Crucible by James Rollins

Author:James Rollins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

12:45 A.M.

“You’re out of time,” Jason announced.

Mara ignored him and concentrated on the monitor. He grabbed the back of her chair and tried to roll her away from her station. She simply stood up and let him drag the empty chair to the side. She bent closer to the screen.

No, no, no . . .

She had to be sure.

Carly coughed into a fist, then cleared her throat. “Mara . . . Jason’s right. You’ve got less than a minute of battery power left.”

Mara knew that wasn’t the only time pressure. Smoke obscured the view to the south. A thickening pall hung over the roof of the lab. Gusts through the shattered windows carried in more smoke, along with hot ash.

Out in the other room, Father Bailey paced with a flashlight he’d found. He still clutched his borrowed phone to his ear. Every thirty seconds, the priest would stalk over and urge them to leave or silently communicate the same with an adamant expression.

Mara had ignored him, too.

This was too important. Once they abandoned this station, they would lose any chance of discovering why Eve had been freed again.

“Look,” Mara said.

She ran a finger down the tangle of crimson lines marking the path of Eve’s digital fingerprint. It wove a winding path to the city’s limit—then crossed outward. In order to follow it, Mara had to hack into other telecom networks. With the city in crisis and systems overloaded, it had taken far too long.

And she still wasn’t certain where Eve was headed.

But maybe . . .

Mara’s finger traveled across Paris’s suburbs and outlying villages: Pontault-Combault, Chaumes-en-Brie, Provins. As Eve’s route coiled and wormed across the map, it extended thin branches that died away, indicating someone had placed restrictions on where the program could travel.

Mara pictured Eve’s path lined by no-trespassing signs.

Still, the general trajectory was clear.

“She’s heading in a southeasterly direction,” Mara explained. “While I haven’t been able discover her end goal—at least, not for sure—I can make a guess.”

She shifted her fingertip farther to the southeast, extrapolating Eve’s path. She tapped at the French commune of Nogent-sur-Seine. It lay some hundred kilometers away, sitting on the right bank of the river that flowed into Paris.

“I think she’s headed here.”

“Why there?” Carly said.

Mara swallowed and manipulated the mouse to zoom into a road map of the township. “Eve was dispatched to knock out Paris’s power grid, to take control of its gas lines, even its water supply. If she’s being sent out again, the target this time must be something even larger, something that could destroy Paris forever.”

She pointed just as the screen blinked off, sinking them all into darkness.

Still, Jason gasped behind her. He clearly had spotted the possible target before the computer’s battery backup died.

So had Carly. “You have to call Commander Pierce,” her friend said. “Now.”

Jason had already pulled out his satellite phone. Its screen flared brightly in the smoky dark. In its glow, the anxiety in his face tightened.

Mara held her breath.

Jason finally shook his head. “No answer,” he reported with a grimace, turning toward the burning city.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.