Alice let Ness ride shotgun.It felt like the right thing to do and it let her monitor her equipment.As they traveled further and further away from the relocation camp, she accepted that the signal was gone.
But why?If it were a trap, if Ness was the trap, where were the hunters?
Con and Rita had been dogged from place to place, even through time.But unless Ness was lying to them, she couldn’t be the reason for the signal.At least, it didn’t make logical sense to Alice.
She was aware that logic could be both a strength and a weakness.But she couldn’t find an illogical reason for sending a teenager careening through time.
But if someone had planted that signal, surely they knew Ness was there—unless they didn’t?
What a tragedy if they hadn’t known.They’d been so close to her.
Alice sighed, but also had to concede that from the little Rita had shared—and from the fact it seemed as if her own people had tried to kill her—care of the individual wasn’t a primary concern.
Alice hadn’t much liked her past, but she didn’t think she’d have liked Rita’s future very much.Knowledge was only power, in her opinion, if it made the lives of individuals better.
She’d brought the data she’d acquired from Rita’s two tracking devices and she loaded that up.She might as well work on that.It would take them two days of hard driving to get back to the silo.
If it was still there?
Something had happened when the time waves started.They’d completely lost touch with everyone.But that made getting back just that much more urgent.
She knew Ty was pushing himself hard—while keeping to the speed limits.They couldn’t afford to get stopped.
She bent her head over the data and noticed a pattern she hadn’t seen before.Was it new?A result of the time waves?Or had she just missed it before?
She pulled it out and studied it.It had similar markings to the trackers they’d gotten from Rita.There were small differences, but it was close enough for her to be sure it was the same tech.
She studied the pattern and then—even knowing she probably shouldn’t—she added it to her tracking.
And immediately got a hit.Thankfully there were satellites in the sky because she needed their signals to home in on where it was broadcasting from.
It wasn’t strong, but it was persistent.She tried to narrow in on it and noticed some very strange anomalies.The pattern was there, but there were other things in there, too.
She frowned.Quantum signatures?She’d only started studying them to try to understand Rita’s tech.
She switched to satellite tracking.Nevada?It wasn’t coming from the silo though.She zoomed in on it and then searched on the coordinates.
Area 51.
She broke off her tracking and sat back, her heart pounding.It was the second rule of the silo: don’t attract the attention of anyone from Area 51.
She’d left Rita’s trackers in the silo in her lab.So why was she getting a signal that could be one or both of them broadcasting from Area 51?
It could explain why they’d lost contact, but it didn’t explain the quantum signature embedded in the signal.
Unless there truly was alien tech at Area 51.
Chapter17
Rita felt strangely reluctant to leave the protection of the spooky office building.It wasn’t logical, but she felt more exposed in the strange, gray light of the sky.
Her time sight showed an angry energy outside the compound, with flashes of light similar to lightning but multi-colored and in ominous hues.
It was hot, the air dry and almost as stale as the air inside the building.
The man Stella had called Alastor was sitting on a bench beside what had been a sad kind of art fixture of something or other.Rita had always thought it should have been a fountain.She liked fountains, but for some reason they’d been deemed wasteful or something.Anyway, there weren’t any.
The small structure could have really used some flowing water to soften its edges.And the sound of it would have helped, too.
