Final Days

Saul leaned in closer, his gun now angled towards Donohue’s crotch. ‘I just want you to understand exactly how I’m feeling,’ he said coldly. ‘I’ve been waiting ten long, miserable fucking years just so I can find out if my wife and daughter are even alive. I want to know who did this thing – what person is responsible for putting my life on hold for all this time. So I want you, Agent Donohue, to tell me every last fucking thing you know. I’ve been arrested, held prisoner, tortured, had guns pointed at me, you name it – and if there’s one person around here who seems to have a better grasp of whatever the fuck is really going on, it’s you.’

‘Or what?’ Donohue gasped. ‘Or you’ll kill me?’

Saul shook his head. ‘No, I’m a lot more imaginative than that. First I’ll blow your right arm off.’ He gestured with the gun. ‘Then the left. Then I’ll drill a hole through your balls. Then—’

‘All right,’ said Donohue. ‘All right. Jesus, I’ll tell you.’

Saul leaned back and waited, the loup-garou making him feel superhuman, invulnerable.

‘It was never really about Galileo,’ said Donohue. ‘When we sent you after Hanover, I mean. It was just about the shipment.’

‘The artefacts from the far future? What exactly were they carrying in that shipment?’

Donohue laughed weakly and rolled his eyes. ‘What the hell do you think was in that shipment? It was something that triggered the growths, left behind by whatever it was that built the Founder Network. But we got careless.’ He winced in pain and shifted slightly. ‘Turns out that shipment went to the bottom of the Pacific before it even managed to reach Taiwan.’

‘And that’s the cause of all this?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Donohue. His skin had by now taken on a pale and waxen appearance.

‘And Galileo?’

‘We figured you needed an added incentive to find that shipment.’

Saul fought the urge to place the gun between Donohue’s eyes and pull the trigger. ‘And Hsiu-Chuan? Where does he come into it?’

‘No.’ Donohue shook his head, and looked back at Saul with wide, frightened eyes.

Saul pushed the gun barrel against Donohue’s uninjured leg. ‘Five seconds.’

Panicked, Donohue put out a hand. ‘Wait! Okay, all right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Hsiu-Chuan was just one link in a very long chain of Sphere politicos that wanted the shipment hijacked.’

‘Why did they want it so badly? Because of whatever triggered the growths?’

‘No, we didn’t have any idea what the artefacts were or what they could do. The Sphere couldn’t have known either.’

‘But there has to be some reason they wanted that particular shipment. They wouldn’t have planned things that carefully just for the hell of it.’

‘They got wind of the fact that we had discovered wormhole generators the size of your fist.’ Donohue coughed. ‘They were right, but they didn’t realize it was an alien technology. Maybe they suspected it . . . all I know is, they wound up grabbing the wrong shipment.’ Donohue groaned, clutching at his injured leg. ‘For Christ’s sake, let me go. I need to see a doctor.’

Saul shook his head in astonishment. ‘I can’t believe this. Billions of people are going to die, all because you people fucked up. Did you ever think it might have been better just to let the Sphere have their own damn wormholes?’

Donohue grunted, baring his teeth from the onslaught of the pain. ‘You really think technology like that would have been better in the hands of men like Hsiu-Chuan? Then you’re a fucking idiot.’

‘Tell me what you know about Hanover. Where does he come into it?’

‘We found out that he was taking bribes from organized smuggling gangs on Kepler. We kept him in business on the understanding that he could stay out of jail as long as he funnelled information back to us, but it backfired.’

‘Backfired? How?’

‘Hsiu-Chuan’s people found out he was playing both sides, and threatned to kill his entire family in front of him if he didn’t give them what they wanted. That meant access codes, times and places, delivery dates and security hacks. Everything they needed to send a team into Florida, and walk right back out with the shipment.’

‘Jesus.’ Saul had a mental picture of Donohue running up and down a leaking dam, trying to plug up hundreds of ever-widening cracks. ‘You really made a mess of this, didn’t you?’

‘Listen to me,’ rasped Donohue, his voice growing weaker. ‘About Mitchell Stone.’

‘He’s still alive, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, he is, and whatever you do with me, you need to help us find him. And stop him.’

‘Why? What’s he got to do with this?’

‘We interrogated him. Put him under, and asked him questions. The things he told us, he’s . . . he’s not even goddamn human any more.’

‘What?’

‘That shipment we sent you to look for?’ Donohue coughed. ‘There’s no reason why the Sphere drone carrying it should have gone out of control the way it did. Those things are near as damn fail-proof. Then we found out that the Sphere lost contact with it at exactly the same instant Stone—’

The shot came from nowhere, blowing out the car’s front windscreen. Saul ducked instinctively, slamming the accelerator down, without pause for thought. The car surged forward.