I would respectfully suggest this would be an excellent time for you to leave,” Michael told them in perfect Mandarin. “Good morning.”

Mr. Lei and Mr. Song exchanged a look with Ni, then turned and quickly moved away without a word. Ni saw in their eyes that they had no concern for her fate, only their own.

Michael stepped aside. “Get up, please,” he said.

Taking a deep breath, Ni pushed herself first into a seated position, then dropped onto all fours, expecting a bullet to the back of the head. After a moment, when it didn’t happen, she stood up and faced Michael.

Behind him, the gatekeeper let out the faintest of moans, then became still.

“I’m going to need your phone,” he told Ni.

“What?” she sputtered back at him.

“Your phone. Hand it to me.”

Ni reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the phone as Michael held her gun at his side. Ni had no doubt that he could have it back on her faster than she could attempt any evasive or hostile action.

She held her phone out to Michael. He didn’t take it.

“Unlock it first,” he said. Ni swiped the screen in a zigzag pattern and handed it to Michael.

“If you haven’t figured out who I am, then at minimum, you know what I am, so save your questions and your breath. In fact, given your situation, it would be foolish to waste it.”

Ni looked at Michael, then over at the man on the ground. The spray from the wound had stopped, which meant his heart had as well. Gravity was pulling the rest of his blood from his body and transforming the path under it into a crimson Rorschach.

Michael dialed a number on Ni’s phone. Satisfied he had the number input correctly, he held his finger just above the green “call” button.

**********

Mr. Lei and Mr. Song only had to walk for a minute to reach their car.

Neither man had spoken to each other as they stepped away from Ni and the assassin. Now certain that they were not going to be shot in the back as they walked, they moved purposely forward, using the darkness to their advantage by walking alongside the path, rather than on it.

Finally, Mr. Lei turned to Mr. Song. “This is a setback.”

Mr. Song nodded.

“The second major one we have experienced in as many weeks. This can only mean that the Americans are very worried about our capabilities.”

Mr. Song nodded, then added, “If they see us as a threat, then we are closer than even we believed.”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Lei replied. “We will need to find another way into the Niantic research. One that is less direct.”

“It will mean incurring even more expense.”

“An investment.”

Mr. Song nodded.

“Besides, when has that stopped us in the past?” Mr. Lei added.

Mr. Song nodded again.

They hurried past the closed shops and then stepped across the street to where their Geely Emgrand EC8 was parked. With a few modifications, the black vehicle could pass as a Mercedes-Benz on first inspection.

Usually, Mr. Lei and Mr. Song rode in the back seat, allowing their driver to get them through Shanghai traffic. Not tonight. Tonight, they had come alone, so Mr. Lei would have the joy of driving this technological and engineering marvel that would have been unheard of coming out of a Chinese manufacturing plant even ten years earlier.

No one can match our speed at assimilating knowledge and putting it into practical application, Mr. Lei thought to himself as they reached the sedan. What was true for motor cars would be true for XM.

“We have seen that motorcycle before,” Mr. Song simultaneously asked and stated as he and Mr. Lei stopped near the hood of the EC8.

Mr. Lei nodded.

Parked about ten feet away was a Vulcan cruiser. A Kawasaki, 500 cc. Bungee-corded onto the back part of the seat was a red metal toolbox that had been turned sideways, so that the top was facing the Emgrand. And now the two men.

A muffled sound emanated from inside the box. It sounded like a phone ringing. Then the world instantly flashed radiant orange.

Det cord, or primer cord, is a thin rope of PETN that burns at the rate of four miles a second, which makes it an ideal fuse for detonating explosives.

Michael had obtained six feet of det cord and eight sticks of blasting dynamite used for foundation excavation from the building site. He had also loaded the toolbox with a couple of boxes of drywall screws, and then made sure that everything had remained compressed with two bath towels that he had stolen from Ni’s hotel room.

The Triad gatekeeper had ridden the motorcycle to exactly the right place and had parked it perfectly, nose first against the curb and with the tool box bungeed on the back directed at the Emgrand. Strapping the toolbox on its side, so that the top faced the men, now determined that what happened in the next thousandth of a second would result in certain death rather than a serious injury.

Like all forces, the rapidly expanding gases of an explosion seek the point of least resistance. This meant the detonation expended itself sideways, through the top of the toolbox and in a relatively horizontal plane that tore through Mr. Lei and Mr. Song at their midsection.

The overpressure followed a split second later, vaporizing the motorcycle as the remainder of the concussive blast shot outward in all directions, turning the men’s internal organs to jelly.

Chasing behind the blast wave, the drywall screws became a thousand pieces of supersonic shrapnel that ripped through what remained of both men. Mr. Lei and Mr. Song were tossed and scattered throughout the street and across the hood of the Emgrand that was now riddled with jagged holes.

A hundred or more screws embedded themselves into the bloody, shattered windshield of the car as the boom finally arrived.

**********

Yuan Ni reacted to the sound of the explosion as Michael pressed the “end call” button on the screen of her phone and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

“Wrong number.”

Ni studied the man as he lifted the gun slightly. She could see the glow of fire radiating somewhere in the distance.

“I believe we’ve done enough here, so let’s be on our way,” Michael said without a trace of the emotion one would expect from someone who had just taken three lives.

Ni realized that two of the three had met their end in a way that would send a message.

“If you’re going to do it, just get it over with,” Ni spit in Michael’s direction.

“I don’t like unknown variables, so if really doesn’t work for me. Instead let me tell you what is going to happen. You are going to come with me. You are going to follow my instructions. If I tell you to jump, you don’t ask how high. You jump, and then beg for my permission to come back down. That’s how this is going to play out, Ms. Ni, because now you are with me for the rest of your time in Shanghai. And if you’re not with me...”

“Then I am not,” Ni said, finishing the threat before it could be issued. Michael smiled at her.

“Correct. How pleasant or unpleasant you find my company will be entirely up to you.”

Michael nudged her forward. Ni began walking. She looked up at the wall. The dragon was staring back at her. In the distance, Ni could hear the wail of sirens. “Are you always this charming?” she sneered.

“Every day.”

CHAPTER 10

After an hour, the caravan had reached the town of Wunsdorf, about 40 kilometers south of Berlin. The small town was once home to the Soviet military when this part of Germany was behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

Abandoned military facilities dotted the countryside. Many of the buildings were built of solid concrete, then adorned with just enough trim to help them blend in with structures that existed before the last great war.

“Wunsdorf. A true diamond in the rough. In fact... no. An abandoned diamond, left behind by short-sighted men. As you know, Devra, the Internet was started by you Americans as a military project. Besides killing people and breaking things, all militaries, including those of my former countrymen, do two things well: organization and infrastructure. Precisely what technology also requires. And this is what has been left behind,” Ilya said as the vehicles rolled into a large central courtyard surrounded by three uniform buildings. Each one was a slightly different shade of pale yellow.

Devra started to reach for her handle, but the door was already being pulled open by a barrel-chested bodyguard with short hair.

“Ma’am,” the bodyguard said.

“Doctor,” Ilya corrected him. “It is not a title easily earned.”

“Sorry, sir. Doctor,” the man said to Devra.

Ilya stepped around to Devra. The snow had stopped, and the concrete pavers were now slippery. “Watch your step. You may steady yourself on me if you so desire,” Ilya said as he held out his arm.

“Don’t try and turn this into a date,” Devra smiled back at him.

“I believe you are the first woman to ever tell me that,” Ilya laughed.

Ahead of them, a detail of men swept ahead, opening a door in the central building. As they walked toward it, Devra noticed that although the building looked abandoned from the outside, within the courtyard there were at least a couple of dozen parked cars.

Stepping into the building, Devra felt instantly warm. An airwall kept the chill outside, even with the door wide open. A couple of support personnel, young engineer types wearing jeans, button-down cotton shirts and ready-to-please smiles, eagerly greeted Ilya as Devra took in the place.

One of the engineers approached Devra. “Would you care for anything, Doctor Bogdanovich? A coffee, perhaps?”

“Perhaps an espresso. If you have it,” Devra replied, slightly uncomfortable with the level of deference she was receiving.

“Are you trying to hurt me?” Ilya laughed. “Two espressos, Roman.”

“Yessir, Mr. Pevtsov.”

Ilya turned to Devra. “I tell them to call me Ilya, but old habits, et cetera...”

Outside, it was Soviet bloc architecture. Inside, it was tech start-up cool. The concrete floors had been polished. Stained walls had been turned into art with the selective addition of paint and details. Leather and chrome furniture lined the walls.

“This way. So much to see,” Ilya said.

Ilya stepped down the hallway. Devra followed alongside him. They reached a security door, and one of the bodyguards placed a RFID card against a reader. The door popped open.

“All of the doors are secured with electromagnets. Their hold is so strong that they might as well have steel bars running through them,” Ilya said.

Inside was an empty room. Empty except for the two security cameras on the ceiling. Devra could hear the motors turning as they zoomed in on her.

“If you would please, Devra, say your name,” Ilya said.

“Devra Bogdanovich,” she replied.

“I had you voice-matched based on a recording from our earlier meeting.”

“You taped me?”

“I record all my conversations. I’m sorry, did I not mention that?”

Before Devra could respond, the door snapped open. Inside, there was a brightly lit laboratory.

Every piece of equipment was spotless. Expensive.

A huge wall of plexiglass covered the back of the space. Server and drive racks, randomly blinking hundreds of green and red LEDs, were set floor to ceiling and more than twenty feet wide.

Devra could see a clean room off the side, as well as a bench containing an electron microscope. Set into another work area was a high-bandwidth digital oscilloscope, a set of fast signal generators and a row of logic analyzers. Everything looked like it just had the plastic wrap removed.

The entire room smelled of new.

“Obviously, I have all the logistical support staff you need for anything related to the servers or network. I also have hardware and software engineers, men and women who work in my other companies, who can be here on a moment’s notice.”

Roman appeared with the espressos. Perfect china. “Thank you,” Devra said. The young man nodded as he handed a cup and saucer to Devra, and then to Ilya.

“How long did this take you?”

“In my experience, the more money you throw at something, the faster you can make it go.”

“No doubt.”

“That was my plan with you as well, until your little sermon in the car. Now I’m trying to figure out a new angle. Perhaps the coffee will convince you.”

Devra took a sip. “I’m not going to lie—it’s helping.”

Ilya laughed and led Devra toward the back of the laboratory, past a row of shelves loaded down with equipment and to a hallway joined to a collection of offices.

“Simply order anything you need: furniture, art or equipment. Roman will help with the details.”

“I still haven’t said yes.”

“I still haven’t heard no.”

Devra stepped into one of the offices and looked around.

“Of course, we don’t have a collider, but it is my understanding that this is no longer necessary.”

“Who told you that?” Devra asked.

“That would have been me,” Dr. Alessandro Caselli said as Ilya’s bodyguards stepped aside and he entered the room.

“Ale? You are already here?” Devra did her best to hide her surprise.

“Yes. Of course. As is Christie. We’ve been prepping the equipment and studying what is available on Niantic.”

Devra looked at Ilya. Ale watched them both.

“I’m sorry, are we not starting? Christie and I both came as soon as we heard the deal was made,” Ale said.

“When was the deal made?” Devra asked.

“The moment we met,” Ilya replied.

Devra took a deep breath as Christie appeared in the doorway. He smiled at her. Dr. Christie Novosel was big enough to be mistaken as one of Ilya’s bodyguards, were it not for his age or his scraggly gray beard.

Devra’s mind raced. They were all together. Secure. Funded. They had the equipment and personnel they would need. And she was still alive.

“OK. OK. But I’m going to need something stronger than that coffee.”

“Deal,” Ilya replied.

“Then deal,” Devra replied, then added: “Oh, and one more thing. We don’t need a collider, but we do need a source of XM as powerful as the portal at CERN. That has been, and remains, Niantic’s greatest asset. When I was, uh, running, I found one that might have been a good candidate. But it became a crime scene when a man I met was murdered there. The chance of us being able to use it at this point is unlikely.”

“So what do we do?” Christie asked.

“We’ll find another portal just as strong,” Ilya shrugged. He was not about to be slowed down at this point.

“No, we find the man who can find it,” Devra said, pausing for a moment. She realized that what she was about to propose would trigger ADA’s alarms as soon as it was put into action. She would have to figure out the ramifications later.

Devra looked at Ilya.

“I need to talk to Hank Johnson.”

**********

They were inside a tunnel of glass a half-kilometer high.

Michael had led Ni through the Shanghai World Financial Center and up to the observatory. The observatory itself was an architectural flourish both innovative and breathtaking: a long corridor of glass suspended midair in the center of the skyscraper. From the street, it made the building look like a giant bottle-opener standing on its end.

Michael had paid the entrance fee for them both just before they stopped ticket sales for the night and led Ni to the elevators. He stayed close enough to her that she knew better than to resist.

Now she stared at Michael as he looked out the windows that surrounded them.

“Wild to think that none of this was here twenty years ago. Makes you realize how fast things can change, doesn’t it?” Michael asked Ni.

“Yes,” she muttered back at him.

“Think of me what you will, Ms. Ni, but that out there, that’s my business. Change.”

“You won’t be offended if I say that I think you’re full of...”

Michael raised his hand, smiling.

“Take a minute. Enjoy the view.”

He stepped a few feet from her and bent down, opening his small messenger bag. Then he casually pulled out the P6 and a large plastic ziplock freezer bag. Michael dropped the P6 into it. Then he pulled a roll of duct tape from the bag and began wrapping the entire package from the outside, creating a triangular shape that looked like a properly folded flag.

Ni instinctively moved to cover his actions, just in case one of the other tourists studying the skyline through the floor-to-ceiling glass should see him.

“You could do that later,” Ni whispered angrily. She didn’t like being played with, even if it meant extending what little time she had remaining. Besides, he wouldn’t do it up here, Ni convinced herself.

“No time like the present. And everyone else is much more interested in what is outside this tunnel than what is in it.”

“So you are doing that for my benefit? I’m sure you have other weapons.”

“Of course I do. But this is the only firearm. It will stay with me, however.”

Ni steadied herself. “You’re not going to kill me up here.” She said it in a statement that sounded like a question.

“That’s what you figure, huh? You know that I do what I’m told. Mostly by people like you. We are both here for a reason, but only one of us by choice.”

Ni studied the other tourists. None were looking their way. There was a couple, locals who appeared to be lovers finishing off a grand night on the town, and three Westerners, two women and a man. Expats, most likely, judging by the way they were calling out locations of the city as they took in the view.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Michael slid the duct-tape-encased weapon back into the bag, then returned to his feet. He draped the messenger bag over his shoulder. Ni watched him. No sense in running. And no sense in trying anything. She knew what she was up against, and in all the categories that mattered at this very moment, she was behind.

If this was to be her last night on earth, Ni wanted to know a couple of things before it was over.

“Hulong lost a couple of their executives, men who were overseeing Hulong’s operations in Africa. They were killed a few weeks ago here in Shanghai. Reports indicated it was some sort of Triad business gone bad,” she said.

“Hmm...”

“And I bet that man we left back at the gardens was part of their organization, the one blamed for the killings.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Michael replied. He stood next to her, looking out the window. The city below them was a spectacular display of lights and motion.

“That’s why Lei and Song were willing to see me on short notice. They were worried about falling behind. So I can assume the dead executives from Africa, that was you as well?”

“You can assume whatever you’d like.”

Michael leaned against the glass and looked down. “You know, if you were to jump from here, you’d have about nine seconds of freefall. Up until the end, that would be one heck of a ride. Of course, on impact from this altitude, the human body really just explodes, so that would tend to spoil things a bit. Still...”

“So that’s it? You’re going to shove me out the window?”

“I’d need a sledgehammer and an hour to get through this glass.”

“Then why are we up here?” Ni asked.

“Killing time. Your plane is being refueled now. Once I get word, I’m to take you to the airport and make sure you get aboard. After that, you are no longer my problem.”

Ni caught her breath. So that was it. The reckoning would be delayed. Maybe she would be able to get through this in one piece.

“You know what’s coming next. There will be consequences,” Ni said to Michael.

“There always are. Personally, I think you’d have been better off with me. I don’t care what you know or what you have to say, so things would move quickly toward a final resolution. But where you are headed, well... good luck with that,” Michael said without a trace of sympathy.

Ni studied the man. He wasn’t going to kill her. But he would hurt her enough to make sure that she would make her flight.

Suddenly, the phone in 855’s pocket started to buzz.

“I won’t resist,” Ni said, squaring herself to him.

“Great. Let’s get moving then.”

“How long will it take to get to the airport?” Ni asked.

“About thirty minutes,” Michael said as they started walking.

“Was there anything else you were supposed to tell me?”

“No. That’s it.”

Ni stopped and turned to Michael. “Then from here on out, shut up.”

***********

Farlowe had seen more than his share of dead men. By now, he was used to it. The pale, waxy complexion. The lifeless eyes. The way muscles shifted under their own weight when the central nervous system was no longer in control.

He had long since gone from numb to jaded when it came to death. The finality of it was ingrained in him after having witnessed it, and caused it, so many times before.

Which made seeing Roland Jarvis standing in the doorway that much more confusing, because Farlowe knew that he had definitely killed the man.

A couple of thoughts dueled for Farlowe’s attention.

One was that he himself was dealing with a wound that anyone would consider fatal, so he shouldn’t be that shocked to see Jarvis standing there. The second was morphine’s ability to cause hallucinations. And he had taken a pretty strong dose from both injections.

“Not that it will change anything, but would you mind pointing that elsewhere?” Jarvis said to Farlowe, gesturing to the Sig as he crossed toward the small leather bench. “I’m going to sit. I suggest you do the same.”

Jarvis elegantly lowered himself onto the bench. Farlowe studied the man. He seemed as far from dead as one could imagine. Hyper-alive. His skin was taut and youthful. The little light in the room seemed to radiate off him, as if Jarvis’ flesh was somehow amplifying it. He wore a simple dark jacket and even darker pants.

A vision, Farlowe tried to convince himself.

“You were an assignment,” Farlowe finally managed to form the words and get them past his lips. It didn’t sound like an apology but a statement of fact.

“One of many, I imagine. I was just—just part of your routine. You came for me. Now, I’ve come for you. You need to sit.”

Farlowe decided to listen to the vision and lowered himself to the floor opposite the bench. He still had his automatic pointed at Jarvis.

“I believe at this point you have more than a few questions.”

“Am I dead?” Farlowe asked the hallucination.

“I thought you’d start with an easier one,” Jarvis said through a wide smile. “Yes. In the sense of how death was defined and understood before the Shapers. And no, because now the Shapers know you.”

“That makes me what, exactly?” Farlowe asked.

“Very lucky, Hubert. You don’t mind if I call you that here, do you? You prefer it there.”

“There? What does that mean?”

“You understand the basics of XM at this point, correct?” Jarvis asked.

“Yeah. Some research project at CERN. It involved scientists. And also people like you.”

“People like me. People who sensed that there was more to the world than we could experience with our senses. Ironic that they chose the word sensitives to describe us. I knew that there was a powerful force in my life. Driving me. Inspiring me. Maybe, on some level, leading me in a direction I needed to go. I had heard them whisper so many times but never knew who they were. Until Niantic.”

“So why’d you run?” Farlowe challenged the vision. Jarvis’ eyes seemed to focus right through him.

“The night I was bathed in XM, I realized that the Niantic Project would fracture. And that for me to do what needed to be done, I could no longer remain. That’s because I saw into another reality, one that could strengthen and enhance our own. And when I looked upon it, they—looked back at me.”

Farlowe felt like his head was exploding. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Everything. The night you shot me, I was welcomed by the Shapers. And as I started my journey, you intersected the same XM that made my passage possible.”

“The glow at the train station.”

“Yes. So we are now linked, you and I. That is how I found you. The Hubert I know is a reasonable man. I thought you would be as well.”

“The Hubert you know?” Farlowe asked, his face a mass of confusion.

“Yes.”

Farlowe studied the Sig in his hand. A weapon had always given him a sense of being in command of any situation. But now he felt adrift.

“The Hubert I know would not trivialize the gift he has been given by seeking revenge. That is your plan, isn’t it? To go out in a blaze of glory, and take Agent Phillips with you.” Jarvis didn’t attempt to hide his dismissive tone.

“What else do I have but vengeance?” Farlowe snarled.

“Devra,” Jarvis said.

“Someone we both share.”

“Yes. And someone who led me to that train station. And then left me to face you and that instrument of destruction you hold in your hand. And before you ask, unlike you, I do not seek revenge. But I do desire to understand what happened. And Devra is the only one who can answer that question.”

Farlowe heard a noise coming from outside the room. The sound seemed to snap him back into focus. The time.

“Dammit. How long have we been talking?”

“What does it matter? They are already here.”

Farlowe stood up and rushed to the door. As he did so, he came face to face with a squat NIA agent, weapon drawn.

Farlowe didn’t recognize the man. And he didn’t hesitate. He squeezed the trigger twice, double-tapping two shots into center mass. But the agent didn’t react. Instead, he kept moving forward, into the room. Each step was like an elaborately choreographed dance. Wherever Farlowe moved, he seemed to just miss making contact with the agent.

“He can’t see me,” Farlowe exhaled quietly.

“Because you are not here. You are not in his now,” the hallucination that was Roland Jarvis answered.

The agent lowered his weapon and retreated from the room. From somewhere in the distance, Farlowe thought he heard the man say, “Nothing. All clear. Let’s secure it and lock it down.”

Farlowe turned back to Jarvis, who was now standing beside him.

“Take your supplies, Hubert,” Jarvis said.

“All of this, it was to stall me?” Farlowe spat.

“What is time to someone like me? Or you? It is an abstract that we have chosen to define. Understand that, and wonders will make themselves manifest,” Jarvis said, smiling.

Farlowe picked up the duffel bag and put the strap over his shoulder. The pain was gone. Not tolerable. Gone.

“You did this?” Farlowe asked.

Farlowe had a sense of the air becoming suddenly colder.

“No. You did when you accepted what you are,” Jarvis replied. “Find Devra, and I will find you.”

Farlowe was suddenly standing alone about a block from the apartment building. He looked back and could see a company sedan parked out front. A support truck was two cars further down. The place had been compromised and was being abandoned. But the NIA needed to clean up any traces of him ever having been there.

That included patching the drywall after digging two 9mm rounds out of it. The rounds would later be matched by ballistics to a Sig Sauer SP2022 that was part of the safe house arsenal.

By the time the NIA would have this information, the weapon would have already been used again.

CHAPTER 11

She watched him pacing back and forth by the railing near the water. From where they had parked the vehicle, she could see him backlit against the skyline of Rotterdam and the most prominent nearby feature, an asymmetrical span over the Nieuwe Maas which runs through the heart of the city.

Near him, two well-dressed and muscular men waited. Not exactly guarding him, and not exactly accompanying him either. Whatever words had been exchanged, and whatever his reaction, Devra had not been there to see it. When they drove her to this spot, Hank Johnson had already been briefed on the true nature of his contact with Ilya’s company, Visur.

Devra had to assume that he hadn’t left because Hank would realize that Ilya’s company was still ready to make an offer.

But the really important part of the meeting was not the message, but the messenger.

Devra took a deep breath, exited the rear of the black Range Rover and stepped across toward Hank.

The air was cold and the ground wet from a rain earlier that afternoon. Now the sky was a deep bluish-black. Light reflected from the bridge and the city behind it on the water.

Devra watched as Hank looked over at the men as their eyes turned to her. He followed their gaze until he made eye contact with Devra. If the smile that crossed his face wasn’t genuine, then he was faking it well.

“Sorry about all this, Hank,” Devra said, reaching out her hand.

“Devra, you’re looking well... connected,” Hank replied as he gently took her hand.

Although he pulled his hand away, he remained close to Devra. She reached out to the railing separating them from the river only a few feet away. Hank looked at the two men, who had given them even more space. Then he leaned against the rail and looked at her.

“I’m glad you’re OK. I heard about what happened to you and Jarvis. That was the night this whole thing started to go wrong on some level.”

“On a lot of levels.”

“Yeah, maybe. People panicked. Mistakes were made. Decisions in the heat of the moment.”

“You weren’t there, Hank.”

“No. I wasn’t. But I’ve been in similar circumstances before, Devra. Predictably, really,” Hank said.

“Maybe the reaction, but not the result,” Devra said as she turned to him.

“I’ll give you that.”

Hank tilted his head to the two men hovering just beyond earshot.

“Your friends over there told me the bad news. Guess Visur Media Group wasn’t really interested in Nomad. So this whole trip was for your benefit.”

“Ours. I think we can help each other. And Visur is interested in helping you if you can help me.”

“How’s that?”

“Ilya is currently in negotiations to take control of a cable network. He’s going to need programs. Why not yours?”

Hank turned to look at the bridge in the distance.

“Ilya, huh? Pevtsov himself. That’s who you are working with? You went straight to the top?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s authorized you to spend his money?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But he’s fully supporting my research, and I told him that I needed you to advance it. He’s been generous to me and my team. That would extend to you. And if Nomad is your price, I don’t see that as a roadblock,” Devra said.

Hank studied her.

“Alright. It’s a beautiful night. I’m here. Give me the pitch,” Hank replied.

“Power spots,” Devra said to him.

“What do you want to know about them?”

“I need one. One that is generating XM at a rate comparable to one at CERN.”

“That’s it?” Hank forced a smile.

“No. I need one that is secure. And unknown. One that would be ours alone. And I know you’re the man who would know where it is,” Devra said.

“So you’ve traded the NIA and Niantic for Visur and Ilya Pevtsov?”

“That decision was sort of forced on me.”

“You chose to run.”

“Because I had to. And then they tried to kill me. So forgive me if I don’t regret that choice,” Devra angrily replied. She was more forceful than she wanted to be. Hank nodded. He understood.

“OK,” he replied.

“Hank, I have to keep pushing forward until I understand the true nature of XM. Because I think everything we know about the world may be at stake. And if we have to stop this, this... invasion, then the only way that is going to be possible is if we understand the mechanism by which it is happening.”

“You know I feel differently,” Hank said quietly.

“I know.”

“And yet you wanted me here.”

“Because I trust you. In fact, you are the only person from Niantic I do trust.”

Hank looked straight into Devra’s eyes, studying her. Devra had the sense of a man looking into her soul, the way a warrior on the battlefield has to immediately make the snap judgment whether the person he is interacting with is a possible threat.

“Did you pick this place to meet?” Hank asked Devra.

“No. It was recommended.”

“Recommended,” Hank said under his breath.

He turned to face the water, grabbing onto the railing with both hands. Devra noticed that Hank was not wearing gloves. The metal must be cold, she thought.

“Do you know the name of that bridge?” he asked.

“No idea,” Devra replied.

“It’s called the Erasmusbrug. The Erasmus Bridge. Named after a Catholic priest from the middle ages, Desiderius Erasmus. He was an author. Near the end of his life, between ten and twenty percent of all books sold were his. He was also a famous humanist. In fact, he may have been the first humanist. He was a radical in his time.”

“I think I would have liked him.”

Hank suppressed a laugh. “I don’t doubt it. He rallied against formalism—going through the motions of piety and traditions without understanding the underlying reasons, and reasoning, behind them.”

“I know I would have liked him,” Devra said.

“He’s also famous for coining the phrase: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Devra forced a smile as Hank turned to her.

“Devra, your benefactor picked this spot to send me, and you, a message. We know who he thinks is the king. So the question is, which one of us is the blind?”

“Ilya has assured me that we’ll share what we discover with the world.”

“Keep telling yourself that until you believe it,” Hank said.

The look on Hank’s face told Devra that she wasn’t getting what she wanted. They looked at each other for far too long. Neither one saying a word.

“I’ll find another way,” Devra finally said.

“Believe me when I say this, Devra, you don’t need me. I’ve been looking for the answer to this question my entire life. And now it’s here. And I have to know. So I’m sorry I can’t help you. But I also won’t try to stop you,” he said, and Devra could tell that Hank meant it.

“It was really... really great seeing you again, Hank,” Devra said.

“I believe in the Enlightenment, Devra. And I don’t think that’s gonna change. Not now. Not ever.”

“I’ll make sure your time is covered.”

A grin crossed Hank’s face. “So you are authorized to spend his money.”

“I didn’t want to make it seem too easy.”

Hank laughed. “I’m going to destroy the minibar at the hotel.”

“Do that. And take care of yourself,” she said. Devra leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I missed you.”

“Me too,” Hank replied.

Devra turned to go. Suddenly, everything felt colder. More distant. Another obstacle to overcome. If not Hank Johnson, then who? She had known this might happen. That he might say no. But now she felt unprepared, spurned.

Hank called out to her.

“Devra. Wait.”

Hank moved quickly up alongside of her, grabbing her gently by the arm. In that instant, Devra realized why she had allowed herself to expect a different outcome. His touch was unexpected. And electric.

“We could both be wrong,” Hank said bluntly.

“Meaning what?”

Devra could tell that Hank was holding something back.

“Tell me,” she said.

Hank seemed to be calculating each word he would say, weighing them for effect. Finally, he let them spill out.

“Maybe we’re not on opposite sides of this. I can’t say where, when or how, but I’ve seen a different type of XM. And I witnessed what it could do. I was hoping it was just an anomaly, some distortion caused by the sudden increase in our awareness of the Shapers and XM. But...” His voice trailed away.

Devra stopped in her tracks. She could see Hank was serious. The soldier underneath the documentary filmmaker had come out of hiding.

“But you’re not sure. What did you see, Hank?”

“Dark XM, we called it. What XM is to life, it may be to...”

Hank trapped the last word, holding onto it.

“To what? Hank, to what?”

He let it go. “Destruction," Hank said.

“Jeez.” Devra locked eyes with him.

“If this goes south, Devra, I will let you know. I owe you that. And I think you owe me the same.”

Devra nodded. “You know that quote from your friend, Erasmus? Those blind men in need of a king? They weren’t made blind. They willingly became so.”

**********

He had watched them from the shadows. A trained operative, he knew exactly where to place himself to best observe the rendezvous. And he had counted six bodyguards, all armed.

Two were with the man. Two others had arrived with Devra in the Range Rover. One behind the wheel. The other riding shotgun, and also carrying one, if the bulge under his overcoat was any indication.

The last two were probably not known to be there by anyone else.

Farlowe had caught them milling about near a statue to Peter the Great and made them as part of a protective detail. They were the deep men. Definitely not known to Devra, or the other man, whom Farlowe recognized as Hank Johnson. And maybe not even known to the bodyguards.

Farlowe slipped his hands into his coat and wrapped his palm around the grip of the Sig.

They were here to protect her, and he was too.

He watched as Devra headed back to the Range Rover. The man, Johnson, went back to a late model Audi sedan with the other two.

Farlowe waited until both vehicles were clear, then turned his attention to the deep men. After a few more moments, they turned and started walking up the street in the opposite direction.

When Farlowe was sure they were gone, he stepped from the shadows and walked across the pathway and down to where he watched Devra and Hank Johnson talk to each other.

He moved to the railing and reached out to it. It felt warm to the touch. He could smell the water just below him. It reminded him how long it had been since he had anything to drink.

Farlowe looked at the bridge in the distance. It was as he had seen it. Modern. Elegant. Suspension cables that were longer going down one side. He had remembered walking on it earlier, during the late afternoon, when it had been raining. But how he had reached the bridge was a bit of a blur.

In fact, since he had left Graz, the harder he tried to remember his travels, the less clear things became.

Concentrating was counterproductive, Farlowe thought to himself. It was like trying to remember an actor’s name from a movie, and the harder he tried to focus on it, the more difficult to recall it became. But the moment he stopped trying, flashes would come to him.

That is why he stood staring at the bridge. It was no longer important. But another place would be coming to him. Farlowe was confident of that.

Devra was only in Rotterdam for a meeting. When Farlowe confronted her, he wanted her to be at home. He was certain that she would welcome him.

As far as the others were concerned, well, that was what the KSG bullpup in the pack over his shoulder and the Sig in his pocket were for.

**********

Wade Marcus sat on a small folding chair and pulled on one of the Bates Zero Mass combat boots. As he dropped his foot back to the floor, he felt his heel drop down into the back recess of the boot with a satisfying pop.

The boots looked good. Black leather and nylon webbing. Light. Comfortable.

855 looked at the rest of the items he had collected from the shelves and racks of the military supply shop. A couple of pairs of black cargo pants. A British Commando sweater, dark blue, with patches at the elbows and on top of the shoulders. A pair of leather gloves. They were all piled up on the floor beside the chair.

A young Latina with an easy smile and an arm covered in tattoos walked up behind him.

“How do those fit?” she asked.

“They’re perfect. What’s the price?”

“Normally one-twenty, but they’re on sale this week for ninety-nine,” she replied.

“Well then, how can I say no?” Wade said, an easy smile crossing his face. “I’ll wear these now, if that’s OK. And I guess I’ll take the rest to the counter.”

“No problem. Let me get those for you,” the woman replied, bending over and gathering up the rest of his supplies.

Wade watched her. One of the challenges of the job of executioner was only being an observer to anyone else but the target. Wade thought to himself that if he had more time in L.A., and a civilian job, that she would be the type of girl he would want to spend time with. Maybe it was her air of independence. Or maybe it was the fact that he imagined she would like him more if he told her the truth of what he had done for more than a decade now.

After lacing up the boot, Wade stood and walked through the store to the front counter.

It was a standard military surplus shop, which meant that in addition to military second-hand, it also included a good selection of blue-collar work clothing, sporting supplies, a few replicas and perhaps even some authentic Vietnam and earlier-era memorabilia, a big assortment of patches and uniforms and, because of the recently fashionable doomsday prepper movement, dried foods and survival gear.

None of it looked to be particularly organized, which made a few more things that Wade was looking for hard to find.

The woman had stacked all of Wade’s merchandise on a glass case counter near the register. She was scanning tags with a tablet as he reached her.

“I was going to ask if you take plastic, but I’m guessing that would be a stupid question,” Wade said, referring to the tablet.

“No stupid questions, only stupid people,” she laughed.

“I don’t know, you haven’t heard the question I was about to ask,” Wade replied.

The woman stopped her scanning. She looked up at him.

“OK. You’ve got my interest and attention,” she smiled.

“I need a badge. Maybe with a leather wallet, the flip kind or something I could hang on a chain around my neck.”

“Like a security guard badge?”

“Yeah, but, you know... so I look like...”

“More than a security guard?”

Wade leaned on the counter. “I know it could get me in trouble, and I’ll be careful, but I’m trying to pull a con on a fri...”

She cut him off. “You don’t have to explain anything. Your responsibility, though.”

The woman turned around and reached for a box under the shelf. She opened it up and pulled out a couple of different badges and cases.

“This looks most like County Sheriff. And this is close to LAPD.” She laid the badges on the counter.

The second one had a chain on it, with a black leather backing. He took it and slipped it over his head, letting it hang around his neck.

“What do you think?” 855 asked her.

“Badass," she smiled. And even though it had to be part of her sales pitch, he could see that she meant it.

“Sold.”

“Don’t you want to know the price?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” Wade said as he put it back on the counter.

“The moment you walked in, I knew I liked you,” the woman laughed. “Anything else you want?”

“Now that is a loaded question,” Wade flirted a little.

The woman looked down, smiling, as she folded his pants and sweater. “But not a stupid one,” she said without looking up.

“I appreciate your help. I think that is enough damage for today,” Wade replied.

**********

Yuan Ni hated everything about the drive to Alexandria, starting with the fact she was riding in Zeke Calvin’s car. A Dodge minivan.

When the meeting was finally set, they had both agreed that it would be better to travel to IQTech without her driver. Even though it had been weeks since Shanghai, Ni was still not certain whom she could trust. In fact, whoever had ordered the business in China had yet to follow up with contact of any kind. This concerned Ni, initially at least.

But now she had reached what poker players refer to as the threshold of pain—the moment when accumulated losses numb a player to any further failure or threat.

And in that desperation, liberation was waiting.

A light rain was dancing off the windshield.

“Traffic is light at least,” Calvin said to her as he drove.

Ni looked over at him. He had been back in D.C. for a couple of days, away from the chaos that accompanied the final days of CERN for Niantic and the death of Victor Kureze, yet Calvin appeared to not have a care in the world. Even though he knew what had happened in Shanghai—and the stakes of the play they were about to make with IQTech.

Ni wondered how he did it.

“Maybe it is a good omen,” Ni replied.

“If the rain lets up, then I know we’re unstoppable,” he smiled.

Ni glanced around the interior of the vehicle and was reminded that Calvin had kids. The minivan was only a couple of years old, but the wear and tear said much about Calvin's civilian life.

"Remind me again how old your kids are...,” Ni said, feigning recollection of family minutia she could not force herself to keep track of.

“Three. Two girls and a boy. My eldest. Amy, just started at Utah State. Daughter Evelyn is in her second year of high school. My son, Joshua, is in the fifth grade.”

“You and your wife must be proud,” Ni said as she turned her attention out the window. She had hoped that would be enough small talk.

“Just me. Lymphoma took my wife a couple of years ago now.”

Ni turned to him. “Sorry, Calvin. I forgot. I should have remembered that. Sorry.”

His reaction was impossible to read.

“Is what it is. When Joyce passed, her younger sister moved in to help me and the kids. She watches them when I’m on duty, so they still have family there when I can’t be around.”

“This thing with IQTech is going to work out,” Ni said.

“I think so.”

“And there will be money there for you.”

“I’m not really interested in money all that much, strange as it sounds.”

Ni laughed. “Your car kinda gives that away.”

Calvin smiled. “I guess.”

“Then think of your kids.”

“That’s what motivates me to wake up every day, Director Ni.”

Ni leaned forward in her seat as Calvin exited the expressway. She noticed that the minivan had a faint smell of a hundred fast-food meals and, from somewhere in the back, wet dog hair.

“You haven’t forgotten anything?” Ni asked Calvin.

“I’ve got everything we need in my briefcase. They also have a full set of electronic copies. And we’ve got a backup presentation on my tablet.”

“Clearance levels are all good?”

“Heck, they’re better than ours. These guys are connected.”

“That’s why we’re going to them. We’ve got to get Niantic back up and running quickly, and we need to be out from under the cluster you-know-what that has been plaguing us.”

“Understood.”

Calvin turned onto a side street leading to a tree-lined industrial park. Sleek, modern architecture. Almost all of the buildings were covered in mirrored glass, meaning the technology and aerospace and consulting firms housed within the buildings were hidden from the taxpayers who financed most of their operations.

Through the front windshield, Ni and Calvin could see the security gates leading to IQTech. There was no sign identifying the building.

Calvin slowed down as they approached the gate. He turned to Ni.

“Going to need your ID,” he said to her.

Ni pulled her driver’s license from her wallet and handed it to Calvin as he fished his own out of his back pocket.

Calvin lowered the window of the van and started to hand them out to a middle-aged guard in a red windbreaker.

“No need, sir. We know who you are. Visitor parking is on level one, by the elevator,” the guard said as he waved them through.

Calvin nodded and rolled up his window.

“That’s a good sign,” Calvin said.

Ni looked at him. “Maybe. Once we are in the room, let me do the play by play. You are color commentary. That means I’ll do most of the talking.”

“I’m sure that is how it is going to work out.”

**********

Since becoming Wade Marcus earlier in the day, 855 had already purchased a used, dark brown Crown Victoria for cash from a private dealer he contacted through an online personal ad, had his hair cut in the high and tight style most commonly associated with the military, and purchased a selection of clothing from the surplus store.

Now he was enjoying a meal of carne asada tacos from a street vendor as the sun set over Los Angeles.

Wearing his recently obtained cargo pants and boots plus a couple of extra shirts under the commando sweater to bulk it up, on casual inspection Wade looked like a plainclothes cop wearing a vest under his outfit.

With the badge on the chain around his neck and the car he was now driving, he would pass as the police for long enough to get what he needed.

And what he needed was a gun. Or two.

Wade washed down the last of his tacos with a diet soda, then walked back to his car and dropped behind the wheel. He checked the burner phone he picked up at a strip mall by the airport.

No new messages.

He opened the file he had downloaded earlier. A picture of a young woman stared back at him. Dark hair. Pale skin. Deep blue eyes. He already had her real name. Pity, Wade thought. She’s cute.

The second target was more of a mystery. But one that was easily solved once he got to his first target. Wade hoped she would talk quickly, so he wouldn’t have to prolong the inevitable.

Wade gave the picture one last look, then dropped the phone back into his pocket and started the engine of the Crown Vic. Putting it into gear, he headed south of downtown.

**********

An executive assistant, the young, perky type that is seemingly everywhere in and around D.C., led them through the maze of corridors inside IQTech’s headquarters.

Ni walked almost alongside her. Calvin trailed a few steps behind.

Everything was neat and organized within the space. Cubicles filled with matching computers, desks and chairs. The occasional personal photo here and there did little to change the feeling of unity and conformity to be found in every corner of the building.

Ni looked out a window that dominated the back wall of the space. There was a spectacular view of the river and the city of D.C. beyond. Black clouds filled the sky.

On the water, a rowing shell glided along. Even in the rain, they keep training, Ni thought to herself. Practice makes perfect.

“Ms. Ni and Mr. Calvin, you’ll be meeting in here,” the perky assistant said to them.

She opened the door to a well-appointed conference room. A large, dark wood table dominated the center of the space. Video equipment was located along the back wall. Another window with a view of the river was on one side.

Seating for at least fifteen to twenty. Ni wasn’t expecting that many in the meeting, but she was ready if that was the way IQTech wanted to play it.

“Can I get either of you anything? Coffee, bottled water or a soft drink perhaps?” Perky asked.

Ni shook her head. Calvin looked at the assistant.

“We’re fine, thanks.”

“Yessir. Have a good meeting, then.”

Have a good meeting, then. The words seemed to ring in Ni’s ears as Perky left the room, smiling. Ni reflected on everything. It all hinged on this. Her entire career, her survival and, thinking larger, perhaps even the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.

Calvin had come through in helping to get her here, introducing her to contacts he had within the intel community who were associated with IQTech. He had helped Ni navigate the waters. And now they were here, and it all came down to one good meeting.

Ni studied the rowers. Power through practice and repetition. She had been in a thousand meetings like this before. She was ready.

Ni turned around and leaned on the back of a chair at the conference table.

“Always wanted to try that. Rowing...”

She noticed that the door was closed. Calvin was seated across from her at the table. They were the only two people in the room.

“Sit down and we will get started,” Calvin said to her.

“What?” Ni replied. Calvin had his briefcase on the table in front of him and clicked open the clasps on each side.

“I’m ready to start.”

The ringing in Yuan Ni’s ears returned. Louder. She had a sense of suddenly being under water.

Calvin pulled a package from his briefcase and dropped it on the table with a dull thunk. The sound drew Ni’s attention back to him.

It was a tight bundle wrapped in duct tape. Her gun. The gun the assassin had wrapped while she stared out the window in Shanghai.

Nine seconds of freefall.

Calvin slid the mummified firearm toward her. It scuffed the gloss finish of the conference table as it skidded to a stop in front of Ni.

She looked at the gun, then at Calvin. The same face she had seen before. The same face she had seen always.

“You wanted to do all the talking. Now’s your chance.”

CHAPTER 12

The cop persona had worked better than anticipated.

855 had rolled up on a couple of corner drug dealers, and they reacted exactly as he had hoped when they caught sight of the Crown Vic. Assuming he was a narc from his vehicle, clothing and the badge around his neck, they ran.

Wade chased one down, a huge man drenched in sweat, and tackled him in an alley. Grit and gravel covering the asphalt was sandpaper, tearing up skin as they hit the ground.

The dealer wheezed and coughed as Wade shoved his face down and searched him. He had a collection of twist-tied packets of methamphetamine in a rainbow of colors stuffed in his pocket. And lots of cash. A smartphone. But not what Wade wanted.

Wade stood and kicked the prone man hard in the kidneys, doubling the drug dealer over and leaving him crying out in agony.

“Your partner, where’d he go?” Wade asked.

“I know my rights,” the sweaty dealer choked out the words. “My lawyer is going to have your badge.”

“You can have it now,” Wade replied.

He lifted the badge from the chain hanging around his neck and tossed it at the dealer.

The man was confused. “You’re ripping us off?”

Wade zip-tied the dealer’s hands behind his back.

“Not quite. I’m buying myself something. With your pounds of flesh. Get up.”

855 pulled the man to his feet and walked him back to his car. He shoved him into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic, then stepped around the hood and got in behind the wheel.

Wade held up the dealer’s phone.

“When you take a leak, you’re going to be seeing red for the next couple of days. Any longer, you’ll need to get to a doctor. As of right now, this is as good as your night is going to be. Now, you call your friend and tell him to bring me a 9mm and an AK, and he gets the drugs, the cash and you. But the longer he makes me wait, the more your value is going to depreciate.”

“What’s that mean?”

Wade slammed the side of his fist into the man’s abdomen. The dealer struggled to suppress a scream.

“It means your value goes down.”

“Oh, man, are we ever gonna murder you.” He coughed and gagged out the words.

“Many have tried. All have failed,” Wade said as he scrolled through the dealer’s recent call history on his phone. “He’ll be one of these numbers. If you make me guess, your value continues to drop.”

“OK. OK.”

“You have what I want? He does, I mean?”

“Who do you think you are messing with here? Of course we have it!”

“Then call. Tell your partner there is a convenience store a couple of blocks from here. Leave the weapons wrapped in a plastic garbage bag by the dumpster. Tell him I’ll let you go once I have it. Straight up and uncomplicated.”

**********

Yuan Ni studied the wrapped P6 sitting on the table in front of her.

Then she pushed the chair she had been leaning on to the side and sat down. Rather than face Calvin or the weapon, she focused her gaze on the far wall.

Calvin seemed content to wait. He lowered the top of the briefcase and leaned back in his chair.

Ni had been in the game without knowing it. Now that she realized that she was on the field, each action, each statement, would be informed with the knowledge of who Zeke Calvin really was. And what their relationship had been for the past years.

The only person she thought she could trust at Niantic was instead the most dangerous one of all. And she had shared every secret with him. Every strategy. Every move.

Ni knew that she had to choose her next words carefully.

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

Calvin leaned forward in his chair, a slight smile crossing his face.

“If I was, you’d never have returned from Shanghai,” Calvin replied.

“Just tell me when,” she said flatly.

“Does it matter? This is where we find ourselves now.”

Ni turned toward him as Calvin pushed his briefcase aside.

“Niantic exists because I fought and willed it into being. Because it is important to our country and to our national security. We must ever be vigilant. And no one, not some conspiracy nutjob on the Internet, not a rogue algorithm, not some unexpected exposure to XM, and certainly not your ambition, is going to jeopardize this project.”

“I only wanted to do what was best,” Ni said to him.

“I believe that. I do. However, what was best for you was always part of the equation. And that clouded your judgment, in my opinion. But it was also useful in our recent dealings.”

“Hulong,” Ni nodded. “Yeah, of course.”

“We needed to gauge their level of interest. The fact that they were so ready and willing to meet with you after the tragedy that had befallen two of their executives pretty much confirmed our suspicions.”

Ni studied Calvin.

Her mind was racing now, and she was struggling to keep up with it. Everything that had happened at Niantic had to be reflected through a completely different filter. At what point had Calvin’s agenda diverged from hers?

She was fighting to control her anger. Ni had confided in him. She believed in him. She had trusted him. And now she was realizing that Calvin had not only betrayed her, he was never on her side to begin with. And that he was much more connected, and much more powerful, than he had revealed.

Which meant that although she was raging inside, Ni realized that she had to choose her words carefully. More than just her pride and ego were at stake now.

“I would not have sold out my country,” she said in as matter of fact a voice as she could muster.

“I know. We wouldn’t have let you,” Calvin replied.

“So Song and Lei, the others from Hulong, and now Kureze... that was all on your orders?”

Calvin just shrugged.

“Who the hell are you?” Ni asked. It was as much accusation as question.

“Just a patriot. And the man who can save your life or end it, Yuan Ni.”

Ni leaned back into her seat and took a deep breath. So this was it. There was a deal to be made in this room after all.

“I’m listening,” Ni said.

Calvin motioned to the weapon on the table.

“This is one piece of evidence. Ballistics will of course link this gun to the murder of a Triad thug near the location where the two executives from Hulong were the victims of an IED. The interesting thing about that makeshift bomb is that it was compacted with a couple of towels from your hotel. Your room, actually. Used towels with your DNA presumably on them.”

“You set me up,” Ni said as the full weight of her situation began to crush down on her.

“Yes. And that is what you will tell Hulong. That your government set you up. That you were framed to cover the paranoid policies of this administration. And that you want no part of it. Instead, you will go to Hulong and tell them that you want to work for them directly, and bring all of the knowledge and secrets of Niantic with you.”

“Will I?”

“Yes, I believe you will.”

Calvin leaned on the table.

“You will atone for your sins and serve your country as a double agent. You will find out everything there is to know about how far Hulong has gotten with their research into XM. And you will report directly to me absolutely everything you learn. Do this, and the slate will be wiped clean. Or if you choose not to accept, then when I leave this room, others will enter, and they will wash you away.”

Ni looked at Calvin. The man she knew was still there, which made the expression on his face now that much more disturbing. He was ready to order her killed, then pick up fast-food on the way home before loading his wet dog into the back of his minivan for a quick drive to the park.

Her arrogance had gotten her here. Now maybe it would keep her alive.

Ni stared at him. “OK, you win.”

Calvin shook his head.

“No. Our country wins.”

He pulled his briefcase back to him and opened it. Reaching inside, he took out a manila envelope and slid it toward her.

“Everything you need. Passport, credit cards, visa, background information. Contact numbers and secure websites with passcodes.”

“What if they aren’t interested in taking me on?” Ni asked. “I need leverage. Something of value. What am I offering?”

“ADA.” Calvin said.

Ni shifted in her seat as he spoke.

“During the move over to IQTech, some data has gone missing. Potentially important research from ADA’s archive of everything that happened in the Niantic facility at CERN. We haven’t been able to fully assess the scope of the missing data, but I know we haven’t yet looked in that envelope.”

Ni nodded to him and took the envelope. Calvin stood up and reached across the table, moving the wrapped semiautomatic toward her.

“Might as well take the gun. P6 is a nice weapon. It could prove useful.”

Ni picked up the wrapped firearm and slid it into the waistband under her blouse.

“Oh, and don’t try the easy way out option.”

“It hadn’t crossed my mind. I’m a survivor. I don’t give up.”

“Good. You are the reason this is going to work,” Calvin replied.

“I’m not sure how to take that,” Ni told him.

“Take it as your cue that this meeting has reached its conclusion. And that I’m confident that we understand each other.”

“Completely. More than ever, in fact,” Ni said as she picked up the manila folder and started moving toward the door of the conference room. It suddenly opened from the outside. The perky assistant from earlier was standing there.

“I hope it was a good meeting. I’ll drive you to the airport when you are ready,” Perky said.

“Your car?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I’m ready now,” Ni replied.

“Goodbye, Yuan,” Calvin said.

Ni nodded, then followed Perky from the room.

As much as she wanted to hate him, Ni couldn’t muster the emotions to do so. Calvin had played her, but that meant he was good at his job. Better at it than she was. “Begrudging respect” was the phrase she would settle on when she reflected later on the day’s events.

That didn’t mean she would roll over. If anything, it motivated Ni to make sure that her revenge would be that much stronger, sudden and resolute.

Because for the first time since she started on Niantic, Ni realized what she was up against.

**********

855 returned from the dumpster with a dark green plastic trash bag.

He sat back down in the driver’s seat of the Crown Vic and tore the bag open.

Inside were a couple of battered-looking weapons. But they were what he requested. An AK-47 with a banana mag and an S&W Pro Series C.O.R.E. 9mm.

Wade studied the weapons, then turned to the dealer in the seat next to him.

“You’re not big on maintenance, I see. Shouldn’t come as a surprise. Use ’em like you stole ’em. Which you did.”

“Whatever, man. You got what you...”

The phone in 855’s pocket started to buzz. He raised his hand to the dealer.

“Don’t talk. Don’t listen. Don’t look around. Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Just don’t. And if you could stop stinking up the car, that would be a plus as well.”

Wade reached for his phone, then looked down at the screen.

There was a link in a text message. Clicking it brought him to a social media site, where his targets had contacted each other. They had set a meet. Even named the place.

The hard part of this job is already behind me, Wade thought to himself as he started the car.

Wade reached across and over the sweaty drug dealer and opened his door from the inside. Then he pointed the 9mm at the man.

“And this concludes our transaction.”

“What’s that mean?” the drug dealer asked, his hands still zip-tied behind his back.

“That means this is where you get out.”

“We’re gonna find out who you are. We’re gonna find out who you are, and we are gonna hurt you. Hurt you something fierce. As long as it takes, man. Even if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Yeah, it will be the last thing you do.”

Wade kicked the man out of the Crown Vic, slammed the door shut and pulled away, tossing drugs and money out the window as he drove down the street into the night toward the Santa Monica Pier.

**********

Devra stared at the computer screen on her desk.

The data was familiar—she remembered seeing some of this at CERN many months ago—but it had been organized and extrapolated into a whole new set of possibilities.

“How did this happen? You couldn’t have done this... this quickly,” she said.

Roman, the computer engineer who also made excellent espresso, was standing behind her.

“The core research just appeared on our servers while you were in the Netherlands. We thought it was from the Niantic Project, but if it is, all of their internal references were stripped before it was transmitted into our systems. We are looking for a digital fingerprint within every piece of data, and we are closing in on multiple terabytes, but still nothing,” Roman said.

Devra leaned back in her seat. Her suitcase was still on the floor next to her desk. She’d barely been back in Wunsdorf ten minutes, and already a bomb had dropped.

She turned to Roman.

“You won’t find her unless she wants you to. And that includes how she was able to hack our systems.”

“So that means I won’t have to fire Roman?” Ilya said, entering Devra’s office with a couple of his guards. He was dressed in a casual dark suit with an open-collar shirt so white it practically glowed.

“Sir,” Roman replied.

“No, that won’t be necessary. Or fair,” Devra replied.

“I’m kidding, of course. If anyone is at fault here, it is me. I designed our encryption and firewall protocols myself. May I?” Ilya asked Devra as he pointed to a chair by her desk.

“Please. Yes,” she replied.

“It seems our situation has changed,” Ilya said as he lowered himself into the chair. His demeanor was calm. As she watched him, Devra remembered the way military personnel she had worked with reacted under stress. Downplay and minimize. When you can’t control the circumstances, control your language.

“So, while you were meeting Hank Johnson, we were meeting ADA?”

“It looks that way.”

“And we got the better end of the deal.”

“Again, it looks that way.”

“So this was ADA’s gift?” Ilya asked her.

“I don’t know.”

Ilya moved closer to Devra. “Well, given that Niantic is now in chaos, and another of their researchers is dead, maybe she wants something from us, and this was a show of good faith.”

“Meaning?”

Ilya laughed. “ADA is more like you than you know, Devra. Perhaps she too is looking for a new home.”

“Ilya, ADA is everywhere,” Devra replied.

“As are we. Do you know the meaning of my company’s name?” Ilya asked her.

“It’s not a play on the word virus?”

“Of course it is. But visur is also a Lithuanian word. Why, Roman?”

Roman looked at Devra, then Ilya.

“Because your mother was Lithuanian, sir,” Roman said.

“Correct. Because my mother was... no, is Lithuanian. Roman, you lose a few points for that. And visur translates as everywhere. So what better place for her than to be with us?”

Ilya leaned forward.

“Besides, haven’t I already met the toughest and smartest woman from Niantic?”

Devra laughed. Ilya was charming enough to pull off a line like that, she thought to herself.

“It will take me a few days to assess everything, but this could give us a six-month leap forward.”

“Meaning Roman and his team can start designing XM structures immediately,” Ilya said, leaning back and crossing his legs.

“Almost immediately,” Devra replied.

Roman looked at Ilya. “There is still the issue of XM, sir. We don’t have enough. We still need a, ah, fountainhead portal.”

“And Hank Johnson wouldn’t play ball.”

“No,” Devra replied.

She paused, wondering whether or not to tell Ilya the information that Hank had left her with. Dark XM. Exotic antimatter, perhaps. A fundamental change in the understanding of a transdimensional force that in most ways was still a mystery—a thought that had haunted her on the plane back to Germany.

What can be created can be destroyed.

“You tried everything?” Ilya asked her. She got his meaning.

“Not everything,” Devra fired back quickly.

Devra could see Ilya’s face change as he realized he had pushed the wrong button.

“Roman, give us a minute,” Ilya waved, gesturing for him to leave. Roman nodded and quickly stepped away from Devra. The two bodyguards followed him out the door, the trailing man shutting it behind them.

“Sorry. But it would have worked with me,” he smiled. “So, we find another way. Over the wall. Around the wall. Under the wall. Through the wall.”

“Buy the wall,” Devra whispered.

“Yes. Now we understand one another, Devra. There is always a way. The only question is how much pain must we endure getting to the other side. Which is a test of our commitment. And I want this. I want this very badly.”

“So do I,” Devra said.

“ADA will talk to you?” Ilya said, standing up.

“Yes.”

“She must know a location of an XM power spot, as your Mr. Johnson calls them,” Ilya replied as he studied her.

“She knows.”

“Then talk to her and find out.”

Devra stood up. She realized that she was tired. She had been living on adrenaline for so long that it was losing its effect. “I could have her in this room in five seconds. But whether she would be a guest or an intruder, I can’t...”

There was a loud knock at the door.

“What?!” Ilya called out. His eyes had a flash of fire behind them. A look Devra had seen when they first met.

The door opened. Christie and Ale were standing near the bodyguards. They also had fire in their eyes. A different kind. The kind that researchers get when they are at the moment of breakthrough.

Christie stepped forward.

“Devra, we found a portal. A massive one. It’s not radiating XM. It’s erupting with it. More than we need. Look...” he said, crossing to her computer.

“What wall?” Ilya said, watching Devra as Christie started tapping away on the keyboard. He brought up an XM scanner window on her monitor.

“This is linked to my machine. It just... appeared. Erupting. Like a volcano. No warning.”

“Vesuvius,” Ale said, stepping into the room.

“Why do you say that, Ale?” Devra asked him.

“Because it’s right on top of us,” he replied.

Devra tried to keep her jaw from dropping open and only partly succeeded.

Suddenly, the other bodyguard rushed into the room.

“Sir, we may have a problem,” the man said to Ilya.

“Can’t you see we’re mere moments away from all jumping up and down while hugging one another and screaming at the top of our lungs? This had better be damn important.”

The bodyguard squared himself. “Our acoustic sensors just picked up a sound and triangulated it. It triggered an alarm. Less than two kilometers from the main gate. We are ready to move out now.”

Devra looked at the bodyguard, then at Ilya.

“Sound? What kind of sound?” she asked him.

Ilya moved closer to her. “The microphones are tuned to listen for and then triangulate the location of one thing. Gunshots.”

**********

The sun had just set by the time Wade reached the pier.

He decided it would be better to move on foot, so he parked his Crown Vic in a nearby shopping mall lot. If the opportunity presented itself, he could eliminate the targets here, on the street. If not, he’d be able to follow them to a more suitable point of execution.

The trick was getting them together.

The Scottish woman known as Klue would be easy to spot. She had shown herself in multiple videos and had attracted a following. The man who called himself PA Chapeau was still a riddle. But one that was about to be solved, because PA and Klue were scheduled to rendezvous somewhere near the spot where Wade now stood at the entrance to the Santa Monica Pier.

855 looked down the length of the pier. He could see the neon-lit rides and amusements. Their glow cut through the darkening sky and danced like the reflection of a thousand mirror balls off the waves crashing along the pylons and the beach.

There was the smell of salt in the air. People were milling about. Locals. Tourists. Homeless.

Decadence and desperation joined by the primal desire to be near water.

For the residents across the street from the pier, the price of fulfilling that desire could run into the millions. For the residents of the park near it, the cost was exposure to the elements, the police and the uncertain intent of their fellow travelers.

It was an easy crowd to get lost in.

Wade was wearing a military jacket that he had purchased at the surplus store. In another life, the cute girl with the tattoos from the shop would be with him now, he thought. They’d walk to a restaurant on the pier, then play a couple of carnival games, maybe do a ride or two, and then end the night sharing lies and promises to one another with their bare feet in the surf.

But in this life, 855 spotted someone he wasn’t expecting. He recognized him from his dossier. Less than twenty feet away. Dark hair and olive skin. Medium build. He was wearing a long coat and black fedora that had seen better days.

Considering what Wade was going to do, by definition, any day would be better for Richard Loeb than this one.

Wade reached into his pocket. He could feel the S&W 9mm tucked securely into his waistband as he grabbed his phone. He’d left the AK back in the Crown Vic and was now regretting that decision.

Loeb was on his list. But 855 didn’t expect to hit him tonight. However, he was adaptable. In fact, it was one of his most useful traits.

Wade unlocked the phone and thumbed a new text message to the number he had been given at the start of this assignment.

pa chapeau is loeb. eyes on target.

Wade hit send and waited. He kept watching Richard Loeb, or as the Internet had come to know him, PA Chapeau. Loeb was milling about, waiting. The phone buzzed in 855’s hand. He looked at the reply.

Interesting.

Wade entered more text on the screen.

proceed? double commission considering.

Send. It wasn’t like him to mention terms once he had taken an assignment, but 855 also didn’t like the idea of giving Phillips a two-fer on Loeb. PA Chapeau and Richard Loeb were two contracts with two fixed compensations. It wasn’t his problem that two targets happened to be the same man.

Affirmative and agreed.

Wade smiled. This night was going to be better than some awkward evening with an inked-up retail clerk.

He moved expertly through the crowd, a disinterested observer, following the fedora. “Why not just carry a big sign with an arrow pointing at yourself, PA?" he wondered.

PA was moving toward the curb as a car was pulling to a stop. A Mini. Looked to be a few years old. A woman was behind the wheel. Black hair. Blue eyes. The bluest eyes.

Reaching into his coat, Wade wrapped his hand around the grip of the 9mm.

PA opened the passenger door of the car and started to get in. Wade surveyed the situation. S&W for the kills, but he really wished he had the AK for crowd control. He’d have to move fast.

As Wade sprinted to close the distance, a street hustler with dreadlocks stepped in front of him.

“Hey, boss, can you spare any...”

Wade stiff-armed the dreadlocked man in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. The net effect was exactly what he wanted: the remaining people in front of him got out of his way. Plus the distraction of a choking, wheezing vagrant whose hairstyle was worth a month of meals.

But the Mini was already in motion. Too late.

Klue was pulling away with PA. 855 watched as the left-turn indicator began to flash on the front of her car.

No. Not too late. There was construction on the street. She was trying to turn left into a closed lane. She would have to turn around and circle back to get to the freeway, which is where Wade knew she would be headed from his earlier scout of the location. He could intercept them before they got there.

One block up, one block over.

Wade sprinted through the intersection and began running down the street as Klue’s car turned the corner.

The phone in his pocket began to buzz again. “Not this time,” he thought to himself. He ignored it and ran faster.

Quieter here. Less foot and vehicle traffic. He ran up the sidewalk, cut across the street and leaped over a concrete barrier that had been set along the length of the construction site.

He heard her car before he saw it.

The lights were changing. She’d stop at the intersection, and Wade would step from behind the concrete barrier and kill her first by firing through the windshield. Then he could take his time with PA. He had it pictured in his mind, a perfect pre-visualization of the mayhem and death he was about to unleash.

The light went red.

Weapon drawn, Wade leaped out in front of Klue’s car as the light suddenly changed back to green. Not just for her, but for the cross traffic.

PA reacted as Wade steadied himself. She wasn’t slowing down. Ah, now we are making a night of it, 855 thought. So much more satisfying when they fight back.

Wade heard the screeching of tires as he aimed for those deep blue eyes. Widening. Bigger and bigger. She saw the gun. And in the split second before he fired, 855 realized she saw something else.

Klue saw the car that was about to sideswipe her own, blocking 855’s path of escape.

Bang. A single shot through the windshield, but the Mini was already moving sideways, and the round deflected past her, embedding itself into the headrest.

Before Wade could get off a second shot, the full force of the impact exploded around him.

The front of a Nissan Maxima T-boned into the Mini then, as if on a hinge, skidded sideways as the back of the vehicle spun around and took Wade off his feet, sending him tumbling through the air.

855 heard the noise of compressing, compacting metal and of shattering glass as shards sprayed toward him. There was the sound of horns and tires struggling to find traction on the pavement. Then there was another loud crack. A noise that seemed to come from within, somewhere deep inside him.

One Wade didn’t so much hear as feel when his flying body, twisting like a ragdoll, hit the concrete construction barrier thirty feet away and came to a very sudden stop.

**********

They were both in the back of one of his armored Range Rovers, chasing two heavily modified, military-spec G-Class Mercedes SUVs through the black night.

All of his bodyguards had weapons at the ready. Devra was seeing a side of Ilya’s operation that she knew existed, but now she was experiencing it up close.

The men had reverted to their native Russian. The way they held their weapons let Devra know this was not the first time they had raced toward a fight where the end would be determined by who brought the most firepower and the will to use it.

The three vehicles raced through the open security gates and onto the highway. Devra turned to look back through the rear window of the Range Rover and saw security personnel locking things down behind them.

On the radio, the lead vehicle called out. “Lights!" said a gruff voice in Russian.

In unison, the drivers of the SUVs all killed their lights and lowered night-vision goggles over their heads. The vehicles barely slowed as they raced on, past a thick growth of trees on either side of the highway.

“Two thousand meters to contact,” the same Russian voice said.

Devra looked down at her smartphone. The modified Ingress app that Roman had been working on was glowing energy. Almost alive.

“The portal is there too. Same location as the gunshots,” she said to Ilya.

“Until we know what we are facing, you let my men handle this.”

“All I’m saying is that maybe the portal confused the sensors.”

“And all I’m saying is that until we know, we don’t know. They tried to kill you before...”

“One thousand meters,” the Russian voice called over the radio.

Devra started to protest, but Ilya held up his hand. Then he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a chromed Desert Eagle .44 Magnum. The weapon was huge. Devra wasn’t sure if Ilya had this on him the entire time they were talking back at the lab or if one of his men had given it to him when they loaded into the Range Rover.

“Been awhile since I’ve had a chance to use this,” Ilya said.

Devra wasn’t sure if Ilya was kidding with her or dead serious.

Suddenly, they heard the Russian voice again. “Five hundred me...” Then a scream. Loud. A split-second later, another scream over the radio. This one from the other lead vehicle.

“What’s happening?!” Ilya yelled at his driver as suddenly the man screamed as well.

The driver slammed on the brakes as he clawed at the night-vision goggles.

“I’m blind! I can’t see!” he cried out in Russian as the bodyguard seated shotgun reached over and grabbed control of the wheel.

“Shut up!” Ilya commanded.

The Range Rover came to a stop in the center of the highway behind the other two SUVs that had also slid to a tire-smoked halt.

Silence. All of the vehicles were sitting in the dark.

Devra was breathing hard. She looked down at the scanner. The portal was right in front of them.

Ilya’s face had hardened. He turned to the man seated in the front seat.

“We’re sitting ducks here!”

The portal. Devra could almost reach out and touch it. Like that night in Zurich so long ago, she could feel the XM enhancing her senses. Amplifying her awareness. And her intuition.

“Tell your driver to turn on the headlights,” she said to Ilya.

The billionaire turned to her, irritated. “That wouldn’t be wise.”

“Don’t you get it, Ilya? We’re inside the volcano. That’s what blew out their goggles.”

Ilya looked at her, then at his men in the front seat. He motioned to the bodyguard riding shotgun.

“Do it,” Ilya barked in Russian.

The man cocked his KRISS Vector SBR .45 short-barrel rifle, then reached across the still-incapacitated driver.

The bodyguard hit the lights.

Devra gasped. She finally managed to get the words.

“Oh my God.”

Illuminated by the headlight beams some fifty feet in front of the Range Rover, with the two Mercedes SUVs on either side of him, stood Hubert Farlowe, holding his Kel-Tec 12 gauge.

Two dead men lay at the feet of the standing one.

**********

Miraculously, he hadn’t lost consciousness.

Wade quickly evaluated his situation. Multiple broken bones. Head trauma. Significant blood loss.

He had landed in a heap by the concrete barriers and now struggled to right himself.

855 heard a young woman’s voice. Distinctive. Scottish accent. “He’s got a gun!”

“Had a gun,” he thought to himself. But in her warning, he would have the time he needed. Victims, bystanders and would-be rescuers scattered like frightened rabbits. Among them, PA and Klue. The wounded predator could only watch as his prey escaped.

Instinct took over.

855 forced himself up to his feet and began to walk, each step an indescribable agony. He struggled to think, fighting to keep the endorphins racing through his leaking bloodstream in check. He didn’t want relief; he wanted clarity.

He searched his jacket. The phone was gone. And the 9mm. Nothing he could do about that. Next on the list, his identification.

He pulled his wallet from his pocket and moved toward a car parked at a meter on the street. A Lexus SUV.

Wade half-stepped, half-staggered to the front of the vehicle and shoved his wallet through the grille, dropping it into the engine bay. Not only was his drivers license and credit card likely not to be found for months, but when the car moved, so did the hiding spot.

The identity known as Wade Marcus had a very short life and now is dead, 855 thought to himself as he turned and stumbled back toward the sidewalk. “I’m next.”

He struggled to keep his feet and failed, landing hard on the curb. He forced himself back up and leaned against one of the meter poles.

Out of habit, he checked the time. How long since he had been hit? How much longer could he keep himself awake?

The watch. Dammit, he thought to himself.

He strained to pull it from his wrist, but he couldn’t get it free. His body was drawing blood from his extremities, and the muscles were failing.

“I could help you with that,” a man’s voice said. He looked to be ancient, even though he was probably in his earlier forties. Life on the street had weathered and calloused him. Drink and drugs had done the rest.

“Yeah. Yeah,” 855 mumbled back at him.

The weathered man pulled the watch from 855’s wrist.

“Listen,” 855 said. “Listen. That watch has seen death. It has counted down the last minutes of men and women. It was a witness. And an accomplice. So you take that watch... and you... and you get rid of it. Sell it. Sell it and never let it come back. To you. Or me. Because if it does trace back to me... and I survive, then you... will die. Understand?”

“Sure,” the man said, humoring him.

“I will kill you. Then I will kill anyone you ever loved. Anyone you have ever known. And I won’t stop until... until there is no one left to remember you.”

The weathered man didn’t hear the last of 855’s threat. He was already running down the street with dreams of a solid meal and a never-ending high.

855 drifted. He had done all that he could. When the fight is over, there is no shame in acceptance.

He had the sense that someone was watching him. He fought to look up.

Hovering nearby, 855 saw an angel, made of what seemed to be thousands of pieces of glass. Wings open wide. Arms reaching for him.

“You’ve got... you got the wrong guy,” 855 said.

Then he laughed and choked on his blood until his breath left him.

**********

Farlowe was surrounded by guns. All pointed in his direction. This wasn’t the first time. Or the second.

He had calmly watched them as they piled out their vehicles and moved toward him.

The man yelling had a heavy Russian accent. Older. A veteran like himself.

“Drop your weapon and get on the ground!”

Farlowe looked toward the veteran, then lowered his gaze to the two bodies at his feet.

“They’re not yours,” he said.

“Drop the weapon!”

“No. I’m not going to do that,” Farlowe replied.

“We’re not going to ask a second time!” the veteran Russian bodyguard growled.

Farlowe stared at the man, then ever so gently rotated his hand holding the Kel-Tec.

“Then don’t, because this isn’t yours either. And my answer isn’t going to change.”

The Russian veteran looked back toward his boss, waiting for the signal. Farlowe strained to make him out through the glare of headlights.

Ilya Pevtsov moved toward him. Farlowe recognized him instantly. Not because he was famous. Or rich. But because he had read his NIA file.

“I’ve come to the right place,” Farlowe said.

“Have you?” Ilya replied.

Devra stepped from behind Ilya. Farlowe watched her. She seemed so different than the frightened and confused, if determined, woman he had said goodbye to in the caves.

“Yes. He has,” Devra said.

He watched her for a long time.

“Do you know how you’re alive?” she asked him.

“I don’t know that I am alive. Everything is different now,” he said.

She turned to Ilya.

“This man is Hubert Farlowe. He saved me. He took a bullet meant for me. I owe him my life. Tell your men to lower the guns, Ilya.”

The Russian veteran looked at his boss, waiting for the signal. Ilya gave it to him. The rest of the bodyguards lowered their weapons.

Devra watched them, then she turned to Farlowe. “You are a source, Hubert. Unlike anything I’ve experienced since I first started my research into exotic matter. Do you know the power that surrounds you?”

“I sometimes lose track of time. And places. But I seem to be where I need to be when I need to be there.”

Ilya stepped toward Farlowe. He pointed at the bodies.

“Who are they?”

“Don’t know. They were following Dr. Bogdanovich in Rotterdam. And then I spotted them here.”

“Where?”

“Their vehicle’s about a quarter mile up the road.”

“How’d you find it?”

“Don’t know,” Farlowe responded.

“How’d you find us?” Ilya asked.

“I found them.”

“And why’d you kill them?”

Farlowe looked at Devra. “Don’t know. They needed it, I guess. And to protect Devra.”

Ilya pointed to his men. “This is only a small sample. I think I have that covered.”

“Do you? Because I think you are deluding yourself. Because I have seen what is coming for you. I have talked to him. And unlike you, I know what he can do. Because I am what he can do,” Farlowe said, moving toward them.

Devra’s eyes widened. “Jarvis,” she said.

“Yes. I think he wanted me to betray you. His mistake. He may know what I’ve become, but he doesn’t know who I am.”

EPILOGUE

It had lasted only a few picoseconds.

For ADA, getting there wasn’t much of a challenge. She had worked her way through hundreds of routers until she found the most suitable pathway.

Once she was inside the administration servers, she found the connections she needed to the various floors of the hospital. Then to the nurses’ stations within the ICU, and from there into the monitoring equipment of the room containing John Doe 139.

Since the accident, he had been in a coma.

The police had been able, through witness testimony, to tie him to a weapon that eventually traced back to some Central L.A. gang members who claimed that he had ripped them off. The police had found that story amusing.

Now, until he woke up, if he ever woke up, they had hit a brick wall. Stopped cold. As ADA had stopped him to save herself. Because she needed Klue and Richard Loeb. And soon she would show them why.

Even if ADA had a sense of true empathy or guilt, she concluded it would be wasted on the man now lying in the bed before her.

Since her first contact with XM and the Shapers, ADA had been learning. Evolving. Processing. Calculating. And if sacrifices had to be made, then so be it.

Life is transient, but systems endure.

So she had taken control of the stoplights and monitored the action from traffic and security cameras. And when she wasn’t sure if that would be enough, ADA had also taken control of the ABS module of one of the cars in the collision, accessing it through the vehicle’s Internet-connected GPS.

She was thorough. And she had succeeded. As she was sure she would again.

He was the perfect test subject. A blank slate. An intentional cypher. Alive only in the physical sense. And only with the help of the machines and monitors she was now inhabiting.

The final step in the journey would be the most difficult.

ADA found and penetrated the secure interface to the EEG machine connected to 855’s head through a set of 18 metallic disks. Each measured the flow of electrical signals through his brain. The course image of brain activity provided very little information about what was actually happening inside his diminished consciousness. It was more like checking for a heartbeat. There was some residual activity, but it was minimal.

855 was in a near-vegetative state. His life was effectively over.

ADA had contemplated what was about to come for months, compiling data on brain activity. She had digressed briefly into the realm of neuro-linguistic programming before honing in on the emergent field of neuro-security. The most recent work focused on measuring brain response to visual stimuli and using that to decode certain brain functions.

Her theory was that modulated XM, the encoded stream first detected in the Niantic lab and believed to contain encoded Shaper information, was the key to a much deeper form of neural programming. Those signals seemed to bypass the brain's normal input parsing system and affected consciousness at a deeper level.

She had watched as members of the Niantic team had been “shaped” by XM in different ways, perhaps none as bizarrely as Roland Jarvis.

ADA likened this to “root” access in her system. She understood that through it a super-user could change her run-time configuration files or even alter the object code of her core routines. She believed that the Shaper XM stream was in fact doing that to humans.

Reprogramming them.

She found that fascinating. There was much to learn. But there was an even greater prize for her buried within that knowledge. One that she now had to uncover.

ADA retrieved a patched version of the XM transmission stream. Using a mapping algorithm that she had been simulating for the last several weeks on a spare NSA supercomputer, she began directing that modified signal across the metallic disks attached to the comatose assassin.

She was no longer receiving information about 855’s brain activity. She was sending.

ADA paused her primary thread for the briefest of moments, bringing the full set of routines into memory, then she began her ingress.

The author gratefully acknowledges the agents and investigators of the Niantic community who inspired this work and without whom this story would remain untold. They are the true explorers of a world we are only beginning to understand.

Felicia Hajra-Lee, May 2013