Patrick Lee - The Breach

Yet beyond the rage, their actions were surprisingly normal. Nothing about them suggested that they were controlled like mindless puppets, or even reduced to some animalistic state of mind. Not even close. They were just extremely pissed-off people focused on a target. Their minds were, if anything, clearer for the adrenaline rush. As Travis watched, two of them conferred and then one took out a set of car keys and tried to pick the cage's lock with it.

The man in the cage only stared at the horde around him, rattled by the experience but not at all surprised. Like a marine biologist in a shark cage.

Travis's eyes went back to the seats and the three people who remained in them. They were the farthest three from the cage. The farthest from the orange cube. As if the thing had a radius of influence, and they were just outside of it. One of the three looked up, his eyes drawn to someone out of frame. He nodded in response to something he was told, then stood, and took a single step toward the cage. His eyes hardened. His jaw tightened. A second later he was sprinting toward it, crashing into it with the rest of the throng.

The video ended.

Travis stared at the blank screen a moment, then met Paige's eyes.

"What's the write-up on that one?" he said. "Pisses people off like nobody's business?"

"It does something to the R-complex," she said. "The reptile foundation of the human brain, where the fight-or-flight response comes from. Where rage comes from. The cube does two things. First, it tags anyone within a couple feet of itself as a target. Then it affects everyone within another twenty feet beyond that, maxing their aggression and turning them inward against the target."

"Bet someone at Border Town learned that the hard way," Travis said.

Paige nodded, looking away. Travis didn't bother her for the details.

"Anything nice ever come out of the Breach?" he said. "Instant puppy generator, something like that?"

Paige managed a smile. "It's not all bad. We survive the next thirty-six hours, I'll show you some of the good stuff." Somewhere over Greenland, Travis reclined his seat and tried to rest. He was asleep within minutes.

Paige watched him.

After a moment she felt self-conscious and looked away, even though there was no one else in the room to see her.

She didn't trust what she felt about him. There was every reason not to; her feelings were exaggerated all to hell right now. The guy had saved her from the worst thing she'd ever endured-had literally come in with guns blazing-and then carried her over fifteen miles to safety. Her memories of the journey out of the mountains, early on before she'd gone completely comatose, comprised a vignette of little waking moments. Coming to in his arms, being carried like a child. A big part of her had hated that feeling: being unable to stand up for herself after years of training her body to military-specialist standards. But here was the thing, and there was no getting around it: being carried had also felt good. Irrationally good, on some primal level that was all about vulnerability and security. He'd simply made her feel safe.

And then she'd kissed him. Jesus, why had she done that? There'd been no real need for it; he'd already been faking it well enough, as far as the chopper was concerned. Looking back, she wished she could write the moment off to her delirium, but in fact she'd felt pretty damn awake at that time. Rotor wash made for an effective alarm clock.

She glanced at him again. Sound asleep, sunlight across his chest, the shadows of folds in his shirt sliding back and forth as he breathed.

No, she definitely didn't trust her feelings. A few hours earlier, when she'd seen his life history on the screen of her PDA, she'd taken it like a kick to the stomach, and then had immediately found herself rationalizing, finding ways to cut him slack, to not blame him for what he'd done-for what he'd been-in his distant past. It was a wonder she hadn't said it all out loud and made an ass of herself in front of her people.

All this, superimposed over the thing she wasn't dealing with at all.

Her father.

Even now, she hadn't cried. Not since her initial reaction in the clearing. She'd tried. Tried to get there, to at least accept that it had really happened, if nothing else. So far, it hadn't worked. It was still too big, too close-she couldn't get a sense of where its edges were.

It would happen in its time. It seemed there was no forcing it.

For now, she thought she could use some sleep of her own. She stood and left the room to find a place by herself. Travis felt someone shake his shoulder. Had he even slept? It hardly felt like it. He opened his eyes to find Paige standing over him, haloed by the ceiling lights of the little room. Outside was darkness, broken every few seconds by the pulse of the aircraft's starboard beacon.

"Wheels down in five," Paige said.

Travis nodded. She left the room to speak to someone in the hallway.

The plane banked steeply, offering a view of its destination: Switzerland's Meiringen Air Force Base, its runway threaded tightly between mountain ridges in a way that was uncomfortably familiar.

Ten minutes later Travis stepped out of the plane's tarmac-level exit into crisp air, the stars hard and bright above the mountains.

A tandem-rotor helicopter-a Chinook, he thought it was called-waited with its turbines already whining at idle. The team transferred the gear, and within five minutes they were airborne again, moving north over the high country toward Zurich, and whatever waited at 7 Theaterstrasse.

Zurich was close to what Travis had pictured. He sat beside Paige in the last SUV of the motorcade winding its way down into the heart of the city. Under the black sky, the clean lines of centuries-old architecture descended in fractured order to the river. Ahead and below, a fog bank had settled over the low-lying blocks that flanked the waterfront. Gray specters of mist drifted along the deepest streets of the city. The motorcade descended into the fog just before swinging left onto Theaterstrasse.

Ahead and to the right, rising straight from the water, was the only nine-story building for several blocks. Paige and the others in the vehicle reacted to the sight of it, if only in subtle ways. Hands unconsciously tightened the clasps of Kevlar armor. Gripped the stocks and barrel guards of rifles. Drummed on armrests.

The detachment operators had put on their gear aboard the Chinook. Travis hadn't asked if they'd brought a set for him. They had. In addition to the Kevlar, he now wore a tiny comm unit in his ear: a microphone and receiver that were always on and linked to the rest of the team. They'd given him a gun, too. A rifle identical to theirs. Identical to the one he'd already killed with, while kneeling over a muddy hole in Alaska.

Paige called Border Town on her cell for an update. She'd done this every five minutes since they'd touched down at Meiringen. Right now there was an AWACS aircraft making broad circles thirty thousand feet above Zurich. Six attack helicopters were staged in parking lots along the ridges east and west of town. Farther out, F-18s orbited, ready to kill any unauthorized thing that came within fifty miles of the city on wings or rotors. Every traffic camera for miles had specially filtered lenses that reduced windshield glare and allowed high-res facial imaging of vehicle occupants at night. These cams were all networked to a system that could recognize Aaron Pilgrim and several of his known allies. If they did, three detachments from Tangent's Berlin hub were standing by in the city, ready to move against them.

None of it reassured Paige, Travis saw. Rock, paper, scissors. On the outside, the building was beautiful. Ancient stone facade rearing up to the sky. Cobblestone approach. Wrought-iron fence gleaming in the mist, its sheen catching the city lights through the fog.