ABOVE THE ANGRY WAVES
The wooden motorboat cut through the night waves, its engine roaring in fits and starts. Palawan was far behind now, shrinking into a thin black line slowly swallowed by the tropical storm. On the wet, slippery deck, Indah sat with her back against the cracked wall of the wheelhouse.
Rain began to fall again, light but sharp as needles of ice. The gunshot wound in her left arm throbbed. She cleaned it with cheap alcohol she found in the boat's first-aid kit, her face utterly unmoved as the chemical burned her exposed flesh.
"Are you sure we're not being followed?" Joko asked from inside the cabin. His fingers danced over the keyboard of a rugged laptop resting on his lap. Its screen cast a blue glow across his pale face.
"Not for now," Indah replied flatly. Her eyes remained fixed on the darkness of the sea. "But their radar will detect us as soon as we approach the outer boundary of the Southern Philippines' maritime sector. Victor has access to private military satellites."
Joko snorted, adjusting his glasses as they slipped down his sweaty nose. "That man is a complete psychopath. I just managed to breach the second encryption layer of Professor Hendra's files. Indah... the place we're headed, Nightingale’s Cradle, isn't just a lab. It's a graveyard."
Indah turned toward him. "Explain."
"Hendra designed the island's defense system to bury itself if this project ever leaked." Joko turned the laptop toward Indah. On the screen was a three-dimensional blueprint of a crescent-shaped coral island. Buried deep within the volcanic rock at its center stood a massive cylindrical structure. "It's a cloning and neural-modification facility. There's also a high-frequency transmitter there. The place where they... reprogrammed your brain."
Indah stared at the red cylinder on the screen. That was where she had been reborn as a weapon. Her childhood memories—if she had ever had any—had been erased inside that glass tube filled with synthetic amniotic fluid.
"That melody," Indah whispered. "How does it work?"
"Hendra implanted a subdermal chip near your brain's hippocampus. The chip is inactive, locked by 256-bit audio encryption. Only the specific frequency of the lullaby he created can trigger the release of those memories. If we activate it in the island's main control room, the entire block of suppressed memories will unlock." Joko looked at Indah anxiously. "But there are risks. If your brain rejects this sudden recovery process... you could suffer a cerebral hemorrhage. Die."
Indah clenched her fist. The pain in her head began returning, as if the chip inside her skull were reacting to their conversation. "I'd rather die knowing who I am than live as a nameless hunter's dog."
Suddenly, an alarm blared from Joko's portable sensor device.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Damn it!" Joko shouted. "We've got a problem! Radar contact. Three... no, four objects approaching at high speed from the northeast."
Indah sprang to her feet, ignoring the pain in her arm. She peered into the night through an infrared night-vision scope. Above the churning surface of the sea, four black silhouettes sped toward them. Not ordinary boats. They were armed tactical Skiffs, the kind commonly used by naval special forces.
And they were moving without lights.
"Drones?" Joko asked, his voice trembling.
"No. Humans," Indah said. She checked the magazine of her pistol, making sure it was fully loaded. "Alpha Team never sends robots to do a human's job. Joko, kill all the boat's lights. Now!"
Total darkness swallowed their boat. The engine was shut off, leaving the vessel to rock amid the massive waves. An oppressive silence settled over them. Only the slap of water against the wooden hull and the rumble of distant thunder broke it.
Their pursuers drew closer. Indah could hear the faint hiss of the enemy Skiffs' jet turbine engines. They spread out, forming a horseshoe formation to surround the wooden boat.
A massive searchlight suddenly flared to life on one of the enemy boats, sweeping across the sea before locking directly onto their vessel.
"Fire!" a voice shouted through a loudspeaker.
RATATATATAT!
.50-caliber machine-gun fire tore the wooden cabin of their boat into splinters.