Page 100 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

Chapter 65

Priya ran through the darkness in her dreamlike world, her bare feet pounding the metal grates of TAU’s labyrinthine mind. In this digital hallucination, doors flew open for her, one after another after another. None of them could hold up against the keys she possessed, but she still had miles to go.

Though TAU was focused elsewhere, its demons were onto her. They hounded her, chasing her relentlessly, growing closer by the second. They would appear suddenly, surrounding her and leaping for her throat, but she would open another door, vanish, and reappear elsewhere inside TAU’s mind.

She sensed TAU growing stronger. The attack was failing. Max was being compromised.

She dropped down another level, raced into a new section of the labyrinth, and soon found herself surrounded.

Men. Dogs. Demons.

It was imagery. But it was real in Priya’s world.

They lunged for her on all sides, claws digging into her, hands reaching for her throat. But even as they tried to consume her, she pulled back, passing directly through a wall.

The noise vanished. The claws vanished. She was in a misty forestnow, green leaves all around. A stream ran nearby. Trees reached up into the fog above. Moss underfoot instead of harsh metal.

This was Priya’s construct. The lair of the Gray Witch. She had hidden it from TAU, but the demons had now seen her vanish into it. They would soon consume and destroy it.

She raced down a forest path, water dripping from the vines, mist obscuring everything ahead of, behind, and even above them. She came to a waterfall at the side of a stony bluff and walked through it. She was back in TAU’s labyrinth, surrounded once more by the dark, anodized steel. A formidable door stood in front of her.

Priya laid her hands on the vault and overrode TAU’s passcodes. The door vanished and she stepped inside the circular room. Glowing imagery surrounded her. Files by the thousands. The full genetic codes of the sea locusts, the clones, and the fertility-destroying virus.

She touched the files with her bare fingers, moved them to another section of the room, and searched for the gate Max had opened for her. Finding it, she sent the information.

“I hope you haven’t missed me while I was gone,” she added.

The data raced through the labyrinth and out. As it cleared TAU’s control, the demons appeared in the doorway.

TAU saw through their eyes. “You have accomplished nothing,” it insisted. “I will destroy all the data you’ve sent and make you suffer for your treachery.”

The demons sprang at her. Their fangs and claws digging into her skin. It seemed as if they would rip her apart. Priya knew that TAU could make them think or feel anything it wanted them to experience. The pain of the attack was as real as anything she’d ever experienced, but it wasn’t enough for TAU.

“You choose to be a witch. Now burn like one.”

Flames erupted in her forest. The demons pulled her toward it. And then, suddenly, she vanished from their grasp.

TAU’s minions stood baffled. Even TAU seemed confused: Priya was no longer part of it.

—

“The hell with waiting,” Kurt had grunted.

He’d cut the wires with a single draw.

Priya arched her back as Gamay had. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out. Her face turned toward him. Her eyes found him. Then they closed, and she collapsed in his grasp.

Clearing the wires, Kurt lifted Priya over his shoulder. She was light as a feather. Climbing out of the pool, he saw that Gamay was now standing. “Time to go.”

Chapter 66

The Overseer knew he was being followed. He’d hunted enough animals and men in his life to know the sound of pursuit intimately. He ran with abandon, heading for the coast. If he could flag down the patrol boat, he could still escape.

Seeing a number of the clones trying to flank him in the lowlands, he turned for the hills, ducking into the foliage and scrambling up the rocks that covered that part of the island. He realized all too late that he was taking the same route as the escapees he’d hunted down just two weeks before. He burst from the foliage into the same clearing, staring out at the sea over the same cliff.

He stepped to the edge in hopes of finding a route to climb down. He saw no path that would get him past the first section. What he did see—for the first time—was an indentation in the rock, an opening. Glancing at the edge of the cliff he saw wear marks caused by a rope or cable rubbing back and forth. Tracing the line back he found an anchor hidden behind a small boulder.

He suddenly realized how the clones had escaped him and it dawned on him that they were more intelligent, more organized, and more unified than he’d ever imagined. Perhaps he’d underestimated them. Perhaps they were not just—

---