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She hoped Jilly was right and Noreen was indeed in the truck.

Ahead, beyond a curve in the freeway, she saw a cloud of dust rise into the air. Its distance and timing coincided with where the vehicles should be. For a second, she wasn’t sure what they were doing, and then it dawned on her.

The accident.

They must have been trying to find a way around it.

As she swung around the bend, she could see where both vehicles had gone off the road. She raced over, stopping at the top for a quick look.

What she saw stunned her. The truck that Noreen was supposedly in had crashed against the center divider. The SUV had stopped next to it and men were piling out of it.

Armed men.

Martina looked around for her missing friends. The pickup truck and the area around it were deserted.

One of the men from the SUV shouted and pointed down the road. Martina turned her head and spotted Noreen, Riley, and Craig on the other side of the center divider, running under the overpass.

The crack of a gun was followed by one of the men shouting, “Next one won’t be a warning so you might as well stop running now!”

“We have to do something,” Jilly said.

“Get off,” Martina told her.

“What?”

“Get off!”

As Jilly climbed from the bike, Martina pulled her pistol out of her backpack and then handed the bag to her friend.

“You can’t go down there,” Valerie said. “They’ll kill you.”

“Those are our friends. I’m not going to just leave them.”

Martina gunned her bike. But instead of going down the hill where the others had, she raced across the freeway and maneuvered through a dirt divider to a transition lane leading to the southbound 405. As she reached the lanes, another gunshot boomed.

Followed by a scream.

__________

N
OREEN CAUGHT UP
to Riley and Craig as they reached the underpass.

“Keep moving!” she urged them.

“I’m trying,” Craig said, out of breath. “I’m just…I’m trying.”

Noreen threw an arm around him, taking some of his weight. When Riley started to do the same on his other side, Noreen said, “No. I’ve got him. You keep going!”

Behind them she heard the other truck skid to a stop, and soon after the sound of feet hitting the road. Seconds later, a bullet screamed through the air above them. A voice yelled for them to stop.

As Noreen and Craig continued forward, she heard another sound behind them.

Dammit
.
They have a motorcycle.

How would she and her friends outrun that?

She looked around, and then pointed ahead to where the bridge ended. “Over there, into the brush.”

If they could get through that and into the city, they might be able to find someplace to hide before the motorcycle discovered them. But as they angled across the freeway, Noreen heard the bike again, ahead of them this time. They were being squeezed in a vise.

Boom!

Something hit Noreen’s shoulder, knocking her forward. For a split second, she thought it was a rock, but then searing pain engulfed her.

She screamed.

__________

R
ILEY TWISTED AROUND
at Noreen’s cry just in time to see her friend fall to the road. Craig staggered forward, almost falling with her, and then lowered to his knees next to her.

As Riley ran toward them, she saw that the kidnappers had passed into the shadows of the overpass. Focusing back on her friends, she noticed her pistol lying on the ground a few feet in front of Noreen.

She raced to it, scooped it up, and fired down the road. The men scattered, looking for cover, but there was none between her and them. She continued to pull the trigger until the pistol clicked empty.

When the shooting stopped, all but one of the men stood back up.

“Riley! Down!”

Startled, she whirled around and saw Martina standing about twenty feet behind her, aiming a gun in her direction.

“Down!” Martina repeated.

Riley dropped.

__________

A
S SOON AS
Riley was out of the way, Martina fired, but instead of rapidly emptying the magazine like her friend had done, she took a second to aim each shot. Three men went down, but the other two were able to hop the center barrier and duck behind it before she got to them. Of the three she hit, two appeared critical enough that she didn’t think they would be getting up anytime soon. The third, however, pushed back to his knees and raised his gun before she realized what he was doing.

His shot sailed wide, but her answering bullet did not.

Keeping her gun aimed at the area where the other two had disappeared, she moved over to her friends and was horrified to find Noreen’s shirt covered in blood.

“Martina?” Noreen whispered.

Martina grabbed her friend’s hand. “I’m here.”

“We…found you.”

Martina’s gaze switched back and forth between the divider and Noreen. “You did.”

“I was so…worried.”

“I was worried about you, too.”

“Did you…did you find…him?”

“What?”

“Ben. Did you find…him?”

“I found him.”

Noreen smiled for a moment and then winced in pain.

“You’re going to be fine,” Martina said. She drew her hand away. “Hang in there.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.” Martina looked at Riley and mouthed, “Watch her.”

Staying in a crouch, she moved over to the divider and carefully rose high enough to see over the concrete wall. The area where she’d expected the men to be hiding was deserted. As she started to rise a few more inches to get a better look, hands grabbed her and yanked her over the divider.

Sour breath poured down on her from a laughing bald man. “A new one. Our lucky day.”

Another man, with hair in a ponytail, jerked Martina’s gun out of her hand and shoved its muzzle into her cheek. “Bitch shot our friends,” he said. “I’m thinking we should kill her now.”

“Oh, she’s going to die all right,” bald guy said. “We’re just going to have a little fun making it happen.” He tapped Martina’s cheek as if she were a child. “That all right with you, honey?”

Martina stared a hole through him.

The man laughed again as he stood up. “Hey, kids,” he said in the direction of Riley, Noreen, and Craig. “Hide-and-seek’s over. We win. Why don’t you all come on over here and we’ll—”

A rifle blasted, but it was the sound of a bullet zipping through the air right before it pierced the bald man’s head that Martina would remember. As the man crumpled to the ground, his partner whipped around, trying to see where the shot had come from.

The next bullet caught him square between the eyes, laying him out on the asphalt only a foot from his friend.

Unsure who had done the shooting, Martina stayed on the ground.

“It’s all right,” a familiar voice yelled. “It’s all clear now.”

Martina rose to her feet and spotted Pax and Nyla standing on the overpass. Pax was cradling a rifle against his chest, while Nyla was slinging hers back over her shoulder.

“You all right?” Pax called down.

“I’m okay,” Martina said. “But Noreen’s been shot.”

She looked over at her friends. Riley’s face was drawn, her eyes wet. Craig’s didn’t look any better. Between them lay Noreen, her eyes closed, her chest unmoving.

“No!” Martina leapt over the barrier and ran back to them. She picked up Noreen’s head. “Hey, Noreen, come on. You’re going to be fine.”

Riley put a gentle hand on Martina’s shoulder. “She’s gone.”

“No. She can’t be. She can’t!”

Noreen had been Martina’s best friend for as long as she could remember. How could she be dead? Martina tilted Noreen’s head back and started to administer CPR. She was still pumping Noreen’s chest when Ben, Pax, Nyla, and the others reached them.

“It’s over,” Ben whispered in her ear, a soft hand on her back.

“No!” She blew more air into Noreen’s mouth.

“Let her go.”

“I can’t.”

He wrapped his fingers over her shoulders but didn’t pull. “You have to. For her.”

Martina blew in another breath. As she moved back, she looked at her friend’s face.

She could see now that Noreen was gone. Gone and never coming back.

She leaned back down, pulled her friend into her arms, and cried.

__________

T
HEY FOUND A
station wagon to put Noreen in and returned to Dodger Stadium, where they buried her that afternoon on a hill overlooking downtown.

Martina and Ben remained by the grave long after everyone else left. For a while, neither said a word, but finally, slowly, Martina began to talk, telling stories about Noreen—fighting over boys as far back as elementary school, helping each other cheat on tests, and learning together to play softball. She managed a few smiles at her friend’s occasional cluelessness, but at the end, there were only more tears.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Ben said.

How could she not? First, she had abandoned Noreen, and in the end she had not acted quickly enough to save her.

“If you hadn’t insisted on looking for them, all three would be dead now,” he told her. “You saved Riley and Craig. That’s what you need to remember.”

She leaned against him.

He was sweet and he meant well, and maybe someday she’d see it his way, but not today.

28

NB016

10:14 AM EST

S
TAYING LOW, OMAR
flew the helicopter up the East River until Ash thought they’d gone far enough. Ash then gave Chloe the signal that it was her turn.

She hit the
SEND
button on Vintner’s phone and raised it to her ear.

__________

C
ELESTE CLICKED ACCEPT
the moment the call was directed to her computer.
“Vintner?”

“No, Director. It’s Reni Barton.”

“Why am I speaking to you again? Where the hell is Commander Vintner?”

In a hesitant voice, Barton said, “Ma’am, the, um, I’m sorry to report that the commander ran into an ambush on level eight. The medic has him sedated but he needs medical attention.”

Celeste closed her eyes for a moment to rein in her frustration. Then she slowly said, “I need you to tell whoever’s in charge that I need one of the helicopters back here
immediately
.”

“That won’t be a problem, ma’am. We’re actually inbound to you right now with the commander so he can get some help. The pilot tells me we’re only a few minutes out.”

Celeste cocked her head. “You are?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Finally, a break.

“Tell the pilot not to power down after he lands,” she ordered. “He needs to get me out of here.”

“Ma’am?”

“Just do it!” Celeste disconnected the call. To Dalton, she said, “Tell everyone in group A we depart in ten minutes with or without them. Once we reach NB110, I’ll send the helicopter back for group B.”

“Yes, Director.”

Celeste rose from her control-room chair for what she knew would be the last time. Another base, perhaps NB110 in Pennsylvania, would be the new Project Eden main headquarters. But she could figure that out later.

Right now she needed to pack.

__________

C
HLOE DISCONNECTED THE
call. “We’re cleared for landing.”

Ash smiled and said over the intercom, “Omar, take us in.”

Omar rose until they were hiding in the clouds before he headed toward NB016.

“Half mile,” he reported a minute later. “Clouds are a little thin here. If we swing a little east, that would put the sun at our back and delay them from noticing we’re not the helicopter they’re expecting.”

“Do it,” Ash said. He looked at the rest of the team. “Radios on and weapons ready.”

__________

O
DD
, KLEINMAN THOUGHT,
a few seconds after the helicopter appeared on the radar screen.

The aircraft was approaching from a more easterly position than he had expected. Dream Sky was almost due north of NB016. Maybe they’d been forced to fly around a portion of the growing storm.

Whatever the reason, he needed to be the first to greet them so he could brief the strike team on the base’s situation.

He left control and headed for the dedicated stairwell to the roof.

__________

C
ELESTE ENTERED THE
combination for the safe in her executive office and pulled it open. Inside were three portable drives. The first one she pulled out contained all the information she’d been compiling on the other senior Project members, especially her three colleagues on the directorate. The drive was her key to becoming the principal director. She stuck it in her travel bag.

The other two drives held her personal copies of Project codes and the Project’s detailed plans for restarting humanity post-epidemic, including the locations and control-override codes for all Project Eden bases. Normally, the principal director was the only one who’d possess this comprehensive information, but since the job was currently being shared, all four members of the directorate had a copy.

She filled the rest of the case with a few items of clothing and some personal items, then called the control room. “Ms. Dalton?”

“Yes, Director?”

“What’s the ETA on the helicopter?”

“Preparing to land, ma’am. They should touch down within the min—”

Celeste hung up, having heard all she needed to. She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

__________

K
LEINMAN STOOD NEAR
the landing pad, hearing more than seeing the descending aircraft.

The glare of the sun through the clouds made the helicopter look like an indistinct dark blob until it was no more than a hundred feet from touching down.

He narrowed his eyes, thinking the sun was playing tricks on him, but no. Vintner’s helicopters were both black underneath. The one about to land was gray. If the strike force had resorted to using another vehicle, wouldn’t it have reported that?