Prime (31 page)

FIFTY-SIX

A wail of disbelief escaped Parker’s lips as Sasha collapsed in front
of the stone circle. He didn’t need to touch her or check for a pulse to know
that her life force had been completely extinguished.

He wanted to reach out to her, to hug her
empty shell to his chest and demand that the heavens give her back, but he knew
that to do so would be to join her.

She had found her answer, a solution to the
incomprehensible equation of life with all its unpredictable chaos. Even if his
rational mind balked at the idea, he could not argue with what he now beheld—Sasha,
dead in an instant.

As if to affirm the testimony of his eyes, he
felt a strange tingling in his skin.

He took a step back in alarm. The sensation
faded but only a little and only for a moment. Whatever Sasha had done, it was
still happening…and it was spreading.

He saw her computer, discarded and all but
forgotten beside her body, but still functional. A thing of metal and silicon,
it was immune to the anti-life power she had unleashed, and it would sit there
casting its ambient glow until the battery died, a process that might take an
hour or two…long after everything else on the planet had ceased to exist.

He had to get to the computer, turn off that
sound and undo what Sasha had done.

But if he failed, if he died trying, there
would be no second chances for humanity.

He spoke into the microphone taped to his
shirt collar. “Jack, are you there?”

There was a momentary pause, and then King’s
voice, breathless, sounded in his ear. “I’m here, Danno.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I should have trusted you.”

“Save it for later, buddy. I heard
everything. You gave it your best try.”

“She did something to the Prime, Jack.
Turned it against itself.
I have to get to her computer to
turn it off. You heard what she said. If I can’t stop this, everyone dies.
Everywhere.”

“Then stop it. Do what needs to be done,
Danno.”

“Listen to me, Jack. If this thing kills me
before I can get clear, someone else is going to have to finish it. Do you
understand?”

King was silent for few seconds then simply
said: “Roger.”

“I’ll keep talking so you know what to do.”
Parker took a deep breath. The tingling sensation was getting stronger even
though he had yet to take a step. “If I stop talking, you’ll know what it
means.”

He lurched forward and instantly the itch
became a fire burning on his skin, deepening into his muscles. One step
forward, two… Despite his promise to keep communicating, the words were stolen
away.

Another step…

He stood over Sasha’s corpse, reached past
her… The pain was deep inside him now, but his extremities felt numb and cold.
He stretched out his hand, closed his fingers over the hard plastic of the
laptop. He couldn’t tell for sure if he was gripping it; his fingers had no
sensation whatsoever, but through the haze, he could see the screen moving
between his outstretched arms.

With what felt like the last of his strength,
he staggered back down the passage, away from the Prime. Each step brought a
measure of relief from the pain, but the coldness remained in his extremities.

“Jack, I have the computer.”

He thought he heard his friend say something,
“Thank God,” perhaps, but he couldn’t be sure. Something was happening to his
hearing, to all his senses.

He peered through the fog now clouding his
vision and stared at the computer screen. A sound file was playing from the
virtual
urghan
, playing a single note
in an endless loop. Below the graphical representation of the wave, he saw
numbers: 7.83.

That’s
it
, he realized.
The frequency of life—7.83
Hz.

“It’s the Schumann Resonance!”

He couldn’t tell if King responded, so he
kept talking.

“It’s a constant waveform produced by the
friction of the Earth’s surface rotating beneath the ionosphere. You can’t hear
it—it’s below the audible range for human hearing, but it’s everywhere, all the
time, and has been for billions of years. Some scientists called it the ‘Earth’s
heartbeat.’”

Like a beating heart, Sasha had stopped it
with something akin to defibrillation. It was a simple matter of wave dynamics;
when two oppositely phased waves of the same frequency met, they cancelled each
other out completely. It was the same principle used in sound-dampening
headphones.

That was what Sasha had done; she had
dampened the frequency of life, and plunged the Prime into deathly silence.

He tapped a few keys and shut down the
waveform, trying to explain what he was doing to King, and wondering if it
would make the difference.

The sudden flare of pain in his muscles told
him it hadn’t.

“It’s not working,” he rasped, and then he
realized why. Sasha had stopped the beating heart of the Earth. It wasn’t
enough to stop the phased wave; he needed to start the heartbeat again.

His fingers fumbled uncertainly on the
keyboard, making the adjustments that would play the Schumann Resonance again.
A sine wave began oscillating across the screen, but that was the only change.

“It’s not working. I think it needs to be
closer to the Prime.” He wasn’t sure if the words were even coming out or if he
was just imagining them. “There’s a ring of stones… I think that’s the marker.
I’m going to try to put it there. You’ll know if it works because we’ll all
still be here.

Gritting his teeth, he lurched forward,
straight into the eye of the storm.

FIFTY-SEVEN

King heard every word.

When the fissure had first opened, separating
him from Parker, he had lingered there, wondering if he should try jumping
across. Before he could make the attempt, he heard Parker’s voice in his
headset, and he knew that whatever else had happened between them, his friend
was still trying to do the right thing.

Confident that Parker was doing everything
possible to coax Sasha away from the brink of madness, King turned his
attention to what seemed like a much more immediate concern. The report of
gunfire drifting down into the crevasse painted an incomplete picture, but it
was enough for him to realize that the effort to capture or kill Rainer had
taken an unexpected, and evidently dire, turn. Somewhere up above him, his
teammates were fighting for their lives.

He played his light on the walls of the
crevasse. It was almost vertical, but the break was irregular, with nubs of
stone sticking out everywhere. What he could not see was the top; there was no
telling how high he would have to climb.

He was just getting started on the ascent
when he heard a crackle of squelch in his ear, followed by Parker’s voice.

“A new Black Death?
Is that what you want Sasha? You can tell
me. I can understand why you might feel that’s necessary.”

What
the hell
?

Parker had opened the channel intentionally
so that King would know what was happening. King didn’t understand half of what
was said, but he could quickly discern two things: Sasha Therion was bat-shit
crazy, and Parker was doing his damnedest to rein her in.

King listened intently but kept his focus on
the task at hand, moving slowly, methodically, patiently up the wall. The noise
of fighting grew louder, and King realized that the crevasse did not lead
outside, but rather connected with another cave where the battle was taking
place. The good news was that the climb would be over soon.

The bad news was that he had no idea what he
was about to step in.

When he reached the top, he kept his head
down for a moment, wary of not getting caught in
a crossfire
.
Off to his left, on the far side of the fissure, the team had just opened fire
on a horde of the malformed creatures that were swarming toward them. Over the cacophony,
King heard something else; a voice…a familiar voice…

Rainer’s voice.

“Hold your position. Stay behind cover. Let
them burn through their ammo.”

Who’s
he talking to
?

At that moment, Parker’s voice sounded in his
ear. “Jack, are you there?”

He didn’t respond right away. If he was close
enough to hear Rainer speaking, then he was close enough to be overheard. He
lowered himself down below the edge of the crevasse and whispered. “I’m here,
Danno.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I should have trusted you.”

King’s mind sifted through what he had
overheard. He recalled Sasha saying something about chaos and how life was a
mistake, and the realization had chilled him. What had she done? “Save it for
later, buddy. I heard everything. You gave it your best try.”

“She did something to the Prime, Jack.
Turned it against itself.
I have to get to her computer to
turn it off.”

King heard Rainer’s voice again, almost
simultaneous with Parker’s. “Now, advance. Stay in a single file line. Continue
to use the dead for cover.”

Rainer was talking to the frankensteins
through a radio headset just like the one Chess Team used. Not merely talking
to them, but directing their movements, guiding them strategically, the way a
chess player might maneuver pawns on the game board.

“You heard what she said,” Parker continued.
“If I can’t stop this, everyone dies.
Everywhere.”

King heard, and on some level he understood
what his friend was telling him, but there was nothing he could do to help.
“Then stop it,” he said. “Do what needs to be done, Danno.”

“Listen to me, Jack. If this thing kills me
before I can get clear, someone else is going to have to finish it. Do you
understand?”

Parker’s appeal stopped him cold.
What was happening down there?

He shook his head. There was nobody better
suited to dealing with whatever it was that was happening at the Prime than
Daniel Parker. “Roger.”

He pulled himself up again, peeking over the
edge quickly to locate Rainer. He found his former CO, illuminated by indirect
light from some kind of electronic device—a GPS unit or a PDA. Rainer’s eyes
were fixed on the scene playing out beyond the fissure, where his remaining
force of four frankensteins were
preparing to overrun Chess
Team.

As stealthily as possible, King levered
himself up onto the floor of the cave, never taking his eyes off Rainer. He
brought his carbine up, but in the darkness, he couldn’t get a good shot. He
abandoned the effort, and in a smooth motion, he sprang to his feet and
charged.

Rainer must have heard the ground crunching
underfoot or sensed movement in the air, for at the last instant he swung
around to face King. There was confusion in his eyes, as if he still didn’t
comprehend what was happening, but as King slammed into him, he threw up a
defensive arm that somehow struck King in jaw. Then, in a tangle of limbs, both
men went down.

The PDA flew out of Rainer’s hand, shattering
against the floor, its light instantly extinguished, but neither man noticed.
King tried to get his hands around Rainer’s throat, but a fierce punch rocked
him back and sent stars shooting across his vision. As he tried to shrug off
the blow, Rainer squirmed from beneath him, and launched a flurry of blows—fists
and elbows—most of which missed completely or glanced off King’s gear. A few
however found their mark, and King’s head rang with the impacts.

He lowered his head to his chest, trying to
make himself less of a target and clutched at Rainer. His fingers tangled in
the other man’s shirt, then managed to snare one of the flailing arms. He tried
to twist it around, but Rainer was not so easily subdued. The rogue Delta
officer did not try to wrestle free of the hold, but spun around in the
direction King was trying to turn him, and drove his body back into King’s
chest, slamming him into the cave wall.

The breath was driven from King’s lungs, and
his arms flopped uselessly to his sides, his nerves buzzing. Rainer whirled and
drove a fist into his gut. King doubled over, partly from the piston-like force
of the blow, and partly in a desperate attempt to trap his foe’s arm, but
Rainer had already pulled free. With a savage growl, he gripped King’s
shoulders and heaved him to the floor, descending on top of him with another
crushing impact.

King felt a stab of pain in both biceps as
Rainer straddled his chest and drove his knees down onto King’s arms, pinning
him. Then, Rainer’s hands closed around his throat, and a darkness that had
nothing to do with the absence of light began to close over King.

Rainer leaned forward, close enough that King
could feel the man’s breath on his face. “Jack. I’ll be damned. You threw me a
party.
Used that little bitch as bait to draw me out.
I’m impressed.”

King would have spit a curse in the man’s
face, but the breath to do so had been driven from him and the choking hands
kept him from drawing another. He struggled to free himself, to get even a
moment’s respite, but Rainer’s position was unassailable. King felt his limbs
start to tingle from oxygen starvation, growing cold and numb.

Then, as if in answer to a prayer he had not
even thought to utter, Rainer’s grip went slack. He moved his hands away from
King’s throat and held them up, flexing them before his face.

“What the hell?”

The rush of oxygen brought King back from the
brink of despair. His arms were still tingling…no, not just his arms… Every
square inch of his body was pins and needles, and the sensation was deepening,
becoming a painful itch.

Through the fog in his head, he heard Parker
speaking, and realized that what he was now experiencing had nothing at all to
do with the beating he’d received. Rainer was feeling it too.

Whatever Sasha had done to the Prime was
spreading, growing in intensity.

“There’s a ring of stones… I think that’s the
marker.” Parker was saying. “I’m going to try to put it there. You’ll know if
it works because we’ll all still be here.”

A low wail of pain came over the radio,
grunts of exertion and agony, and then an abrupt silence.

Danno
!

King heaved against Rainer. Distracted by the
strange pain that was creeping over his
extremities,
the other man was slow to react, while King’s grief and rage opened a vein of
untapped strength. He got one of his arms free and wrapped it around Rainer’s
waist, and in the same motion drove his feet against the cave floor.

Locked together, they rolled once, twice…and
then suddenly there was no ground beneath them, and they plunged into the void.