Miko stood framed in the doorway by candlelight spilling out from the apartment, wearing a long coat.
“Oh thank God,” she said, and immediately wrapped her arms around Hamza.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Hamza said, stroking her hair. “It’s just a blackout.”
Will looked away. This seemed very much a husband-wife moment.
Miko let Hamza go, sniffling slightly and laughing at herself.
“Not really,” she said. “Hey, Will.”
“Hey, Miko.”
“Will’s going to crash here, if that’s okay,” Hamza said.
“Of course,” Miko said. “Come in, both of you. The stove’s gas—it still works. I made coffee.”
They entered the apartment, pleasantly illuminated by twenty or thirty candles in all sorts of holders—candelabras, glasses,empty jam jars. Will and Hamza unbuttoned their coats but kept them on. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold inside as it was onthe street, but the building had a modern central heating system. It didn’t work without power, and the warmth they had generatedby walking up twenty-plus floors was rapidly dissipating.
“What did you mean when you said ‘Not really,’ Miko?” Hamza said.
“Huh?” Miko said.
“At the door. I said it was just a blackout, and you said not really.”
Miko tilted her head, puzzled.
“You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what? I’ve been walking for the last hour.”
“Turn on the radio. I was listening to it until you guys showed up.”
Hamza flipped the switch on a battery-powered radio on the coffee table. Immediately, a news station came on through faintstatic. Hamza walked into the kitchen and came out a moment later with two coffee mugs, handing one to Will.
They listened, as the radio announcer described the scope of the blackout.
Will looked at Miko.
“This is . . .”
“I know,” Miko said. “It’s not just here. Power’s out all over the world.”
Silence.
“Do you think the Site did it?” Miko asked.
Will didn’t answer.
The radio announcer solemnly proclaimed that he would continue to broadcast updates as he received them, as long as he hadgasoline for the generator powering the station’s transmitter. He then proceeded to describe disasters occurring all aroundthe world as power and computer systems failed.
“Look at that!” Hamza said. He had turned to look out through his apartment’s large windows across the East River, towardthe dark shadows of Brooklyn and Queens. Will and Miko turned to follow his gaze. A finger of flame rose up from the darkness,spreading out into a cloud as it grew.
“What is it?” Miko asked.
“Tanker truck, maybe,” Will said. “Propane or something.”
As the light from the initial explosion faded into a dull glow, new blossoms of flame appeared to replace it, rising up allacross the darkness beyond the river.
Törökul
The lights of the city of Uth radiated in the deep night, reflections off the stillness of the Aral Sea creating a sort ofmirror city in the water, shimmering and inconstant.
Six men sat cross-legged around a fire on a hilltop overlooking the city, sharing skewers of shashlik, passing the spits offire-blackened mutton between them. Skins of kumis circulated as well, some of the first of the spring, as the mares producedmilk for the new foals.
One set of lights in the city of Uth shone from a higher perch than the rest. A Byzantine cross, projecting from the exactcenter of the dome atop what had once been a mosque, built five centuries before. But for more than two decades, the cross.An insult, blazing out across the plain.
One of the men, the leader of this group, turned his gaze toward the city, looking at the defiled mosque, then back at hismen. He said nothing. There was nothing to be said.
Another man tossed his skewer into the dirt, scowling at his chief. The leader held the other man’s gaze for a few moments,then reached over and picked up the discarded skewer from the ground. He dusted off the worst of the dirt and took a bite,washing it down with a long swig from his skin.
The chief considered. He thought about the power he held—the men he could gather to his cause on a word, and more importantly,the Sword of God hidden away in its canyon. He thought about what it would mean to pull his army together, and what it wouldmean if he lost. Timing. As with so many things, it was all in the timing.
Without warning, the cross atop the mosque in Uth winked out, along with all the other electric lights in the city. If notfor the firelight still twinkling here and there between the buildings, it would have been easy to assume the city had beenwiped off the face of the earth.
The chief and his band got to their feet. Brownouts were nothing strange in Uth, but normally only a portion of the city wouldgo dark at a time. This suggested a larger failure. And perhaps, an opportunity.
The mirror city off the coast was gone, swallowed up into the black water.
The chief watched the dark city for a moment, then lifted his head and shouted up at the stars, crying war.
Chapter 26
Staffman’s hands ached, a tendons-deep pain that ran halfway up his forearms. He wanted nothing more than to stop typing,to soak his hands in hot water, and pour half a bottle of ibuprofen down his throat. But each time he pulled his fingers offthe keys, his botnet shut down another portion of the worldwide power grid. Each failure meant that many fewer computers availableto work on breaking into the Oracle’s systems, and that much longer he’d have to keep his agonized fingers moving to try tokeep the virus contained.
He flicked his eyes to the right, to the screen with the progress bar. Ninety-nine percent and counting.
It had taken nearly four hours to chew through the Oracle’s security. Despite Staffman’s efforts, the world map on his monitorwas more than half black, with the rest an angry red, dull like the coals of a fire that had almost burned itself out. Theentire American East Coast was dark, as was all of South America, Australia, and parts of Africa. He’d managed to maintaina good deal of Asia, the United States, and Europe, with their
