Chapter 129 THREE VEHICLES

Chapter 129 THREE VEHICLES
Maeve kept the phone at her ear.
The second Maeve was not moving.
Landon was already at the door with keys from Sena's hand that he had taken without ceremony.
"Three hours," Maeve said.
"Less," Landon said. He went out.
"Talk to me," Maeve said into the phone.
"They stopped at the main entrance," the second Maeve said. Her voice was barely above a murmur. "Four people. Two at the entrance. Two going around the south side." A pause. "They have equipment. Not weapons. Tools."
"They are here to retrieve something," Maeve said.
"Or destroy it," the second Maeve said.
"The archive."
"They do not know where the basement entrance is. I watched them build this facility for three months from below. They used a construction team that was replaced before the basement level was added. Only Carver's contact and one other person knew about it." She paused. "The other person is one of the four outside."
"How do you know," Maeve said.
"Because he is looking in the right direction," the second Maeve said. "The others are reading from a schematic. He is not looking at the schematic."
Maeve looked at Aldric. "Can you reach Bianca."
"Trying," Aldric said. He had three stations running simultaneously, signal bouncing through the network in a way that Maeve did not fully understand and did not need to. "The region has poor coverage. I am routing through the lower level signal amplification." He paused. "It will work. Give me two minutes."
Two minutes was a long time with four people at a facility and one person in a basement and a vehicle already driving away.
"Second Maeve," Maeve said.
"Here."
"The basement entrance. How secure."
" It's a steel door, mechanical lock with no electronic components." 
"It will hold against tools
"How long before he finds it."
"The entrance is concealed behind a false panel. Good work. Not obvious." 
"Ten minutes. Less if he is thorough."
Maeve looked at Rory. Rory looked at the display. The thing from the sealed chamber was eight minutes out.
"There is nothing I can do from here in ten minutes," Maeve said. Not to the phone. To herself.
"There is something I can do," the second Maeve said.
Maeve went still. "No."
"The archive is twelve years of documentation," the second Maeve said.
"Twelve years of evidence of what Carver attempted and how the lower levels stopped it. If they destroy it, that record is gone. The lower levels have their own record but a human record has different weight in a human world." A pause. "You know that."
"I know that," Maeve said. "I also know there are four of them."
"I know the building," the second Maeve said. "I have been in it for an hour. I know which doors lock from inside and which ones do not, which corridors have exits and which ones end at walls, where the power runs and where it does not." A pause. "I am not going to fight four people. I am going to make the building difficult."
"That is not the same as safe," Maeve said.
"No," the second Maeve said. "It is not."
"The archive," she said. "Is there anything in it that cannot be replaced."
"All of it," the second Maeve said. "Physical records do not have copies."
"Those records document the lower levels as they were before anyone knew they could protect themselves. Completely unguarded data. If Carver builds again and gets those records back he does not start from zero."
"How much physical volume."
"Two boxes. Maybe three."
"Can you move them."
"Yes." A pause. "There is a service exit on the north side. Not on the schematic. Carver's contact added it the same way he added the basement. Off record." She paused. "If I can get the boxes to the north exit I can get them outside before they find the entrance."
"And then what," Maeve said. "You are outside a facility with four people inside it who are looking for exactly what you are carrying."
"The forest starts twelve meters from the north exit," the second Maeve said.
Maeve looked at Sena. Sena was looking at the display where Landon's vehicle signal was moving north at speed and was still two and a half hours from the facility site.
Too long.
"Aldric," Maeve said.
"Almost," he said.
"The lower level signal amplification," Maeve said. "Can you use it to reach Enzo directly. Not Bianca. Enzo."
Aldric looked at her. "The warmth he carries would act as a receiver if the signal is routed correctly," he said slowly. "I have never attempted it over this distance."
"Attempt it," Maeve said.
He turned back to the instruments.
Rory took his palm off the table and looked at the display. The thing from the sealed chamber was five minutes out. On the surface layer its signal had changed character. Not the deep foundation warmth of transit. Something that sat at the boundary between below and above, the specific signature of something that had reached its destination and was preparing to surface.
He looked at Maeve.
She was still on the phone with one hand and watching Aldric with the other and running calculations behind her eyes that he could read from across the room. He knew the look. She was building the problem from every angle simultaneously and arriving at the same answer from each one and not liking the answer.
"Mom," he said.
She looked at him.
"Go," he said.
She looked at the display. At the thing five minutes out. At the signal that matched his own rendered in depth-map light.
"I am not leaving you here with something we do not understand arriving in five minutes," she said.
"Sena is here," he said. "Aldric is here." He held her gaze. "And whatever is coming is not coming for you. It is coming for me. Your being here does not change what happens when it arrives." He paused. "Your being there might change what happens to her."
The phone in Maeve's hand carried the second Maeve's quiet breathing and the distant sound of boxes being moved across a basement floor.
Maeve looked at Rory for a long time.
He looked back. Clear. Decided. The same face as the seam. The same face as the lock. The same face as every moment where what was required was not protection but trust.
She crossed to him and put both hands on his face and looked at him.
He put his hands over hers.
"Aldric," she said without looking away from Rory. "Do you have a vehicle."
"Keys are on the hook by the door," Aldric said. "Faster than Sena's. Tank is full."
She took her hands back. She looked at Rory one more time.
"Do not touch anything until you understand it," she said.
"I know," he said.
She picked up the keys from the hook.
She looked at Sena. Sena nodded once, the nod that meant I have him, the nod Maeve had learned to trust across six years of working together.
She went to the door.
Aldric's voice stopped her. "Maeve."
She turned.
He was looking at his instruments. At the display. His face had the specific quality of a man who has just read something he did not expect and is deciding how to say it.
"Enzo's group," he said. "I reached them."
"Good," she said. "Tell them—"
"They are already moving toward the third facility," Aldric said. "They have been moving for forty minutes." He paused. "But that is not what I need to tell you."
She waited.
"The thing from the sealed chamber," he said. He looked at the display. At the surface layer. At the signal that had been moving for an hour toward this clearing.
It had stopped.
Not at the clearing. Three kilometers short. At the road junction where two tracks met in the forest, the same junction Sena had turned at to reach the building.
"It is not coming here," Aldric said. He looked up. "It changed direction four minutes ago."
"Where is it going," Maeve said.
Aldric looked at the display.
At the third facility site.
"It is following Landon," he said.