Do No Evil (Aeon Trilogy Book 2)

Chapter 21

Laura turned her attention from the farm house's interior to its exterior. One moment it was there. The next it turned into a cloud of debris as the hypersonic tungsten rod scored a direct hit on it. The view through Sarah's eyes instantly turned to static.

Laura let out a sigh of relief and turned to Kobus. "Halfway there," she said. "Thirty seconds to impact in Washington, D.C."

***

"It's not me," blurted Nick. "Someone cut us off from the outside!" Even as he spoke, the connection to Chengwen's body suddenly disappeared, and the scene projected onto the central holovision in the control room turned to static.

"Disconnect yourself now!" barked Jaeger, gesturing with his pistol to the network cable plugged into Nick's skull.

Nick reached behind his head and quickly unplugged the cable. Losing access to the ether again felt like losing a lobe of his brain. But it was better than having Jaeger shoot him. "I'm off!" he said, raising his hands.

Jaeger turned to the technician who was cycling through a holographic display to Nick's right. "What happened?"

"I don't know, sir," said the technician, without raising his eyes from the display.

"Find out!" screamed Jaeger. "Don't let Lal touch anything," he added.

In a moment, two guards had grabbled Nick by his upper arms and dragged him away from the console. One of them reached up to the base of Nick's skull, and he knew that the man was deactivating his MindWave.

Nick's mind was racing. Laura must have done it, he thought. If she was capable of everything else she'd done, she was also capable of shutting down this facility's communications. She would be trying urgently to prevent them from sharing the information that could prevent the war she wanted so badly.

But why? Even if every means of communications in this facility was blocked, Jaeger must be able to walk outside and contact the government from another location. The war was imminent, but surely not so imminent that Laura could gain by delaying Jaeger's ability to contact his superiors by a few minutes. Unless...

Nick felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. No, she couldn't be doing that! And yet now he finally understood that Laura was capable of doing anything.

"General, it's Laura!" he cried. "She must have launched some kind physical attack on us!"

"Physical attack? What do you mean?" demanded Jaeger, whirling back towards Nick, pistol still drawn.

"It's the only thing that makes sense. She must seen that we were on the brink of preventing the war that she wants so badly. She let us keep talking to each other as long as we wanted because it kept us distracted, even as she deactivated all of our other communications. Her plan only makes sense if she's going to destroy this facility within a few minutes, before we have a chance to share what we've learned," explained Nick breathlessly.

Jaeger paused, and for the first time Nick had ever seen, wore a look of surprise and indecision on his face.

The expression vanished in an instant.

Jaeger's eyes refocused on Nick. "Get connected again and get our communications back up." He turned to Hank, who was standing by his side. "Sound the general alarm. And then get your ass to the surface and run to the Pentagon as fast as you can. Tell them what you've seen here."

As a siren started blaring and the aide departed, Jaeger turned to one of the guards standing next to Nick. "Wyatt, save the conversation we just had to a data crystal and then get your ass to the Pentagon as well."