The blue screen staring back at him felt surreal. He shook his head. Frank would call. He had to call. A virus couldn’t knock out the United States government. There were scientists, whole departments whose sole purpose for existing was to identify and eliminate these types of threats before they even became a problem. He wondered fleetingly if this were a joke, but dismissed it. Colonel Frank Reid would never play that tasteless of a joke. Lee didn’t even think Frank would play any joke at all.
He didn’t strike Lee as the joking type.
Something was keeping him from calling. The Internet signal could have been damaged or destroyed where Frank was, causing him to be unable to contact Lee for the past two days. Techs would be working overtime to reestablish contact with the Coordinators so Frank could tell them to hold off on reading their mission packets.
In the meantime, Lee had no idea what to do with himself. He would usually busy himself with a book or a movie, but watching a movie seemed inappropriate and he would not be able to focus on reading a book with his mind running through scenarios of what the hell was happening in the world outside his bunker.
He drank the rest of his water bottle and went to his treadmill. He left the incline flat and brought it up to an eight-minute-mile pace. He needed to waste some time and planned on running for a while.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE: NEW HAVEN
CHAPTER TWO: EXTRACTION
CHAPTER THREE: A MISSION
CHAPTER FIVE: SOMEONE WHO ISN’T AFRAID OF DEATH, OF DYING
CHAPTER SIX: NOT A DRILL
CHAPTER SEVEN: THIS IS REAL AGAIN
CHAPTER EIGHT: FIVE-MAN ARMY
CHAPTER NINE: SPACE WALK
CHAPTER TEN: EVACUATION
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THIS WAR WON’T LAST FOR EVER
CHAPTER TWELVE: SEVEN SHADES OF HADES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THIS IS ALL THAT IS LEFT
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: STRANDED
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A CURFEW IS IN EFFECT
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: WHAT MATTERS
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE SHARD
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: IS THIS HOW IT ENDS, THIS TIME?
CHAPTER NINETEEN: NOT AN ECHO OF YOU, NOT A SIMULATION OF YOU
CHAPTER TWENTY: HE’S GONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A SECOND CHANCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: YOU KILLED BLAKE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: IT CAN’T BE DONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: POINT OF NO RETURN
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: BORN DEAD
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: AT PEACE
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: NO ONE HAS EVER MADE IT THIS FAR
CHAPTER THIRTY: DEAD MAN WALKING
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: EASY WAY OUT
EPILOGUE: THE LONG WAY HOME
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Bonus Material
About Orbit Short Fiction
Newsletter
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Sawyer
Excerpt from Tracer copyright © 2015 by Rob Boffard
Excerpt from The Remaining copyright © 2014 by D. J. Molles
Cover design by Kirk Benshoff
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First eBook edition: March 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-38638-8
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