Extinction Game (43 page)

I regarded him bleakly. ‘And what happens to the rest of us?’

Casey turned on his heel without answering me and went to kneel by the laptop controlling the transfer stage. The screensaver vanished, to be replaced by the control interface. One after the
other, the status lights on the field-pillars blinked into life as they came online.

That was when I knew it was too late, and he was on his way to the Authority with Greenbrooke.

‘For Christ’s sake, Casey!’ I yelled in desperation. ‘The Authority’ll kill all the rest of us once they know what you’ve done! Don’t you understand
that?’

He glanced over and gave me a sunny smile. ‘Not if you show them the recording I’m making just now. That’s your alibi, right there. It proves I’m responsible for
everything, and not any of you. I’ll happily take the blame right on the goddam chin, but they’d have to catch me first.’ He smiled broadly. ‘See? I’m not such a bad
guy after all.’

I opened my mouth to try once more and beg him to stop, even knowing it was useless. I’d seen madness like this before, in Herschel and Marlon, before they murdered my own world. And I was
going to have to watch it happen all over again.

I wondered if I had the strength to rush him, to throw myself at him and knock him over, smash the laptop or damage one of the field-pillars, maybe. But I knew he would most likely shoot me dead
first, rather than risk my further interference. But then again, maybe that was preferable to sitting by and watching another world die when I had at least some kind of chance of stopping him.

Something made me look up at the top of the basement steps and I saw Rozalia, crouched down in the open doorway. She was looking down at me, a finger raised to her mouth. She looked shockingly
pale, sweat making her hair cling to her face. It must have taken an enormous effort to follow me here, as badly wounded as she was. I wondered how she had avoided getting caught by the tripwires.
Or had Haden been there to help her as well?

She sank back into the shadows, and I saw her raise her rifle, aiming it straight at Casey’s head. But I could see she was struggling to hold the rifle steady. If she managed to hit him,
it’d be a miracle.

I glanced back over at Casey and saw him staring at me. He stood up quickly and stared up at the steps.

He saw Rozalia, her weapon wavering in her hands. He moved fast, reaching for his rifle and bringing it to bear on her.

There wasn’t time to think.

I stumbled upright and ran towards Casey. He fired at Rozalia just as I threw both wrists around his head, pulling the chain of the cuffs taut around his throat. I heard Rozalia cry out, and I
dragged Casey across the basement and towards the cage in the middle of the transfer stage. I fought a sudden dizziness, the blood thundering in my ears.

Casey must have sensed my sudden weakness, for he slammed one elbow backwards into my chest. I slumped, but it only increased the pressure on his throat. He reached up in desperation to try and
wriggle free, and I again pulled as hard as I could.

I glanced quickly towards Rozalia, seeing that she had tumbled down the steps and now lay bleeding on the dusty concrete. Her rifle lay nearby. I knew I didn’t have the strength to fight
Casey for much longer.

By now, the air above the transfer stage had begun to shiver and twist. I had no more than seconds before it carried Greenbrooke and the cargo of bees back to the Authority.

I realized that Casey was growing weaker. He was on his knees now, still struggling to be free, and I let myself fall to one side, pulling him after me. I looked over at Rozalia, and saw she had
managed once more to get a hold of her rifle and was struggling to aim it.

Casey took advantage of my distraction, reaching back to dig his fingers into my eyes. I screamed and twisted away, and he took the advantage, surging back to his feet just as a loud explosion
filled the confined space. Casey staggered and fell within the transfer stage’s perimeter, blood pouring down his leg.

The air around him shimmered like a summer heat haze and I knew I was out of time. Even badly wounded, Casey would still be able to open the cage once he crossed over to the Authority.

In an instant, I knew what I had to do.

I scrambled over to the laptop controlling the stage. The screen showed a countdown with just seconds to go, and a set of transfer coordinates flashing red. I had been taught, during my last
week of training, how to program a transfer stage control rig to get me back to the island in an emergency. I quickly tapped an icon, then reset the coordinates to a null sequence.

I turned in time to see Casey crawling towards the transfer stage’s perimeter, stark terror etched on his face. He knew what I had done. Then he vanished, sent spinning into some
unimaginable void along with Greenbrooke and the cage of bees. The space encircled by the field-pillars was as silent and empty as if nothing and no one had ever been there.

‘Jerry.’

I went over to kneel by Rozalia. I could see she was struggling to breathe.

‘Just hang on there,’ I said, feeling helpless. ‘I can recalibrate the stage, jump us all the way back to the island. There are doctors there . . .’

‘Stop trying to be a fucking hero,’ she gasped. ‘Go get Yuichi. He’s right where you left him.’

‘Of course.’ I glanced back towards the stage. How long would it take me to power it up again? How many minutes? Too many, I realized.

‘I wanted Casey to pay for what he did to Nadia. And to you. Do you understand?’ Her hand reached out, taking hold of my own. ‘You’re a good man, Jerry Beche.’

‘Yeah, and we can talk about that when you’re feeling better. How the hell did you even get past those tripwires?’

She smiled faintly. ‘By paying attention,’ she whispered.

Her eyes closed and I felt her grow slack in my arms.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Come on. Wake up. Rozalia.
Wake the fuck up
. I . . .’

And then I looked down, at the blood still spreading across the floor, and knew it was already much too late.

I got back up and hunted around until I found a key, sitting on a dusty shelf, that fitted the cuffs. I programmed some adjustments to the transfer stage’s settings, then paused, seeing
Casey’s video camera still mounted on its tripod.

I picked the camera up and turned it this way and that until I found a slot with a memory card. I popped the card out and pocketed it, then made my way up the stairs and out into the late
afternoon sunshine. Off in the distance, I saw a trailing line of bee-brains. They didn’t look as if they were headed my way, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I started to run back to
where I’d left Yuichi.

I found him right where I had left him. His head was slumped to one side, his jaw slack, his eyes closed as if in death.

I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach, thinking I had lost another friend. But then his eyes opened, and he squinted up at me.

‘I guess she found you,’ he said. ‘You catch Casey?’

I knelt down beside him and helped him to stand. ‘We caught him,’ I said.

‘And Rozalia?’ he asked haltingly. ‘I heard shooting.’

I shook my head and said nothing. Yuichi just nodded, looking suddenly old.

‘Come on, you goddam hippie,’ I muttered, doing my best to take his weight. ‘Time to get the hell out of here.’

Yuichi gazed down at Rozalia’s body with a look of infinite sadness when I manoeuvred him down the steps of the basement some minutes later. The stage was powered up and
ready to take us home. All I had to do was punch in a last command.

‘We’ll come back and get her, I promise,’ I said, just before the basement faded from view.

‘Yeah,’ Yuichi muttered, looking lost. ‘No one gets left behind, right?’

I felt the familiar seesaw during the moment of transition, and then we were back inside the shipwrecked trawler. My heart swelled inside my chest when I saw Chloe standing framed in the
moonlight, just beyond the rent in the hull. She came forwards and I held her tightly, feeling tears run down my cheeks. I had never been so glad to see someone alive.

Finally I let go of her, and she helped me guide Yuichi back outside, to where Randall, Winifred and Selwyn were waiting for us. Kip Mayer sat on a rock nearby, looking dishevelled and forlorn,
his suit streaked with dirt. As we emerged from the hull he stared at us as if we were ghosts.

Selwyn grabbed hold of me by both arms. ‘Casey?’

‘Dead,’ I replied. I looked over at Mayer. ‘The Authority’s safe. We stopped him just in time.’

‘We were going to go through and look for you, but we couldn’t make the connection,’ said Selwyn. ‘We were afraid something terrible had happened.’

I glanced at Mayer, and suddenly decided I didn’t want him to know about the second secret transfer stage. ‘There was a glitch, that’s all,’ I told Selwyn, extemporizing
quickly.

Selwyn peered into my eyes, looking for something. ‘And Rozalia? Oskar?’

I met his gaze as steadily as I could. ‘They didn’t make it.’

Selwyn took a step back and nodded grimly. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

I walked over to Mayer, who sat staring off into space. I saw he had my predecessor’s last testament gripped in one hand, as if he’d just been reading it.

‘You people shouldn’t have lied to us about retirement,’ I said, nodding at the crumpled pages. ‘None of this would have happened otherwise. As far as I’m
concerned, that makes you people nearly as much to blame as Casey.’

He gazed at me hopelessly, then looked away again. The moonlight revealed bruises on his face, and I wondered if he’d received them during his brief incarceration at the hands of the
Patriots.

‘There isn’t time for this, Jerry,’ said Winifred, coming towards me. ‘We need to get going.’

I turned to look at her. ‘Where to?’

‘The Authority,’ she replied. ‘Remember what Howes said back at the Mauna Loa? We have to take the evidence back through to the Authority ourselves, along with Kip.’

I nodded as it came back to me. ‘What happened at the base?’ I asked her. ‘It all went okay?’

She nodded. ‘Pretty much the way Howes said it would. They took him prisoner, and that gave us the opportunity to get Kip out while their backs were turned. We can’t hang around.
They might have seen our headlights.’

Selwyn stepped towards Mayer. ‘Mr Mayer? If you’d care to program the stage with the appropriate coordinates, we’d be delighted.’

Mayer nodded. ‘You’ll need to leave your weapons,’ he said.

We all looked at each other. ‘If you go through armed,’ said Mayer, ‘the people on the other side will shoot first, trust me. Just leave them somewhere out of sight
here.’

We did as he said, not without some trepidation, then waited as he programmed the stage for the Authority. He and Yuichi were the first to climb onto the tiny stage, followed some minutes later
by Winifred and Randall, then Selwyn on his own and, lastly, myself and Chloe, gripping each other’s hands as the light swarmed around us.

Men in dark suits were waiting for us when we arrived at our destination, all of them conspicuously armed. I felt a brief moment of terror, thinking perhaps we had misjudged
Mayer and inadvertently walked straight into a trap. But when I saw the other surviving Pathfinders standing unguarded nearby I decided we were safe.

Two of the men – agents? Soldiers? I had no idea – guided us out from the circle of field-pillars, then led us towards the other Pathfinders. I saw Mayer standing in a far corner of
the room, tapping at the notes in his hand and speaking animatedly to another man.

‘Do you think they all share the same tailor to keep the bills down?’ muttered Selwyn, leaning in close to me as he regarded the armed men all around us.

I looked about, seeing that the stage occupied one end of a long, high-ceilinged room with peeling wallpaper. It looked like a ballroom that had seen far better days. Rows of ancient-looking
computers sat on desks pushed up against one wall, their screens shrouded with plastic dust covers. I heard the muffled honk of traffic from beyond heavily curtained windows, and shivered. It was
freezing cold.

Tall doors opened and yet more men in the same dark suits entered. One of them stepped towards Mayer.

‘I need a situation report,’ he said, before glancing towards us and frowning. ‘What are they doing here? Are they cleared?’

Mayer shook his head. ‘No, but there wasn’t any choice. I had to bring them with me.’

‘They shouldn’t be here,’ the other man insisted. ‘There are strict quarantine laws, you know that.’

‘I need to show you something first,’ said Mayer, pressing the pages into his hands.

‘Kip . . .’

‘I’m serious,’ Mayer insisted. He glanced towards us again. ‘They can wait while we talk, okay? Then, if you’re still not happy about it, we can send them back
over. But only if you insist.’

Mayer’s companion regarded us for what felt like a long time.

‘All right,’ the man said with a sigh. ‘But make this quick.’

‘That, sir,’ said Mayer, ‘is not something I can guarantee,’

Mayer disappeared in the company of this other man, and the rest of us were led away down a corridor beyond the tall doors. A wheeled stretcher appeared, along with a nurse, and Yuichi was
hoisted up and onto it by Randall and Selwyn, who had been helping him along thus far. I watched as they trundled him away, trying to ignore my misgivings at being separated in this way in this
cold and bleak place.

They led the rest of us along a corridor and past a dust-specked window, through which I caught sight of a city’s streets.

‘We’re in Washington,’ Winifred said from behind my shoulder as we walked on, almost whispering the words. ‘I’d know the place anywhere.’

We came to a small room, devoid of either windows or any furniture apart from some rickety wooden chairs. They locked the door when they exited, and I sat there, tense, hoping it didn’t
mean we were prisoners.

Randall tried to make small talk, but gave up after a couple of minutes. No one was in the mood for anything more than waiting for whatever came next.