Kill Switch by Jonathan Maberry Page A

looked at me. As if I had any answers.
    â€œI feel sick,” said Bunny. “That air we breathed? I feel like crap.”
    He raised his BAMS unit. The light was no longer green. Now it flickered back and forth between green and yellow. Mine was doing the same thing. So was Top’s. I peered at the tiny digital screen to see what kind of particles it had picked up, but all it said was: SYSTEM ERROR.
    Top frowned. “Was it me or did the power go out when that thing flashed?”
    â€œIt went out,” I said.
    â€œAnd it came back on?”
    â€œYeah.”
    He held up his watch. The digital display was flashing the way those things do after a power interruption. “All my gear’s in reset mode except the flashlight. It doesn’t have a circuit breaker. Just a battery. It went off but came back on.”
    We all checked our gear and got the same results. Bunny said, “You think that machine is the EMP weapon they were building?”
    Top shook his head. “Can’t be the EMP cannon. It’s too big.”
    â€œI know, but we got hit by something like that.”
    â€œEMP would have fried the electronics,” said Top. “This just interrupted the power.”
    â€œWhat can do that?” asked Bunny. “I mean to everything, even our flashlights?”
    â€œI have no idea,” I said.
    â€œDoesn’t make sense,” said Bunny. “If something could interrupt electrical conductivity all the way down to a watch battery, wouldn’t it fry our central nervous system? I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, guys, but why ain’t we dead?”
    We had no answer for that.
    Top gave the big machine a long, hateful look. “Cap’n, I’m two-thirds convinced we ought to put some blaster plasters on that thing and blow it back to Satan. We got a nice airplane waiting outside.”
    â€œYes,” said Bunny fiercely.
    I shook my head. “Blowing it up isn’t our job and we don’t know what will happen if we damage it.”
    They didn’t like it, but they nodded. Hell, I didn’t like it, either.
    â€œLet’s gather what intel we can,” I said, “find Erskine and his team, and then get the hell out of Dodge.”
    â€œHooah,” agreed Top.
    â€œHooah,” said Bunny, but his voice was small and unemphatic.
    We stood in silence, lost in the strangeness of the moment, still caught in the net of whatever had just happened to us. Three soldiers, gasping like beached trout, feeling small and scared.
    That’s when we heard a voice say, “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

 
    INTERLUDE FIVE
    OFFICE OF DR. MICHAEL GREENE
    EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK
    WHEN PROSPERO WAS TWELVE
    â€œDid my son talk to you about his God Machine?” asked Oscar Bell. He sat on the doctor’s couch, legs crossed, hands resting on his lap. Greene thought he could see a flicker in the man’s eyes. Nerves, perhaps, or excitement.
    â€œPlease understand, Mr. Bell, that I encourage an air of unrestricted confidence in my sessions with your son,” said Green. “However, that comes with a certain level of trust. He knows that what he says goes no farther than—”
    Bell held up a finger. “Don’t. You want to stick to some set of bullshit doctor-patient rules, then consider your services terminated.”
    That hung in the air, ugly and real.
    â€œI…,” began Greene, but once more Bell cut him off.
    â€œI don’t need a blow-by-blow. I don’t want to know what the kid jerks off to, and I don’t want to know what he thinks of me. That’s all psychobabble nonsense and we both know it. But I do want to know about the God Machine. And I mean everything.”
    Greene felt as if he had been nailed to his chair by the force of Bell’s green-eyed stare. The man frightened him, and that went beyond the threat of a massive financial loss. Bell seemed willing to give him a