Chương 10
Not from the phone.
From the JANUS relay.
The black rack behind the security glass lit by itself.
Owen stood.
“We disconnected it.”
Hale stared through the glass.
“Not power.”
The secondary protocol screen returned.
RESUME AUTHORIZATION DETECTED.
02:00.
Mara looked at the JANUS-7 drive on the table.
Nobody was touching it.
Owen’s voice dropped.
“Someone authenticated from somewhere else.”
Hale turned toward the bunker map.
“J-4.”
Mara picked up her radio.
No signal.
The low-bandwidth rack remained powered down.
The hardwired phone gave only static.
Someone had cut internal communications.
01:42.
Helen said, “Can we disconnect the relay again?”
“It is disconnected,” Owen said.
“Then what is counting down?”
Hale went pale.
“The continuity package already exists.”
Rourke stood despite his cuffs.
“What happens at zero?”
Hale looked at him.
“It releases to the emergency archive bus.”
Owen stared.
“The physical archive?”
“Yes.”
“Can that reach the surface antenna room?”
“Yes.”
Mara was already at the door.
Hale said, “If Bell has a J-4 authority module, he can export it through emergency transmission.”
“What’s in the package?”
“We don’t know.”
01:18.
Mara opened the security seal.
Helen grabbed her arm.
“Mara.”
She turned.
Helen’s face had lost every trace of disbelief.
Only authority remained.
“Bring him back if you can.”
Mara looked at Rourke, then Hale.
“If I can.”
She left.
The hardened stairwell smelled faintly of hot dust and wet concrete.
Emergency lights strobed red along the steps.
Mara climbed toward the east corridor with her pistol low and close to her body.
Behind her, boots followed.
She spun.
Hale stopped three steps below.
“I told you no.”
“You need someone who knows the archive bus.”
“I need you in the command room.”
“You need me where my mistakes are.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“No.”
He kept climbing.
Mara considered ordering him back.
The countdown was under a minute.
She turned and moved.
Lower east records storage had already been unlocked.
The door stood open.
Cold air moved through the corridor.
Inside, metal shelving held sealed document containers and hardened portable archives.
A maintenance panel on the far wall had been pulled open.
Marcus Bell crouched beside it.
He was fifty-two, broad-shouldered, balding, dressed in a blue civilian emergency vest over a white shirt. Mara had seen him twice that evening without remembering him.
He held a compact black device in one hand.
J-4.
His other hand rested beside a fiber coupler.
Mara raised her weapon.
“Hands away from the panel.”
Bell looked over his shoulder.
He did not seem surprised.
Hale stopped beside Mara.
Bell’s eyes went to him.
“Admiral.”
“Marcus.”
Mara said, “Both hands where I can see them.”
Bell stood slowly.
He placed the J-4 module on the floor.
“Do you know what’s in the continuity package?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
Hale’s voice roughened.
“What did you do?”
Bell looked at him.
“What you taught us to do.”
“Don’t.”
“Protect the system.”
“By corrupting it?”
“By proving it cannot be trusted.”
Mara heard boots in the distant stairwell.
Security, perhaps.
Or someone else.
She kept the pistol steady.
“Step away from the panel.”
Bell did.
The wall display beside the archive bus showed 00:31.
Hale moved toward it.
Bell said, “Don’t touch anything.”
Mara snapped, “Admiral, stop.”
Hale stopped.
Bell smiled faintly.
“You still listen when a competent person gives an order. That’s nice.”
“What happens at zero?” Mara asked.
“The package transmits.”
“To where?”
“Three internal emergency repositories.”
“And then?”
“When external communications return, it propagates.”
“What’s in it?”
Bell looked at Hale.
“The truth.”
00:20.
Hale’s face tightened.
“What truth?”
“Every provenance correction JANUS ever made. Every concealed review. Every sanitized continuity copy.”
Rourke’s voice echoed faintly from the corridor behind them.
“And every source identity attached to them?”
Bell looked past Mara.
Rourke had followed.
Helen and Owen were behind him.
Mara swore.
“Why is everyone leaving the secure room?”
Helen said, “Because you took the only admiral who knows the system.”
“Fair.”
00:12.
Bell looked at Rourke.
“Yes. Source identities too.”
Hale moved.
Mara blocked him with one arm.
“You’ll expose people who had nothing to do with this.”
Bell’s composure cracked for the first time.
“And what did secrecy protect?”
“Living people.”
“It protected you.”
“Both are true.”
Bell flinched as if the phrase struck him.
Mara noticed.
Hale noticed too.
00:07.
“Marcus,” Hale said. “Who did we lose?”
Bell looked at him.
The anger vanished from his face.
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Mara understood before he answered.
“My brother.”
Hale stared.
Bell swallowed.
“Evan Bell. Ankara station support. Twenty eleven.”
Hale’s eyes shifted.
He remembered.
Bell laughed once.
“There. Took you a second.”
00:03.
Mara looked at the panel.
Three repository indicators waited to turn green.
She had one choice that did not require understanding the software.
She fired into the fiber distribution coupler.
The shot deafened the corridor.
Plastic and glass exploded inward.
The countdown reached zero.
Nothing transmitted.
For a few seconds there was only ringing in Mara’s ears and smoke curling from the wall.
Bell stared at the destroyed panel.
“You stupid—”
He moved.
Not toward Mara.
Toward the J-4 module on the floor.
Hale kicked it away.
Bell struck Hale in the chest.
The admiral stumbled into a shelf.
Mara holstered rather than risk firing in the tight space and hit Bell with her shoulder.
They went into the floor hard.
Bell fought like a civilian who had rehearsed what violence might feel like and discovered reality was less organized.
He grabbed her glove.
Tried to twist her wrist.
She drove her forearm across his collarbone.
“Stop.”
He did not.
She shifted pressure.
“Marcus.”
His breath came fast.
“Stop.”
The fight left him in pieces.
First his right hand.
Then his legs.
Then his neck.
Finally his eyes.
Mara restrained him.
When she rolled him onto his side, he began to cry.
Quietly.
Angrily.
As if his body had done it without permission.
“I just wanted it out,” he said.
May you like
Nobody answered.
“I wanted someone outside those rooms to know.”
