Would I do things differently? And if so, why haven’t I already done those things?

  I’m with Tom. I chose to be with him.

  But if I had complete control over everything in the universe, would I still choose that path?

  Joan chewed her lower lip.

  I didn’t expect to get into a philosophical discussion today. Especially with Harry McGlade.

  “He’s got a point.” Jack Daniels walked up on Joan’s other side. “Even if you believe in fate, and you think that you’re just a random leaf blowing in an ambivalent wind, it’s still your choice to let that ideology define you. The hand you are dealt is up to chance. How you play that hand is completely within your control.”

  McGlade added, “We act. We react. Like a writer, we are free to create our own destiny.”

  “You said this would end in a bloodbath.”

  “Because it will.”

  Joan turned to Jack, who nodded. “That sounds about right. These things always end in bloodbaths.”

  “So why do you choose to go into this situation?” Joan asked her.

  “Because I’m choosing not to die today.”

  “Does that work?”

  Jack winked. “It’s worked every day for the last fifty-some years.”

  Joan mulled it over, and then she smiled. “That is complete and utter bullshit.”

  Jack laughed. “Hell yeah it’s bullshit. Don’t believe a damn thing this jackass tells you.”

  Harry expressed mock outrage. “I’m offended! You ladies want to see some dick pics?”

  They said, “No,” in unison.

  “They’re not mine.” He frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure whose they are. Maybe you can ID them. No? Fine. I’ll ask Fabler.”

  Harry trotted off. Joan headed toward Catherine’s limousine, and Jack caught her shoulder. “Seriously, though. Try not to die.”

  ZIGGY

  Area 57 – New Mexico

  The pizza wasn’t sitting well. Ziggy wondered if stress and pressure had conspired to wreak havoc on his digestive system.

  IBS. Irritable bowel syndrome.

  The irony isn’t lost on me. A clone of Sigmund Freud, stuck in the anal phase of psychosexual development.

  Or maybe I just need more fiber.

  He left the control room, heading to the toilet to toil, and received a text from Mary.

  It made him feel a modicum better.

  THEY’RE COMING.

  His thumbs danced on his phone screen. How many?

  Her quick reply: 15 total.

  Hmm. That’s more than I expected.

  Not that we don’t have the ability to deal with it, if things go sour.

  Split into four groups, Mary continued.

  Oh, good. That simplifies things.

  Einstein? he texted.

  Confirmed. Will be knocking on your door soon.

  Excellent.

  Ziggy considered giving a thumbs-up emoji, but emojis made him uncomfortable. They seemed beneath him. Childish.

  Instead he texted, See you soon, and pocketed the phone.

  If everything runs smoothly, there will be maximum returns with minimal casualties.

  If not…

  It’s a big desert. Plenty of places to bury more bodies.

  His bowel issue no longer seemed urgent, so Ziggy did an about-face and headed for the pantry to procure some bran or something else to grease the intestinal wheels. Before he realized it, Ziggy smelled the stench of rot and realized his route was taking him past Room 33.

  I hate this section of Esbat.

  Maybe I can sneak past without him hearing.

  He tread lightly, actually getting up on the balls of his feet, and just as Ziggy neared the door he heard the voice.

  “Helloooooo, Sigmuuuuund.”

  Shit. Caught.

  Ziggy stopped and examined the big, steel door, like he always did.

  No cracks or crevices or any way to see through it.

  How does he always know it’s me?

  “Um, hello. Have you eaten?”

  “Yessssssssssss.”

  “Well, that’s good. I have to be going. Extremely busy. We should talk later.”

  “Let ussss doooooooo thaaaaaat.”

  Ziggy hurried away, then called the guards and made sure the doors to that hallway were locked.

  I am bothered by the fact that I am bothered.

  I don’t do nonplussed well. A man of my pedigree.

  My brain is apparently preoccupied with important matters, and I’m not paying close enough attention to the mundane. I should have taken an alternate route to the pantry.

  I’ll remember next time.

  Which was what Ziggy had told himself last time.

  And, like last time, he pondered why he’d gone that route, because there had to be a reason.

  There are no accidents. No mistakes. No coincidences. No slips of the mind.

  I must have done that for a specific purpose.

  What is my subconscious trying to tell me?

  He analyzed it while he found a container of powdered fiber in the pantry.

  He analyzed it while he mixed himself a big glass.

  He analyzed it while he chugged the slimy concoction.

  Is it Charles? Do I not trust Charles? Is that why I took that route?

  Ziggy walked back to the control room to analyze that, and was interrupted by the proximity sensor alarm going off. He checked the monitor bank.

  The guests have arrived.

  BERT

  Area 57 – New Mexico

  Bert knew he had to get his mind in the game, but all he could focus on was—

  Does Weejy actually love me?

  They hadn’t known each other for very long, and intense situations (such as being shot at and kidnapped) could very well trigger intense feelings that weren’t real.

  But the mere idea of her feelings mirroring his… it intoxicated Bert.

  And now I’m back to where I lost her. Staring at a submarine hatch in the middle of the desert.

  Bert’s cell rang. He held it up—

  —and saw Weejy’s phone number on the Caller ID.

  Hearts don’t actually skip beats, unless the person has some serious cardiac problems. But Bert definitely noticed a flutter in his chest.

  He glanced at Tom, who nodded. Bert answered and put it on speaker.

  “Good afternoon.” A male voice. “Welcome. You must be Albert. And the man next to you is a dead ringer for Thomas Jefferson. I’m afraid I don’t recognize the woman. Or that odd bird.”

  Bert scanned the area, wondering how this guy was watching.

  “There’s a camera in the yucca.”

  I knew we should have checked the yucca.

  “Who are we speaking to?” Bert asked.

  “I’m Number 17. Sigmund Freud. I prefer to be called Ziggy.”

  “The lady is Number 20, Mary Tudor,” Tom told the plant. “The bird is Stosh.”

  “It appears to be a dodo bird.”

  “I cloned him.” Bert hadn’t trusted any of the other teams with his beloved fowl, and had brought along a modified baby carrier that strapped to his back. “Do you have my two companions with you?”

  “I do. Just a moment.”

  Bert held his breath. And then…

  “We’re here, Bert. It’s so great to see you.”

  Weejy. Bert’s knees got knocky.

  “Are you okay?”

  “We’re fine. You got my message?”

  “I did.”

  “I dislike formalities,” Ziggy interrupted, “but would the three of you mind showing your tattoos to the yucca plant? You’ll understand why we have to maintain this level of security when you come down.”

  Bert, Tom, and Presley removed their shoes and did as instructed.

  “Excellent. Looking forward to meeting you in person. Please come down the ladder, and then the stairs.”

  Ziggy hung up.

  Presley squatted next to the yucca and examined the plant. Then she turned with her back to it and took out a small box that looked like a transistor radio. After fiddling with some controls a small LCD screen blinked to life.

  “Wide angle digital camera. No microphone. It’s wired, not Wi-Fi. But there is a Wi-Fi signal here.”

  “Can you hack into the signal?” Tom asked.

  “There’s no WPS. And they disabled UPnP for NAS. But good news, they don’t have MAC address filtering on.”

  Bert put his hand over his mouth to shield his lips from the camera. “What does that mean for those who don’t speak technogeek?”

  “To get our earbuds working underground I need a LAN line to hook into. Or hardware. A computer terminal. A router or modem.”

  Tom rubbed his chin. “How long will it take once you hook in?”

  “Best case scenario, they wrote their password down or saved it to their hard drive. Worst case, I go sniffing with Kali Linux and Hydra or Hashcat, which can take hours.”

  Hours? Not ideal.

  “What if we have a chance to get Weejy and SoJo out of there before then?”

  “Fabler wants us to wait for comms. Ops can go tits-up fast. Better to be slow and thorough and get out clean than try to rush things and go fugazi.”

  Tom’s mouth became a thin line and he stared off into the setting sun. A very Mr. Rushmore-ish pose. “Okay. Let’s go say hello.” He pressed the talk button on his ear radio and announced, “This is Team Four. We’re going in.”

  “Team One in position,” Fabler answered from two kilometers northwest. “Got eyes.”

  “Team Two in position,” Grim confirmed, two kilometers southeast. “Got eyes.”

  “Team Three, trying to get into position,” Harry said. “But Jack and Phin still have their clothes on.”

  Jack, Phin, and Harry had gone into Bakersbad to find the informant who’d sold Bert the information about Area 57.

  “Descending into the facility,” Presley told everyone. “We expect to lose comms in a few seconds.”

  The hatch opened with a CLANG! that echoed with an ominous, hyperbolic finality. Tom and Presley penetrated the dark hole with flashlights, something Bert had apparently forgotten to grab when the gadgets were being passed out.

  Presley went down the ladder first, quick and wiry and assured. Bert wasn’t any of those things, but he loaded Stosh into his backpack/baby carrier and moved as fast as he could while also being mindful of slipping, making sure he always had at least one foot and one hand on the metal rungs. Tom followed, electing to leave the hatch open, flashlight clenched in his teeth.

  The bottom of the hole ended in a hallway-slash-cave. Dirt floors, carved rock walls buttressed up with steel support pillars, and overhead beams like a mineshaft. Bert shrugged off his pack and set Stosh on the ground.

  “Doooo-doooo.” Stosh seemed scared.

  He’s not the only one. “I know, buddy. It’s dark. Just stay close.”

  “Doooooooooooooooo.”

  Presley touched the button in her earpiece. “Comms check.”

  No one replied.

  As expected, we have no way to communicate with the others.

  We’re on our own until Presley hacks the network.

  “We can plant here.” Tom knelt down, next to a wall.

  “You sure? Has to be another entrance that’s faster.”

  “Devil we versus the one we don’t.”

  Presley nodded and crouched in the dark, alongside the opposite wall. Then they righted themselves and continued walking. After a dozen steps, the trio reached a steel door, light peering through the cracks in the jamb.

  On the door, DO NOT ENTER in stenciled red letters.

  “Do we knock?” Bert asked.

  “I don’t think we need to.” Presley pointed her beam above the door frame, revealing a video camera.

  A moment after she spoke, the door pushed open with a loud, rusty creak that made Bert’s fillings rattle.

  Standing there, a wide, hairy, ugly man in a brown leather apron, looking like he’d been rejected from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot for being too frightening.

  “I’m Tork.”

  No shit. Tomás de Torquemada. I’m not even religious, but one peek into his dead, black eyes and I’m willing to convert to any religion he tells me to.

  “Are you going to stand there, filling the doorway, Tork? Or let us in?” Presley snarked.

  His eyes became slits, obviously pissed off.

  Bert’s sphincter clenched.

  I really don’t like the evil ones. They give me nightmares.

  “Doooooooo!” Stosh’s feathers stood up and he lowered his head like a velociraptor.

  Apparently Stosh doesn’t like him either.

  Tork stepped to the side, and Presley brushed past, followed by Tom. When Bert walked by the large man, he caught a stench of body odor and dried blood.

  Stosh hurried after Bert, sticking his tail plume straight up and spraying bird shit as he trotted. It looked like someone spilled a can of lumpy, white paint. But stinkier.

  “Your animal is disgusting.”

  “He doesn’t like meeting new people,” Bert lied. Stosh had met over a dozen people in the last few days, and liked all of them.

  Except for maybe Leo and Catherine. They treated Stosh like his feathers carried Ebola.

  The door opened up to an open-well staircase, industrial metal steps and railings, zig-zagging down at least six floors.

  Deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast.

  “So how big is this place?” Tom’s voice echoed, competing with their footfalls.

  “Big.”

  “How many levels?”

  “I dunno.”

  “How many people live here?” Presley added.

  “Lots.”

  “I get it,” Tom clapped the big man’s shoulder. “Ziggy doesn’t trust you with this information.”

  “Ziggy doesn’t have a clue.” Tork shrugged off Tom’s hand. “Ziggy doesn’t run things.”

  Interesting.

  After a descent that took at least four minutes, another metal door led to a proper hall, with sheetrock walls, old, dim lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals, and occasional steel doors. It reminded Bert of a storage facility, missing ninety-five percent of the storage units. The air had a staleness to it, which added to the claustrophobia and mounting sense of dread.

  Bert summoned up the guts to ask, “Where are Weejy and SoJo?”

  Rather than respond, Tork opened another metal door. Standing there, smiling demurely, was Sigmund Freud in a three-piece tweed suit.

  “Hello, friends. Welcome to Area 57.”

  Ziggy made no move to shake hands, keeping them clasped behind his back. Elsewhere in the large room two dozen Beige Boys milled about, dressed in desert fatigues with matching Kevlar. All carried sidearms. Some carried machineguns.

  Stosh hunkered down and said, “Dooooooo,” in the lowest pitch Bert had ever heard, staring right at Ziggy.

  Stosh doesn’t like him, either. Is my buddy becoming antisocial?

  “I thought it was called Project Esbat.”

  Ziggy raised an eyebrow. “You’ve heard of that, Thomas? Interesting. I have nothing to do with Esbat. We’re a separate, sister project. We share research space.”

  “How much space are we talking?”

  “Forty thousand square feet of hallways, rooms. It was being built in the nineties to store radioactive waste. Then it was reappropriated for… something else. Since then, there have been many administration changes, and what was once a military operation has become more akin to independent contract work. All but a few people have forgotten about us. Which serves our purpose and suits our needs.”

  “You don’t seem to be totally forgotten.” Presley glanced around the room. “You’ve got a small army.”

  “Secrets can only remain secrets if they are guarded, Mary. We have sixty full-time guards. They’re good at their jobs. Esbat has a staff of ten or so. My staff is smaller.”

  “Well, it’s not the size that counts,” Presley said. “According to other women.”

  Ziggy chuckled, but the mirth didn’t reach his eyes. “A penis joke. I get it. Plus, I’m Freud, so even more appropriate. Good one.”

  Bert tried again. “Where are Weejy and SoJo?”

  “Ah, Albert. I’m really so thrilled to meet you. While royalty and politicians are fascinating in a celebrity sort of way, it’s truly science that advances society. Did you know that our donors met, one time, in 1927? Freud and Einstein, in the same room. They discussed the necessity of war. And now, almost a hundred years later, Freud and Einstein meet again. I expect we can accomplish great things together, Albert. But first things first. I must insist you all relinquish your firearms. We can’t allow weapons.”

  “There are twenty-six men carrying weapons right behind you,” Presley stated.

  Ziggy smiled. This time it did reach his eyes.

  “That wasn’t a request, Mary. That was an order.”

  VAN

  Twenty-Two Hundred Meters Southeast of Area 57 – New Mexico

  Van sat in the warm, pebbly sand, not far from his bag in the back seat of the pickup truck, eyeing the people around him.

  Grim, the ex-soldier, dressed like a grunt from Full Metal Jacket. Roy, the ex-cop, dressed like Miami Vice. Frank, the scientist, dressed like a wannabe commando who shopped at The North Face. And Frank’s wife, whose name Van had forgotten, dressed like a middle-aged slacker, because she probably was one.

  I’m the only one without a gun.

  But I’ve got something better.

  I’m smarter than these idiots.

  And I’ve got a whiskey bottle full of sleeping pills.

  I’m going to kill them all.

  The other four had all taken turns looking through the giant scope mounted on the giant sniper rifle, set up on a bipod. Van busied himself with plotting, and shaking sand out of his romper shorts.

  “So you can hit a target from here?” Frank, sprawled on his belly, peered down at the target, Area 57, two kilometers away.

  Grim shrugged. “Maybe with unlimited time and unlimited ammo. It would take a lot of practice from here to get the MOA clicked in. You have to account for gravity, heat, humidity, the ammo grain, shape, load, and material. It’s hard. Things get easier as they get closer. We’re here if Tom’s team runs in this direction, or to tail if they run toward Fabler.”