She looked down at the title. ‘Project Halstead’ was printed on the black plastic cover.

  “Open it,” he said.

  She looked at him confused. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to know.”

  “It’s at my discretion what you need to know and right now I say you need to know. Take a look.”

  She flipped open the cover and started reading a piece of paper stamped with security designations she didn’t know existed despite her own high clearance. She speed read the first few paragraphs but still wasn’t clear what the point of it was. She looked at the general. “I don’t understand. It appears to be some kind of declaration from the United Nations to do what?”

  “The five permanent members of the security council have decided that if we cannot come up with a way to put the genie back in the bottle, we are to try a different approach…”

  “Which is what?”

  “To negotiate with the thing and try to come to an agreement, which leaves us humans in control of a portion of the planet and the AI the rest.”

  Denise’s eyes grew large as he spoke. “This… they…”

  Corolla walked forward and sat on the table just to her right. “Yup. They want to surrender to it.”

  She flicked through more pages. “We don’t even know if the AI will accept those terms. So far it appears to just do what it wants. Its larger plan, whatever that is.” She looked up at the man next to her. “It doesn’t care what we want.”

  He nodded. “Nope. But now you know what I’m up against doctor. Before we even get a chance to make this thing a heap of scrap, we might be asked to stand down.” He looked at her directly. “That cannot happen. We need to turn the tide before the end of the week, when there’s a closed session at the U.N. to take stock and decide.” She wanted to reply, but wasn’t sure what to say. He continued. “You said you needed to talk to me. Is it connected to the fuss in the mess hall?”

  She looked away from his gaze. “Yes…”

  “What is it?”

  “They were behaving that way because… they have perceived they are in danger…”

  “Of course they are in danger. We all are!”

  “No, they mean specifically them. They think the AI is coming to kill them.”

  He paused before replying. “There’s not been any movement from the AI towards the mountain. So far it’s staying behind the barriers it has put up across Texas and New Mexico. They have evidence?”

  She pulled Kevin’s drawing from her pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. “Kevin Riley drew this.”

  “That’s your evidence? A sketch?” He picked it up. “He’s a talented young man, but you’re going to have to give me more than that for me to take what you said seriously.” She shook her head and he stood up and picked up the binder. “Then I suggest you get some more sleep, and be here for the morning debriefing in—” He looked at the clock on the wall. “Three hours.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mike crouched low behind a gas pump. Behind the station’s store, power lines fizzed with electricity with the occasional surge producing a fourth of July display of sparks. The distance to the safety of the main building was only twenty or so feet but was lit up like day, providing him nowhere to hide if any of the AI’s surveillance were to be looking in that direction. They were now a few miles further in to the city, and had managed to keep to the shadows, but the closer they got to the center the fewer dark spaces there were. The others were in the street behind, watching him and the block overall for any sign of things that shouldn’t be there. He stood, his joints reminding him of his years and ran forward covering the ground to the entrance to the store, and leaned his weight on it, which pushed it open slightly. He turned and waved. In response the others started running his way.

  He moved inside the small building and turned his light on again illuminating almost completely stocked shelves. He grabbed a few bottles of water and some snacks and stashed them in a backpack. The door opened behind him and the others rushed inside, all but Brad out of breath.

  Elias pulled a can from a small section of dog food and pulled it open, scooping it out and letting Brillo enjoy it on the floor. He saw Mike look at him and before the FBI agent could ask, he shook his head. No, Travis hadn’t made a reappearance.

  Mike hid his sigh and looked at the others. “Everyone stay here. I’m going the rest of the way by myself.”

  “You’re not going in there alone,” said Brad.

  Elias looked at Joan and offered Brillo’s leash to her. “I’d feel better if I knew someone was looking after him…” She nodded and took the lead. He then took a backpack from a rack on the wall and packed some water and other items into it. Brad did the same for his own pack.

  “Sun’s coming up,” said Noah looking out of the station’s window.

  “If we’re not back by sundown,” said Mike. “Head—”

  “You want us to hang out here in this gas station for another twelve hours?” said Gabe.

  “When we leave the city, it’s better we all go together, but if you want to leave sooner that’s up to you.” Gabe remained silent. “Head west, find what vehicles you can. The AI couldn’t have taken all of them, and keep going. Hopefully we’ll be back within a few hours and we can all leave.”

  “You really think Alexis is in the city?” said Joan.

  Mike moved to the entrance and pulled it open. “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

  Elias kneeled and ruffled Brillo’s fur around his dog’s neck and head. “Until I come back, you be good now for this lady.” He looked up at Joan. “He’s just been fed so he should—”

  “I’ve had dogs. I know what to do.”

  Elias smiled and stood. “Good.” He then joined Mike and Brad near the entrance. A new source of light had joined the electric blue cables that hung in the sky as the sun bathed the sidewalk, roads and distant buildings in a pinkish hue. The bright ball of light though to their northwest still shone bright, rivaling the rising star to the east.

  “Either of you got any idea what we’re heading into?” said Brad to the two men next to him.

  “Nope,” said Elias.

  Mike remained silent and walked out onto the forecourt. The others followed closing the door behind them. “Keep to cover when you can.”

  “I know how to do reconnaissance,” said Elias surveying the nearby junction and nondescript buildings beyond.

  Mike smiled at the older man. “Of course. Lets go.”

  They kept to the early morning shadows as best they could and kept up a good pace for ten or so minutes moving through neighborhood after neighborhood of single story pastel colored homes, until Elias started to slow, so the others did the same to stay together.

  “I need a quick break,” said Elias out of breath. “Twenty years… ago… I would run rings… around you two, now…”

  They were crouched near a small wall. Mike looked at the homes across a junction in front of them, then at Elias. “You okay to get to that gray house over there?” Elias nodded. They walked as fast as they could across the empty crossing and then continued across the faded grass, stopping at the entrance to the small residence. Brad tried the front door, which was locked.

  “Lets try around the back,” said Mike. They quickly moved around the side, stepping over garden implements and Brad pushed open a gate to a similarly sparse backyard. He immediately tried the back door, this time it opened and they all moved inside. They collectively took a breath. The sky above them was devoid of cloud, and the early morning sun was bringing everything into sharp detail. Brad moved from the kitchen they were in, to the hallway then disappeared through a door there.

  Elias leaned back against the counter.

  “How you feeling?” said Mike.

  Elias gave a brief smile. “Could do with a long bath.”

  Mike also smiled, nodding in agreement. “There’s got to be somewhere where that’s still a thing.” He moved to the nearby cupboards and pulled one open. A full glass bottle with a black ornate label stared back at him. He was sure he could smell the fumes of the whiskey despite the bottle not having been opened. He pushed away the temptation and closed the wooden door and pulled another one open. This storage space contained some chips, which he pulled out and opened, handing the bag to Elias who started crunching on a few. “Charge your batteries,” said Mike. “I don’t want to stay here too long.” Elias nodded and Mike moved into the living room.

  Brad was looking out of the window to the street out front. The taller man shook his head. “You don’t realize how many cars, trucks and other vehicles there are, until they are all gone.” He turned around. “What’s the AI doing with all of them?”

  “Can’t be the tech,” said Mike. “Must be the raw materials, but who knows for what.” He tried not to think about the ‘what.’

  “Maybe to build more of those things we saw some hours back…” Brad looked back to the empty street outside. “Makes you think what else is it building…”

  Elias appeared in the doorway to the hallway. “I’m good.”

  “You sure?” said Mike.

  “Sooner we get this over with and get out of this city the happier I’ll be.”

  They made their way back outside, and resumed their journey west past neatly laid out homes. Eventually they entered a road and were immediately hit by the smell of burned wood and plastic. Their eyes then confirmed what their noses already knew. A row of blackened burned out shells of buildings sat just off the sidewalk. Opposite was an apartment complex almost as damaged, with the top floors just a ruin of brick and exposed pipes. Mike was the first to notice silver cabling sending up coils of smoke into the bright blue sky.

  “It’s the power lines. They must have collapsed onto the buildings,” he said.

  Brad gestured to further along the road. “Not just collapsed…” They walked forward and followed the line of cabling that ran over and through building after building, until the power lines were just a few feet above the ground all heading in the same direction.

  “Hell…” said Elias.

  They had arrived at another junction and the scene resembled what the former ranger had uttered. Trees which once had sat across the sidewalks were now charcoal stumps, and only memories of homes, gas stations, stores and warehouses covered a burned and in some parts still smoldering landscape.

  Flashes of recognition came to Mike. Similar scenes had plagued his dreams, but as he stood on the last piece of unburned sidewalk, he wondered if they were images his mind had conjured during his sleep or something else…

  “I don’t think she’s here, Mike,” said Brad. “We should—”

  Mike stepped forward. The crispy road surface crunched beneath his boots. “You can go back to the others… Travis said—”

  “Who knows what that thing in Elias’s mind wants!” Brad looked at Elias. “No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  He looked back to Mike who had stopped and turned around.

  “That ‘thing’ is my son!”

  Brad’s face tightened. “Think about what you’re saying!”

  Mike turned away. He didn’t need his old friend seeing the doubt in his mind. “Go back Brad. Head west with the others.” As Mike marched forward, he heard Brad let out an exasperated breath, then his boots crunch across the road behind him.

  As they progressed they stayed close to the buildings that had avoided being destroyed by the fire, which must have raged across the central areas of the city. It was obvious to all of them that amongst the black soot covered jumble of rubble and debris must have been bodies. Thousands, but they kept the grim knowledge to themselves, locked beneath a determination to get to the center of the devastated landscape, then get the hell out. Gone was the blue sky, as the air was now thick with a fine dust which limited the distance they could see, but within the mist the light which they had seen from the moment they entered the city burned bright just a few miles further on.

  Elias coughed and doubled over, reaching out for what remained of a street lamp, its pole warped, its metal surface smeared as if it were once a liquid. He wheezed as he tried to catch his breath. Brad pulled his pack open and pulled out an old T-shirt he had stashed away, tore it into three pieces and gave two to the others, who then tied it around their faces, covering their nose and mouth.

  They pushed on. The mounds of masonry were now larger in scale and covered a greater area. They stopped near the entrance to a once grand building. The ground and first floor still remained.

  “This isn’t all the fire,” said Brad, his words muffled through the rag around his mouth.

  Mike nodded in agreement. Something had destroyed these buildings, perhaps before the fire even took hold. Until now they had seen the AI produce surgical strikes, using drones or missiles, man’s tech to do its dirty work, even control towns full of people, but what they were walking through was on a different scale altogether. If he hadn’t already realized, it was clear humanity was at war, and from the evidence were losing.

  They kept on going, the light a few blocks ahead now brighter than the sun above them. So much so that it was causing its own shadows to be formed on the devastation around them. Each of the three men glumly marched forward, still using what pieces of wall and hollowed out building they could. Their clothes were now covered in grime and decay, a natural camouflage blending them into the landscape. Not that it mattered as the smog limited their visibility to a few hundred yards at most. If the AI was watching their progress it would surely find it hard to locate them.

  The scorched roads were now four lanes wide. Mike was the first to see the shape a mile off, just visible below the intense ball of light that sat above it, hundreds of feet up. He strained his eyes, which had been stinging for the past half an hour.

  “What is that?” said Brad.

  Mike pulled his binoculars from his pack and focused them best he could on the curved dark form which rose up into the sky.

  “It looks like a… lighthouse…” said Brad.

  Elias stayed silent. His head had been throbbing since they they had entered the blackened landscape, but he wasn’t sure if it was a headache born of stress for walking through a place humans shouldn’t be, or something else. His gut was telling him the latter but that had to be ignored if he was going to get out alive. And he had to do that for Travis to continue to exist.

  Brad grabbed Mike’s arm. “We’ve seen it. Now lets turn back!”

  The special agent shrugged him off. “We were sent here for a reason!”

  “She’s not here Mike!”

  Elias looked at the monochrome landscape around him for any sign of movement. “Ya think you two can shout any louder? I don’t think the AI can hear you.”

  Brad let out a frustrated breath.

  Mike moved closer to him. “I know she’s probably not here. But you have to trust me when I say it’s important we find out what that thing is!” He pointed to the hill looming through the mist, behind mounds of rubble.

  “Fine. We get close, then we get out. Yeah?”

  Mike nodded.

  They marched forward, now having to climb across buildings and other structures which had been torn down to their constituent parts, rubble, steel, plastics and wood in heaps, each man trying not to look at the ball of blue-white fire suspended high in the smog filled sky.

  Mike stopped on top of a small mound. “You hear that?” A faint humming filled the air.

  Elias nodded towards their destination. “Reckon it’s coming from that thing. Like a generator or something.”

  Mike looked at him. “Is he—” Elias shook his head and Mike frowned, then pushed on, scampering over blocks of concrete the size of small cars. The other two followed, all climbing higher, when suddenly they stopped at a precipice above a valley, the wall of dust which had blocked their field of view was gone and the horror of their destination was clear for them to see.

  “What the fuck…” said Brad under his breath.

  Bodies, thousands piled on top of each other, formed a hill, at least nine storeys high. Some were clothed, others naked but all contained eyes that were sparkles of blue light.

  “Are… they alive?” The words almost stuck in Brad’s throat, partly from how dry it was but mostly from fear. The sound of bricks falling jolted him from what held his gaze, and he realized Mike was climbing down the almost sheer drop, to the former parking lot below. “Mike! We have to go! Before the AI knows we’re here!”

  More sounds of bricks falling came from his other side and his swung his head in that direction. Elias was following Mike down, but doing so more awkwardly.

  “Brad… stay… here,” said Mike looking for the next foothold. “I’ve left you the binoculars.”

  Brad looked near his boot, then bent down and picked them up. Staying kneeled, he shook his head then held the eye pieces to his face, and turned the central dial to better focus on what the other two were moving towards. “They’re…” He looked down to Mike who was now almost at ground level and wanted to find the right words to convince his friend to turn right around and climb back up, but instead the vocal sounds stayed within his mind, for fear had taken control and his eyes darted to the broken buildings around him.

  Mike’s heart was pounding, almost loud enough to eclipse the sound that was coming from the fury of electric fire high above him. It hummed so loud that he could feel it in his teeth and bones. The power lines stretched to it from all around. They were at the center of the AI’s web and it appeared the inhabitants of Albuquerque had been the spiders meal. Suddenly fizzing came from his and Elias’s left, and they jumped away just as a surge of energy flowed along a nearby cable sending a pulse of heat in their direction. It moved higher until it was absorbed by whatever the hell was in the sky.

  He looked at Elias. “Travis?” Elias shook his head. “Right then.” Mike took a step forward, then another, moving towards the human mountain of bodies. Elias walked with him, both men studying the strewn, discarded figures a hundred yards away, and glancing around at what was once the downtown area. Each step brought the people that were packed and heaped together closer, until finally Mike and Elias stopped a few yards short of the first body.