Quantum Break by Cam Rogers Read Free Book Online

Will had really gone off the deep end: a daylong fit of rage, followed by an inability to process it. Will had disappeared into the barn for forty-eight hours, muttering and shouting. When Jack tried to make peace, Will had thrown a plate at him, mashed potatoes flying everywhere. It was the only time Jack hadn’t felt safe around his older brother.
    “You could have told me that in an e-mail, Paul.”
    If there was one thing he learned from the episode with the two women in Belize it was that nothing is more important in this life than happiness—whatever it looks like, wherever you find it. This was no way to live.
    Paul leaned against the console. “What did we always say?”
    “C’mon…”
    “What did we say?”
    “We stick together or the bastards win.”
    “Right. Tonight is the most important moment of my life. I wouldn’t be here without you, so I couldn’t have done this without you.” He turned and popped the clear Perspex idiot shield from an oversized black punch-button. “I want you to be able to say you were in the room when the world changed.”
    Paul’s palm came down, gently, and the room outside blasted to electric life. Mechanisms activated beneath the curved walkway that circled the core, and from beneath the walkway flat double-hinged sections swung up, opened, and clicked into place. In a single wave corridor sections unfurled around the circumference. In seconds the walkway had become a sealed corridor circling the crackling geometric sphere at the chamber’s heart.
    Jack stepped back.
    Paul said, “Put these on,” tossing him a pair of photoreactive goggles.
    “Shouldn’t you have given me those before you hit that button?”
    A monitor suspended from the roof flashed a green alert. “The ground security door’s been opened. We’ve got about three minutes.” Paul ran up the steel-mesh stairs to the entry door, slashed his card through the reader, and locked it down tight. “Call it five. Follow me.”
    The machine was vibrating. The core threw off sparks. The air smelled like burned hair. A shimmering corona, like a heat mirage, rose from the corridor-ring.
    “Will bulk e-mailed the entire project mailing list—investors included,” Paul shouted above the din, coming to a stop before the gangway. “He expressed his lack of confidence in the project in a very detailed manner. In short he freaked the investors right out. Funding was pulled, Jack. They shut the entire project down.”
    Jack nodded, understanding, checked the door, glared at Paul. “They fired you. They fired you, and you’re in here with a hacked code key about to fire up a reactor that your only real expert thinks is massively dangerous . With me. ”
    “C’mon. We’ve done worse.”
    “I don’t think we have, Paul.”
    Something under the floor belted against itself, and the sphere at the center of the room started thrumming.
    “This is six years of work, Jack! People trusted me to guide this to the finish line. People with families. Once administration sees that it works safely—”
    “You’ll go to jail!”
    “It’ll be worth it!”
    Jack took that in. “This is just like that time with that girl from summer camp.”
    “I don’t deny that Heather had a few problems—”
    “You’re white knighting, man! Again! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
    “This is about families, Jack! And futures! The future! Lives will change if I can make this happen.”
    Jack pointed straight at the machine. “This is based on Will’s work, isn’t it?” Jack insisted. “He knows what he’s talking about. I mean, before he went off the rails, before our parents were gone, he was doing good work, right? He might be nuts but he’s not an idiot.”
    “The team’s been over it and over it and there is nothing, and I mean nothing to Will’s accusations.”
    “Maybe so, but I didn’t come back to get arrested. Shut it down, okay? It sounds … really pissed off.”
    Paul shook his head. “Too late.