< Read Part 9 |  INDEX | Read Part 11 >

10: Deactivation

The computer beeped. Nothing showed up in front of Wes. He frowned, scanning the readouts a second time. Willows leaned forward and pressed something. “My files! They’re safe!”

“Not exactly just yet,” Wes said. “We’ve got until the Baffin relay quits on us, then we’ve got to try to catch Southampton Island. Do me a favor and figure out whether we’ve even got a chance. Is it looking dusty in here?”

Willows raised his head from the screen, eyes wide.

“Go look,” Wes said calmly. He began scanning the display in front of him. Willows squeezed past him and disappeared into the back of the chopper.

From the indicator lights in front of him, it appeared the flight path was actually triangulated off the ground beacon and three satellites. Which meant there had to be more satellites, which should mean standard GPS navigation. The importance of the ground beacon wasn’t entirely clear.

Until the ground indicator began flashing red. The chopper dipped suddenly into a nosedive.

Wes threw up his hands. “What the–”

Cayley Willows’s elbow hit him in the back of the head. He shook off the pain and pushed the mathematician aside. “Override code. File. Come on.” He glanced out the windshield. “Whoa, water, back off, water!” The file containing the code popped up on the screen. Wes keyed in the manual override and hauled on the controls. The chopper levelled and skimmed the vast expanse of Hudson’s Bay.

Willows’s dry, nervous voice filled him in, sounding like a rote recitation. “The ground beacon is to ensure the UNIA vehicle remains in UNIA control, in the event of a terrorist hack. Without either the beacon or the correct manual protocols, the aircraft will self-crash.”

Wes turned and looked at him.

“I asked them when they brought me up here.”

Dimly reflected in the windshield, Wes could see Willows behind the pilot’s seat, straightening his Faraday suit. Then the mathematician disappeared further back into the aircraft. A second later, his voice came through the earpiece of Wes’s suit again. “Dr. Liu…are you a medical doctor?”

“Why?”

“If you can find an autopilot setting, you need to check your patients.”

The children. Wes swore and scanned, forcing himself to slow down and look at the displays. “Hang on. What’s wrong? How are their vitals?”

“Fine. But my suit’s pulser just activated, and the children are not protected from nanos.”

“Neither is the inside of this ship,” Wes muttered.

“Ahhh…” Willows’s voice held a chilling tremor. “It appears they go for flesh first.”

“Do something!”

“Do what? Electrocute the children?”

“Do whatever you have to!”

There. A standard sat lock. Hello, focus, Wes. It’s all right in front of you. Wes called up a map, input co-ordinates, and engaged the autopilot. He sprang from his seat.

His suit snapped and crackled, standing away from his body as if charged with static electricity. Dust fell from his fingertips. He brushed his hand along the back of the seat, and it happened again. “How much can these suits take?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure it can’t keep up with the nano replication rate.”

“Any idea what that is?”

Willows turned around from the drugged children. “No, but, this is getting weirder.”

Wes moved up beside him. “Go sit in the co-pilot’s chair. Keep sweeping the controls and screens with your gloves. Try to protect anything that’s not going to get fried by the charge.”

Willows went forward. Wes knelt. The dust clung to the children. They looked like they’d been playing in the garden and now needed a bath. But their skin was intact, in fact, they didn’t seem to be suffering at all. Wes recalled the horrible images Elgin Parker had displayed to the Terramoon staff. This was different, definitely different.

The scientific side of him wanted to take his glove off and see what happened. Common sense intervened. As he watched, the dust seemed to build up on the children, forming miniscule spikes like iron filings compelled by a magnet.

“I’m not getting anything,” Willows said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, my suit was pulsing, and now it’s not. It’s like they’re not here anymore.”

“Yeah, I think they’re over here. I’m trying to decide what on earth to do.”

“They can move under their own power?”

“I don’t know. It looks that way.”

Willows was silent for a moment. “Because if they can, then every dispersion model I’ve generated is useless.”

“Were you ever given data, or did you find data, to suggest this is normal for them?”

“Not a scrap.”

Wes stared at the children. “Because it might not be. Um, oh, whoa.”

The dust seemed to dissipate, but where it went, Wes couldn’t tell. It appeared to soak into the children’s skin. He knelt there holding his breath, waiting for something horrifying to happen to them.

Nothing.

Their chests rose and fell as before. Pulse rates quickened slightly and resettled to normal. Wes couldn’t resist any longer — he pulled his glove off and brushed his hand across the forearm of the nearest child. When he looked at his fingertips, there was no trace of the dust. He pulled off his headgear and sank back on his heels.

“I don’t understand,” Wes murmured. “I don’t understand. Elgin Parker, what did you do?”