The night sky over the Atlantic coast was a bruising purple. Rain lashed against the hull of the Icarus.
"Target in sight," Hughes announced over the intercom. "Monhegan Island Lighthouse. Ten miles out."
Jason stood by the open bay door of the airship. The wind whipped his trench coat. He checked his parachute harness. It was a Surplus WWI rig—basically a silk handkerchief and a prayer.
"It's a HALO jump," O'Malley yelled over the wind. "High Altitude, Low Opening. Except we don't have altimeters, so just pull the cord when you see the rocks!"
"Comforting," Jason shouted back.
Maria stepped up beside them. She was strapping a flamethrower tank to her back.
"Why the fire?" Jason asked.
"Because you can't reason with a machine," Maria said grimly. "Fire cleanses."
"Green light!" Hughes yelled.
Jason jumped.
The freefall was terrifying. The wind roared in his ears. The ocean below was a black void, broken only by the rhythmic sweep of the lighthouse beam.
But the beam wasn't yellow. It was blue.
A piercing, electric azure light that cut through the fog like a laser.
"Pull!"
Jason yanked the ripcord. The chute cracked open, jerking him violently upward.
He drifted down toward the rocky island. He saw figures moving on the ground. Stiff. Jerky.
The Hollow Men.
He hit the wet rocks hard, rolling to absorb the impact. He cut his chute loose.
O'Malley and Maria landed nearby.
"Movement," O'Malley whispered, raising his Thompson gun.
Three men emerged from the fog. They wore fishermen's slickers. They walked in perfect unison, their steps heavy and synchronized.
They didn't carry guns. They carried gaff hooks and wrenches.
"Federal Agents?" O'Malley asked.
"No," Jason said. "Processors."
The men turned their heads simultaneously. Their eyes were black voids.
They didn't shout a warning. They just broke into a run.
"Open fire!"
O'Malley pulled the trigger. Rat-tat-tat-tat!
The bullets hit the lead man in the chest. He didn't stumble. He didn't scream. He just kept running, the impacts puffing holes in his yellow slicker.
"They don't feel pain!" Jason yelled, firing his pistol. A shot hit a knee, shattering the bone. The man fell, but kept crawling, dragging his ruined leg without a sound.
"Headshots!" O'Malley shouted. "Aim for the plug!"
One of the men lunged at Jason with a wrench. Jason dodged, hearing the metal clang against the rock.
He saw the copper port on the back of the man's neck. It was glowing faintly blue.
"Maria!" Jason screamed.
FOOOOSH.
A jet of liquid fire engulfed the attackers.
This time, they screamed. The heat boiled the hydraulic fluid in their spines. The copper ports ruptured, spraying steam. They collapsed, twitching.
"Up the stairs!" Jason ordered. "To the tower!"
They fought their way up the spiral staircase of the lighthouse.
It was a grinder. Every landing had more guards. More empty eyes. More silence.
Maria took point, clearing the path with short bursts of flame. The smell of burning rubber and flesh filled the narrow stone tube.
They reached the top. The lantern room.
Jason kicked the door open.
It wasn't a lantern.
In the center of the room, where the Fresnel lens should be, was a massive vacuum tube amplifier. It hummed with lethal power, pulsing blue light out to sea.
Standing in front of it was the Keeper.
He was huge. Seven feet tall. He wore a heavy rubber apron.
But his arms were gone.
Replaced at the shoulders were massive hydraulic pistons ending in steel claws. Steam vented from his back.
"That's a lot of upgrades," O'Malley muttered.
The Keeper turned. His face was a map of scars. His eyes were gone, replaced by optical lenses.
"Unauthorized access," the Keeper said. It was Gates's voice again, booming from a speaker in the man's chest.
He swung a claw.
It smashed into the stone wall, pulverizing the brick.
"Cover fire!" Jason yelled.
O'Malley unloaded his magazine into the Keeper's chest. The bullets sparked off a metal breastplate under the apron.
The Keeper charged. He backhanded O'Malley, sending the big Irishman flying into the railing.
Maria aimed the flamethrower.
Click.
"Empty!" she screamed.
The Keeper advanced on Jason. The hydraulic claws snapped. Clang-clang.
Jason backed up. He was trapped against the amplifier. The blue light buzzed behind him, making his hair stand on end.
He looked at the machine. It was fragile glass and copper.
He looked at the Keeper. Metal and fluid.
"Hey!" Jason shouted.
The Keeper paused.
"You want the signal?" Jason yelled. "Take it!"
Jason dropped to the floor.
He kicked the base of the massive vacuum tube.
The glass shattered.
CRACK-ZZZZZT!
A bolt of raw electricity, no longer contained by the vacuum, arced out.
It hit the nearest conductive object.
The Keeper.
The blue lightning struck the metal breastplate. It surged through the hydraulic lines.
The Keeper convulsed. The fluid in his veins boiled instantly. Steam erupted from every joint. His optical lenses shattered.
He screamed—a human scream this time, the Gates voice overridden by agony.
He collapsed, smoking.
The amplifier sparked and died. The blue beam vanished.
The room plunged into darkness.
"Is everyone alive?" Jason coughed, waving away the smoke.
"Mostly," O'Malley groaned from the floor. "Ribs are broken."
Jason walked to the shattered amplifier. The silence was heavy.
Out in the ocean, the signal was dead. Thousands of Hollow Men on ships and docks would be waking up, confused, with headaches and lost time.
Jason looked at the wall. There was a chart pinned there. A map of the network coverage.
He shined his flashlight on it.
Node 1: Maine (Offline).
Node 2: New York (Active).
Node 3: Detroit (Active).
Jason scanned down the list. His light stopped at the bottom.
Priority Target: Washington D.C.
Status: Infiltration 40%.
Target Subjects: Senate Judiciary Committee.
Jason felt the blood drain from his face.
"He's not just enslaving workers," Jason whispered. "He's going for the government."
"Senators?" Maria asked, limping over. "He's going to implant Senators?"
"Why bribe a politician when you can reprogram him?" Jason said. "Gates is staging a silent coup."
A sound cut through the storm outside. A rhythmic thwup-thwup-thwup.
"Chopper!" O'Malley said.
A spotlight swept the tower.
It was a Pitcairn Autogyro—an early helicopter prototype. Hughes was leaning out the side.
A rope ladder dropped onto the balcony.
"Taxi service!" Hughes yelled over the rotor wash. "The Navy is here!"
Jason ran to the railing.
Below, three destroyers were circling the island. Searchlights swept the rocks.
But they weren't firing at the lighthouse.
BOOM.
A cannon fired. A shell hit the lead destroyer.
"They're shooting at each other!" O'Malley yelled, confused.
"Confusion in the ranks," Jason realized. "Some of the sailors were Processors. When the signal died, they woke up. Or panic set in."
The US Navy was fighting a civil war in the middle of a storm.
"Go!" Jason ordered. "Get on the ladder!"
He helped O'Malley and Maria up. Then he grabbed the rung.
As the autogyro lifted off, Jason looked down at the burning lighthouse and the chaos at sea.
He had cut the strings. But the puppets were armed.
"Washington," Jason muttered into the wind. "We have to go to Washington."
He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
The war wasn't about money anymore. It wasn't about territory.
It was about who got to be human.