“No,” he said, still torn on what to do.
“You’re downloading the CityForge app, right?” A small smile curled at her lips. He wondered if she knew he had lied on the helicopter.
He nodded, withdrew from the room, and closed the door behind him. But he stood just outside the door, waiting, hoping to hear her call. It never came. She must have been texting.
He activated a cell phone and downloaded the Labyrinth Reality app. He entered the code for the private Labyrinth he had created. He was once again asked whether he was the hero or the Minotaur.
He clicked hero. The dialog read:
Searching for an entrance to the Labyrinth…
In Berlin, the application had said there were no entrances near him. He waited. Finally, a message appeared:
1 Entrance Located.
He clicked the link. A map appeared with GPS coordinates and a glowing green dot.
The location was an island north of Scotland, which surprised him: it was much closer to Berlin than Dadaab. Why did the location not appear when he tried the app in Berlin? He decided the entrance must have been set to reveal on a timer, or perhaps only after some event had occurred. Or, perhaps, when a partner activated it. That possibility intrigued Desmond the most.
He zoomed in on the map dot. It was in the Shetland Islands. From the satellite photography, the place looked barely inhabited. There were some farms, a few roads, a seaport, and an airport.
The glowing dot itself lay in the middle of a forest. There was no building, no home, not even a road leading to it. But he knew something was there—waiting for him.
He hoped it held the key to finding a cure.
Chapter 71
Hannah’s eyes were open when Peyton entered the office that had been converted to a patient room. The young woman tried to sit up in bed, but Peyton told her to lie back down.
Her voice came out hoarse, faint. “What happened?”
Peyton considered what to tell her. She decided that Hannah had been through enough. Details could wait for another day.
“We were rescued.”
Hannah closed her eyes, breathed heavily.
“Are we going home?”
“Eventually. I need to make a few phone calls. You’re in good hands here. I’ll be back.”
Outside the room, Peyton activated the phone and dialed Elliott’s cell. The call connected without ringing.
“You’ve reached Operation BioShield. If you’re calling from inside a cordon zone, press one. If you’re calling from outside a cordon zone, press two.”
After a brief pause, the recording repeated.
Why would Elliott’s phone route to a call center? Peyton had never heard of Operation BioShield. She wondered if it was related to the congressional act, Project BioShield, that had called for stockpiling critical vaccines in the aftermath of 9/11.
Curious, she pressed one, indicating she was inside a cordon zone.
“If you or someone in your home is sick, press one. If you have training in an essential job role, press two. Essential jobs include anyone with military training, doctors, nurses, police, fire, EMT, and prison employees. If you are calling from an operations center, dial three. All other callers, press zero. Note: pressing zero will greatly delay your wait time. The current wait time is six hours and eighteen minutes.”
Peyton hung up and dialed several of her CDC colleagues. She knew only a few of their numbers by heart. But all of her calls were routed to the same Operation BioShield hotline.
She dialed the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center. A different recorded message played: “You’ve reached the BioShield Command Center. If you are transporting supplies and need destination or route assistance, press one. If you work in an essential role and need an assignment, press two. If you have located unsorted individuals outside a cordon zone, press three.”
The last option chilled Peyton. Unsorted individuals.
The recording repeated; there was no option for an operator.
Peyton pressed two. A man with a gruff voice said, “Name and social security number.”
She gave him the information, and heard the man typing.
“Sir, I have critical information—”
He interrupted. “Location?”
“Dadaab, Kenya.”
A long pause.
“Your ops facility is Phillips Arena. Report there immediately for assignment.”
“What?”
“Phillips Arena is located at—”
“I know where Phillips Arena is. Listen to me, I led the CDC mission to Kenya, the one that first encountered the Mandera virus.”
The line was silent. She had his attention.
“I have information regarding its origin and possibly the key to finding a cure. I need to speak with the CDC.”
She heard furious typing in the background.
“Best number to reach you?”
“Did you hear what I just said? I know how this pandemic started—and possibly how to find a cure.”
“I heard you, Dr. Shaw. We’re getting about a hundred calls per hour now from scientists and physicians who are sure they have information regarding a cure. We have a queue that a research assistant is working through. They’ll have to call you back.”
“You’re going to put my message in a queue and call me back?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your name?”
“Corporal Travers, ma’am.”
“When this is over, Corporal, the newspapers and TV shows are going to figure out why so many people died. They’ll identify turning points, when people in critical roles made the wrong calls—moments when someone could have made a decision that would have changed the course of the outbreak and saved millions, possibly billions of lives. This is one of those moments. This is the moment when you can simply connect me to that research team or someone at the CDC. It will only take a few seconds. You can save a lot of people—right now.”
“Sorry, ma’am, I don’t even have their number.”
Peyton paused, thinking.
“Ma’am?”
“I’m still here.”