Read Online The Colony: A Novel by A. J. Colucci - Free Book Online

Six-year old Kendra had screamed.
    “We’ll drop your things off here,” Cameron said and placed the bag on the cot.
    Kendra left the room wondering how on earth she would ever sleep in such a confined space. She settled in the cart and it took off once again. There was a familiar tightening in her chest that squeezed her heart. The halls seemed to narrow. She closed her eyes and imagined a vast ocean—a meditation technique she’d learned from her mother—but the ocean waves kept pulling her under.
    “Miss Hart?”
    Kendra opened her eyes. They had stopped.
    “You all right?” Cameron asked, with an amused smile.
    Kendra nodded. They were facing a set of doors marked CONTROL CENTER .
    “Is this another one of those tiny rooms?” she asked.
    “Actually,” Cameron whispered in a throaty voice, “it’s enormous.”

 
    CHAPTER 11
    KENDRA BLEW OUT AN astonished breath. The control center was another quarried cavern but the size of Grand Central Station. More fantastic than its scope was its shape. The four gargantuan walls were triangular and came to a point twenty stories above her head, as if she were inside the Great Pyramid.
    It was a strange dichotomy of archaic and ultramodern. Despite its primitive walls, most of the room looked like a futuristic NASA control center. A sea of holographic computers, gleaming silver and bathed in ghostly blue light, stretched across the floor to a main command unit: a forty-foot tactical workstation packed with enough silicone to run the entire city of Manhattan. Overhead were circular offices clear as glass that seemed to be floating on air. At one end of the pyramid, long tables faced the gold seal of the United Nations and red velvet carpet flowed over the steps to the podium and stretched along a formal dais.
    Kendra decided this was one of those secret locations the government hides from the public. Places like Roswell and Area-51 and Mount Weather. This was where all the important New Yorkers would flee in the event of a nuclear attack.
    Only now the place was nearly empty, about a dozen men and women sitting quietly at a table off to the side. Kendra froze when she recognized two of them: New York mayor John Russo and Dr. Paul O’Keefe.
    “You must be Professor Hart,” Russo said, squinting over his glasses. He extended a hand toward an empty seat near Paul. “Please, join us.”
    Kendra struggled to recover. Six hours ago, she was counting ants in the Southwestern desert and now she was standing in an underground bomb shelter with the mayor of New York City and her ex-husband.
    She feigned a smile, walked to the seat next to Paul and sat down. He didn’t look at her but leaned back casually in his chair, his eyes fixed on the mayor. He was wearing a lab coat with an ID tag clipped to his pocket. It was the same familiar etching in her dreams: the dark hair, graceful manner and the liquid chestnut eyes that sent shock waves through her body. The beard was new, and made him only more attractive. His left hand, masculine with long, gentle fingers, was wrapped around the back of his neck and Kendra noticed he still wore his wedding ring.
    Paul was obviously avoiding her gaze, but she could tell he was beginning to crack and finally, without moving a muscle, his eyes shifted to her face.
    She shot him a look that could freeze hell, but he only smiled.
    Agent Cameron sat down in a seat next to Russo.
    “Seems we’re all present,” the mayor began. “So let’s get started.”
    Kendra’s mouth had dried to sandpaper. There were small pitchers of water on the table and she filled a glass in front of her.
    Russo introduced his eight municipal staff members; Kendra barely caught their names, but she was impressed by those present from Washington, most of whom she vaguely recognized. White House Chief Counsel George Bennington was accompanied by three members of the National Security Council, who were somber and silent during the introductions.
    The mayor concluded,