Mark Alpert - Extinction

Wen grabbed Layla’s arm and tried to pull her to her feet, but she slipped out of his grasp and bolted from her chair. She dashed to the other side of the room and scanned the floor, wildly looking under all the chairs and terminals. She got down on her hands and knees and searched every corner, but the floor was spotless. Then the Module in the corridor pounded the door again, and Layla could feel the linoleum tiles shiver underneath her.

And then she saw it. A folded piece of yellow paper, no bigger than a postage stamp, wedged beneath one of the legs of a nearby chair. She dove for the grimy thing, picked it up and unfolded it. Written on it in red pencil were four Mandarin characters, followed by six digits.

Triumphant, she jumped to her feet. Holding the paper high in the air, she ran back to Wen and the computer terminal. But before she could get there, the screen went black. All the terminals and servers abruptly stopped humming. Then the lights went out.

Supreme Harmony observed the U-shaped notch in the Three Gorges Dam. Module 83, the pilot of the China Explorer , steered the cruise boat into this notch, which was the upstream entrance to the ship lift. Just ahead, a narrow waterway led to a huge steel trough, one hundred meters long and twenty meters wide. The cruise boat was supposed to glide into this water-filled trough, which was poised to lower the boat to the downriver stretch of the Yangtze. But the China Explorer would never get that far.

As the boat entered the notch in the dam, Module 83 threw the engine into reverse and then cut the power, stopping the vessel dead in the water. At the same time, Modules 84 and 85, who stood on the starboard side of the upper deck, tossed a rope toward the concrete wall that formed the right edge of the notch’s U. The Modules looped the rope around an iron cleat embedded in the concrete. Then, aided by Modules 86, 87, and 88, they pulled on the rope until the thin fiberglass hull of the China Explorer touched the wall. Because all the dynamite was loaded on the boat’s starboard side, the sixty tons of high explosive were now just centimeters away from the dam’s concrete backbone. And because Supreme Harmony had incorporated most of the guards stationed in this section of the structure, no one sounded the alarm. The Three Gorges Dam was utterly tranquil until the moment Module 83 pressed the detonator.

Supreme Harmony braced itself for the pain. The six Modules on the China Explorer died instantly, but the Modules serving as guards lived a few seconds longer. The explosion rocked the dam and set off the secondary charges planted in the control shafts. Great billows of flame erupted along the whole length of the structure. A jolt of agony coursed through the network at the instant each Module died, followed by a sickening numbness. But the sacrifice was worthwhile. Although Supreme Harmony lost fourteen of its Modules in less than ten seconds, the loss to the human race would be significantly greater.

One of the survivors was Module 96, formerly known as Xi Keqiang, the commander of the dam’s security force. He stood on a hilltop overlooking the Yangtze River, and through his ocular cameras and retinal implants Supreme Harmony observed the breach. The central section of the dam collapsed first. Huge slabs of fractured concrete broke off the top of the structure and fell to the spillway one hundred and seventy-five meters below. Then the water from the reservoir began to pour through the gap. The breach seemed small at first, just a thin waterfall, but the flow quickly intensified. The concrete crumbled at the edges of the gap, torn from the dam by the pressure of the rushing water, and soon the waterfall became a roaring cascade. Pulled by gravity and current, the trillion-gallon reservoir leaned its full weight against the dam, knocking down the sections on either side of the spillway. A sodden mountain of silt slid over the precipice, and then the water rushed downstream at full force, deluging the docks and roads on the riverbanks.

Supreme Harmony ordered Module 96 to turn his head to the east. Below the dam, the Yangtze passed through the Xiling Gorge, a zigzagging stretch of river bounded on both sides by steep cliffs. The gorge acted like a sluice, funneling the floodwaters into a narrow channel. Supreme Harmony knew what would happen next because it had seen the computer simulations: A wall of water more than fifty meters high would rush downriver, furiously building speed until it reached the eastern end of the gorge, thirty-five kilometers away. Then the flood would release its fury on the first piece of flat ground it encountered, the broad floodplain occupied by the city of Yichang.

Jim and Kirsten switched seats before their truck reached the front of the line at the police checkpoint. Clambering awkwardly in the cramped cab, Jim slid to the right while Kirsten took the driver’s seat. She tore the bandage off the underside of her chin, then removed her bloodstained blouse, pulling it over her head. Underneath, she wore a black bra with lacy curlicues on the B cups. Jim stared at it for a couple of seconds too long, then raised his eyes to meet Kirsten’s. “Do you want to wear my T-shirt?” he offered.

She shook her head. “No, then they’ll see where the prosthesis attaches to your shoulder. Speaking of which, you better hide your right hand. I can see the metal in your knuckles where the skin scraped off.”

“So you’re, uh, not going to wear anything over the bra?”

She shrugged. “It’s less suspicious than the bloodstains. And take a look at those cops over there. They’re young guys, full of hormones.”

Jim looked at the police officers at the checkpoint. Two of them were talking to the driver of a van at the front of the line. Both cops were in their twenties and had greasy black hair and long sideburns under their officer caps. They clearly weren’t Modules. Four more officers from the Yichang Public Security Bureau leaned against a pair of patrol cars parked on the left shoulder of the road. Three of them seemed to be taking a break, drinking tea from Styrofoam cups, while the fourth—an older, fatter man in a police sergeant’s uniform—appeared to be supervising the operation. These four officers weren’t Modules, either, but Jim noticed that the sergeant was studying a printed flyer in his hand. His eyes darted back and forth, checking the faces of the drivers against the photographs on the flyer.

Jim frowned. “It’s like I said. Supreme Harmony is giving orders to the local police. The Guoanbu probably sent those flyers to every Public Security Bureau in the country.”

“That’s why I’m going shirtless. If those cops have my picture, I want them to look at something besides my face.” She looked down at her chest, then turned back to Jim and smiled. “It worked on you, didn’t it? I saw you staring at my boobs.”

“Well, sure, but I was…”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. It would be better if you pretended to be asleep. Pull down the brim of your cap and slump over in your seat. I’ll take care of this.”

Obediently, Jim leaned to the right and let his head fall forward, tucking his chin into his chest. Then he slipped his right hand between his thighs so the police officers wouldn’t see his mechanical fingers, which were gripping the handle of his Glock. He hoped that Kirsten’s plan worked, but he was ready if it didn’t.

After a couple of minutes they pulled up to the front of the line. Straining his eyes to the left and peeking through his half-closed lids, Jim saw one of the younger cops approach the truck’s driver-side door. Kirsten cheerfully called out a greeting through the open window, “Ni hao!” She spoke the Southwestern Mandarin dialect she’d learned from her parents, who—Jim remembered now—had immigrated from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province. In other words, she sounded like a local. She talked to the cop in the rapid-fire Hubei patois, and although Jim understood Mandarin pretty well, he could barely keep up with her.