Brainrush 03 - Beyond Judgment (30 page)

“Everybody needs to get into the conference room
now
!” he shouted.

The people around him exchanged confused glances.

But none of them heeded the warning…

…Until several people on the opposite balcony grabbed their throats and collapsed to their knees.

Palais des Nations
Geneva, Switzerland

P
EOPLE STAMPEDED THE
doorway to the conference room. A Syrian woman fell to the floor. Jake shouldered two men out of the way and stooped to help her up. The Chinese communist leader noticed. He nodded to Jake, took the woman’s hand, and helped her inside. Jake stood by the door as the throng pressed past him. When he saw that Doc was waiting beside him, he grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Brun is behind this!” Jake whispered. Then he shoved the older man into the stream of people. Over their heads he shouted, “Everyone hold your breath as long as you can. Once you’re inside, lie on the floor!”

Jake felt a tickle of irritation at his throat. It began to swell. He tightened his lips and stopped breathing. Then he scanned the perimeter of the crowd, found his target, and charged.

The Russian aide was oblivious to Jake’s onrush. He appeared to be fumbling to remove the cap from the end of his silver pen. His face was red. The cap snapped loose and he raised the fisted pen, now open, over his thigh. Jake tackled him just as he started his downward thrust. They landed in a tumble, and Jake grabbed the man’s wrist. The Russian twisted loose, but Jake kneed him in the groin just as the aide plunged
the pen through his pant leg. The man gasped, and Jake ripped the pen from his grasp. Liquid dripped from the tip of the half-inch needle. Jake jabbed it into his own thigh, pressed the plunger the rest of the way, and felt a cool rush spread across his skin. He’d received a half dose at most, but it would have to do. He rolled away and pushed to all fours. The Russian rose to his feet, his back to the balcony rail—he reached under his jacket for a weapon. Jake stayed low, launching himself like a blitzing linebacker. The pistol came into view just as Jake’s arms bear-hugged the Russian’s thighs. He heaved upward and the man flew back-first over the rail.

His scream ended abruptly.

Jake’s lungs told him to breathe, but he refused to open his mouth. He’d already ingested some of the gas. His throat was nearly closed, and he worried that any more would be the end of him. He raced toward the staircase.

His mind blazed through a jungle of possible solutions to the disaster that unfolded around him. Victor had loosed a deadly gas into the facility. The pens provided an antidote for Order members. No one else was safe.

Except the NATO folks who were taken to another area.

Which meant the gas was being selectively delivered to some rooms but not others, he thought. That could be managed only through ventilation-control systems.

Computer operated.

He leaped down the staircase three steps at a time.

Men and woman collapsed around him. Eyes bulged, hands clasped throats, and bodies writhed in agony. Some didn’t move at all. A number of people had dodged into the meeting rooms on the perimeter of the main floor. Several watched him with wild-eyed expressions, apparently unaffected by the gas in the enclosed rooms. Jake suspected their reprieve was temporary. If he didn’t do something to prevent it, the gas would invade the salons any second.

His mind continued to flash-sort solutions. This was a fallout shelter. Which meant it had to contain extensive fire-suppression systems. That would include the ability to isolate areas within the facility that were divorced from the building proper, and to provide a separate source for respirable air.

One computer station was still manned. The tech cast a furtive glance toward Jake. He entered a command into his keyboard and then ran toward the far exit—where Jake saw a group of five or six people slipping through an open doorway. The Russian officer was at the head of the pack.

Bastards.

Jake sprinted toward the tech’s station. His lungs felt as if they were going to burst. He couldn’t ignore their demands much longer. When he reached the screen, he knew it was all over. He skipped to the next station, and then the next. But every screen was the same. The cursor flashed inside an empty space that read
ENTER PASSWORD.

He was out of options.

His body trembled. It demanded oxygen. In the end, he knew he’d have no choice but to unclench his jaw, suck in the poisonous air, and pray that the dose he’d received would be enough. He looked up at the 3-D hologram that hung suspended in the air. One thousand fourteen pyramids hovered overhead. He knew their purpose, but he wondered how it would be accomplished. Would they suck the oxygen from the atmosphere? Melt the ice caps and flood civilization? Or would they simply blow them all to hell?

As if in answer to his question, each of the pyramids started to glow. And in a sudden flash, they burst forth with laser beams of light that connected one to the other—until together they formed a geodesic envelope of light that imprisoned the globe.

The world was out of options.

He staggered at the base of the platform, horrified by the immensity of what he’d caused. It had all started with an accident
during an MRI, he thought. The changes in his brain had seemed magnificent at first, but they’d come with a heavy price tag. Everyone he cared about had been drawn into the deadly vortex that surrounded him. And now the entire world was at risk.

He dropped to his knees.

God forgive me.

That’s when he noticed the fire panel embedded in the platform wall. The placard was in English. Foggy brain or not, Jake saw that the instructions couldn’t have been simpler. There were two buttons. One was red. One was blue. Each had a hinged Plexiglas cover. They were labeled
ALARM
and
SPRINKLERS
.

Jake flipped open the covers, pressed both buttons, and prayed.

Geneva, Switzerland

A
HMED HAD BEEN
gone only ten minutes when Sarafina heard the noises.

Doors slammed in the hallway outside the apartment. There were anxious voices and rushing footsteps. She looked through the peephole and saw a family run past. They were headed toward the staircase. She heard the blare of several automobile horns in the distance. Then an emergency-vehicle siren.

She and Alex rushed to the window. A throng of people gathered in the park out front. More flowed from their apartments to join them. Others stood on balconies in the opposing building. They all looked upward, many pointing at the sky. It was the sort of scene she’d have expected to see if someone were about to jump from the rooftop. She slid open the window and heard astonished outcries drifting up from the crowd. She leaned out and looked up.

It wasn’t a jumper.

It was the sky.

A series of intersecting beams of light stretched from one horizon to the other, creating a symmetrical pattern of triangles that lit up the sky. It was as if God had used neon lights to paint the heavens.

Fear gripped her throat. She grabbed Alex’s hand, moved to the couch, and switched on the TV.

The woman reporter’s voice was frantic. “Reports are coming in from stations all over the world. The phenomenon circles the globe. The grid—that’s what scientists are calling it—appeared just minutes ago after hundreds of missiles exploded from beneath the earth and were launched into the atmosphere. This footage was taken in Tokyo.”

The screen split. The video beside the reporter centered on a busy downtown intersection. The image began to jiggle as if the ground shook under the cameraman’s feet. Suddenly, a spinning black orb burst from the pavement. The camera barely caught up with its track as it rocketed into the sky and disappeared. The only exhaust plume in its wake was a brief rippling of the air. When the camera panned back down, there was a six-foot-wide hole in the street. Steam issued forth. A motorcycle and its rider skidded too late and disappeared from sight. Cars swerved to avoid the hole. Traffic came to a standstill. Just as it appeared that the worst was over, the entire intersection caved in on itself.

“It’s the same everywhere,” the reporter said. “States of emergency have been declared around the world.”

Sarafina squeezed her brother’s hand. They watched in awe as the video stream switched from one location to another. The quality of the picture varied as scenes came in from cell phones, traffic cams, and other sources. There was a mall in America with matching holes in its floor and ceiling. Children scattered from a launch that exploded through a playground in New Delhi. Buildings toppled in Johannesburg and Beijing.

“The death toll is in the thousands, if not the tens of…”

The reporter hesitated. She placed a hand to one ear.

“I understand we have some new footage. It was captured via satellite. Our scientific consultant, Thomas Goodfellow, is on the line from our London bureau. Tell us what we’re looking at, Tom.”

This time the video filled the entire screen. It was a side-angle shot of one of the orbs as it streaked into Earth’s upper atmosphere. It had taken on a luminous glow.

The British reporter’s voice was authoritative. “This shot was taken two minutes after launch. At this point, the object’s estimated speed has accelerated to over fifteen thousand kilometers per hour. By comparison, that’s three times faster than the speed of a space shuttle launch during the same time period. Although we’re only looking at one of the objects in this video, we’ve been told that all of the other missiles matched its speed and launch timing exactly.”

The computerized high-speed camera steadied on the object’s flight path. It zoomed in to reveal a glowing mass that appeared to be spinning on its axis. As the object’s altitude above Earth exceeded that of the satellite’s camera, the backdrop image of the cloud-covered planet disappeared from view off the bottom of the screen. It was replaced by the star-filled expanse of space.

“At three minutes after launch, the object decelerated abruptly, as did all the others across the globe. They each stopped at an altitude of five hundred kilometers. That’s three hundred ten miles above the earth.”

The camera zoomed and the object filled the screen.

“That’s when they stopped rotating.”

The orb stopped spinning in the blink of an eye. The luminosity faded, and the blurred mass resolved into a hovering black pyramid.

Sarafina gasped. She’d seen one before.

“Two minutes later, this happened.”

Six beams of light burst from the peak of the pyramid. The camera zoomed out as the beams stretched outward to meet with those from the other orbiting pyramids. They connected one to the other in a symmetrical pattern that encircled the globe. When the last of them was linked, the beams seemed to triple in intensity. It was as if an illuminated geodesic dome had been wrapped around the planet.

Sarafina felt the air crushed from her lungs. She knew immediately that this event involved her father. I can’t handle this
alone, she thought. She switched off the television, grabbed the cell phone from the backpack, and dialed Ahmed.

All she heard was a rapid busy signal. The cell network was overloaded.

Her body trembled, her eyes fluttered, and she heard the first notes of a symphony form in her mind. But a squeeze of her hand by her little brother prevented the music from carrying her away. She glanced down at him. He seemed to be gauging her reaction. His worried expression tore at her, and just then—in that vortex of panic and fear—she knew what they must do.

A few minutes later, they were swerving through the panicked crowds on a stolen Vespa motor scooter.

Uncle Tony will know what to do.