“That’s the single most relevant question you’ve asked me since you walked into this laboratory. Andrea has ordered a full relocation. As soon as I have this node disassembled, I’ll be making my way to a rendezvous point in Zeebrugge. You’ll report to another location, though you’ll need to speak with Andrea to find out where.”
“I’ll do that.” I stood to leave but stopped and looked around the lab. Blood stained the floor near the door, and six bodies were stacked neatly against the wall. “Thomas, you’re not alone here, are you? What if there’s another attack before you get the node out of here?”
“Just because you can’t see my defenses doesn’t mean I don’t have them. They caught me napping last time, but that won’t happen again.”
He didn’t elaborate, but he sounded confident. I took it at face value and went back out into the hall. A broken proxy was slumped against the wall. Half of its head was missing, and beneath the shattered polymer faceplate I could see the metal latticework of its skull. I knelt and tilted its chin up with my knuckle. Only one of its seven eyes still had a lens in the socket. It reflected a dim red glow where the light hit it at just the right angle.
I called Andrea on my dataspike.
“Tycho.” She sounded relieved. “Thank you for helping my mother. She’s alive, thanks to you.” It was the only time I heard her refer to Samara Markov that way.
“Of course. I’m just sorry Katerina got away from me.”
“That can’t be helped now. The mistake was mine for underestimating her.”
“Did Thomas tell you about her dead drop?”
“Yes, and that’s one of the reasons we’re abandoning this facility. There’s no way to know what else she installed here. Anyway, give me your sitrep. What do we need to clean up topside?”
“Well, I spotted Katerina in the hotel lobby and gave chase. We entered the street and she veered into the road. StateSec intervened and tried to arrest me.”
“You didn’t kill any officers, did you?”
“No, I didn’t have a gun. I just—”
“You went after Katerina without a weapon?”
“No, I had a pipe.”
“Do you realize you’re mortal? How many officers were on scene?”
“Not too many. Sixteen or so.”
“Oh, only sixteen?”
“Yeah. They tried to arrest me, and that’s when Katerina got away.”
“Alright. You need to get out of Bruges sooner than later. We’ll get any warrants closed, but you’ll need to avoid public travel. They’ll be watching for you everywhere.”
“Where am I going?”
“Lambda site, but I want you to make your way out of Bruges tonight. Pack a five-day bag and take a car from upstairs. Understood?”
“Copy. I have one more question, though. Did we take any casualties?”
“Nine of our support staff, yes, but you mean the field team? No, no one from the field team. We wiped out the attacking force to the last man, but the Eleven won’t give up. For all we know, they may have another unit in place already or assets within law enforcement, so don’t get stopped on your way out of Bruges.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Tycho?”
“Yes?”
“Destroy this dataspike. I’ll contact you again at the rendezvous.”
21
Lambda Site was the designation for the port of Dunkirk, on the northern coast of France. Despite the dark, I kept the viewscreens inside the car on streetview during the entire drive, watching for StateSec or any signs of a tail. For the most part, I was alone on the road, and the car sped through the night passing only the occasional late-night traveler.
I entered Dunkirk an hour after leaving Bruges. I rerouted the car when it neared the port, directing it to take me a kilometer down the road to park in a charging station. The fuel cells were barely drained, but if anyone checked the tags, a vehicle registered in a city some distance away wouldn’t seem out of place there.
I walked the rest of the way to Lambda Site. The early-morning air carried the bite of approaching winter, and I turned up my collar against the chill wind. Dunkirk was a fairly typical port city, active at all hours of the day to process the endless flow of goods from the north. As I approached the port, I saw dozens of crews operating articulated loaders and towering androids processing shipment inspections. Drones gilded silently overhead, feeding data to dockmasters in the control tower. Autonomous vehicles of all sizes weaved around and through shipping containers and dockworkers to retrieve or deliver payloads of shipments and supplies.
Though it meant more eyes to see me—both human and synthetic—the chaos would serve my purposes well. I was just another figure among the many.
I entered Warehouse 03 and approached the service kiosk. It presented a spartan interface with just two fields—one for a company name and one for a tracking code. The company was always the same for terrestrial caches like this. I pulled off a glove and typed PYRPHOROS INC. then the twenty-eight-digit ID. It’d been a struggle to commit that to memory, but thankfully my tired mind hadn’t made a mistake and the kiosk beeped with a message to Please Wait.
A mechanized arm suspended from a system of rails along the ceiling descended a few moments later, placing a shipping case less than a foot wide in any dimension on the floor in front of me. It was sealed, the tamper indicator across the seams still whole. I took the box and walked back outside, deciding it would be best to check the contents somewhere busy than not. Obfuscation through visibility, as it was explained to me.
An android lumbered past as I walked to one side of the warehouse. Close up, I was able to truly appreciate the size of the thing. It was six meters tall, spindly, and carrying two shipping containers on its shoulders as though they were nothing. Its footfalls barely made a sound. Though there wasn’t any reason to, I waited until the thing was a good distance away before opening the case in my hands.
Inside was a metal cylinder and a flat rectangular card with a faint seam running across the short length of its face. Looking closer at the card, it appeared to be wax, but the seam struck me as odd. I gave it a tentative flex, and the wax broke away to reveal a thin polymer chit with numbered instructions printed on it. I brushed away the remnants of the wax and ran through the list.
1) Destroy all electronic devices. Remove all identifiable clothing and pocket litter.
2) Board ship in Berth 9.
3) Proceed to 65°45'00"N 1°42'08"E. Activate beacon on arrival.
4) Dive to 30m upon clearance.
It stood to reason the metal cylinder was the beacon it mentioned. One end was rounded, and the other flat. I could make out small ridges around the flat end and a fine, hairline seam all the way around. I placed the card and beacon in my coat pocket, latched the case shut, and walked back to my car.
The coordinates were in the middle of the Norwegian Sea. That was likely why Dunkirk was designated as Lambda Site in the first place; there was no shortage of seafaring craft. I left the box in the car and set it to return to Bruges. I watched the car pull away and disappear into the city, then walked to the marina in search of Berth 9.