Page 134 of The Lazarus Protocol

Earthnet wasn’t going to let them go easily.

The ground under his feet rumbled, and the whole building shook.

Adam spun to Steph, whose expression took on a shadow.

“She’s gonna blow the volcano. Hopefully, she also dispatched our ride to pick us up.”

“Time to get out of here.” Steph motioned to a pair of men helping each other, encouraging them to keep moving.

Adam handed a pistol to Jay and didn’t know what to do for Marina. “Let’s go.”

Noah stepped out first, Marina behind him. Adam stood by the door as they each came out. The team slipped into their typical formation, even without Ice. Surrounding the workers who had been kept here with them. Ash, Jay, Kai, and Dan.

Adam glanced back at the empty building. “Steph?”

FORTY-FIVE

Steph kicked open the door to the observation building at the volcano crater. Alarms inside the room blared, making her head hurt more than it already had been. She glanced around. “Vesper!”

Her sister wasn’t here.

Steph ran to the closest computer monitor and looked at the readouts. “Oh, yeah. This volcano is gearing up to blow.”

Someone darkened the doorway behind her, and she spun too late. Gunshots filled the small building, the accompanying flash of light almost blinding.

She dove to the side, rolled, and came up firing.

The person fell out of the doorway, and another came in. Steph got behind one of the desks and lifted up, planting her elbows on the desk, her hands cupped under the gun. She squeezed off two shots and ducked back down.

The second shooter peered around the door and fired wildly.

Steph waited a beat, then fired again just as he looked. The second shooter fell away.

“Any more of them?” Vesper’s callout came from behind her.

“What are you doing? We have to get out of here!” Steph checked the doorway was clear, then ran to her sister. Vesper had a flash drive plugged in the computer terminal. “Checking your work?”

“As if you care.” Vesper hammered the keys.

Steph grabbed her shoulder and tugged her back from the desk. “We have to go. You don’t want to die here when the volcano goes, do you?”

Her sister didn’t quit typing. “Now you care. Ran all the way up the side of a volcano just to find me. And for what? It’s not like you really want to hang out and get to know each other. You’d rather stop me and turn everything over to the CIA in exchange for your job back.”

“I might not believe in what you do, but I don’t want you to die.”

“Now she gets it.” Vesper shook her head, still typing.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding the portion of Polaris that’s housed on this island and deleting the program. Which won’t take it down, but its thinking capabilities will be severely hampered if it loses the data stored here.”

“Won’t the volcano do that?”

Vesper shook her head. “It’s connected to their system. I have to firewall it before Earthnet realizes it’s about to be destroyed and transfers the data to redundant servers.”

“Uh, pretty good clue to alert them to the impending blow when the whole island started to shake.”

“You can’t just blow a volcano. It has to…warm up first.”