Chapter 18 - FOUR NOTES MISSING
Cass had disabled the glass using an electronic blackout film.
For eleven seconds, Ward could not see the runway.
That was enough.
Jonah abandoned the fuel vehicle directly in front of the jet, blocking its path. Airport emergency systems automatically sealed the runway.
Ward ordered his guards to remove it.
Cass locked their radio channel.
“Why are you helping us?” Mara asked.
“I’m helping Elias.”
“You imprisoned him.”
“I kept him alive.”
Cass revealed that Elias had deliberately left four notes out of the children’s song. Orpheus could not unlock its root directory without them.
“Where are the missing notes?”
“Inside something he knew Ward would never touch.”
Mara remembered the belongings recovered after Elias’s supposed death.
His cracked watch.
His wallet.
His wedding ring.
The ring remained in a locked drawer inside Mara’s office.
Ward laughed.
“Your office was searched months ago.”
“You searched the obvious drawer.”
Mara had hidden the ring inside the base of a model aircraft Elias gave her when she became chief executive.
Her office stood across the airport in the Quinn operations building.
The global release timer showed three minutes.
Cass opened the tower’s emergency cable shaft.
“You can reach the operations building through the communication tunnel.”
“What about Elias and the children?”
“I’ll delay the aircraft.”
Ward stepped toward them.
Cass raised a small transmitter.
“If my finger leaves this switch, every Orpheus server in this airport destroys itself.”
Ward stopped.
Mara entered the cable shaft.
Jonah’s voice reached her through the radio.
“Mara, do not retrieve the ring.”
“Why?”
“Because the four notes don’t shut Orpheus down.”
“What do they do?”
May you like
Jonah hesitated.
“They wake up whatever Elias buried beneath Runway Nine.”
