Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (6 page)

Huang knew the connection was scrambled nine different ways and routed across the globe like a crazed ping-pong ball. The call was safe. Still, he double-checked the encryption codes before telling Rip the bad news. Only hours had passed since they last spoke, but to Rip it felt as if it had been years.

“I don’t want to tell you this,” Huang said reluctantly.

“Gale?” Rip asked, trying not to panic.

“Cira. She’s alive, okay, but . . . ”

“What?”

“There was an accident on the playground. Her eyes were cut with scissors.”

Rip’s whole body tightened, his mouth went dry, thinking of his sweet angel suffering, bleeding, her eyes. Her
eyes
! “No, oh please no!”

“She had an operation. May need more, but they think she will see again.”

Rip’s fears and desperate worry swelled into confusion and anger. “Does Booker know?” Rip demanded, then answered his own question before continuing his rant. “Of course he knows. If you know, he knows. What’s his problem? I know what he’s doing! He knew I’d never come here without them.” Rip pounded his hand on the table and glanced out the windows at the water—nothing but water for a million miles. “Can you get Gale on the phone? Can you connect me to their room?”

“I can try, but it would not be safe for them.”

“Wait . . . Cira’s accident was the breach, wasn’t it? The hospital link . . . The NSA is heading to Fiji! Everyone is heading to Fiji! Are they out? How much time will they have to get out? Are they on the move . . . damn it, can they even move Cira yet?”

“You need to talk to Booker.”

“You bet I need to talk to him. I need to do
more
than talk to him. Damn, damn, damn!” Rip pulled up the emergency section of his Eysen-INU, but the connection didn’t go through. It was the first time he’d been unable to reach Booker since they went into hiding after their “deaths.” Rip wasn’t sure if Booker was just avoiding him or if something horrible had happened. “Huang, get me in touch with Gale or Booker,
please
.”

“I’ll try.”

Rip could only wait until Huang worked his magic, but as the minutes since their call ended began adding up, he realized he was not completely powerless. Although trapped on the remote and beautiful island of El Perdido—or “El Prison,” as Gale had always called it—Rip possessed the most powerful object known to man.

“To hold all the stars in your hands,” Rip whispered to himself as he held the Eysen-Sphere in the sun, then gently set it down above the Odeon Chip on a teakwood table. A moment later it levitated and images projected out.

Each session was always like his first: the indescribable wonders, the lights, the magical floating Sphere shining out visions of the universe, Earth, humanity’s past . . . and the blurry future. He stood yet again in awe, as if dancing in a dream, surrounded by clouds and stars in a gentle rain of colors.

They had learned so much, but the most important questions concerning the eleven-million-year-old treasure still remained unanswered. Rip had dubbed the people who created the Eysen the Cosegans, named for his once controversial Cosega theory. Cosega, an old Indian word meaning “before the beginning,” turned out to be an incredibly accurate choice.

Rip’s hypothesis hadn’t gone back far enough before the beginning; he was off by more than ten million years. No one with any kind of decent reputation within the scientific community, other than Rip, dared to entertain the notion that intelligent humans had existed for more than the last 100,000 years. Even Rip, who believed a sophisticated society on par with ours might have risen and fallen in prehistory, hadn’t dared to dream that they’d achieved such an advanced degree of knowledge and technology—far beyond what humans enjoy in the present day—until he held the Eysen.

Still, after all the years spent studying it, he second-guessed everything, especially the choices that resulted in the deaths of those who helped to protect it, particularly Larsen, his closest friend. Lately what he’d been most unsure about was the decision to hide it. Enough information from their early research had been released, causing the world’s religions to collapse, but the world went on, seemingly missing the significance.

What if they had let it
all
out? It had become a constant debate among Rip, Gale and Booker. Every commercial Eysen-INU that Booker sold came preloaded with actual data from the original Eysen-Sphere, complete with the new history, new science, and more, but humanity still drifted rapidly toward a perilous future. A future made more immediate because of Cira, who would have to endure what was coming. Yet now even that was in doubt.

He stared at the Eysen-Sphere, mesmerized anew, as it floated in the air. “Like a wizard’s crystal ball . . .  What are you truly capable of?” Rip asked out loud. “You contain the history of the universe, all human knowledge, and you grant glimpses into the future . . . ” He paced around the Eysen-Sphere, thinking of it somehow as something different, something more than he’d ever considered before. “Can you be used as a weapon? A time machine?” He laughed at his absurdity. “Can you save my little girl?”

During their seven year quest into the Sphere, they’d found so much, yet frustratingly little in the way of practical understanding. What was it for? Why had it survived? Who were the Cosegans, really?

“Crying Man, are you there? What about the other ghosts who dwell inside this ancient orb?”

Rip called the man who had silently guided them through the turmoil and vastness of their early days of exploration into the Sphere. Back then, Crying Man had been an almost daily presence. Then, inexplicably, he had all but disappeared five years earlier. They’d only seen him twice since, and not once for more than three years. Rip’s instincts told him that the Sphere might be the only way to save his loved ones. He and Gale had devoted their lives to its study, and, by default, Cira’s life too.

“It’s time to give back, Crying Man,” he said, his tone more pleading than demanding. “Please, my daughter is only six. She’s never done anything wrong in her life, she only knows the innocence and beauty of the world.”

As a single tear slid down Rip’s cheek, incredibly, Crying Man appeared in life-sized form, fully projected out from the ancient Eysen-Sphere. He stood opposite Rip, the Sphere between them. His stern expression, contrasted by smiling eyes, gave him the aura of a parent upset with a child over some minor mishap.

Last time he’d seen him, Crying Man had had long hair. Now his head appeared completely shaved beneath a white hood of light, flowing, silk-like cloth. It matched his long robe, which was tied with a sash that seemed to be made of a thin, green, glowing, neon-like-light. His robe ruffled around him as if in a steady breeze, although the air in the skyroom was still.

Rip stood transfixed, part of him shocked at the appearance of a man he’d just called across eleven million years, and part of him not at all surprised. He wanted to ask, “Where have you been? What took you so long?” but instead he smiled, as if seeing a long lost old friend, and said, “Thank you.”

Gale woke with a start, quickly taking in the cramped metal cabin, and decided she was on a ship. Cira flashed into her mind.

A uniformed woman sitting next to her smiled. “Welcome back,” the woman said. “Let me just check your eyes.” She shone a light and then moved it away. “Good. How do you feel?”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“I have no information about that,” the woman said. “I need to check your vitals.”

“My head hurts,” Gale said. “Where’s Kruse?”

“Yes, you suffered a contusion during impact, but there’s no concussion.” She held out her hand. “Take these.”

Gale eyed the pills suspiciously.

“They’re just aspirin,” the woman said, checking the digital readout as a blood pressure cuff deflated.

Gale figured if they wanted to drug, her they would have done it while she was unconscious. She sat up and took the pills. “Kruse?” she repeated, suddenly worried he might not have survived.

“He’ll be along in a few minutes. He’s checked in on you regularly.”

“How long have I been out? Where are we?”

“You’ve been onboard about forty minutes. We’re on one of Booker’s subs.” There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” the woman called.

Kruse peaked in and grinned as soon as he saw Gale sitting up with open eyes. The woman got up and squeezed past him, Kruse taking the now vacant seat.

“So you’re fine?” he asked.

“Hardly. My daughter might be blind, might be in custody, or worse, she’s all alone. I’ve been kidnapped by my bodyguard, and apparently I’m somewhere under the ocean on a private submarine. Booker has his own sub?”

“Six of them,” Kruse said. “He rotates them in and out of the area.”

“Why?”

“Just in case.”

“In case of
what
?”

“For just such an event as this,” Kruse said, as if it ought to be obvious. “To evacuate you, Rip, Cira.”

“Well, he missed a couple of us.”

“Look, Gale, cut me a break here. I’m doing my job. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Shoot the messenger? You
drugged
me! You could have refused the order.”

Kruse nodded. “I saw no other solution.”

“The NSA is going to find us.”

“I don’t think so,” Kruse said. “Not today. It’s a good plan. The crash was planned. They’ll find just enough wreckage to know it was real. They can check the satellites, but they’ll see no boats or planes nearby.”

“Won’t they think of a rescue sub?”

“Even if they do, it will be dismissed because how could there be one in the area? Too coincidental.”

“But it was here.”

“They don’t know that.”

“He’s had subs here all these years?” she asked, skeptical, but very impressed.

“We have contingency plans upon plans for every eventuality, and—”

“You didn’t have one for Cira.”

“No one expected a severe playground accident. That was a regrettable mistake, but Harmer is with her. Resources are being brought to bear. We’ll keep her safe, Gale. I promise.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

She looked at Kruse, a man she had previously trusted and come to love like a brother. She didn’t really hate him, in spite of his betrayal, because obviously he’d been doing what he thought would best to protect them. He was a surrogate for a man she did despise though, and until she could scream at Booker, she could find no forgiveness, or even kindness, for Kruse.

“They will think you and Cira died in the crash,” Kruse continued. “This is the most remote ocean on Earth. People are lost here, no bodies found, just fragments of the wreckage. There’s security footage of you leaving the hospital with Cira and getting into the plane. We took a dummy, roughly the same size as Cira, its head fully bandaged, IV attached to its arm.”

“So they won’t know she’s still at the hospital?”

“No,” Kruse said, smiling proudly.

“But they’ll check the records. They’ll talk to the doctor.”

“All handled.”

“Money?”

“Naturally.”

“But they’ll search.”

“She’s in a secret room. They won’t find her. Harmer is right there with her. They’ll believe she’s gone. Escaped with you on the plane.”

“They won’t believe another crash, another death. We’ve used up that trick.”

“That’s why they will, because no one would be crazy enough to do it again. Even if they don’t, you know this is all about buying time.”

“And time is a funny thing.”

Kruse nodded.

“But what about Rip?” Gale asked. “They’ll look for Rip.”

“Rip is already at El Perdido.”

She closed her eyes at the thought of returning there, then opened them and stared directly into Kruse’s hard face. “If anything bad happens to Cira, I will kill you.”

“If anything bad happens to her, I’ll let you.”

Once the security guard got Harmer’s Eysen-INU tapped into the hospital’s surveillance camera network, Harmer relaxed a little. Now at least she could see for herself what was happening. She wished she could smoke one more cigarette before the action started, but it was not to be.

Sooner than expected, people came looking for Cira and her parents. Harmer watched with a combination of relief and confusion as police filled the hospital. They swarmed and quickly covered all the exits. It didn’t take long for the man-in-charge to discover that Cira had already been discharged.

Harmer could see him speaking into his Eysen-phone, a smaller, oval-shaped object about the size of a traditional cell phone. The phone linked to a person’s Eysen-INU over the internet, and was about the only accessory needed. Many people just kept their Eysen-INUs with them all the time and didn’t bother with a separate phone. One day, Booker’s company, Eysen, Inc., predicted they would be able to make Eysen-INUs as small as marbles.

Harmer’s remote hope that the police might quickly leave was dashed. Obviously, whomever the man-in-charge spoke to on the phone had ordered a search.

Still, the regular cops would be less likely to find Cira’s hiding place than the CIA, the NSA, or the military. As Harmer counted more than twenty officers, it became obvious this wasn’t just a local operation. Clearly one of the “big guns” had enlisted the police, but which one? The inflated numbers of the police meant serious trouble, and Harmer started to consider options for escaping. Even if they weren’t initially discovered, the police could just hold the facility until their paymasters arrived. It might help to know who was coming first.

Harmer reviewed their enemies. US Intelligence, the Israeli Mossad, the Foundation, and Scarlet, a fragmented group of former Vatican Cardinals who declared that the Eysen-Sphere had been a fraud meant only to destroy organized religions, particularly the Catholic Church. She figured it was the US government that was the most likely to have had the assets—CIA, NSA, DIA, the military, etc.—and networks in place near enough to pose the biggest threat. However,
any
of the others could have found a way to influence the local police.

Harmer eyed the video feed of the hallway they were on as two police officers checked each room. They were four doors away from the phony supply closet which concealed their room. The nurse and orderly watched nervously as Harmer readied her weapon. The orderly was particularly jittery. He was one of only five people in the building who knew the girl had not really been discharged, and with so many cops, any of them could crack. He wondered why so many police had come to arrest the six-year-old’s parents. Who were they really?

“They’re going to find us,” he blurted.

“No,” Harmer whispered firmly.

“The wall isn’t even properly finished,” the orderly said, pointing to the backside of the sheetrock.

“
Quiet
,” Harmer hissed.

The police were now two doors away. Harmer looked at the wall. It was true that if they spent too much time in the supply closet, even more than a cursory glance, they would likely notice something—untaped seams in the sheetrock, no paint, the tiny panel at the end, not even a correct mix of supplies—and all it would take was a few minutes before Harmer would be dead and Cira in custody. She knew there was no way to defend the room.

A wing and a prayer,
Harmer thought to herself. Counting steps, she momentarily met eyes with the nurse. With a slight look at the faux wall, then at Cira, and finally back to the nurse, Harmer conveyed a list of instructions in half a second. The nurse nodded and asked the orderly to help move Cira’s bed to the corner. The three of them would be safest there when Harmer engaged the police.

Two police officers entered the room next to Cira’s. Unfortunately, there was no camera in there. Patient rooms were not part of the hospital visual monitoring system. Harmer had noted that the cops were spending an average of about ninety seconds in each room. She looked at the time on her Eysen-INU, and waited.

The nurse and the orderly were barely breathing, but Harmer worried that at any second the orderly would shout out. She never should have brought him in there, but maybe it was better than having him out there on the loose. Harmer could feel the tension coming from him, but didn’t dare turn around. She didn’t want to do anything to disturb the desperate hush, which seemed to be the only thing holding the room together. The nurse, “a cool customer,” had muted all of Cira’s monitors. Perhaps her stoic presence could also somehow keep the orderly calm.

Ninety seconds had passed and Harmer felt the dampness on her trigger. She was sweating, not typical for her. The camera on Harmer’s Eysen-INU was on. Thousands of miles away, Booker silently watched the wall with the rest of them. Frustrated, he switched his gaze between screens showing the situation around the world – Gale’s plane over the Indian Ocean, Rip on El Perdido, various AX teams, and tracking any number of mobilized groups in pursuit of them all. Not since the days following Gale and Rip’s death had their mission been in this much jeopardy.

Booker communicated with an AX team already in the air over Fiji. They were ready to parachute down and take the hospital by force and evacuate Cira, but that was not an option Booker wanted to use. Even if they
could
get the six-year-old safely out of the building, she would most likely permanently lose her eyesight, and they would still need to escape Fiji undetected. That was not a promising scenario since the NSA now had the island nation under every form of scrutiny. They would know when a butterfly landed on a new flower, or which seagull caught the most fish. Still, if the police, or anyone else, discovered Cira’s room, AX would go in. They would have to try, if for no other reason that to be able to show Gale and Rip that Booker had tried to save their daughter.

Two and a half minutes. The police were staying in the room too long. Harmer’s mind raced. Were they in there preparing an assault? Had the patient seen something while they were constructing the wall?
Harmer clearly remembered closing all nearby doors while the work on Cira’s room was being done.
The patient couldn’t have seen, so what the hell is taking so long?

Three minutes.

They must know!
Harmer heard the orderly sigh behind her, almost more of a wince.
Damn it, he’s not going to last much longer.
Suddenly, two more officers entered the hallway.
What’s this?
Harmer took a deep breath and scanned the rest of the cameras, looking for any other signs of an impending build up to an attack.

Three minutes, twenty seconds. Booker saw the new cops and relayed a command to the AX agents in the air. “Be ready on my signal.”