The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

arranged.
    “Everything the Whisper’s ever done,” he said, “since the day it came out of the Breach in 1989, has been part of the act. Hasn’t it?”
    She nodded against his chest. “I think so.”
    “The notion that it’s compelled to help you at first, and then it tries to take over your will after that, it’s all bullshit. It can do anything it wants to do, anytime. Nothing compels it. Nothing limits it. All that stuff was just a smokescreen so it could control the way people handled it. Up in Alaska, when it used me to try setting off a nuclear war, it seemed to fail because Pilgrim’s people in the helicopter showed up too soon. Are you buying that for a second? The thing can predict a mega lotto outcome years in advance, but not the arrival of a helicopter a few minutes out? Something a radar tech with a stopwatch could probably figure out in his head?”
    “Strikes me as a little inconsistent,” Paige whispered.
    “It was keeping up appearances,” he said. “Playing the role a little longer. Every move it’s made, from the moment it arrived in this world, has been to steer things to exactly where they are right now. Do you see the problem with that?”
    “That twenty years is a long damn time for something that powerful to spend reaching its goal?”
    “Exactly,” he said. “If all it wants is control of Border Town and the Breach, it could’ve gotten it almost on day one. It could’ve just played nice, right from the beginning, won everybody over, and then as soon as the right person was holding it, someone with access to any of the really destructive shit locked away in this building, it could’ve used that person as a puppet to kill everyone here. Just like that. So what the hell is it really after? What’s far enough out of its reach, that it’s taken all these years, and all this elaborate planning?”
    For a moment she didn’t reply. Then her forehead furrowed against his skin.
    “What if it’s after something that wasn’t available until now?” she said.
    Travis thought about that. It sounded right. A hell of a lot better than what he had, which was nothing.
    “Like a new entity?” he said. “Something that would’ve just arrived?”
    “I don’t know. None of the recent unique arrivals has been especially powerful or dangerous, as far as we know.”
    They fell silent again. Travis heard the building’s air exchange system kick on with a sigh. His face was resting against the top of Paige’s head. Every breath was rich with the scent of her hair.
    After a moment he said, “There’s something that bothers me more than all of this.” He considered how to begin. “We agree that Pilgrim isn’t really the enemy here, right? That’s not to say he’s blameless. The Whisper probably chose him because it knew the kind of things he was capable of. But whatever Pilgrim believes, the Whisper is the one calling the shots. So far, so good, right?”
    “Right.”
    “But the Whisper is still a machine. It’s a tool, and a tool doesn’t choose its own purpose. Someone else would have done that.”
    Paige was silent a long while before speaking. “You mean someone on the other side of the Breach,” she said.
    “Yeah.”
    With his arm, he felt a shiver climb the muscles of her back.
    “If that’s the case,” she said, “then we never had a prayer.”
    He tried to think of some reassuring reply to that, but came up empty. All he could do was pull her closer against himself. She responded, settling into him. He lay there listening to her breathing, feeling her limbs relax. Turning the questions over and over, and wondering who—or what—they were really up against, he faded out.
    Sometime later, he woke with the strangest feeling. Like he’d figured something out. Dreamed it, maybe. He tried to remember what it was, but could only push it away, like a child trying to palm a basketball. He relaxed and let it come back. For a moment, it seemed that it might. An impression of it swam into view: the video footage of the high-powered pump station at Cook’s house on Grand Cayman. It had something to do with that. Something about Cook’s need for it, in the first place. But that was all he could get. A moment later it was gone.
    Paige murmured, rising halfway out of sleep beside him. He kissed her forehead and she rolled into him, softly kissing his neck before drifting away in his arms. Feeling her heartbeat against him, he closed his eyes and followed her