right. I hope someday in the future you’ll thank me for what I’m doing.”
“Thank you?” Carlton spat. “For destroying our vision for a better world?”
“For saving the world.”
Mallik backed toward the doorway behind him. Torkan was behind him, his eyes on the motionless guards.
When Mallik was through the doorway, he stopped and said, “You’ll never stop coming after me, will you? The Nine has to end here.”
Then he tossed the vial into the room and sprinted out of sight.
Carlton saw the vial arc in the air toward the center of the room and turned to run, but Taylor was already hauling him backward. He stumbled after her, pushing Gupta through the arch with him. They’d rounded the corner when he heard the vial smash against the stone floor and the screaming begin.
They kept running. Carlton turned to see Wakefield stumble through the arch behind them with one of the guards. Wakefield’s terrified eyes pleaded for help, but there was none coming. He and the guard seized up as their muscles froze, and they both keeled over like statues, their heads smashing into the hard floor.
Gupta paused at the horrifying sight. His own man had been left behind to die.
“Come on!” Taylor shouted. “You can’t do anything for them! This way!”
“Who is this woman?” Gupta said to Carlton. “How does your assistant know we can’t do anything?”
“Because she was in British Army Intelligence,” Carlton said. “She’s not just my assistant, she’s my bodyguard. Much better than yours, I might add.”
Taylor shoved Gupta into motion, and they kept going until they found one of the remaining Library guards at Carlton’s exit.
“Find the rest of your men,” Carlton said to him. “Romir Mallik just killed the other members of the Nine. Stop him before he can leave the Library.”
The guard looked at him in shock, then nodded and ran off.
They descended into the tunnel as Gupta said in stunned disbelief, “Why would Mallik do that?”
“Because he’s insane,” Carlton said. He didn’t add that the video of Torkan had been doctored by his media people to insert the Iranian’s face into the scene. It was just Carlton’s hunch that Mallik had been the one behind the sabotage of the Colossus 5, but he’d needed something concrete to push the others in the Nine to turn on him.
“Two thousand years of waiting and planning,” Gupta said with a whimper, “and then the Nine is destroyed in an instant by one of our own.”
“We don’t need them anymore,” Carlton said. “You and I can complete the project ourselves. We have everything we need to finish it.”
“What about the other members? They’ll be missed by their own people.”
“You forget that I own a news organization. We’ll figure out a way to make their absences go unnoticed or explained until we can activate Colossus. After that, the announcement of their deaths will just be a tragic addition to the news cycle, and we can shut down any subsequent investigations.”
“Does Mallik know where the Colossus ships are right now?”
Carlton shook his head. “No, I made sure to keep that information from him. There’s no way for him to find them. I even convinced Saidon to move the Colossus 5 to an undisclosed location to install the replacement satellite dish.”
“And you’re sure Jhootha Island won’t lead back to us?”
Carlton grinned. He wasn’t upset at all about what had just happened. In fact, Mallik did him a favor by culling his partners.
“I wasn’t lying to Mallik when I said that I issued the code for the self-destruct protocol. Jhootha Island will be but a distant memory by the end of the day.”
* * *
—
“That was bold of you,” Torkan said as he led Mallik to their own exit tunnel from the Library.
“Eliminating the other Unknowns will give us some breathing room,” Mallik said, still surprised at his own impulsive act.