Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (best english novels for beginners txt) 📗

“How?”

“The FBI Cyber Division believes undetected worms operate inside most law enforcement agency networks.”

“If it’s a report by the Royal Oman Police, why is it in English?”

“The document contains sections in Arabic for the Royal Oman Police, French for Interpol, and English for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“Read the relevant English section.”

In its arrhythmic, synthetic voice: “ ‘The suspect entered the home of Ameen and Liesha Nassif through the front door after cutting around and removing the deadbolt, then placing it in a nearby flowerpot. The abundance of water in the entryway suggests the use of a portable, high-velocity waterjet. The suspect appears to have had prior knowledge of the residence, as traces of footwear were found forming a direct path to the victim’s room upstairs. Randomized fingerprints found on the baby monitor suggest the suspect used obfuscation gloves while disabling the device in order to reduce the risk of alerting the other occupants of the home. The victim, a nine-month-old male, was killed by—’ ”

“Stop,” Quinn says.

She does not need to hear the rest. Quinn remembers the report now as the one forwarded by Moretti when she was in the lobby of the Al Hujra Hotel. The one she could not even get through because of how much it brought back the day she lost Molly. But she does not need the details. She does not need to be told that the Elite Assassin remained bedside until the breathing stopped, and that he then reached over and calmly switched the baby monitor back on before anyone on the other end had a chance to notice that it wasn’t transmitting. She does not need a breakdown of the suspect’s MO since it was nearly identical to her own. Quinn thinks back to that moment in the privacy room when Ranveer reached across the table and put his hand on hers. The connection they made. How she allowed a serial killer to comfort her. And now, the search result that she thought would absolve her of all future crimes—that would prove she did not send the Epoch Index and hence is nothing like the Elite Assassin—has revealed the exact opposite, showing her just how closely she and Ranveer are already aligned.

A lean older man with foggy wire-frame specs and a wide black umbrella is approaching Quinn’s car. Cautiously. Respectfully. Leaning to the side in an attempt to see in, leading with a concerned and warm smile. One of the church pastors, Quinn thinks. She takes a deep breath and smiles back to let him know that everything is OK. That she does not need anything from him, or from the church, or from God. Quinn has just solved the riddle of the scorpion, and its meaning is rising up inside her. It isn’t really a riddle at all, but more of an allegory. The scorpion stung the turtle simply because, given the opportunity, that’s what scorpions do. Intertwining the two creatures’ fates does not change the scorpion’s nature.

33

  BLACK BALL

AS SOON AS Henrietta is on the other side of the perimeter wall, she knows for sure that what she is looking at is not the result of a nuclear attack.

What was once a section of Paris known as Station F is now a massive, sparkling, crystalline crater one-third full of rainwater. Scaffolding and catwalks have already been erected so that all the physicists, forensic chemists, U.S. federal investigators, and whatever their French, British, and German counterparts are can mill about high above Ground Zero without their boots shattering the delicate and dazzling sheets beneath, and without them slipping on steep inclines and slicing open their backsides. If you need to get down into the hole to collect samples, there are ladders in designated locations that lead to suspended excavation platforms in the dry sections, and there are tools down there for smashing and digging and cutting and sifting. It is like an exotic alien archaeological dig.

Everyone keeps using the term “blast radius” to describe the 256 meters from the center to the outside edge, but “blast” is the wrong word. Henrietta has coined what she believes is a much more accurate term: reclamation radius. As she has pointed out multiple times to her colleagues and peers, the shards are oriented concentrically inward rather than away from the origin as they would be had they been forged by a crude blast.

Whatever did this did not release energy like every other detonation in the history of human-engineered explosives, from delicate little lady-finger firecrackers to city-incinerating thermonuclear hydrogen bombs. Instead, Henrietta believes that the destruction here was caused by instantaneous absorption. She cannot yet explain where the energy and missing matter went, but likewise, nobody else can explain the enigmatic absence of debris, burns, scoring, and radiation.

But the mysteries of Ground Zero do not stop there. Perhaps the most interesting and perplexing observation is that the phenomenon seems to have triggered a perfectly spherical spacetime collapse. Everything (and everyone) that was on the inside is, quite simply, gone. Everything that came into contact with the perimeter of the sphere has been transmuted into an iridescent crystalline structure. And everything beyond the reclamation radius appears entirely untouched. Buildings on all four sides have parabolic scoops removed, exposing multiple floors, ductwork, wiring, and furniture, yet not a single pane of glass beyond the barrier is so much as nicked. The surrounding buildings and the ground beneath are like injection-molded foam for shipping what must have looked like an enormous crystal ball. Except, according to Henrietta’s working hypothesis, the event wouldn’t have triggered the bright, blinding white of a high-energy burst of light like a traditional blast, but rather the deepest and most absolute of blacks.

A magnificent and colossal black ball.

Surveillance footage shows zilch. In one frame, Station F is there; in the next, it simply isn’t. While Henrietta can buy that whatever happened could have started and finished faster than a single camera’s frame rate—say 1/120th of