Chapter 46

The conversation with Kai left Kurt with a dilemma. He and Joe had come here with a rather limited set of goals centered on gathering enough evidence to prove to the world that Vaughn was cloning humans, imprisoning them, and subjecting them to barbaric experiments. But the revelations he’d seen in Kai’s artwork, accompanied by the knowledge that the sea locusts were rampaging across the ocean toward various shores, changed the equation. The fact that Priya had been joined with Vaughn’s machine complicated the matter further.

Truth was that their options were limited. Without the helicopter, or the speedy ribbed inflatable, escaping the island was unlikely, not with Vaughn alerted to their presence and a fleet of drones and patrol boats at his disposal. And that meant they needed to take action here and now. But the question was: How?

According to satellite data, Rudi and Yaeger estimated that Vaughn had barracks and housing for two hundred people on the far side of the island. Even if that number was divided up between clones being used in the experiments, science, and support staff, and then the cruel brothers and other paramilitary forces keeping everyone in line, they would easily be facing a hundred men at arms, plus drones and whatever other robotic nightmare machines Vaughn had dreamed up to keep himself safe.

Adding to the danger was the idea that TAU was at the hub of all these things, both machine and human. If one drone or one of the linked humans spotted them, all of them would know instantly where the attack was coming from.

TAU and Vaughn had achieved the desire of every field marshal and five-star general since the beginning of time: the ability to see the battlefield from a god’s-eye view, knowing everything that was going on in every corner of the landscape, instantly and at all moments.

Hiding around a corner did no good if a camera or a drone spotted you. Killing a sentry before he sounded an alarm was of little use if his eyes caught sight of you as he dropped. Even the instant elimination of a lookout or guard would set off alarm bells as the man’s consciousness went offline.

Viewed like this, the task was worse than a long shot. One with a foregone and disastrous conclusion.

Their only real advantage lay with Priya: the Gray Witch. “If I go to the other side of the island, will the Gray Witch be able to conceal me from TAU?”

“She might,” Kai said. “But the Overseer and his men are beyond her reach. She cannot blind them. Only the machines.”

That might explain Vaughn’s preference for keeping a group of mercenaries around, Kurt thought.

“What will you do?” Kai asked.

Kurt was a fairly accomplished chess player. He’d even matched skills against an adversary or two on dangerous missions in the past. He’d learned there were really only two ways to win at chess. The most common was to maneuver until your opponent made a mistake; at that point one could press and press and press until they managed to take enough pieces to make it impossible for their opponent to mount a proper defense. The other route to victory was to execute a proper gambit. A high-risk move that usually went directly for the king.

Outnumbered, outgunned, and with no safe way off the island, Kurt figured their only hope was to risk everything in a gambit of their own. Vaughn himself had to be the target. But it meant getting into his stronghold. “I’ll go after Vaughn. If we take him, his machine will leave us alone.”

Kai seemed to accept this. “We will join you,” she declared. “We have been waiting all our lives to strike back. It’s our turn to draw blood.”

“You can’t think about it like that,” Kurt said. “It’s not revenge.”

“For us, it is,” she said. “Vaughn and TAU have tortured us. They’ve used us. They’ve killed many of our kind. And now those of us who remain live in hunger and wait to die. There’s not enough food on this side of the island for everyone. Only small creatures and fruits and the eggs of birds. Before, we could catch fish, but now the spiders came and the patrol boats. The people would rather fight than starve. Who has a greater right to revenge than us?”

Kurt couldn’t deny that. But he wasn’t interested in drafting her tribe for a suicide mission. Bows and spears never fared well against firearms.

“You have to make your own decisions,” Kurt said. “But don’t throw your lives away.”

Kai stared at him. Her hard eyes and her bony face offering a dangerous and haunted look. Kurt found her to be inscrutable and fierce.

Before either of them could say any more, the sound of an argument in the outside hall demanded their attention.

Kai grabbed the knife as a number of challenges and responses were shouted.

Kurt tensed for action as the outer curtain was pulled aside. He relaxed as the inner curtain flew open and Joe entered with the two men who’d been assigned to guard him. He carried what looked like rolled-up posters or charts in his hand. His “assistants” carried wooden boxes and flanked him on either side.

Kai’s chamber guards rushed in behind them, one of them complaining, the other apologizing for the disturbance. Kai held up a hand as if to say it was all right.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Joe said, “but I found some things that might help us get off the island.” He unrolled the charts and began papering the floor with them. “Tunnels, tunnels, and more tunnels,” he said as the blueprints landed beside one another. “They lead out to the coastline in several places. And if the inventory count is accurate, there are several inflatable boats stored in one of the caves on the western side.”

“Interesting,” Kurt said. “Unfortunately, we probably need to do more than plot our escape.”

“Ah,” Joe said, holding up a finger as if he’d predicted just that. “In which case, I present what we found behind door number two.”

Joe turned to his helpers, who placed the boxes down, opened the lids, and then carefully tilted them forward, as if they were showing gifts to the sultan. Instead of gold and jewels, they were filled with gray plastic tubes. Bright orange labels slapped on each tube suggested they should be handled with care.

Kurt noticed the letters ONC , which stood for “octanitrocubane,” an explosive nearly twice as powerful as C4. “Explosives.”

Joe nodded. “An entire vault filled with them. Enough to blow half this island right back into the sea.”