25 - Sam #3
“Affirmative,” Byron’s voice in his ear answered. “Recording it all. But the sprinklers are noisy.”
Keahilani crushed the downed bee drones underfoot as she walked to the panic room door, unlocked it, and she and Noble One stepped out.
Noble One had his weird bulky gun trained on Nico.
Hair dripping in his eyes, Sam asked, “You going to drown us too?”
Keahilani relented and worked her tablet. The sprinklers shut off.
“Sam, Nico?” Byron’s voice in their earpieces. “I was able to catch that command and hack into the sprinkler system. Let me know if that will help.”
Sam had to distract Noble One, get him to point the gun elsewhere. Even if it was at Sam himself.
“Why are you doing all this? Why fake an alien invasion?” Sam asked. Noble One swiveled the gun to aim at Sam. Better, but Sam’s pulse was jackhammering in his neck.
The countdown clock was right above Noble One’s head. Right above that gun.
T IME TO I MPACT : 03 MIN 22 SEC
If Sam could buy them some time with a big confession speech, run out the clock and make sure nothing bad happened, maybe he and Nico could figure out some way to turn the tables. It worked with Bond villains. “You’re making people panic, and they’re dying out there.”
Noble One shrugged. “Big picture.”
“It’s a good cause,” Keahilani added.
Noble One spoke in Russian. “Odin vrag, ob’yedinyayushchiy nas vsekh.”
“What does that mean?” Nico asked.
“One enemy that unites us all,” Keahilani translated. “And to prove the aliens are here and enemies, we’ve prepared a few demonstrations. Timed for maximum impact.”
Sam’s eyes flew to the countdown monitor
T IME TO I MPACT : 02 MIN 41 SEC
Keahilani brought up images on the working screens.
Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Spring Temple Buddha in Henan, China
The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
The Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt
And the Statue of Liberty in Upper New York Bay—just four miles from where they were!
Keahilani gestured to her tablet. “I send the command, and my teams will take out all of these.”
It was like they were on some sick game show.
Sam needed to move the hummingbird drone to show the targets, but if he did, Keahilani and Noble One would figure out they were being recorded.
But there was another way to do this. “Christ in Rio and the giant Buddha in Henan are symbols of faith, the Eiffel Tower and Sphinx are about pride, but the Statue of Liberty? I don’t get that one. You’re targeting hope?” Sam asked.
Anger flushed Keahilani’s face. “Things that divide humans into us and them ! Symbols of nationalism our world would be better without.”
“A bloodbath destroying iconic sculptures and buildings won’t destroy nationalism,” Sam retorted.
“It is symbolic,” Noble One spoke in their defense. “No one will be hurt, but whole planet will shake.”
Sam was scathing. “So your plan is everyone hates the pretend aliens and all humanity comes together, sings ‘Kumbaya,’ and lives happily ever after?”
“You want to see how fear and hatred of an other works to bring people together?” Keahilani said bitterly. “I grew up in Tennessee. An adopted Hawaiian kid with two moms, one white and one Black.”
She had two moms? Like Frida had two dads. Sam hadn’t expected that.
Keahilani’s fingers moved on the tablet. “We just need people to hate an other so frightening it shows everyone human that human differences don’t matter.”
“That’s pretty clever, actually,” Nico said quietly to Sam.
And in that moment it was like Sam could see the path Keahilani had been on, where the pain of her childhood had transmuted into anger. Into faking an alien invasion of the world. Into being moments away from blowing up five icons of humanity, in—Sam glanced at the countdown clock.
T IME TO I MPACT : 19 SEC
They were squared off, Nico opposite Noble One, Sam facing Keahilani. Water cascaded down from the higher-level workstations, leaving the four of them standing in more than an inch of water on the cement floor.
Sam flashed on a memory from his and Nico’s honeymoon.
They’d been playing in the water off a pristine stretch of beach, and the clear turquoise waves sent up this spray that caught the sun in a perfect way to make a rainbow.
Sam had tried to sweep his hand through the water to make his own but ended up shoving a wave of water into Nico’s face.
Nico had spluttered and laughed, “Huh-ho! You’re going to splash me?
” and started splashing Sam back. Both of them splashing, Nico got closer and closer and then he was tickling Sam, who couldn’t stop laughing, and then they were kissing.
Sam pulled back just enough to explain. “I was just trying to make a rainbow.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I want to splash you ,” Nico had said.
“Shut up and kiss me,” Sam had replied with a look that demanded just that. And Nico had.
Sam snapped back to the face-off with Keahilani and Noble One.
T IME TO I MPACT : 19 SEC
“Make a rainbow?” Sam whispered to Nico.
“The biggest,” Nico agreed quietly. “Byron, make it rain.”
“Hey!” Noble One jerked his gun toward them. “What are you whispering?”
Byron gave them the countdown, “Three. Two. One—”
The sprinklers switched back on. Each of them dragging one foot sideways, Sam and Nico kicked up a wave of water right into Noble One and Keahilani’s faces.
Nico dropped into a crouch, sweeping his leg to knock a spluttering Noble One’s feet out from under him. The guy fell, and in the moment of shock and splash Nico wrested the gun from him.
Adrenaline soared inside Sam as he lunged at the tablet. Keahilani needed to protect it, but all Sam had to do was break it. She held it out in her left hand to keep it away from him, and that’s when Byron had the hummingbird drone dive from the monitor wall. From the corner of his eye Sam saw:
T IME TO I MPACT : 05 SEC
The hummingbird drone with its key-beak stabbed the back of Keahilani’s hand. With a cry she dropped the tablet. Sam’s right foot whipped out soccer-style and connected with the tablet, sending it smashing into a monitor on the wall. The one that had shown the Eiffel Tower.
Water sheeted down on them all.
Sam waded over to check the tablet. Screen cracked, it was dead. And it must have been connected to the countdown clock, since that had stopped too:
T IME TO I MPACT : 02 SEC
It reminded Sam of that ridiculous moment in Goldfinger when Bond stopped the nuclear bomb that was going to irradiate and ruin all the gold in Fort Knox with just 007 seconds left. A great moment, but a bit too much to believe.
Two seconds was even tighter. But they’d done it!
“Turn them off again, Byron,” Sam said.
The sprinklers shut off, leaving a dripping sound. But now Sam and Nico had the upper hand.
“You!” Keahilani was outraged, yelling at Nico and then Sam. “You’re ruining it all! We can have world peace.”
“At what cost?” Sam shot back.
“There’s a cost to everything!” Keahilani spat the words out. “There’s a cost to doing nothing.”
It was crazy to Sam that they couldn’t see how messed up all this was. “So you started a war to create peace.”
Noble One moved closer to Keahilani in support. “No one blames chef for broken eggs. They just eat omelet.”
“Team, you got that?” Nico asked.
Bec spoke in their ears. “We’ve been streaming it—all 103 channels in New York, picked up all over.”
“Guys, a confession’s great, but there’s still the problem of the dead spot in space,” Frida said on their earpieces.
Peter chimed in. “I’ve been monitoring socials. People are saying that maybe they’re not even the ones behind this.”
Bec added, “There are always folks taking credit for things they didn’t do.”
“Celebrity wannabes,” Frida agreed.
Ari’s voice cut in. “I did just move the hole in space to hide Mars though.”
“You figured out the code!” Sam was thrilled.
“Nico’s suggestion that time was the key solved it,” Ari said in their earpieces.
Sam beamed at his guy. Proud of you.
Nico blushed, motioning Keahilani and Noble One to sit on the counter of the lowest level so he could cover them both with the gun.
On the monitor wall, three of the working screens changed to show a news report. A handsome young man stood in front of the two white globes of Hawaii’s Keck Observatory. Graphics on screen read:
S CIENCE O PERATIONS S PECIALIST E LIOT Y OUNG
K ECK O BSERVATORY , H AWAII
Eliot was speaking into a reporter’s microphone. “Data from the James Webb Telescope is telling us that the anomaly in space Earth was about to hit is no longer there.”
“Oh my God!” The reporter looked directly at the camera. “Sorry.” They looked around the summit of Mauna Kea nervously. “Does that mean the aliens have landed?”
“The data’s telling us the anomaly moved, and now, seemingly, Mars isn’t there anymore.”
The reporter gasped. “The dead hole in space ate Mars?”
“No.” Eliot put up a hand reassuringly. “We can still see Mars with our optical telescopes,” He gestured behind him.
“Like the Keck. Which means this whole thing is either computer error or someone’s fabrication.
As exciting as extraterrestrial contact would be, we have absolutely no proof of any aliens. And there’s no ‘dead hole’ in space.”
“That’s actually the hot scientist I was telling you about,” Nico told Sam.
“You really didn’t sleep with him?” Sam asked. The guy was movie-star gorgeous.
Nico shook his head. “I really didn’t.”
Sam turned to Keahilani and Noble One. “If you do anything now, the world will just see you as terrorists.”
Like the balloon of their egos and ambition had been totally deflated, Keahilani and Noble One didn’t say anything.
“Nico, Sam.” Ari’s voice in their ear. “We just got word from someone called the Director that the cavalry will be there in ten minutes.”
“That dart was a strong sedative,” Byron said. “They weren’t trying to kill you. Just knock you out.”
That was what they had wanted to do with the bee drones. What he’d done to Brigadoon.
Which meant maybe Raul was okay? Sam could feel this weight behind his eyes lift—just a little—with hope. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for Raul dying.
And maybe Keahilani and Noble One weren’t killers.
Which would make them, maybe, not so different from Sam and Nico after all.
“Why Keahilani ?” Sam asked her.
“Better than Lili ,” Keahilani said.
Noble One spoke in her defense. “Her moms named her after the last queen of Hawai‘i.”
“I’d rather be the woman who rains down fire than the one who lets corrupt businessmen take over,” Keahilani said, raising her fist parallel to the floor and opening it, like she was imagining fire raining down from her hand.
Noble One set his hand on top of hers. “Fire in the sky.”
“How did you get dragged into this?” Nico asked Noble One.
“We were both on scholarship at Vanderbilt. We met, and…” Noble One gave Keahilani a look so loving, like he’d do anything to prove his love to her.
Sam had to admit, it was a lot more than some cheesy flowers, or even homemade chocolates—faking an alien invasion of the whole world.
And he didn’t feel as furious anymore.
Were these two really Bond villains? Or were they just people who had wanted to do some good, but their idea of how to go about that was really terrible?
No one thought to blame Goldfinger or Blofeld’s evilness on the fact they had straight parents, but Sam could see this playing very differently now.
Sam called the hummingbird drone to him and powered it off. Then took out his earpiece and dropped it into the water at his feet.
He motioned Nico to do the same. Nico did.
No one would hear them now.
Sam walked over to Nico and whispered in his ear. “What if we let them go?”
Nico thought about it. “No one believes it’s an alien invasion anymore. Which means they’re not going to launch any attack. So no one else is going to get hurt…”
“Would it really be justice if they’re arrested?” Sam asked.
“Scholarships to college? They’re not rich.” Nico frowned. “Seems like only the rich get justice in this country.”
It was hard to argue with that. And a little uncomfortable, since Sam knew Nico thought Sam was rich. Again, hard to argue with that.
“So we’re agreed?” Sam whispered.
“Yeah,” Nico said.
Sam jerked his head at Keahilani. “Will you swear to it: no more trying to save the world by nearly destroying it?”
Keahilani looked at Noble One.
Almost too quiet to hear, he breathed “We should.”
She considered for a moment, then turned to Sam. “If you’re giving us a way out, yes.”
Sam looked at his watch. “Troops are on their way. You have a seven-minute headstart.” He almost chuckled. There was the 007.
Nico lowered the dart gun. “Make the most of it.”
Hand in hand, Keahilani and Noble One raced inside the panic room. Keahilani flung aside the soaked Persian rug and opened a hidden trapdoor in the floor. Water cascaded down the hole before she and then Noble One slipped into an office on the twelfth floor.
Sam wasn’t surprised they had an escape plan after all. He went into the glass room, careful to not crush any more of the bee drones, and closed the trapdoor. He resettled the Persian rug in its wet place.
Nico started scooping up handfuls of the drowned bee drones. “Byron is going to kill me.”