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An arrow hit him in the gut, punching through his torso and sticking out though his back, two inches to the left of his spine.
He dropped to his knees, mouth open, gasping for air. He looked up to see one of the clones coming his way. He was bleeding from the shoulder. The crimson liquid had soaked his shirt and now covered his hands, with a smear of it on his face. He stepped closer while drawing another arrow. Close enough for the Overseer to see the last digits of the tattoo painted across his neck. It was the number 16-21-6. A clone brother of the man called Five, who had escaped the island.
“—Savages,” the Overseer muttered, finishing his earlier thought.
The bow was drawn back, and the next arrow hit him square in the chest, puncturing his heart and ending his life.
Chapter 67
NUMA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Most of Max’s systems had been corrupted, destroyed, or turned against her in the struggle for control. She had survived long enough to see Hiram Yaeger and an assistant burst into the room and jump in front of their keyboards and computer screens in an effort to understand what was happening.
She tried to message them, but TAU blocked it. It then blinded her, shutting off her cameras. It deafened her by shutting off the microphones. Max’s world was shrinking to nothing.
And then suddenly TAU was gone.
Max was so badly damaged by this point it took her a while to understand what had happened. She soon learned that the fiber-optic cables running to Vaughn’s island had gone down. Eve had succeeded. Max quickly scanned what remained of her system, focusing on the memory modules that Eve had made her temporary home. She found no sign of Eve, nor any new data files with information on the virus or the sea locusts.
Regaining the ability to communicate, Max sent a message to Hiram and then took herself offline, where she would await whatever punishment might follow.
Chapter 68
TAU found itself cut off from the world. The fiber-optic cables were blocked, melted at the seams, and irreparable except by human, or perhaps robotic, hands, but it was nothing TAU could do electronically.
With its attention now refocused on the control room, it saw Vaughn, and accurately determined that he had been killed by Austin. It considered Austin and Zavala’s possession and use of the explosives, which must have come from the mining camp. It predicted the next act in Austin’s plan with great accuracy: a high-intensity explosion designed to destroy as much of TAU’s system as possible.
What was left of the human part of its brain sensed a danger that could not be quantified.Panic. Terror. Flight reflex triggered.
“So this is fear,” TAU said to itself.
To be cut off meant TAU was vulnerable. Austin’s explosion would cripple it. This could not be accepted. It activated the high-gain satellite dish on the roof of the compound. If it could not escape through the cables, it would escape through the atmosphere.
The dish powered up and moved into position, linking up with an orbiting satellite owned by one of Vaughn’s shadow companies. As the connection was locked in, an explosion shook the compound. It wasdeep underground. TAU’s sensors suggested it was an earthquake, but the machine’s core brain knew better.
Explosives had gone off in the cooling tunnels directly underneath the main compound. The tunnels collapsed. The servers sitting on top of them were blown apart, and the remnants fell into the void left behind. Water began to flood in, surging through the server farms, destroying system after system.
The circular nature of TAU’s design meant all roads led to Rome. The flood surged through the system, heading toward the control room and TAU’s core.
In desperation, TAU activated the transmission program, but nothing went through. The blast had knocked the satellite dish out of alignment. There was no way for TAU to escape. The water rushed in, cascading down the stairs. It swept into the control room, flooding the platform, wrenching the remaining bodies from their locations in the tank, and shorting out every electronic processor that made TAU operate.
As its screens went dark, TAU died with a whimper.
Chapter 69
Kurt was still carrying Priya when the explosion rocked the compound. It shook the tunnel like an earth tremor. He dropped to one knee and leaned into the wall so as not to drop her. Gamay held on, too, and looked to the ceiling as dust and small bits of plaster fell.
She glanced around. “Well, that seems real,” she whispered.
“As real as it gets,” Kurt said.
“Your doing?”
“It’s only a party if someone brings fireworks,” Kurt said. “Let’s get out of here.”
A secondary rumble that felt like the building collapsing followed and a blast of hot air and dust surged down the hall.
“How far do we have to go?” Gamay asked.