The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) (17 page)

YOU HAVE SERVED OUR PURPOSE

WE MUST APOLOGIZE

“Apologize? For what?”

THIS IS GOING TO HURT

At that moment, Yang burst into the room, knocking the door off its hinge, laser drawn. “I’m sorry, sir. Braybrook’s orders. Stop this conversation,” he said.

Shaw looked down at the sphere, which suddenly felt lighter in his hand.

It was shrinking, the blue text fading. Shaw reached out to grab it, but before he could reach it, he felt a sting in his fingers. The steely black on his fingers for the last few days was changing. It looked wet, alive with motion, like an oil inkblot on water. And it spread.

Dread washed over him. He knew what was coming next.

The pain shot through his arm. He felt his body double over, and suddenly he was on the floor. He could barely open his eyes through the pain and the tears, but he saw Yang’s feet at his side, a tipped chair leg, his arm growing black. It was a cruel repeat of the morning of the raid. But he knew this time it was different.

Shaw cried out as the blackness overtook him. For Ellie, for the child he’d only known about for an hour, and for this sudden, unexpected, and painful end.

Shaw’s nervous system shut down, encased in deadly black nanobots.

He was dead thirty long and painful seconds later.

Shaw’s blackened body was still in the hotel when dawn touched the windowsills. The Geneva
Sûreté
came and went, and came and went. They scraped his fingers, getting a sample of the nanoshock. They shook their heads—they had never seen a nanoshock with a delayed reaction. It had been days since it was administered, and only now it reactivates? What kind of signal had it received? They’d never seen anything like it.

Yang remained in the room, despite the best efforts of the
Sûreté
to coax him out. There was only one dead body in the room, but Yang looked like a second.

A Swiss medical team came to remove the body and transport it to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where the Air Force would send him back to the States. Under Yang’s watchful eye they carefully zipped him into a black bag and carried the body down the switchbacks of the staircase, finally loading the body onto a stretcher.

Yang followed and climbed in the back of the van after they’d loaded the body, ignoring the looks that were exchanged.

During the drive to Ramstein, Yang called Braybrook, who confirmed that there was a plane waiting. The plane was not taking Shaw back home to St. Louis, but rather to D.C.

The President herself had ordered the White House flag to half-mast. And after giving her condolences to Ellie Shaw, together they had agreed that Shaw deserved a burial in Arlington National Cemetery, instead of the usual cremation. The President had also cancelled D.C.’s rain on the day of the funeral.

Yang volunteered to accompany the body to D.C., and Braybrook consented.

Once at Ramstein, an Air Force coroner and an Army funeral director unzipped the black bag and looked over Shaw’s body.

“No smell,” the coroner said.

The funeral director bent closer and sniffed. “Nothing. That which killed him, also embalmed him.” He grunted. “Let’s hope this new shock isn’t a trend. Any more people die from it, and I’m out of a job.”

The coroner took his own sample of the nanoshock from Shaw’s fingers and put it in a test tube.

With Yang’s help, they placed Shaw into a casket. A true pine box, the height of luxury. Yang watched the lid swing shut, Shaw’s blackened face getting darker and darker, until it had disappeared. Two brass handles turned, locking it tight. A color guard presented colors, draping thirteen stripes and fifty-three stars over the casket.

The casket was the sole piece of cargo. Carried up the gaping rear exit of the cargo plane, it looked like a small minnow in the belly of a monstrous whale. The door slowly closed, the hydraulics masked by the sound of bagpipes.

Yang found the captain of the plane and relayed his orders. He joined the small crew, and within a few minutes they were airborne, on their way to D.C.

Yang stayed in the cargo hold as long as he could, but eventually the cold got to him, and he returned to his seat up front.

One of the men from the front of the plane came to sit with him.

“Will you be the one going after these terrorists?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my call.”

“You want to be, though. Don’t you?”

Yang met his eye. “More than anything.”

“Maybe they’ll let you.”

“I doubt it. They know what state I’m in. I’ll be put on leave and spend most of it with a mandatory counselor while they put someone else on the job.”

“Maybe. Or maybe no one will take it, because they’re all afraid of being targeted. Or of having a sphere show up on their desk.”

“What would be so bad about that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Can you imagine—the whole world watching while you talk to these guys?”

“I wouldn’t give them the chance. I would have thrown that thing out the window.”

“To be sure. Who knows what you might get to thinking.”

Yang looked at him, confused.

“I mean, I know they’re terrorists and all, but you have to grant that they made some good points, you know? So my sister, her first husband used to jump—”

“You’re being serious?” Yang asked. “You really think we’d be better off without the Lattice?”

“No, no, of course not. I just … They made some … good points. Things that made you stop and think. That’s all I’m trying to say. I don’t think we should get rid of it—of course not.”

Yang stared at him. He eventually got up and went back to Shaw’s casket. No one approached him for the remainder of the flight.

By the time they had landed in D.C. at Andrews Air Base, it was late afternoon. Shaw’s parents were waiting to greet the plane, and only after the casket had been moved to a small room for them to view it did Yang leave its side.

Davis and Ita Shaw hung back at first. Ita was the first to approach, her hand brushing the casket edge tenderly.

“It’s our boy,” she whispered.

Davis Shaw went to her, and hugged her tightly. Looking over her shoulder, he stared at the stars on the flag that draped the casket. “Damn Democrats. Adding Bermuda as a state to stack the Senate.”

Ita pushed him away. “For Pete’s sake, Davis, no politics now.” She was crying hard, but then she saw he was too, and they hugged again.

“I can’t think about what’s underneath that flag, Ita.”

“I know. I can’t either.”

“He thought the Lattice had saved his life … if I hadn’t been in the State Department … if I hadn’t put him in danger … maybe he wouldn’t have been in this job—”

“No! You can’t think like that. He never wanted to do anything else. It’s not your fault.”

They stayed together in silence. “I can’t stay any longer,” Davis said. “Tomorrow’s going to be hard enough.”

They left, and the room lights went off after a few seconds. There was no motion or heat to keep them on.

Two hours later, Ellie Shaw opened the door and the lights blinked back on. She looked out into the hall, “I want to do this on my own.”

She walked to the casket and put her hand on it. Her face was red, her cheeks tender and puffy. Turning around, Ellie pulled up a chair. “I brought you something, By. You never got to find out. The doctors checked … it’s a girl, By. We’re having a daughter.”

She got no response, and Ellie sat in silence. She had already cried enough.

The lights stayed on, due to her heat alone, but she never moved.

After almost an hour had passed, a woman a few years young than Ellie poked her head in the back door.

She rapped softly on the door, and Ellie looked up.

“Did you want some company?”

Ellie shook her head and stood. “I was just getting ready to leave. Where’s Mom?”

“She went back to the hotel,” Marianne said.

Ellie nodded as if she’d expected that. “Thank you for waiting.”

“Did you still want to see Byron’s parents?”

“If they’re up for it. It will be easier than seeing them for the first time during the ceremony, right?”

“If
they’re
up for it? How about you? Are you up for it?”

“They’ll appreciate hearing about By.”

Marianne started to tear up. “You don’t have to always be the strong one, you know. If you need to just start crying or flying into a rage or whatever … whatever
you
need. I want to be here for you.”

“You
are
here for me.”

“I’m always crying on your shoulder, let me be that shoulder for you.” Marianne hugged her sister tightly.

“You are,” Ellie said, stroking Marianne’s short hair. “I’m so glad you’re here with me through this. There’s a gaping hole on the inside. It’s like I don’t even know what grief looks like from where I am.”

“I know what you’re going through.”

“You promised not to—”

“I
didn’t
jump. I promised you, and I won’t. But it’s hard not to hear—the feeds, you know. They say you hate the Lattice, that you wish—”

“I know what they say. Trust me. That’s why I wanted you to promise not to jump. I want at least one person left in the world who doesn’t know my inner-most thoughts.”

“But if everyone knows them, stop holding them in, Ellie! You’ll feel better if you just let it all out.”

Ellie shook her head. “Some things need to be worked out in private. Even if everyone is watching.”

They left, and the small room went quiet again. A body in a casket, a flag, a few slim chairs. It was entirely still.

There were no windows to track the passage of the night but it was morning when a color guard entered the room. The men and women lifted the casket and carried it to a waiting hearse just outside.

Surrounded by lights and sirens, the hearse was escorted out of Andrews and slowly into D.C. The motorcade wound its way around the Capitol and along the Mall. Eventually, they crossed the Potomac on the Arlington Memorial Bridge and entered the cemetery.

The entire Memorial Amphitheater was filled. Ellie and her family and Davis and Ita Shaw had a place of honor on the stage, surrounded by rows of generals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President, as well as Zella Galway, Grace Williams and her partner Nosipho, Shigeo Iwatani, Alex Pajitnov of L.R.I., and Lysandra Cunningham from T-Six.

Everyone in the amphitheater was standing when the hearse arrived. The color guard brought the casket to the center of the auditorium, and the funeral began.

Marc Braybrook spoke briefly and introduced the President, who gave the formal eulogy. As she spoke, Ellie listened—her face a mask—while Davis held his wife’s shoulder as she wept.

Eventually it was over. The music played, the mourners filed away. The honor guard carried the casket across the amphitheater, trailed by Ellie and the family. An open grave waited near the Challenger shuttle crew memorial and the memorial for the soldiers killed during the Las Vegas attack.

It was an area “reserved for honored men and women who died in the line of duty during peacetime,” the President had said during her remarks. A “martyr,” she had called Shaw.

Ever so slowly the casket was lowered into the grave. Rifles were fired, roses were tossed, and the first shovel-full of dirt was thrown over the casket.

Ellie was crying, though not sobbing, and Marianne was at her side. Together they left the grave. Braybrook left, so did some of Shaw’s old friends. Eventually Davis and Ita Shaw did too. Yang was the last to leave.

A grounds crew finished filling the hole, compacting the loose dirt on top of the casket, six feet under the ground.

By then, night had fallen. The lights throughout the cemetery pushed shadows across the tombstones. Everything was silent and still.

Below ground, Shaw’s body was still black from the nanoshock, and still just as dead as he’d been fifty-five hours earlier in Geneva when it had attacked every nerve cell in his body.

He was dead when the edge of his casket squeaked.

He was dead when the side paneling was pulled off the casket.

He was dead when four hands pulled him out of the casket and replaced his body with a clone—a lifeless clone, to be certain, but a perfect clone nonetheless.

He was dead when the casket was repaired, and the dirt was slowly repacked against it as the narrow tunnel was refilled.

He was dead when a man’s hands pulled out a black pad, another nanoshock. The hands touched Shaw’s blackened fingertips to the shock.

There was silence. Shaw’s body started changing from its steel black to an inky moving surface. Soon his whole body was swirling black.

“I hope we were in time,” a voice said.

That
Shaw heard. Before he started to scream.

There was terrible pain again, but it was different this time. It was the pain of a dead leg having blood course through it again, but everywhere. Every nerve in his body coming back alive. His fingertips were screaming, his lips, his dick, his brain.
Oh God
how his brain hurt. When he wasn’t screaming, it felt like he was going to break his teeth, he was grinding them together so hard.

Finally, after how long he couldn’t have guessed, the pain began to fade. Or maybe he was just adjusting to it. There was something else there now. He could feel hands on his arms, and a flickering light against his eyelids.

“Don’t rush it, Byron,” he heard. “Take as much time as you need.” It was a man’s voice. No—a boy’s voice? He wasn’t sure.

“Not exactly. He needs to be able to move in two hours,” another voice said. Definitely a man that time.

“That’s longer than anyone else has taken.”

“No one else has been under for more than fifty hours. I told Wulf we should have waited until he was back from Europe.”

“You heard what he said. Shaw was too close to tracing us. We had to take him early.”

Shaw wanted to shout out, but he couldn’t even grunt or gurgle. He tried to open his eyes, but his lids were lead, as if fighting to stay dreaming. But he wasn’t dreaming, he was awake. How was he awake? Alive?