Brett Battles - Exit 9

“Hey, did you see this?” Red called out.

He was back near the slope they’d just taken.

Ash put the phone back in his pack. “What is it?”

“Looks like boot prints. Couldn’t have been made too long ago. They aren’t filled with snow yet.”

Though they’d hit some storms further south in Canada, the weather reports Gagnon had pulled together indicated that Yanok Island, a thousand miles to the north, had not experienced the same. The forecast did predict that was soon to change.

“Which way were they headed?”

“Can’t tell.” Red stopped and leaned down. “What’s this?”

Ash and Chloe moved next to him for a closer look.

There was a five-inch-wide band of puncture marks in the ice that came out from under a pile of snow next to the boot prints and headed north.

“That pile doesn’t look natural to me,” Chloe said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Ash agreed.

Using the entrenching tool that had been strapped to his pack, Ash broke off some of the looser pieces of the pile and shoved them to the side. The other two joined in. After a few minutes, they stopped.

“What the hell is this doing here?” Chloe asked.

Under the pile of snow was a highly modified motorcycle with metal-studded tires.

“Yellow team’s,” Ash said as way of explanation.

Before leaving the Ranch, he had been fully briefed on all aspects of the missing team’s mission, including what gear they’d brought.

He knelt down and took a closer look at the ground around where the bike had been buried. It was possible that yellow team ditched its cycle and covered it up, but he was sure that wasn’t the case. Yellow team had consisted of only two men. By his count, there were at least five distinct sets of boot prints surrounding the pile.

No, yellow team hadn’t done this. Someone else had. Someone who didn’t want the motorcycle to be seen again.

They followed the tire tracks to a rocky overhang that had been walled off with tarps and snow. What they discovered inside left Ash with zero doubt that Bluebird was located on Yanok Island.

It was the yellow team’s camp, and it had been deserted in a hurry.

They put Gagnon into a sleeping bag on one of the cots first, then did a thorough search. Food and weapons and sleeping bags and spare clothes were all still there.

“No radio,” Red said.

Ash scanned the room again. Red was right.

“If I was trying to get out of here fast,” Chloe said, “that’s the only thing I would grab.”

“The question is, why leave in a hurry?” Ash said.

No response was necessary. They were all thinking the same thing.

“See if there’s any kind of journal or notes anywhere,” Ash said.

He stepped back outside and took another look around. Unlike near the buried motorcycle, there weren’t a lot of boot prints. More likely than not, Bluebird hadn’t even looked for the camp. And why would they? They had everything they wanted-the boat, radio, and codes they’d obviously learned from the yellow team that had allowed them to send the false messages to the Ranch.

Back inside, he found Red and Chloe looking at a map of the island spread across one of the open sleeping bags. Though identical to the one they’d brought with them, it had seen considerably more use.

Ash knelt down beside them.

“This mark right here,” Red said, pointing at a blue circle on the map. “That’s where we are. Which puts us about three miles from them.” He moved his finger to the north end of the island, and tapped on the words BRULE INSTITUTE OUTPOST.

A gust of wind whipped past the opening, blowing in some snow. Chloe walked quickly over and pulled down on the tarp rigged to fully enclose the shelter. Using two rocks on the ground, she anchored the bottom so the covering wouldn’t flap around.

“Not exactly a pleasure walk,” Ash said to Red.

“Hence the motorcycle.”

“We don’t have that option.” Ash stood up. He could see the weariness in the others’ faces, and knew his looked the same. His initial plan had been to get as close to the outpost as possible after Gagnon dropped them off. The crash and subsequent hike threw a wrench in that. “A few hours’ sleep. No more. Then Chloe, you and I pay our Project Eden friends a visit.”

I.D. MINUS 12 HOURS 14 MINUTES

LOCAL TIME 10:46 PM

The mood at the Ranch was somber. Billy might have been a disagreeable sort at times, but his heart had always been in the right place, and he’d been part of the team trying to stop the Project since early on. In his role as doctor, he had treated nearly everyone there, so in one way or another, he had touched all of their lives.

That, of course, was not to diminish the loss of Karen Pruitt. She had also been a valuable team member, and there were those at the Ranch who had been very close to her.

But for Matt, losing Billy was like losing a brother. It was simply…inconceivable.

If not for the fact the day they had been both fighting against was looming, he would have been sitting alone in his room, numb to everything around him. He couldn’t afford that now. None of them could.

At the moment, there were teams all around the world trying to find ways of stopping, or, at the very least, limiting the damage from the plague the Project was about to unleash. Which was why Matt was in the communications room, monitoring events. But even knowing that automated shipping containers were one way the virus would be spread, his people were having very little luck finding them. Jordan had been able to track down a handful, but it was just a drop in the ocean. The containment, if that was even possible, would only be a moral victory at most.

“What’s the latest on Ash’s team?” Matt asked.

The man assigned to monitor the Arctic mission was Oscar Guerrero. “The last report was that Pax’s group had already been taken to Amund Ringnes Island, and that Ash and his group were about to leave for Yanok. We should be getting another report at any time.”

“Let me know as soon as that happens.”

“Yes, sir.”

Matt doubted Ash would even find Bluebird, let alone get inside and do something to stop Implementation Day, but he hoped, oh God, he hoped. It was, after all, the only way the coming hell could be avoided.

“Matt?”

He turned and found Jordan standing a few feet away, a closed laptop in his hand by his hip. If anyone had taken Billy’s death harder than Matt, it was Jordan. He clearly felt responsible since he was the one who had found the container. Matt had told him he had nothing to do with Billy’s and Karen’s deaths, that finding the container had been vitally important. It didn’t seem to help.

But now, Jordan looked different, almost excited.

“What’s up?”

Jordan took a hesitant step forward. “I think I might have figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“How they’re distributing everything.”

“We already know it’s the containers, at least in part.”

“No, no. I mean who .”

“Who?”

“The front.”

Matt stared at him.

“Here. Let me show you.”

Jordan set his laptop on Matt’s desk. As soon as it was open, a web browser page appeared for Hidde-Kel, the company whose factory the container that killed Billy had come from.

“We already know Hidde-Kel’s the front,” Matt said.

“Not the front. A front. I know how we can identify the others.”

He brought up a new page. It was a map of an area surrounded by four rivers.

“Recognize it?” Jordan asked.

“No.”

“There are hundreds of variations, so that’s understandable. This is Eden.”