The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that a second Lattice should be built—this time at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, to act as a backup.
    The Geneva Lattice was underground in the old CERN tunnels. Underground, and encased in lead, it was much more difficult to reach and destroy, although attempts were still made from time to time. Mostly it was the Nevada Lattice Installation that was regularly assaulted, despite its protection by sensors, space-based weapons, tactical nukes, and—of course—the Lattice itself, which was used to find that which the rest could not.
    Until today, those defenses had been more than enough, and most raiders were shot down hundreds of kilometers before they reached the Lattice.
    After a failed raid, the life of an attempted raider was mapped with excruciating detail, and any of his or her accomplices were found and jailed within hours.
    But, as Shaw well knew, not until the raider was identified could the investigation begin. You couldn’t stop an attack beforehand. During the attack the Lattice could be used for defense, and afterwards it could reveal the entire life story of the raider and all his collaborators. But only afterwards.
    There could be hundreds of people planning attacks on any given day—there probably were. But to find them, you still had to know where to look. There was no search option for thoughts that Shaw could query. No way to tell it: “Show me everyone who’s planning to attack the Lattice.”
    Once a raider was identified, there was no hiding.
    For crime other than attacks on the Lattice itself, the knowledge that there was a one hundred percent chance you would get caught was usually deterrent enough, as Shaw knew better than most.
    When Shaw was six, he and his family were attacked while on vacation in West Rome. Their computer-driven car was taking them on a guided tour through the narrow streets near the high Vatican walls when eight Neo-Catholic terrorists descended on the car and cut power to its guidance system.
    A man jumped on top of the car and slammed the butt of his laser into the glass dome over the car, shattering it into a million pieces over Byron and his family. He felt his mother’s grip on his arm, but it wasn’t enough to resist the pull of the man’s leathered glove on his other arm.
    Byron and his younger brother Sagan were yanked out of the top and pulled away from their parents. Shaw’s memory of the rest descended into flashes. The thick black boots of the terrorist who had grabbed him. The wailing of his three-year-old brother screaming for his mother. And—for reasons he didn’t understand—a lingering smell of bread from a nearby cafe.
    That was all he saw before he and Sagan were pulled into a steep stone staircase and deep into catacombs and sewers under the ancient city.
    He spent the next four days there, doing his best to comfort his younger brother with games and stories, trying to quash his own fear. The man who had so easily grabbed Byron and stashed him under his arm introduced himself only as Dioli. He promised that Byron and Sagan would not be hurt, that as Catholics they would not take an innocent life. They needed the brothers to send a message to their father, and to the United States in general, that they should stay out of internal Catholic affairs.
    Dioli told Byron the truth about Davis Shaw. Byron’s father was not merely in Italy for a vacation, as he’d told his family. And his job at the U.S. State Department was not as a low-level bureaucrat as he’d let on. He was in West Rome to offer military and financial support to the Italians after the disunification of the country the year before, and to pledge that the U.S. would ensure that the Papal States would have their membership to the United Nations revoked unless they renounced all claims of ownership to the southern half of the Italian boot and withdrew to the walls of the original Vatican City.
    Unbeknownst to Shaw and his captors, a storm was rumbling on the other side of the world. A