Patrick Lee - The Breach

"I'm more open-minded today than I was yesterday," Travis said.

Several more seconds passed as Paige considered what to say next. Travis could see the gleam of sunlight off the chrome handlebars of the ATVs.

"Have you ever heard something described as the strangest thing in the world?" Paige said. "A two-headed snake, a potato chip that looks like George Washington, something like that?"

"Sure," Travis said.

"Even in strict scientific terms, with no hyperbole, the Breach is the strangest thing in the world." She thought for a moment, then went on. "It's a source. A technology source. We get things from it. I know that's vague, but I can't say it more clearly. Not just because it'd be an act of treason, but because you'd never believe me unless you were standing right in front of it, seeing it for yourself."

Travis saw her draw the rifle tightly into her shoulder, her left eye narrowing down the sight line. The riders were still well over five hundred yards out, too far for guaranteed kill shots. Travis was about to suggest that when they came into range, he take the left rider and Paige take the right, when her rifle cracked, a mini thunderclap in the stillness. The left rider jerked-Travis saw blood in the center of his chest-and pitched sideways, pulling the handlebars so tightly to the right that the machine jackknifed, flipped and threw him like a crash-test dummy. Which, by that point, he essentially was. Before he landed, Paige fired again, and the second rider's head vanished above the jaw. He stayed on his quad for another five seconds, then tipped straight backward and fell off. The machine rolled thirty yards farther, throttling down to idle, and then just sat there growling.

Travis turned to her, saw her staring at the kills, her eyes hard and-if he was reading them right-unsatisfied with her work.

"I'm better with a scope," she said.

She leaned the rifle against the tree, turned, and went to a pile of the hostiles' gear in the middle of the camp. Within a few seconds she'd pushed aside their belongings-among them a little dirt-crusted shovel-to reveal a steel plate on the ground, eighteen by eighteen inches and half an inch thick. She lifted it with her good arm and let it fall flat on its other side, exposing beneath it a leg-wide hole in the dirt. Its bottom was too deep for Travis to see from his angle.

What caught his eye first was a disturbance to the plate's underside: dark blue corrosion, and a just-visible bulge where the metal had spanned the hole in the ground. Exposure damage, caused by whatever lay unseen at the bottom.

"Any piece of technology we get from the Breach is called an entity," Paige said. "This one is designated Whisper, and it's dangerous as hell. The man who sent these contractors wants control of it. If he succeeds…" She paused, looked at Travis, then shook off whatever she was thinking, and knelt over the hole. "He can't succeed. It's that simple."

She reached deep into the hole, almost to her shoulder, and lifted out a fist-sized object, perfectly round, its surface a dark, iridescent blue Travis was sure he'd never seen before.

The object from the hinged steel cube aboard the 747.

For a moment Paige gazed at it with a mix of revulsion and fear, as if it were a spent fuel rod saturating her bones with lethal rads. Then she narrowed her eyes and seemed to focus past the irrational feeling.

Travis sensed that whatever danger this thing posed wasn't as simple as any physical risk from holding it. Not directly, anyway.

He lifted his gaze from the thing and met Paige's eyes.

"Are you saying the Breach is a lab?" he said. "Some place where we build things like this?"

She shook her head. "It's not a lab. And we didn't build this thing."

"We as in Americans?" Travis said.

"We as in people."

She held his stare a few seconds longer, then stooped and picked up the shovel from the hostiles' gear.

Travis continued staring at her, replaying her last sentence in all its gravity.

Standing, Paige said, "Do me a favor. The thing the other two went to retrieve from the plane looks like an inch of clear tape. It's very important. It's the key that switches the Whisper on. They'll have it with them now. Get it, while I bury this where their backup won't find it."

"We're not bringing it with us?" Travis said.

"We'd never make it. The Whisper's too dangerous without containment. But we can bring the key. All that matters now is keeping these people from recovering both, and contacting Tangent as soon as we can."

With that she turned away, Whisper and shovel in hand, and left the clearing through the trees on the far side.

Travis watched after her a moment, listening to her footsteps recede across the forest floor. Then he headed toward the distant ATVs. He'd gone only a few paces from the camp when he heard the hostiles' satellite phone begin ringing behind him. An hour later they were two valleys away, racing north through one leg of the long and snaking course he'd quickly mapped. Paige was seated in front of him on the quad, boxed in by his arms as he held the handlebars. She'd grown steadily weaker as they'd prepared to leave-the result, she said, of the interrogator's drug wearing off. That and three days of zero sleep catching up. Travis couldn't see her eyes now, but at times her body went slack and leaned back against him before she jostled awake again.

However long it took the hostiles' backup to reach the camp, it wouldn't be long afterward before they noticed a quad missing. At that point, a glance at a map would leave no doubt as to the direction their prey had gone. Coldfoot was the only way out, and there were only so many paths by which to reach it.

Travis kept the ATV on hard ground that took no imprint from the tires, and did his best to avoid the snowfields.

Darkness over LaGuardia. Dawn at the horizon, cherry red like a heated wire. Karl watched the world come to life, the hotel room dark around him. His reflection in the windowpane, side lit by the bathroom light, stared back with its visible eye blue and cold.

Twenty-five minutes to takeoff. He had all the time in the world. Nobody would make him wait in line.

Not when he was wearing the suit.

It lay in two halves on the chair beside him. He felt for the bottom half, found it, sat on the bed and pulled it over his jeans until he felt the built-in feet, like the feet of a child's pajamas, snug tightly around his shoes. He found the shoulder straps and secured them. He reached for the chair again, felt for the suit's top half, and slipped it on as he stood. He smoothed its long hem, which overlapped the waist of the bottom half by a foot or more. The material, so unlike anything else he'd ever worn, was hard to get used to, even after all his experience with it. It felt like spandex in a way, matching every dimension of his six-foot frame, but at the same time it seemed almost relaxed. At least, relaxed was the closest term he had for it. It was also breathable like the screen of a tent, and nearly weightless. On a previous occasion he'd worn it for more than forty-eight hours straight without any discomfort, even from the portions that covered his hands and head. Though he'd never asked his employers about it-not that they knew any better than him how the thing worked, considering where it had come from-he felt sure that the suit's perfect fit resulted from some narrow intelligence of the material itself. Even now he felt the suit taking the shape of his body until he could hardly tell he was wearing it. It would not be surprising, of course, to learn that the suit had intelligence built into it. It would also not be its most impressive attribute. Not by a long shot.

Karl checked the peephole, saw that the hallway was clear, and left the room. He passed by the elevator bank, opting for the stairwell-elevators were a no-no, of course. Five flights down, he put his face to the little window in the door that accessed the lobby. It was empty except for two girls at the front desk, thirty feet away.