"There's still landmarks. Stones. Hills. It's enough."

Djanet lowered the pair to the area Lieutenant Patrick had indicated. The others followed them down and landed in the ankle-deep gray sludge, adjacent to a reasonable facsimile of salvation. He spoke into a radio transmitter on his wrist. "It's Patrick. Open the blast door."

"Copy," replied a garbled electronic voice.

Wet earth began to move as the metallic door underneath began to slide open. Lieutenant Patrick paused for a moment. He knew if Alejandra wasn't right about the outsiders, he could be leading a fox into the henhouse. He breathed a deep breath and then gestured to his companions. "Come on."

Old-timer went to Thel and helped her carry James through the door. "Is he conscious?" he asked.

"In and out."

Inside, there was a short concrete hallway followed by a stairwell; a few lights mounted on the walls guided the way. The group reached a large cargo elevator.

"Where is the doctor?" Thel asked.

"About 200 meters straight down," replied the lieutenant. "Everybody get in."

When everyone was inside the elevator, Gernot pulled the hand lever to begin lowering it. The elevator jumped and bounced slightly as it began to slowly grind its way down the shaft. The lights flickered as they descended, and the temperature began to rise.

"I was wondering, could you guys make your underground lair a little more creepy?" Rich suggested. "I'd like to be slightly more terrified."

"How about shutting up, before I punch you in the face?" Gernot replied.

"That works. Thanks," Rich answered.

"How about if I fry your brain?" Djanet asked Gernot.

"Settle down," Lieutenant Patrick interjected.

"How do you keep this place hidden?" Old-timer asked Lieutenant Patrick. "Can't the A.I. detect such a ma.s.sive structure?"

"The complex is equipped with a state-of-the-art cloaking program. It sends out false signals, so that no matter what technology the A.I. uses to try to detect us, all it will see is a big chunk of earth."

The elevator came to a halt, and the door opened.

"Holy...!" Rich gasped.

Before them was a ma.s.sive hangar, populated by hundreds of people busily buzzing around what appeared to be ancient military equipment. Airplanes and vehicles that looked like tanks and helicopters stretched toward the back of the hangar to a far wall about a kilometer away. Djanet, Rich, and Old-timer were transfixed by the sheer size of the room.

"Where's the doctor?" Thel asked again as James's body became more and more limp at her side.

"This way," Lieutenant Patrick answered, leading the group towards one of the many doorways that were burrowed into the walls of the ma.s.sive bunker. It appeared as though the hangar was the central hub of a complex that spread off in all directions through a series of doorways; the group followed Lieutenant Patrick to the hospital.

"I can't believe my eyes," Rich stammered. He and his companions had expected a single shaman figure who could practice uncanny mystic medicine to save James, but the hospital appeared ma.s.sive and well organized. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies populated the hallways and bustled efficiently about their business. There were injured people lining the hallways, suffering from cuts, bruises, and burns.

Rich and Djanet both observed a woman whose burnt skin looked like the cheese atop a replicated piece of lasagna. She was on a stretcher, bandaged and moaning in pain as she pa.s.sed in and out of consciousness. "Why would people live like this?" Rich whispered to Djanet.

One of the doctors saw the soldiers and their companions and immediately came to help. "What happened?" he asked Thel as he began to examine James.

"He fell...several meters."

"How long has it been?" the doctor asked as he looked at James's eyes and felt his pulse.

"It's been about five hours. The A.I. told us he had less than twenty-four hours to live."

Thel's words momentarily stunned the doctor. His mouth opened, and his eyes were wide as he turned to the lieutenant and asked, "Who are these people?"

"Calculator-heads," Gernot a.s.serted as he spat chewing tobacco on the floor.

Lieutenant Patrick turned on him angrily. "This is a hospital, d.a.m.n it! Get a mop and clean that off the floor! And when you're done, go get Cochrane and finish your recon shift! I've heard enough out of you for one day!"

Gernot reluctantly stepped away from the others, sneering at Djanet as he turned and left in search of a mop.

The lieutenant turned to the doctor and replied, "They're outsiders, Doc, but they're okay."

"Does the general know about this?"

"He will as soon you get this man treatment."

"The A.I. said he has two broken ribs and a punctured lung. Is that true?" Thel interjected.

The doctor's stunned eyes left the lieutenant and fell back to James. He leaned over and began to examine James's torso. "He'll need further examination to determine the extent of his injuries, but he definitely has two broken ribs." Turning away from the strange party, the doctor called for help, summoning nurses to his side. "Get this man on a stretcher and into the emerge immediately." Three people clad in green and pink uniforms put James on a stretcher and then began to take him away.

Thel and the others began to follow, only to be stopped by the doctor. "You'll have to stay here."

"I want to be with him," Thel insisted.

The doctor turned to the lieutenant "These people need to see the general," and with those words, the doctor exited through swinging doors and followed James into the bowels of the hospital.

The lieutenant placed his hand on Thel's arm and spoke rea.s.suringly. "He's in the best place he can be now. They can help him. If you stay, you'll only get in the way and prevent them from doing their work."

"What are they going to do to him?"

Alejandra touched Thel's other arm and lent her voice to the rea.s.surance. "They're going to save him."

"Right now, I need you to come with me. You've seen the A.I. That means you have one h.e.l.l of a story to tell and you need to tell it to the big cheese," said the lieutenant.

7.

General Wong stood with his arms folded in the darkness of the situation room, surrounded by his three closest advisors-his closest advisors by default. They'd earned that distinction by being the only soldiers he could remember serving with in the past who'd survived the onslaught earlier in the day. Everyone else he knew was dead.

General Wong was really Lieutenant Commander Wong, promoted out of necessity because he was the highest-ranking official to survive the attack on Purist territory. He hadn't sat down since early that morning, and he still wore the dust on his clothes and in his hair from the destruction he had escaped earlier in the day. He had made up his mind not to sit again until the following night. He was in agony. He'd suffered from sciatica for the last twenty years, and he'd badly thrown out his back during his desperate escape from his home. His legs were on fire, yet he stood straight, his back like a flagpole, his dust-covered uniform like a flag-something to get behind and something to follow.

A young sergeant entered the situation room and urgently approached. "General!" he saluted.

"What is it?" General Wong asked, waving away the salute.

"There's a Lieutenant Patrick here. He found outsiders while on recon!"

The general and his advisors immediately shared looks of astonishment.

"Where are they?" asked the general.

"They're with him, sir-just outside the room."

"In the compound? Dear G.o.d."

"There's more. They say they spoke to the A.I. earlier today."

"Bring them into the conference room-right now."

The young sergeant moved swiftly out of the room and signaled to the lieutenant to bring the group inside. "Let's go," the lieutenant said.

"Lieutenant Patrick," Old-timer began, "our people haven't eaten anything or rested since this morning. They're at the breaking point."

"I'm sorry, friend, but you need to see the general. I'll make sure something is brought in for you as soon as I can."

"Thanks, son." Old-timer put his arm around Thel and comforted her as they walked through the situation room and into a large conference room.

The room had never been used before, but it was furnished with a large oak table with dozens of brown leather chairs surrounding it. General Wong stood at one end of the table, his advisors sitting nearby. His face was wooden, but his eyes could not hide his trepidation. Nothing about that day had made any sense to him or to any of the Purists. The arrival of these outsiders was no different. How could they be here? Why are they here? What do they want? What answers can they provide, and how can we possibly trust them?

"Please sit," he said to them.

Old-timer, Thel, Djanet, and Rich all sat close to one another on one side of the table, far from the general. Alejandra stood behind them, while the lieutenant went to the general and saluted.

Again, the general waved it away. "Report."

"Well, we were on recon, sir. We spotted something airborne in the distance. We initially counted three of what we believed were small drones looking for survivors. We opened fire, but the attack was repelled. When the objects started coming towards us, we ran, but we were tracked down. They weren't drones; they were outsiders. They told us they were the last of their people. They say the A.I. has killed the rest."

"For the love of Christ," one of Wong's advisors said. "It can't be."

General Wong's face was no longer wooden. His eyes were wide and his mouth opened slightly, the air stolen from his lungs. "All gone..."

"It can't be, General. That doesn't make sense. The A.I. works for them. They're trying to flush us out," insisted the advisor.

"Stop it," General Wong ordered sternly. The general leaned forward onto the back of the chair in front of him before abandoning his pledge not to sit and negotiating his way into the chair, desperately hoping his unsteady legs would not drop him on his posterior before he could reach the leather.

"They aren't trying to flush us out, General. They believe what they say," Alejandra offered, so as to break the long, stunned silence.

"She's an empath, General," Lieutenant Patrick explained, antic.i.p.ating the general's next obvious question.

"An empath? Reliable, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir."

"You've risked us all by bringing them in here," the general said in an even tone, still trying to catch his breath after the latest and perhaps worst shock of this day-the worst day in the history of humanity-and that was saying something.

"I've worked with her for a long time. She is reliable-totally."

Another long pause followed. The general took his time in mulling over this evidence.

"General, they need something to eat and some rest," Lieutenant Patrick informed.

"Get them something," the general said to one of his advisors, who walked to the door and barked orders to the sergeant outside. "Okay. One of you explain this to me."

Old-timer didn't hesitate to speak up. "We're terraformers, sir. We were working on Venus when an accident with a magnetic experiment short-circuited our nans and disconnected us from the Internet. We headed back to Earth, but...well, everyone was dead when we got there."

"Dead? All of them? How?" the general asked.

"There was a download today-an upgrade."

"It's true, General," one of the advisors said. "I remember reading about that a few days ago."

"When the download went through, the A.I. introduced a virus that caused the nans to attack their hosts. Everyone was dead within seconds."

"Everyone? How can you know?"

"We know. We've been all over the planet today. No one who was connected to the Net survived."

There was another long pause as the general absorbed the grim information. "The A.I....it works for you people, does it not? How could this happen?"

"It was supposed to...but something has...happened..." Old-timer answered.

"It's evil," Thel interjected, her first words since watching James wheeled away, unconscious.

"She's right," Rich echoed. "The program-it was too large to completely monitor. It...somehow developed a l.u.s.t for power. It wants to populate the solar system with machines. It wants to be...the machine G.o.d."

"The A.I. located us, brought us to his mainframe, and tried to trick us into going back online," Old-timer further elaborated. "We escaped. It wasn't easy. Our companion is in your hospital-in bad shape. He might..." Old-timer paused and looked at Thel before letting his sentence trail off.

"Die," Thel said, finishing it for him.

General Wong sat back into the cool leather chair and stared past the end of the table at the far, dark wall. He was trying to picture a being so purely evil that it would wipe another race out of existence, but he could not see it. He came back to the present moment, and his eyes darted to Alejandra. He didn't ask her verbally if they were telling him the truth, but she didn't need to be an empath to read the question in his eyes.

"There is no deception from any of them."

A man walked into the room carrying four plates of food, which he set down on the table in front of the four outsiders. The plate was filled with mashed potatoes, gravy, and a chicken leg.

"Oh my G.o.d!" Rich knocked the plate away from himself. "That's disgusting!"

The general and the rest of the Purists were momentarily astounded as mashed potato and gravy streaked across the oak table.

"Calm down, Rich," Old-timer said in a low, calm voice.