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A twang sounded through the water. Joe felt himself tumbling backward.
The cable had snapped in two.
At first he was dragged by the current toward the topside breach, but then the lines and hoses co
As the boat raced into the shallows and beached on the rocks, Joe was dragged into the boulder field down below. Each blow felt like being in a car crash and Joe was suddenly thankful for the hard stainless steel helmet.
When the ride stopped, Joe was thirty feet under, the suit was filling with water and the air hose was either severed or kinked because no air was coming through. Joe knew he couldn’t swim, but he could climb. Up he went, crawling across the concrete pylons and boulders like a raccoon in a garbage dump.
He shed the weight belt and the task got easier. As he went higher, the light from the bottom of the boat grew brighter. With his air ru
He collapsed between two of the boulders, unable to hold up the helmet and shoulder harness without the buoyancy of the water. He struggled to lift it off, but it wouldn’t budge until two sets of helping hands pulled it off for him.
“Did we do it?” Joe asked.
“You did it,” the major said, hugging Joe and lifting him up. “You did it.”
CHAPTER 59
HIGH UP ON THE HELIPAD, THE EERIE, OMNIPRESENT SOUND of the microbots continued to grow louder. It came everywhere at the same time like demented electromagnetic cicadas, chirping by the billions and moving closer with every passing moment.
The noise was grating to Kurt Austin, but it seemed to be affecting Zarrina and Ji
Zarrina looked over the edge and ran her gaze upward along the sides of the buildings between which the helipad rested. The stain of the approaching horde was now three-quarters of the way up the pyramids, the white structures becoming covered in dark gray and black.
“Give him the code,” she said.
“Never,” Ji
“You should listen to her, Ji
“We have people, money, lawyers,” she reminded him. “We don’t have to die.”
“Do not speak!” Ji
She grabbed him. “Please, Ji
Ji
Before she could reply he shoved her backward, sending her over the edge.
Zarrina fell, screaming as she dropped. She hit what was now a six-inch layer of microbots ten stories below, blasting them in all directions like a cloud of dust. She lay there uncovered for all of a few seconds and then the swarm converged on her, covered her up and began to feed.
Ji
“Take a good hard look, Ji
It continued to grow darker around them. The bots were only one story below, cutting off all light that shone upward. Only the few halogen lamps on the side of the hangar and the red post lights at the edges of the helipad illuminated them now.
Ji
“For my friends. For my country. For people around the world who would suffer if you win. I don’t have a problem with that. What are you dying for?”
Ji
At that moment he hated Kurt with every fiber of his being. Hated him enough to lose all sense of balance.
He charged toward Kurt like a wrestler going in for the kill.
Instead of shooting Ji
Kurt popped back up to his feet in time to see Ji
“Not used to fighting much, are you?” Kurt baited Ji
Ji
Still holding the rifle in both hands, Kurt blocked the pipe and jabbed the butt of the rifle into Ji
Ji
It fell into the dark, trailing a strange whistling sound from its hollow ends.
By now the rising stain of the horde had reached the edge of the helipad, its first probing fingers curling up and onto the flat surface, converging toward the middle from all sides.
Kurt was ru
Through a mask of blood Ji
Kurt pointed the rifle at him and then flung it off the deck. “You can’t beat me, Ji
Ji
From out of nowhere Ji
Kurt swatted it away and it skipped into the approaching tide of microbots.
It was now or never. Ji
“Look at them!” Kurt shouted, holding Ji
Ji
They reached a trail of blood and swarmed into it like ants crawling all over one another. They glistened beneath the overhead lights, and the sound of their movement was overwhelming, like a monstrous swarm of bees and fingernails on chalkboard mixed together.
“Give me the code!” Kurt demanded.
The laptop sat a few feet away, the horde had already encircled it. It was literally floating on the sea of microbots.
“What good will it do you now?”
“Just give it to me!”
Kurt held him down, Ji
“Now, Ji
“221-798-615,” Ji
Kurt yanked Ji
A ti