The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

her spine. They were standing atop a nine-story building filled with armed, trained killers. If even those on the nearest floor were affected—
    “Oh my God,” she whispered. She steadied her microphone beside her mouth, caught her breath and said, “All teams, get out of the building, right now. Run.”
    But even she had to know it was too late. In the darkness around them, the LED indicators on the hanging circuit boards began flashing a manic rhythm. The trap was already springing. A second later, the orange light ahead of them flared bright, just as it had done in the video. Then brighter. So much brighter it lit the room, revealed it as daylight would have. A basketball-court-sized space, mostly empty, strung with spiderwebs of circuitry here and there.
    Travis grabbed her arm, spun her toward the double doors and the landing beyond, and sprinted, dragging her until she caught her balance and ran with him.
    “Where are we going?” Paige said.
    “The eighth floor windows over the river. I hope you can swim.”
    “Are you fucking insane?”
    “Insane problem, insane solution.”
    They passed through the doorframe, sidestepped the nuke and took the stairs two at a time, slowing only as they reached the tangle of wires halfway down the flight.
    Just below them, the stairwell thundered with running footsteps. But were the footsteps going down, or coming up? There wasn’t time to judge it.
    Travis reached the bottom of the flight, Paige just a step behind him. Tunnels among the wiring branched in five directions; he didn’t know which one led to the river overlook. Paige did. She took the lead, and he followed, close, stooping in the low passageway. The pounding on the steps still gave no clue as to its direction.
    They’d gone thirty feet through the tunnel when a voice spoke in their ears.
    “This is Haslett. I just got outside the main exit. I think we better get everyone back to their positions.”
    Paige stopped. Travis pulled up just short of crashing into her. Behind him, the clamor of footsteps on the stairs went silent.
    Paige steadied herself and spoke. “Status, all report. Are you guys affected or not?”
    A jumble of calm responses came back over the line, the comm system cutting out most of them. But Travis heard enough to know they were fine. Paige turned in the tunnel, faced him, looking as confused as he felt.
    “Maybe it didn’t reach far enough,” she said.
    Haslett responded. “No, I think it reached too far. I think it just tagged us as targets, the same as you.”
    “What are you talking about?” Paige said.
    “Look out the window,” Haslett said. “All teams back to positions, right now. Sorry to countermand you, Miss Campbell.”
    The footsteps resumed on the stairs, definitely coming upward now.
    Paige met Travis’s eyes a moment longer, then turned and covered the last forty feet to the nearest set of windows, at an open corner looking out over the river in one direction and the city in another. Over her shoulder, Travis saw what was happening even as he stopped.
    Paige said nothing. There was no expression for it.
    In every building they could see, the dim glow of flashlights had vanished from the windows. That was because the flashlights were coming out through the street-level exits now, their beams stabbing wildly through the fog as their owners ran. Ran toward 7 Theaterstrasse. Travis’s eyes trailed up along the river, and he saw the same thing happening, block after block, as far as he could see. All the way to E41, two miles away, where every pair of headlights had just swung off onto the surface streets, and were coming this way at full speed.
     
    VERSE VAN OCTOBER NIGHT IN 1992
     
    Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Chase strains at the binds any longer. Both appear resigned to what is going to happen to them, and Travis hates them all the more for it. He wants them to be afraid, as he knows Emily must have been before she died.
    The mad blue and red pulses of police flashers rim the plantation shutters. They’ve made no move to come in yet. A bullhorn has been chattering on and off for the past ten minutes, and three times the phone has rung for thirty seconds or more, but Travis has paid no attention.
    Neither has he spoken to his parents.
    It is this simple: he wants them to sit here waiting to die.
    He wants them to feel what Emily felt, and he wants them to feel it for as long as possible before he kills them. The last thing they will ever hear will be the