He continued her thought an instant later. “—air. All of it designed by wannabe demigods at the helm.”
Wilma didn’t agree with his generalized assessment of Edison, but she wasn’t about to correct him. Or disagree. Ever. “I’m afraid their food stores are useless.”
“Assuming it has spread, which, based on everything we now know, it must have.”
“No wonder they were desperate.”
“Desperate people make desperate mistakes,” Craven said.
“Especially when their idea of heaven caves in around their feet.”
“Fortunately for us.”
The bloody visuals from earlier came roaring back into her mind, driving the words out of her mouth before she could stop them. “And then Fletcher came along.”
“A necessary and glorious bastard,” he said. “The perfect weapon in an imperfect world.”
“They never stood a chance,” she said, thinking about the women and children that had been mowed down with vengeance.
Craven opened the notebook again, this time flipping through the second half of the pages with his thumb one at a time. “I don’t care how many search parties you send out, if you don’t account for the uncertainty principle in all things organic, then—”
“—you lose containment,” she added, wondering if he’d now offer up a remark about the unexpected creation and subsequent escape of the females.
Wilma waited for it, but Craven said nothing, only leaning the book her way.
She now had a direct view of a hand-drawn schematic involving a square object with wires leading away from it. The notes below it were written in cursive—not printed like the others.
He laughed. “So close, yet so far.”
She knew what he meant. “That confirms what Heston told us.”
“Which until now, I found hard to believe.”
Wilma couldn’t disagree even though she wished she could. “No wonder Nirvana was willing to trade so much for those identical panes of glass.”
“Baseline testing is all about quality control,” Craven said, pausing. “The question is—”
“—is this Edison’s or Morse’s genius?” she asked before he could finish his sentence.
“My guess—they were both involved.”
“Is this what you were hoping for?”
“Actually, it’s far better, assuming I choose to believe these efficiency numbers. Good God, Wilma. They hit a homerun with this tech. Imagine what else we’ll find inside these walls.”
She pointed to the right side of the page, just beyond the sketch of the window, where a set of thin lines had been drawn horizontally and spaced evenly apart. There were also wave guides drawn in next to them, with arrows leading to and from a triangle object drawn in the corner. “Looks like nano layers, with some kind of prism technique.”
“To split the wavelengths,” Craven said in a level tone, spacing his words out as if his mind was intent on releasing them one at a time. “Clever.”
“They must have figured out how to harvest more of the spectrum than we ever thought possible.”
“Otherwise, why go through all the trouble?”
“They’ve been very busy men,” Wilma said.
“Were—very busy men.”
“The same could be said for the rest, sir,” she replied as another twinge of pain slammed into her chest.
She walked next to Craven, paying close attention to her body language, not wanting him to see what she was really feeling inside. It was all about maintaining appearances. At all costs. He needed to remain confident and certain in his trust for her.
Everything she had become the past ten years came down to a single decision she’d made long ago. The one in which she’d picked a side and committed herself to this man and his mission.
Some might think she had a maniacal side, but it was more about the sheer lack of options in the new Frozen World. Back then, Frost was an easy ‘no.’ And now, after what she’d seen today, her decision to forgo Edison’s camp was also the right move as well.
She rolled her eyes at herself. Sometimes you just get lucky, making the right decision for the wrong reasons, even if you hate that choice every minute of every day.
Craven stopped a few steps later and shook his head. “Doesn’t appear to be here.”
“Then it must be in another lab somewhere.”
“Looks like we have more exploring to do.”
“While we’re at it, we need to start thinking about devising a counteragent.”
Craven paused before answering. “Otherwise, whatever got loose here will find its way to us.”
“Yes, sir. Exactly what I was thinking.”
“Then perhaps it wasn’t the best decision to barge in here after the others left.”
“We couldn’t have known, sir.”
“Just goes to show you, Rice. No matter how smart you are or how well you plan, sometimes you end up a little overconfident in your read on things.”
She wasn’t sure whether he was referring to her loyalty or the fact that he had misjudged the aftermath of Fletcher’s attack and the value of the silo’s tech. “None of us are perfect, sir. But we’ll figure it out. We always do.”
CHAPTER 38
“All right, break time is over,” Krista said to her group, putting two fingers into her mouth and sending out a whistle in a short, high-pitched blast.
She put her arm up and made a circle gesture with her hand. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
One of her security team members led Horton and Scab girl from the trees lining the gulley to her right, taking a path to the second vehicle.
“Thanks for the consideration,” Horton said as he walked by. “Everyone needs a little privacy now and then.”
Krista didn’t respond, only giving him a cursory head nod. For some reason the bearded man thought it necessary to give the girl with whip marks across her back some privacy when she did her business.
The ‘consideration,’ as Horton had called it, seemed out of place. Modesty or shyness or whatever it was called didn’t seem to fit what Krista thought the Scabs were all about.
Then again, maybe Nomad had tamed them in some way when they were all shacked up in his hideout doing God knew what.
“I’m glad we stopped. He’s a lot calmer now,” Summer said, walking up and kneeling to pet Sergeant Barkley. “Aren’t you, boy?”
“That’s good, because I was just about done with all that drooling and jumping around. You really need to keep him under control.”
“I know. I’m trying. But he’s probably not a big fan of long trips. You know, all the strange smells of the forest and being cooped up and all.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” Lipton added, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He held up a stub of what he had been eating. “At least this jerky was edible.”
“Well, it wasn’t jerky,” Simms said as he walked up to Krista. “Repairs almost complete, boss.”
“What was it?” Krista asked.
“Some kind of carriage bolt. Big sucker.”
“At least it’s fixed.”