Chapter 119 - The Underground Rail
Breathing heavily, Naomi shoved the hundred-pound metal carcass off her body and rose to her feet. Vanessa was trembling behind the remains of a marble pillar, her hands pressed over her ears, but she was unharmed.
"Naomi... the turrets stopped," Vanessa whispered.
"The central processor was inside the simulacrum," Naomi said, wiping the synthetic coolant from her face. She walked to the wall behind the desk where a hidden panel had slid open during the firefight.
Beyond the panel was not another laboratory, but a deep, circular elevator shaft plunging into the absolute darkness beneath the bedrock of Manhattan. The cables were still vibrating; an elevator car had descended only minutes before they arrived.
"He said 'London transit,'" Vanessa said, coming to stand beside Naomi, peering down the terrifying drop. "How could there be a transit to London from underneath New York?"
"Project Boreas," Naomi replied, her memory core surfacing long-dormant protocols that had been hardwired into her brain during her childhood in the facility. "In the 1970s, the Directorate funded a subterranean mag-lev vacuum transit tube beneath the North Atlantic seabed. It connects New York, Reykjavik, and London at Mach 3. Civilian intelligence believes it's an urban legend. It isn't."
She looked down at the control console beside the shaft. The digital readouts were flashing red:
*TRANSIT CAR 01: EN ROUTE TO REYKJAVIK TERMINAL.*
*PAYLOAD: SUBJECT ALPHA (STABILIZED).*
*CARGO STATUS: STERLING BIOMETRIC REPOSITORY COMPLETE.*
"They have Subject Alpha," Naomi said grimly. "The original genetic template from which my generation was harvested. If Vance brings Alpha to the European Directorate, they can mass-produce the next iteration—hundreds of Units with no free will, completely bound to their neural carrier signals."
"And the people in the streets above?" Vanessa asked, horror dawning in her eyes. "The citizens of New York?"
"They're the testing ground," Naomi said. "Unless the master transmitter at the London node is destroyed, their brains will fry when the carrier wave reaches full resonance in seventy-two hours."
Naomi looked at the secondary launch pad on the console screen.
*TRANSIT CAR 02: STANDBY. FUEL RESERVES: 100%. DESTINATION LOCK: SECTOR ONE (LONDON CENTRAL).*
"There’s a second pod," Vanessa said, her voice small, terrifyingly aware of what Naomi was going to say next.
May you like
"Yes," Naomi said, reloading her sidearm and checking the ceramic seals on her vest. "And it only holds two passengers."
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