Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Eight

The Jakobys

Tuesday, August 31, 3:02 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 32 hours, 58 minutes E.S.T.

Hecate swore and punched the wall beside the safe.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Cyrus.

“I can’t see the numbers on the dial. Look in my desk drawers . . . find a lighter, anything!”

Otto and Cyrus began tearing apart her drawers, throwing papers and pens everywhere. “Matches!” cried Otto. “I found a pack of matches.”

Hecate crossed the room, navigating by the light from the battle. There was a scrape and a hiss and a small fire blazed at the end of a paper match. Cyrus snatched up a sheaf of reports and rolled them into a tube. Otto held the match to the roll, and as it caught, the glow flooded the room, pushing back the shadows.

Cyrus cried out in delight as if with all of the technology he and Otto had stolen or created, this simplest of man’s tools—fire—was the wonder of the ages. He and Otto hurried over to the wall and watched as Hecate attacked the dial once again. This time the tumblers clicked one-two-three and she jerked the door open.

The safe was large and there were stacks of papers, bundles of currency, cases of jewelry, and several high-capacity flash drives banded together with oversized rubber bands. One whole side of the safe was taken up by a large briefcase with a corrugated metal cover. It was very heavy and Hecate grunted as she pulled it out and they carried it over to the desk. Otto swept the last of the papers onto the floor as Hecate set the case down and unlocked it. She punched the on button and they all held their breath.

A tiny green light popped on and the screen flashed from black to blue.

“Thank God!” said Cyrus.

“Lead case in a lead-lined safe,” said Hecate. “My father taught me to be extra-careful.”

Cyrus looked up at her and there was such a depth of love in his eyes that Hecate felt her own eyes growing moist. She said, “I want us to survive this.”

“We can’t. . . .”

“We can’t escape the island,” said Hecate. “But there are caves and tunnels all through this island. We may be able to find a place to hide until we can escape.”

“What are the chances?” said Otto with a calculating coldness.

“Slim. But that’s better than none.”

Otto studied her and then nodded. “Your father and I have faced longer odds.”

“Like when we faked my death in Brazil,” Cyrus said. “That was the first time one of the ‘Family’ had to be sacrificed for the cause.”

“What do you mean?”

“We drowned a clone and let his body be found. By then we were in Cabo and reading about it in the papers.”

The computer finished loading.

There was a sudden racket from outside. Yells and gunfire.

“They’re here!” Cyrus cried, but when Hecate ran to the door and looked out she shook her head.

“No . . . it looks like a single soldier.” She turned back, smiling. “I have a dozen Berserkers on this floor at all times. They’ll tear him apart. We have time.”

Cyrus dug the flash drive from under his shirt and lifted the lanyard over his head. He kissed it lovingly and handed it to Otto, who punched in the security code that activated the drive.

“How will we transmit?” asked Otto as he handed the drive to Hecate. “The EMP will have taken out your router.”

“Satellite uplink,” she said. She fitted the drive into a USB port and tapped a few keys. “The uplink’s built into the computer. We can hack three different Mexican satellites from here.” She turned the laptop around with the keys toward Cyrus.

“Good,” said Cyrus. “The next steps are critical. I have to upload the release codes and then transmit. The signal also sends an automatic verification sequence. Unless I hand-enter a cancel sequence, then the release codes are unscrambled when the Extinction Clock reaches zero.”

“When’s that?” asked Hecate, caught up in the sorcery of her father’s plan.

“Noon tomorrow.”

The gunfire in the hallway was punctuated by hoarse death screams. Hecate chewed her lip. The screams sounded more like Berserkers than ordinary men. More soldiers must have reached this floor.

“What if those soldiers break in here and take the trigger device?”

“Doubting the unstoppability of your transgenic toys?” Cyrus said with a smile.

“I don’t want to fail when we’re this close.”

“We won’t. Once this is sent, all we have to do is . . . nothing. Unless they know the cancel sequence it won’t matter.”

“I don’t even know it,” said Otto. “Mr. Cyrus is the only one who can stop it, and . . . why would he?”

“It’s all yours, Father,” she said. “Let’s change the world.”

“Let’s not,” said a female voice.

They whirled to see Grace Courtland standing in the doorway to the closet.