Dark Rising (28 page)

The man spun on his heel and left. Ahmad Al Janaddi was about to turn back to his monitors when he paused – could it be the intruders that the Takavaran were meant to be guarding against? What if they were American agents come to steal his work? Maybe they knew its potential and wanted it for themselves.

He tapped his pursed lips with a stubby finger. They wouldn’t need to steal it – he would gladly trade it to go with them. After all, he was the secret to the process, not the machines. He just had to make things a little easier for them. The sub-basement didn’t have electronic locks, but everywhere else . . .

Al Janaddi looked quickly over his shoulder. No guards were in the room and all the technicians were deeply engrossed in their preparation for the test run. His fingers flew over the keyboard and he dived into Jamshid II’s electrical security grid
. Just a few open doors should help
, he thought as he changed the small green security lights to red.

Although he couldn’t hear the whirr of the electronic locks being disengaged, he imagined it occurring throughout the facility. The doors were now open for everyone . . . and everything.

Al Janaddi shut the screen and glanced over his shoulder once more. Satisfied, he smiled and then moved his lips to practise again. ‘Hello, I live in New York. How are you?

‘How are you doing? I live in New York.

‘Howrya doin’? I’m a NooYarka.’

THIRTY-EIGHT

I
t didn’t take long for the Takavaran to find the break in the wall. Of the fifty soldiers deployed to the inside of the Jamshid II facility, ten had been sent to the lowest level. Now Makhmoud Ajhban, the squad leader, called in to report the wall intrusion to the unit leader, who ordered all his men to break into ten-man teams and perform a floor-by-floor search.

Ajhban sent eight men through the hole to investigate if there were any more enemy agents outside. He hoped so; he would put his men up against anyone or anything. The tall Takavaran was looking forward to breaking the boredom of what had, up to now, been a babysitting job in the middle of the desert.

*

The eight men cautiously entered the tunnel. They only had small handheld torches against the darkness, which enveloped them like a velvet curtain once they had moved away from the hole in the wall. Akhbin Ramsheed crouched down and examined the floor of the cave. Multiple footprints led back into the dusty tunnel: a party of at least five, perhaps six, military men; all large, with one exception – a youth or maybe a woman. He smiled at the thought of capturing a Western woman.

The Takavaran passed through the skeleton room without stopping – these men had witnessed violent death a hundred times and a few more cadavers didn’t interest them. They stopped at the rockfall and looked in silence at the tracks that disappeared into it. Ramsheed felt the cool granite – the ancient rocks were newly broken.
Just blown
, he thought. His neck prickled and he looked around and sniffed. There was a lingering sweet smell, like overripe fruit and vinegar.

It was then they heard the clicking, like furiously working rug-picking sticks. Ramsheed gave a small signal whistle and the men moved into a back-to-back defensive formation, torches placed on top of their handguns and held in front of them to throw weak yellow pipes of light into the gloom.

The creature was already there with them, standing motionless just a few feet from Ramsheed. In the dark he had mistaken it for a large stalagmite. Even when he shone his torch full onto the gigantic, glistening frame his brain refused to comprehend what he was seeing.

A huge claw shot out and cleaved his body from the navel up. His fellow soldiers were bathed in a warm spray of blood.

The men fired instantly, but their bullets glanced ineffectively off the hardened carapace plates. A single bullet penetrated between the gristly jointed segments on the monster’s slightly softened underbody – the projectile was not large enough to cause any significant trauma, but the spark of pain inflamed the creature. It moved at a blurring speed into the midst of the unit, spitting its corrosive venom and striking out with its claws until six bodies lay in pieces or liquefying on the tunnel floor. The remaining two men ran for their lives towards the hole in the wall. One managed to dive through, but the other was grabbed in a deadly embrace.

The creature’s mandibles parted and it extended its feeding tube and inserted it slowly into the soft skin at the base of the man’s neck. His hellish screams changed to a strangled, wet gurgling sound. Already his face and torso were beginning to collapse as his insides were liquefied and sucked out from his body.

Makhmoud Ajhban struck the jabbering man full in the face to try to make him more coherent. He had no time for this; he had heard the gunfire and the screams from inside the tunnel and he needed information. Spittle was running down the terrified Takavaran’s chin and his eyes were like those of a horse about to bolt. He was babbling about Azih Dahaka – an ancient monster from Persian stories to scare children and old goat-herders on dark nights. Azih Dahaka, the stinging dragon, was a fearsome demon from the time of creation, a horn-headed monster with the tail of a scorpion and a great armoured body. It was said to eat men and horses and would eventually destroy the world. Azih Dahaka had been defeated in battle by a great warrior who blinded him and chained him beneath a mountain.

Ajhban was about to strike the useless man again when a small sound from the opening in the tunnel wall attracted his attention. Two foot-long eyestalks came through the hole, followed by a waxy, insectoid head that was sharp at one end and telescoping out from under an enormous armoured hump.

The thing’s dark green shell was spattered with fresh blood, and as Ajhban watched, a vertical split at the front of the face broke open to reveal the tip of a black spike that eased out and back. As the barb re-entered, more blood dripped from the dark bristled maw. The black bulbs of its eyes fixed on the two remaining Takavaran, and it climbed through into the passageway and perched upside down on the ceiling like some sort of giant flattened cockroach.

Ajhban had seen enough. He threw the convulsing soldier roughly to the ground and turned to run.

The creature dropped down on the fallen man and snatched up his body. The front of its torso opened and a series of smaller thoracic limbs held the struggling soldier tight against its plated chest like a parcel of meat. The whole time its eyestalks were on the squad leader as he sprinted down the corridor. For a hunter, fleeing prey was irresistible. It shot after the running man, knowing it could catch him with ease.

The solid white door from the stairwell into level two had no lock, just a bar embedded in a steel plate. It opened easily when Sam pulled lightly on the handle. The HAWCs went through fast and fanned either side of the doorway.

All quiet.

They were in an immaculate corridor with gleaming white tiled walls and a ceiling that had recessed lighting every few feet, giving it a surgical brightness.
Good, means we’re either on the right floor or very close
, thought Alex.

‘Stay alert,’ he ordered his team. He knew that the better the facilities, the better the security – and he expected it to be formidable here, given what they had encountered at the Persepolis facility. He motioned them to proceed.

Jamshid II was based on a circular silo design: most of the important rooms were in the centre and the exits and storage on the outside. He knew that if they continued along the curving corridor they would eventually return to where they’d started – no corners or dead ends. Great for surveillance, not so great for Special Forces insertions.

Alex held up a clenched fist to signal the team to halt. Guns pointed up and down the curving corridor as the men waited for his signal to proceed or withdraw. Adira stepped in front of Zach to keep him sandwiched between the wall and herself. Their breathing slowed; all was still and silent.

Alex could sense something. The floor wasn’t empty – he’d expected that – but the presence was . . . strange. He was relieved to sense that it wasn’t the monster, but something human, or almost human. It seemed captive or somehow bound. Alive, but not fully living; tortured and longing to . . . not exist.

Maybe a prisoner; could be useful
.

Alex cleared his mind and listened more intently; breathed in his surroundings. He closed his eyes and pushed out further. He grunted softly:
it hurt
. The pain surged through his head like a red tidal wave and washed down the back of his neck. An image formed then faded, and the contact dissipated like a dream.

Alex slowly breathed in and out. Gradually, the raging fire in his skull weakened and died down to smouldering embers. He opened his eyes and blinked. It took a few seconds before his vision cleared.

‘Are we okay, boss?’ Sam whispered beside him, keeping his eyes on the corridor.

‘Fine. Stay alert – there’s someone ahead.’

Alex motioned to proceed and the team crept forward, staying flat to the inside wall.

There was door after door and little else. Alex was confident that, between them, Sam or Irish could open any barrier they came across. But so far nothing was locked. For ten minutes the HAWCs went down the corridor checking rooms – they found nothing but empty storage rooms and plain square cells containing a bed, toilet and sink. None of them looked like they’d ever been used.

Until Lagudi opened one of the doors.

‘Jesus Christ!’ He fell back out of the doorway and scrambled to the opposite wall, his gun held out in front of him. With his other hand he crossed himself and then pointed.

Alex drew his gun, pointed at Sam and O’Riordan and then in both directions along the corridor. Each posted himself at opposite ends of the stretch of corridor, ten feet from Alex and the rest of the team.

Rocky had gotten to his feet and was breathing fast. Alex gave him a look that made the stocky little HAWC nod and mouth
I’m okay
. He still kept his gun on the open door.

Alex could feel waves of self-loathing and anguish pouring from the room.
Our captive
, he thought as he stepped over the threshold.

Though it was dark inside, a harsh band of light from the corridor lit something that was propped up on the bed. It was barely recognisable as human; its mass glistened redly, as if a thousand arteries had ruptured and bathed it in sticky blood and other bodily fluids. It quivered, probably in fear.

It took all of Alex’s resolve to look the being in the face. If it hadn’t been moving, he would not have believed it had ever been alive. Its body looked torn and stretched, as if it had undergone terrible torture. Its tongue protruded like the cap of a huge mushroom, and a soft mewling emanated from the broad slit of its mouth.

Alex holstered his gun. Almost immediately the thing began to raise itself up. Alex slowed his breathing again, not only to settle his nerves but also to reduce the intake of the foul smell in the room. Now closer, he could see that metallic fragments were embedded in the creature’s flesh; not shrapnel but something that seemed fused into it. A long thin appendage – Alex thought it might be an arm – lifted towards him.

‘Can you understand me?’ Alex asked, holding out his hand. The limb, reddish-white, brushed his fingertips . . . and an image began to form in Alex’s mind.

‘
Ai-yish!
’ Adira had entered the room. She hissed something more in Hebrew then drew her gun. Alex swept his hand up quicker than she could move, knocking the weapon out of her grasp.

His contact with the misshapen form was broken and it collapsed back like a wave on the shoreline.

Alex turned to Adira. ‘It’s . . . he’s not dangerous. Get Dr Shomron in here.’

Adira stood transfixed for a moment, revulsion pulling her features into a grimace. Alex handed her gun back. ‘And you wait outside,’ he told her. She made a guttural sound in the back of her throat and left.

Zach came into the room quickly, stumbling slightly. Alex guessed that Adira had given him a little push to help him make his mind up about entering. He stood there with his mouth open and stared for several seconds before whispering, ‘
O Elokim Yerachem
; oh my God. Do . . . do you think he understands us?’

‘I think so, but I doubt we’ll ever understand
him
. His mouth doesn’t work properly.’

Alex stepped forward and the thing rose up slightly, drawing back into the corner where the walls met. He made a gesture of reassurance and said to Zach, ‘Could this be the result of proximity to a black hole?’

Zach put his fist over his nose to mask the smell. ‘Yes, spaghettification – the theoretical elongation of the atomic structure of matter. Just astrophysics conjecture, really . . . I used to think.’ He shook his head. ‘He shouldn’t even be alive. Forget about the gravitational deformity – he should have been radiated down to a molecular disintegration point. He must have been shielded from the worst of it somehow. He’s lucky to be alive.’

Alex looked at Zach with a creased brow and the young Israeli realised what he’d said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean lucky as in –’

‘Doesn’t matter, forget it. Was this an accident, do you think? Some sort of side effect?’

The miserable being was once again reaching out with its long, raw-looking appendage. Alex’s fingers touched the fleshy tentacle as it waved towards him.

‘It’s an effect, sure,’ Zach replied, backing up as Alex and the creature made contact. ‘But I don’t yet know enough about what they’re doing to know whether it’s a side effect or the end result. The thing is, the colossal forces they’re playing around with could wipe most life from the planet, with any survivors being left . . . like this.’

Zach backed up some more. ‘Who was he?’

Alex felt a soft wetness as the long wet tentacle stuck to his fingertips. ‘Maybe a test subject; a volunteer – who knows? Some people sacrifice their all for what they believe in.’

‘Yes. Yes, I understand sacrifice,’ Zach said, near the door now.