Mark Alpert - Extinction

Layla was scuttling on her elbows and knees when she banged her head against a sheet-metal panel in front of her. After a few seconds of disorientation, she ran her hands along the walls and realized she’d come to a T-junction. One branch of the duct extended to her right and the other to her left, and they seemed to be exactly the same size. She couldn’t tell which branch the schoolboys had chosen, right or left. She held her breath and listened again, but she couldn’t hear a damn thing. At the same time, she realized with alarm that she hadn’t heard any gunshots for the past half-minute or so. Her heart pounded as she imagined Wen Hao sprawled on the floor beside the server racks, with the blank-faced Modules standing over him. She felt a surge of rage and an almost overwhelming desire to return to the computer room with her pistol blazing. But a moment later she finally did hear another distant exchange of gunfire. Wen was still alive. He might be doomed, but he wasn’t dead yet. And as the echoes of the gunshots faded away she recognized another sound, the familiar high-pitched keening of the schoolboys. It came from the duct branching off to the left.

She scrambled as fast as she could in that direction. Soon she heard the boys’ cries quite clearly. Thank God for their healthy lungs. The ventilation system was louder here, and the warm air blew fiercely through the duct, buffeting Layla from behind. Worse, the metal walls in this branch were hot enough to burn her elbows and knees. But she kept pushing forward, moving toward the crying boys. After a few seconds she saw a glimmer of daylight reflected off the sheet metal. Up ahead, the duct turned to the right, and the light grew stronger as Layla approached the bend. Then she turned the corner and saw the outlet vent, a large bright square covered with a crosshatched grate. Two small figures huddled in front of the vent, both clutching the grate as they stared desperately at the world outside.

Layla called out “Hey!” as she crawled toward the boys. They spun around, terrified, and howled even louder. They kept screaming even after she came close enough for them to recognize her. But somehow Layla knew what to do. Thinking of her father, she yelled, “ Quiet! ” in the firmest, most commanding voice she could manage. And though the boys didn’t understand a word of English, they fell silent. Then Layla said in a gentler tone, “Let me through,” and the boys moved aside so she could examine the grate.

The crosshatched grille was held in place by four nuts and bolts, and under ordinary circumstances it would’ve been impossible to loosen them without a pair of pliers. But whoever installed this vent hadn’t applied any paint to the fittings. Exposed to large quantities of warm, moist air, the grate and its bolts had become mottled with rust. Layla braced herself against the duct’s hot walls and started kicking the vent with all her might. She slammed Wen Hao’s cheap running shoes against the metal grille, over and over again. After a full minute of strenuous effort, the grate gave way.

The schoolboys rushed for the opening, but Layla yelled, “Stop!” in her commanding voice and they froze. Then she cautiously peered outside. The vent was on a mountainside, as she’d expected, and the slope was rocky and steep. Directly opposite was another mountainside, less steep and much greener, and at the bottom of the ravine between the mountains was a slender brown river. The morning sun shone on the opposite mountain, but the river was still in shadow, which meant they were on the eastern side of the ravine. Layla looked to the north and south but didn’t see any signs of civilization; the mountain range went on for miles in both directions. But to the north she spied a footpath carved into the slope. It was narrow and studded with rocks and Layla didn’t know how far it went, but right now it was her best option. She needed to get far away from the Operations Center and hike to some village or town where she could hide the children. If she was lucky, she’d find a grandmotherly type who would take pity on the schoolboys and offer them shelter without asking too many questions. Then Layla would figure out a way to alert the world to the existence of Supreme Harmony.

She put on her down jacket and stuffed the pistol in one of the pockets. Then she pointed to the jackets that the boys had cast aside in the duct. “Take them with you,” she ordered. “You might need them later.”

Again, the boys followed her instructions, which were so simple they didn’t need translating. Then Layla grasped their hands and set out for the footpath. The slope was treacherous, covered with small sliding rocks, so she walked slowly and concentrated on keeping the boys steady. For a moment she thought of Wen Hao, who was almost certainly dead by now. The most important thing, he’d told her, was the safety of the children. She gripped their hands a little tighter and took another step.

Supreme Harmony observed a conference room in the building called Huairentang—“The Palace Steeped in Compassion.” This was the highest seat of power in the People’s Republic, the equivalent of America’s White House or Russia’s Kremlin. Located in a walled compound just west of Beijing’s Forbidden City, Huairentang was the home of the Politburo Standing Committee, the nine elderly men who’d risen to the top of the Communist Party hierarchy. They sat at a long mahogany table covered with porcelain tea sets. Also attending the meeting was Module 73—formerly Deng Guoming, the minister of State Security—who sat at the foot of the table. He wasn’t a member of the Standing Committee, but he’d been invited to this emergency meeting to discuss the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam.

It was late, well past midnight, more than sixteen hours after the dam gave way. The committee members, usually so crisp and confident in their identical black suits, seemed tense and haggard. Supreme Harmony ordered Module 73 to adopt the same attitude, which was enhanced by the thick bandages wrapped around his head. The Module had told the Standing Committee that he’d had a minor accident while coordinating his ministry’s investigation at the site of the ruptured dam. In reality, the Module had never left Beijing and wore the bandages to conceal the fresh stitches in his shaved scalp. But his fabricated story had evidently impressed the committee members, who kept glancing at his head.

The network directed Module 73 to focus on the general secretary, the most powerful man in the room, who sat at the head of the table. Seventy years old, he had a square, serious face and a full head of thick hair, dyed black. By all accounts, he was a competent statesman with above-average intelligence and a cautious nature, but his term as China’s paramount leader was nearing its end. He was in the process of handing over his leadership positions to the vice president, a sixty-year-old man who wasn’t as intelligent or careful. Because the government was in transition, several other committee members had already switched their allegiances to the vice president, but Supreme Harmony didn’t know the details of the shifting alliances. The inner workings of the Standing Committee weren’t described in any document stored on the government’s servers, so the network had to rely instead on its observations of the committee members and its general knowledge of human behavior. Fortunately, this knowledge had increased exponentially over the past few days.

The meeting started with a report from Zhu Qiang, the committee member who oversaw all of China’s law-enforcement agencies. Because Zhu was Module 73’s superior in the hierarchy, Supreme Harmony paid special attention to the man. In a somber voice he told the committee about the devastation in the Yangtze floodplain, lowering his head as he delivered the bleak reports from the cities of Yichang, Wuhan, and Nanjing.