Ah . . .
The explosive bubble in the cavern finally collapses into its vacuum with one last blast of force. In that final clap, she fully understands.
Her work now is done, as it must be.
Almost.
36
December 26, 8:33 P.M. CET
Pyrenees Mountains, Spain
Dazed, Gray pushed off the stone floor to his knees.
Smoke billowed out the door at the north end of the cathedral’s transept. The explosion still echoed in his head. A moment ago, he had reached the door—only to be met by a detonation. The blast wave had knocked him back into the church.
Kowalski ran up to him, his rifle clutched in one arm.
Mara came, too.
Monk . . .
Kowalski pointed his rifle at the smoke. “Does that mean he saved all our asses?”
Gray didn’t know—didn’t even care right now.
He sat back on his heels. He remembered Mara sharing Monk’s last words, a plea from one friend to another.
. . . take care of the girls.
Even at the end, Monk proved himself to be more than a soldier.
He was a father.
“Gray . . .” Kowalski said. “Look.”
With tears welling up, blurring his sight, he failed to spot the stir of smoke by the doorway. A figure stumbled across its threshold, coughing, falling to his knees, then crawling off to the side.
Monk rolled to a seat and shoved his back against the wall.
Gray leaped and rushed with the others to his side. “Monk!”
Monk waved at the doorway, at the smoke. “I told you to take care of this. Do I have to do everything?”
“What happened?” Gray asked. “I thought you . . . I thought . . .”
“Me, too. Thought I wasn’t coming back.” Monk gave Mara a nod. “I carried your ball as far as I could—then rolled it the rest of the way. Luckily you made your device a sphere. Eve was able to flare the processors with the last of her battery’s charge, turning it into a bright disco ball.”
“And the big blast?” Kowalski asked.
“DARPA engineering at its best.” Monk tilted to show his wounded arm, revealing the stump of his wrist. His prosthetic was gone. “After I rolled the ball, Eve took over from there.”
Monk lifted his other hand and waggled his fingers.
Gray understood. He had seen ample—and disconcerting—examples of Monk’s ability to detach his prosthetic hand and control it remotely by thought alone, via signals from his microelectrode array.
It seemed Eve must have learned this trick, too.
Mara frowned, having never witnessed this sight. “What does he mean?”
Gray explained, “Eve was able to control his prosthesis, to send it scurrying on its fingertips, like a determined mouse. All to deliver an explosive punch into the Crucible’s device.”
“And Eve’s doppelganger?” Mara asked.
Monk sighed. “After the blast sprawled me across the stairs, I got one last message from Eve. All is well.” He shrugged his good arm. “She did it.”
“What about Eve herself?” Gray asked.
Monk tapped his head with a finger. “I don’t feel her inside here at all. She’s gone. I think for good. I had a sense she was telling me good-bye.”
Kowalski exhaled a long puff of smoke. “Can’t say I’m going to miss her.”
Monk stared over at Gray. His friend was clearly relieved to have saved the world, but his eyes shone with a greater concern.
“I know,” Gray said and reached out a hand. “Let’s see if Painter has any word on the girls.”
37
December 26, 2:33 P.M. EST
Location Unknown
Have to keep moving.
Carrying Harriet in her arms, Seichan splashed along an icy creek through the frozen woods. Snow fell thickly around them. She had Harriet wrapped in a thick quilt, but her thin body shivered in the frigid cold.
Or maybe my arms are doing the shaking.
She could no longer tell. Her body quaked. Freezing water sloshed in her stolen boots. They had been lucky to find the hunter’s cabin an hour ago, first stumbling upon a rutted tract, then following it to the squat log home.
Inside, she had found an old coat, along with a man’s worn pair of dungarees, several sizes too large, but a rope served as a belt. She had to pack the pair of men’s Timberlands with extra socks to hold them to her feet. She stole a quilt from a bed to keep Harriet warm.
As much as she wanted to stay and light a fire in that stone hearth, she knew it wasn’t possible. She was in and out of the cabin in under three minutes. Valya and the other hunters were on her trail and Seichan’s well-marked track in the snow led straight to the cabin.
Still, she had found another use for the place.
After gearing up against the cold, she pushed Harriet out a window on the leeward side of the log cabin, where the snow was just a dusting compared to the front. She led Harriet into the woods, then used a brittle pine branch to re-dust the light snow under the window.
With her trail into the woods obscured, the hunters might believe she was still holed up inside. To reinforce this assumption, Seichan left a candle burning in there and cracked a window at the front. She then backed into the woods but kept a sight line to the cabin through the falling snow.
Once the place was only a vague shape in the storm, she waited.
The hunters closed in shortly thereafter, following her trail to the front door.
She aimed her stolen Desert Eagle toward a shadowy movement to one side and fired twice. Her rounds shot along the edge of the cabin. The shadow fell with a sharp cry.
She then fled, letting them believe the shots had come from inside the cabin. While Valya’s crew stopped and figured out what to do, Seichan extended her lead. She hoped they might want to take her and Harriet alive, to continue to use the pair as pawns against Sigma. If so, they might proceed with caution, waste more time.
Twenty minutes later, the hunters’ patience wore out.
A loud blast sounded, echoing through the woods. From a rise, she spotted a glow through the snow. They had firebombed the place. It would not take long for them to realize it was all a ruse and pick up her trail.
Though her trick had bought them time, it also worried Seichan.
Valya would not have destroyed the cabin with such little regard to the noise and fire unless she was sure no one was around.
Must be in the middle of nowhere.
And Seichan didn’t know if she was headed even deeper into the unknown.
She had begun using creeks and streams to help confound her path, but that would only slow the others down a little. Plus, it was a tactic that sapped her strength, draining body heat, risking frostbite.
With a final bout of shivering, she climbed out of the creek, her feet too numb to hold her upright on the slick stones any longer.
She set off through the woods, looking for some shelter, somewhere to hide.
A higher hill appeared out of the snow.
She headed for it, not with any plan in mind, but just because it was there, a goal, something for her to focus her attention on versus the cold.
Maybe I could even see a town from up there.
She reached it and climbed. She had to put Harriet down. The girl followed, dragging the quilt behind her shoulders. Seichan stopped twice to catch her breath, to place a palm on her belly, trying to feel for any telltale kick.
Nothing.
Worry grew.
She and Harriet finally neared the summit. The view revealed only more woods, more snow. With visibility this poor, a town could be a mile away and she would not spot it.
The only reward for this long climb was the discovery of a rocky overhang that offered some shelter from the snow. Seichan drew Harriet there, where they huddled together.
Seichan took off her boots, ripped the soaked socks from her feet, and reached to her pocket where she had stuffed extra dry pairs. Empty. She had exhausted her supply. She leaned back, her feet numb, her toes unmovable.
She felt like crying or punching something.
She settled for pulling Harriet closer.
The girl mumbled into her quilt.
“What’s wrong?”
Harriet shifted to the side and vomited into the snow, her tiny body racking with the effort. Once done, she gave Seichan a heartbreaking look of guilt.
“It’s okay, honey.”
Seichan wiped the girl’s face with one of the wet socks, then drew her under her jacket for extra warmth. Harriet was failing. Stress, exhaustion, fear, and the cold had taken their toll on the young girl. She was swiftly heading into shock.
It was over.
This was confirmed as a sharp shout cut through the snow, sounding like it came from the base of the hill. She heard the note of triumph.
The hunters had found their trail.
Knowing this, Seichan reached to the back of her own neck. She struggled with frozen fingers to undo a clasp there, then slipped free a small silver pendant from around her throat. She reached over Harriet and fastened it to the girl’s neck.
Seichan lifted the shining dragon hanging there, drawing Harriet’s eye to it.
With her other hand, she pulled out the pistol and lifted it.
She kissed the back of the girl’s head.
“Merry Christmas, Harriet.”
She then replaced her lips with the muzzle of the pistol.