The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

He reached for the hydraulic lines again. Right on schedule, the battering ram of a hammer fired just as it had before. But with Kurt’s body twisted out of the way, it slammed into the huge oval window.

The eerie sound of cracks traveling through the acrylic caught everyone’s attention. They turned just as the window, designed convexly with all its strength focused outwards, failed from the inside.

The water blasted in like a crashing wave, hitting everyone and everything at once. It swept the people, the furniture, and the machines across the room, slamming all into the far wall.

Kurt felt several jarring collisions and struggled to free himself from the welder. Even as he got loose, the swirling water pinned him against the wall and held him down like a vicious wave might trap a surfer. He pushed off the floor with one foot and broke the surface.

Foam and debris were being blasted about by the gushing water. Kurt felt himself being pushed up by the rising flood as the room filled with liquid. As he neared the ceiling, the trapped air slowed the process, but it must have been leaking out somewhere because the space was collapsing.

Kurt looked around. Joe was there, holding Marchetti with one hand and clinging to the wall with the other.

Leilani popped up and grabbed ahold of a pipe that ran along the ceiling, which was now easily within reach.

“Any sign of the robots?”

“I never taught them to swim,” Marchetti said.

“First thing you’ve done right,” Kurt told him. “How far down are we?”

“Twenty feet.”

“We have to swim out.”

“I can make it,” Marchetti said, coughing as if he’d swallowed half a gallon of water.

“Leilani?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Okay. Get rid of your shoes,” he said, then, turning to Marchetti, added, “and lose that stupid robe. Not only will it drown you, it’s been giving me a headache since the moment I got here.”

They undid their shoes and pulled them off, Marchetti shed the wet robe, and they swam to the gaping hole where the window had been.

Before they went under to swim out, Kurt looked Marchetti in the eye. “Where do I find this Otero character?”

“The control center, in the main building, back near the helipad.”

“Can you override his access so I don’t get welded, nail-gunned or otherwise screwed by your robots along the way?”

Marchetti tapped the side of his head as if the idea resonated with him. “That’s the first thing I’m going to do.”

“Good,” Kurt said. He glanced at Joe, determination in his eyes accompanied by the energy surge that came with going on the offensive.

“I hope you’re rested,” he said, “because now it’s our turn.”

CHAPTER 13

IN A DARKENED CONTROL ROOM NEAR THE PEAK OF AQUA-Terra’s highest completed structure, Martin Otero looked from one screen to the next. Three large monitors sat in front of him. Two had gone blank, a third showed something moving and then pixilated out. In a few seconds it was blank like the others.

“What happened?”

Otero ignored the question. Blake Matson, Marchetti’s attorney leaned in closer. “What happened? Did the old man get it or not?”

Otero gestured to the blank screens. “You tell me. Obviously I can see only what you see. So how would I know?”

While Matson stared, Otero ran through the reboot program, hoping to get a signal from the construction robots. At the same time an alarm began flashing on the island’s schematic display.

“Water in the forward lab,” Otero said. Suddenly, he understood what happened. “The compartment’s flooded. Marchetti’s picture window must have fractured.”