Callsign: King (Jack Sigler) (Chesspocalypse #1)

“No time to explain.” He took her hand and began striding purposefully across the open area toward the mouth of the cave.

It was already too late. One of the craft swooped down between them and their destination, flaring its rotors and buffeting them with a blast of artificial wind. King held up a hand, partly to deflect some of the grit that was blasting into his face, and partly to shade his eyes from the high intensity spotlight that stabbed out from the helicopter, transfixing him and Felice like bugs on a pin. The message was crystal clear: stay put. There didn’t seem to be any alternative.

But then, as the turbines were shut down, returning the night once more to silence, King heard a familiar voice reach out from the center of the blazing light. “Jack? Is that really you?”





19.


It was difficult to say who was more surprised at the reunion. Sara rushed forward, and in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, wrapped her arms around King. She felt cold to the touch and her kiss tasted faintly of salt, but he welcomed it nonetheless. Days of uncertainty about her fate had been swept aside, and all the questions about what had happened seemed completely unimportant.

When he at last drew back from her embrace, he got a look at her traveling companions, most of whom had deployed in a defensive perimeter around the two helicopters. They all, Sara included, wore dark fatigues, but aside from Sara, only one man was not openly wielding some kind of weapon. That lone hold-out was a handsome dark-haired man, who seemed to be waiting for Sara to make an introduction.

“So you must be the friend that Sara told me about,” he intoned. “Jack, is it? I’m Max Fulbright.”

King nodded, and cast an inquisitive glance in Sara’s direction. Her expression told him that she had volunteered only the barest minimum of information about him. “That’s right. Generally speaking, Sara and I try not to interfere in each other’s work, but sometimes there’s a bit of overlap.”

“This time there’s a lot,” Sara said. “Manifold Genetics is involved, Jack. And you’ll never guess what they’ve been up to.”

“Actually, I might.” King beckoned Felice forward. “I don’t know if you got a chance to meet her back in Addis, but this is Felice Carter.”

Sara did a double-take as she recognized the geneticist. “Last time I saw you…” She left the sentiment hanging as something else dawned in her eyes. “Jack, she could be infected.”

King shook his head. “It’s much worse than that.”

He gave a quick synopsis of everything that had happened from the moment he rescued Felice from the burning hospital room, up to their arrival at the cavern. Felice seemed visibly pained by what he was saying, but the information was too important for him to sugar-coat anything. When he was done, Sara turned to Felice.

“I’ve been to the Manifold lab where they were trying to exploit what you found, and I’ve seen their research. They want to isolate the contagion that causes this…” She turned back to King, “zombie state. It’s the key to all of this, and she may have it in her.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” King countered. “There’s something else at work here.” He glanced at Felice, then took Sara aside and in a low voice, described what had happened when the rebels had tried to assault Felice. “She changed him,” he explained. “Just like that. One second he was attacking her, and the next, he was a mindless drone. That wasn’t the result of exposure to a contagion.”

Although he hadn’t been invited into the conversation, Fulbright spoke up. “Are you saying that she’s doing it…changing people with some kind of supernatural power?”

King glanced at Sara, curious to see her reaction to that suggestion. “I don’t know what the mechanism is, but I know what I saw.”

“Then we’ve got to keep her safe,” Fulbright declared. “I’ll arrange for transport to a secure facility.”

As Fulbright moved to the nearest helicopter, King turned back to Sara. “Who is that guy?”

“I think he’s CIA.”

“You’re not sure?”

She shrugged. “You know how spooks can be. But he arranged the takedown of a Manifold lab. He’s trying to get out in front of whatever they’ve got planned.”

“I don’t trust him.”

Sara playfully punched his shoulder. “Jack, are you jealous?”

He offered a half-hearted grin. “Guilty as charged. But seriously, this is some bad shit. I don’t trust anyone right now, least of all the Company.”