Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

“They can move faster than this?”

“Oh, yes,” Simon tells her. “Much faster. This is only standby mode. Once it is fully operational, you won’t even be able to see them. We’ll have to use synchronized plasma strobes to track their movement.”

Quinn leans in closer and squints through the glass. “Are they also spinning?”

“At 222 rpms. I’m impressed, Ms. Mitchell. Most people can’t see that.”

“How do they…stay up?”

“They are dynamically stabilized using the strongest and most complex electromagnetic fields ever generated. We have our own nuclear power plant in the basement.”

Quinn turns and looks up at Simon. “Does this thing do what I think it does?”

Simon’s expression changes as he defers the question to his superiors. In the CIA, there’s what you’re allowed to know, and then there’s what you’re allowed to say. But what really messes with your head is what your imagination does during long, drawn-out, awkward silences when the truth gets left unsaid.

“Jesus Christ,” Quinn finally says. “You guys built a fucking time machine, didn’t you? Right in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.”

Moretti’s mouth slides into a one-sided smile. “You’re goddamn right we did,” he says with more arrogance than pride. “Right under everyone’s noses. And we did it to save their sorry little lives.”

“The theory,” Van interjects, “is that building a machine capable of sending messages across time enables us to receive information about present threats that the machine will send in the future.”

“You’re telling me that you built a machine that, in the future, sends the names of terrorists back in time, just so you can get those names now?”

“Bingo,” Moretti says.

“Well, too fucking bad it doesn’t fucking work,” Quinn says.

“Oh?” Moretti asks pointedly. “And what makes you say that?”

“What do you think? Maybe the fact that my ex-husband was just killed in a fucking terrorist attack.”

“After which…” Moretti teases. From the inside pocket of his jacket, he retrieves a dark, oblong object, raps it on the top of one of the cases like a miniature gavel, then places it with a snap against the black plastic. “We received this.”

A flash drive.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Proof that Kilonova works,” Moretti says. “That is the next Epoch Index.”

It takes Quinn a moment, but she begins to see how all the components fit together. Her training disguised as pursuit; the capture of the Elite Assassin, only to have him be redeployed; a second blockchain of names placed deliberately on top of cases of modern, exotic weapons. Kilonova is just one component in the real machine the CIA is building: a clandestine, global team that uproots anything the government finds threatening long before it has a chance to grow.

“How did you find it?”

“As soon as we started building Kilonova, we also started monitoring the backlogs of gravitational wave detectors using Henrietta’s AI from the LHC. Never found anything. Until yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“The exact same data suddenly appeared in the backlogs of four different gravitational wave detectors located in four different parts of the world—simultaneously.”

“How can that happen?” Quinn asks. She looks to Simon, but he seems to know that it is not his place to speculate.

“Quinn,” Van says, “just like Seoul was the beginning of a persistent nuclear threat, we believe Paris is the beginning of something completely new. Something possibly much worse.”

“How can something be worse than a nuclear threat?”

“Easy,” Moretti says. “Whatever created that hole in Paris, it was a hell of a lot smaller and lighter than a nuclear warhead. Or a dirty bomb, for that matter. It was cheaper and easier to build, and we don’t have any technology that can detect it. And its blast pattern—or whatever the fuck you want to call it—is perfectly spherical, and apparently cuts through absolutely anything, which means from the air you could take out entire buildings, and from the ground, you could erase the most secure bunkers ever built. Imagine one of those things being detonated from a drone over the White House or the Capitol. That scary enough for you?”

“But why now?” Quinn asks. “Why would a second Epoch Index appear right after the attack in Paris?”

“Because someone figured out how to re-create it,” Moretti says. “Or will figure it out. Which means the clock is already ticking.”

“How do you know that?” Quinn asks. “How do you know what you found isn’t just a copy of the first Epoch Index?”

“Completely different technologies,” Moretti says, as if expecting that very question.

“What does that mean?”

“It means the first Epoch Index was sent back using particles. That’s why it was detected by the LHC. We don’t know how to accelerate particles to speeds faster than light—at least not yet—but we do know how to generate gravitational waves. This data was found by gravitational wave detectors, which means it was sent by Kilonova. Or rather, that it will be sent.”

“Maybe the first Epoch Index was just sent back twice. Using two different technologies. Like a backup.”

“Quinn, it’s the wrong size,” Van says. “And the old decryption keys don’t work. We tried them all.”

“Which means we need new decryption keys,” Moretti says. He looks from Quinn to Ranveer, then back again, and in his eyes, Quinn can see all that his statement implies. “And we need them fast. This one has more than twice the number of blocks.”

“What?” Quinn looks to Van for confirmation, finds it in the lines and eyes of a pained and anxious face, then looks back at Moretti. “You want to take out almost forty innocent people?”

“Fifty-six,” Moretti corrects. “And ‘innocent’ is a strong word.”

“No fucking way,” Quinn says. “I’m all for making whoever is responsible for Paris pay, but there’s no way the CIA can take out fifty-six innocent targets.”

“Correct,” Moretti agrees. “The CIA can’t.”

“Wait a second,” Quinn says. “If all this starts with a single person reverse engineering Paris, all we have to do is find him, right?”

Moretti holds up the flash drive, presenting it as what he seems to believe is irrefutable proof. “Apparently that ain’t how all this plays out.”

“Quinn,” Van