The Rising Sea (NUMA Files 15)

Joe nodded. “Something tells me these aren’t the hospitality suites.”

Kurt tested the door handle. “Unlocked,” he whispered. “Let’s make an entrance.”

Switching off the safeties on the weapons they’d taken from Han’s guards on the hill, they prepared to move into the room.

With slow precision, Kurt pulled the handle down until it clicked and the latch disengaged. He eased the door open and felt a slight wave of air passing over him, as the room inside was kept at positive pressure.

He pushed the door far enough for Joe to aim his weapon inside. But there was no one there to challenge them. “Empty,” Joe said. “Let’s take a look.”

Joe moved in first and Kurt followed, shutting the door as carefully as he’d opened it. The room was unoccupied, but it was filled with equipment. Complex machinery had been bolted to the floor here and there. Shelves were stocked with prefabricated parts: gyros, servos, robotic arms and legs.

“Your friend Han should talk to someone about this robot obsession,” Joe quipped.

“About a lot of things,” Kurt suggested.

While Joe examined the parts on the shelf, Kurt moved deeper into the room, where he discovered a high-tech 3-D printing machine. It had been left on and was warm to the touch.

He tapped the small screen on a control panel. A series of Chinese characters appeared along with a blank line for a password. He didn’t waste his time trying to guess it and moved on.

Beside the 3-D printer was a table, now tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. A sheet covered a figure beneath it. Kurt pulled the sheet back, expecting to find Nagano, tortured and deceased. Instead, he found the half-finished shell of another humanoid robot. No face, no body panels, just a frame with limbs and wires and a power cell. He noticed an air bladder covering the chest and a liquid reservoir.

Joe arrived carrying two robotic arms. “Can I give you a hand?”

“Very funny.”

“Dr. Frankenstein has nothing on this place.”

Kurt nodded, covered the unfinished creation with the sheet and moved to the back of the room. He reached the far wall and realized it was made of smoked glass. He pulled the infrared scope down over his eyes once more but saw only the reflection of his own heat.

Pushing the goggles back up, he pressed his face up against the glass, shielding his eyes from any reflection and trying to discern what was on the other side. He couldn’t see much, but he heard something. Or rather he felt it. A vibration coming through the glass. A murmuring sound as if several people were talking in low tones on the other side.

He waved Joe over. “Do you hear that?”

Joe put his ear up to the glass. “Conversation?”

“Too repetitive,” Kurt said. “It’s the same words over and over again. More like chanting or praying.”

&n

bsp; “If I was Nagano, I’d be praying for help right about now,” Joe said.

They looked around for a door, discovered that one of the panels was held in place by a spring-loaded, magnetic latch. Pressing it once released it and Kurt pulled the door open.

The droning sound grew in volume but not clarity. Kurt stepped deeper into the chamber. There were more unfinished machines under sheets on medical tables around him and, down at the far end, a pair of figures standing in front of high-definition screens. They were watching and then repeating what they saw and heard on the screen, both figures speaking the same phrases over and over.

Kurt gripped his pistol and stepped closer. The figures ahead of him didn’t react to him approaching at all. As if they were in a trance.

He found a light switch on the wall, raised the pistol and paused. Strangely, he recognized the phrase they were repeating. They were speaking English. And stranger still, he recognized the voice that was speaking that phrase.

“Japan will never be an ally of China,” the image on the screen said.

“Japan will never be an ally of China,” the standing figures repeated.

Kurt flicked the switch. Neither of the figures reacted. They just kept speaking. Starting and then stopping and then starting over again in an endless loop.

Kurt stepped around in front of them. The two figures were identical, complete with mussed silver hair, deep-blue eyes and three days of stubble. Kurt felt as if he was staring in a mirror—two mirrors, actually. He was looking at robotic versions of himself.

* * *