Protocol 7 (48 page)

Blackburn clenched his teeth as the freight elevator reached the level of Dragger Pass, and continued downward. He had no idea that Simon, Max, and Nastasia were literally a few feet away from him, descending to the Nest in the adjacent shaft at a speed only slightly slower than his own. The padded interior cast an eerie effect from the dim blue lights mounted along its interior edges.

His detachment of soldiers was absolutely silent behind him; he knew they were the only men in the entire Vector5 organization with the clearance—and the courage—to enter the Nest…and he wasn’t sure if he was glad of that or concerned. This was his operation—his goal. He didn’t want to share it, not even with his own men.

The holo-display made the depth reading float in the open air, each numeral as large as the palm of his hand. As he watched, it slowly reached the magic number -2,153 meters, the base level of Central Command—and continued to fall. The calm, slightly amused voice of the AI that controlled the lift said it out loud, “Two thousand, one hundred and fifty-three meters,” it said. “Continuing…”

This final trip was only beginning. They had another one thousand meters to travel.

Blackburn was thinking about the man who was waiting for him at the bottom of the shaft. He knew that Oliver was very ill, perhaps terminally. I wonder how long he’ll live, he asked himself. That is, assuming he decides to cooperate.

The AI’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Two thousand, six hun—”

“Shut up for a second,” Blackburn said. Another voice—a human one, one he recognized—was buzzing in his ear, coming from the earpiece in his helmet. He tapped his shoulder to receive the incoming message.

“Go ahead,” he growled. “I’m listening.” The men around him didn’t flinch; they knew the drill. Blackburn was the chief commander in charge of the Vector5 mission; he was always connected to everything that was happening below and above the ice. It was true, sometimes he confused the men around him when he responded to some unheard comment or question, but that wasn’t important. All they thought about—all they could think about—was the mission. That was all that mattered.

“Sir,” said the voice of his exec, “we’ve identified an anomaly at 842 meters south-southwest of Dragger Pass, four degrees of ascension above the Gorge.”

“What type of anomaly?” Blackburn growled, controlling his temper with some difficulty. This wasn’t what he expected, and it certainly wasn’t what he wanted. I’ve had enough, he told himself. He hated surprises.

“It’s a thermal event, sir. Infrared data indicates a highly condensed source, very localized, and currently descending at ninety degrees from the horizon.”

“What the fuck are you talking about!?” Blackburn shouted, sending a chill through the already cold freight elevator. The number in front of his face read -2,483 meters. The AI voice, prudently, remained silent. “It’s super-hot and moving down a tunnel?”

“No, sir,” his exec said. “Straight down. Through the ice.”

“Shit,” Blackburn muttered. “At that depth, at that temperature, I’m sure the satellites picked it up.”

“Sir, we’ve been monitoring and scrambling the information with the surface droids, but you’re right. I’m afraid this amount of energy might be impossible to hide.”

“What is it?” he demanded. Exposure didn’t matter at the moment. “What the hell is out there?”

“Sir our AIs at central command are suggesting it’s the same submersible that entered Fissure 9. We have also confirmed human activity about one mile from the incident. Acoustic and pressure wave data confirm: a small group moving around and not being quiet about it in one of the maintenance shafts we thought was sealed off.”

I knew it, he told himself. I knew Lucas and those traitors were tapping into the old air shaft system. “Send the fissure drones through the main airshafts,” he commanded. “Send them up to Tunnel 3, and when you find them, gas the fuckers out of their little mouse holes.”

“But…sir,” the exec said in his ear. Blackburn could hear his terror, even in the scratchy little thread of the audio feed.

“But what?” Blackburn snapped. “‘But sir, additional activity in the same area as the thermal event will certainly be noticed by satellites.” It was a deadly accurate parody of his exec officer’s careful, diplomatic tone. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t care. Whatever happened has probably already been reported. We’ll have to deal with that later. But this shit needs to stop NOW!”

“Copy that, sir,” the exec said quickly, obviously eager to end the communication. There was the tiniest of snicks as he broke the connection to follow order.

Blackburn slapped the padded door of the freight elevator in completely frustration. “Can’t this piece of junk move any faster?” he blurted out. But he already knew the answer: nothing moved fast enough to appease his impatience.

None of the men around him spoke. They knew the drill. It was safer to just lay low and not to respond at times like this.

The AI unit had more courage, or perhaps less common sense, than the humans. After Blackburn stopped speaking for thirty seconds, it spoke up:

“Reaching depth of 10,022 feet in 133 meters. Prepare to exit.”

“Shut up,” Blackburn muttered.

* * *

Samantha and Ryan knelt beside Hayden’s motionless body, too drained and overwhelmed to speak. Sam was numb, beyond feeling or thought, as she strained to see the scientist clearly in the failing light. The only source of illumination was the guttering fire from the icy shaft where the Spector had disappeared.

Hayden was breathing heavily; she knew that much. But she couldn’t seem to make herself care. It was just too dark to see, until Ryan turned on the guide lights in his ice suit, and the air was filled with a directionless, blue light that seemed almost acidic, somehow.

The blood draining from Hayden’s ruined hand was black in the odd light.

“God,” Samantha said. Then louder, fuller, “God, NO!” Even the ice around him was saturated with freezing blood.

Years of training surged to the forefront. Her hands reached out almost on their own and tried to explore the wound. She gasped in spite of herself when she saw it clearly: half the skin and part of the flesh had been removed from his right thumb—half-sliced, half-torn away. Lucas wanted his thumbprint, she realized. He thought he might need it in the Spector. He would have taken the whole digit if he’d had the time.

She pushed the horror of it away and got to work, tearing off a section of his ice suit and tying it around his bleeding thumb as tight as she could.

“I have to stop this before he dies,” she told Ryan. “He’s going to go into shock any second, maybe lose his hand, or worse.” Or die, she screamed inside her head. Or DIE.

She pushed it away again, even harder, and reached into a small pouch sewn on into the hip of her own suit. She thanked god she had packed a full med-kit into her clothes before they had left the scientists’ encampment; she was shocked that it became useful so quickly.

The pocket contained a small, foil-sealed pre-moistened cloth infused with ammonia. It was suitable for cleaning, for sterile bandaging…or for what she was about to do.

Sam pulled his mask aside and held the tiny fabric against his nose. Hayden’s body jerked instantly from the intense smell, and his clean, uninjured hand suddenly came up, trying to pull the cloth away—then clutching at his forehead as if to contain a whole new agony.

It took him a long moment to locate the pain. Slowly, slowly he lifted his wounded hand as if it were a dead thing lashed to the end of his wrist. He stared at it with naked horror as a new line of already freezing blood trickled into his palm.

“Oh god,” he said, choking on his own words. “My thumb, my god, my hand!”

“Stay still,” Samantha said, and produced a one-shot syringe from another pocket of her suit. He was weak; it wasn’t hard to hold him down while she injected a strong painkiller at the base of his neck. “It’ll take a few minutes, just be patient.”

As his struggles abated, as his breath slowed, she loosened her grip and looked at Ryan standing above them. There was horror in his eyes.

“How the hell are we going to tell him about Andrew?” he said. Samantha wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. Either way, she knew, he sounded absolutely desolate. How the hell are we going to explain this, she thought.

Samantha stroked the older man’s cheek, tried to bring him back to a semi-conscious state. She knew it was possible; it was why she had chosen to give him that particular medication. “Hayden,” she said gently. “Hayden, can you walk?”

“I think so,” he said, groggy and uncoordinated. He tried to stand and found himself falling again; Sam bent forward to support him. Ryan offered a hand and pulled him up, steadied him.

“C’mon,” Ryan said, sounding uncharacteristically gruff. “You’ve got to move or you’ll freeze.” He glanced at Sam as Hayden swayed in place, fighting to stabilize. “We’ve got to get back to the others.”

Hayden could barely hold his body upright. He had only the vaguest idea of what had happened just minutes before. And they had walked less than ten feet when he pulled up short and turned back, searching the ice, looking for something. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Where’s the Spector? Are you—”

“It’s all right, Hayden,” Sam soothed, trying to keep her voice steady. She knew what he was going to ask next, and she didn’t want to deal with it. “We have to go. Let’s go.”

“Where is Andrew?” Hayden asked weakly, still disoriented. “Is he with them, the ones who, who took the, the…?” He couldn’t seem to find the words, but there was fear and confusion in his eyes.

“No,” Ryan said. “He’s not with the others.”

“No? Then what—what are you saying?” An ounce of the old impatience had leaked back into his tone.

“He’s dead,” Ryan said somberly.

It took a few seconds before the words registered in Hayden’s brain. “What?” he said. “What? What are you saying?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “He’s dead?”

He pushed Ryan’s hand away with a violent sweep of his good arm, then spun around and staggered past Samantha, back toward where the Spector had disappeared. He had taken less than ten steps when his hands went to his head. Samantha and Ryan watched in solemn despair as Hayden fell to the ground.

He touched the icy floor beneath his feet and then pounded the ice with his fist, feeling a shocking pain that seemed all too insignificant. “Why, why?”

Ryan went to him and tried to help him to his feet. “Please, Hayden,” he pleaded. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here. We’ve got to get the others in the encampment and decide what to do next.” He paused for a moment to make sure he wasn’t out of line. “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” he whispered.

Hayden simply shook his head. Then he pulled himself to his feet without help. “I know,” he said gruffly. “I understand.” He turned back one last time to look at the slight depression in the icy floor that had engulfed his life’s work and his student.

“Let’s go,” he said.

* * *

Two miles below Dragger Pass, the eight fissure drones dispatched by Central Command swarmed up the wall of the crevasse, clanking as they armed their canisters of lethal gas and their array of projectile weapons. They moved swiftly up one of the main air shafts toward Tunnel 3. It was a climb of almost four thousand feet, but that was no issue: the drones, each the size of a football, could navigate almost any terrain. They were capable of climbing walls by embedding themselves into the ice. And they were fast, able to achieve the equivalent of twenty miles an hour for extended periods of time.

The drones were controlled by a specialized team at Central Command. They were like tentacles for Vector5, able to reach virtually any obscure location throughout the continent.

Their target was simple and—now that they had located it—painfully obvious. They were coming for the five remaining scientists still left at the encampment, where they had packed their gear believing they were finally about to escape.

* * *

Simon found himself staring at the back of Nastasia’s neck. They were descending at an alarming speed, moving toward a destination he couldn’t even imagine. And still, he was haunted by the symbol he had glimpsed etched into her skin, hidden by the fall of her obsidian hair.

I need to see the insignia again, he told himself.

The AI voice—the same as in the other elevator, though they couldn’t know that—recited the depth to him in a dry, emotionless recitation. Max listened with only half an ear, clenching the ray gun in his left hand and toying with the virtual console in front of him with the other, fingers hovering, almost twitching. He had the awful feeling that they were going to have to get out of the DITV, leave it behind, if they hoped to live through this last adventure. And he knew it was going to happen fast.

Simon forced himself out of his trance, but he couldn’t help looking at Nastasia one more time. He wondered if he should just snatch the thermal mask from her face and pull her hair back so he could see the tattoo again. It would only take a moment—

“We have to be ready to move the minute we hit the bottom,” Max said. “No hesitation.”

Simon was jerked back to the reality of the situation. “Why?” he asked, confused.

“I don’t want to be a sitting duck,” Max said. “I would rather leave the vehicle inside.”

Simon nodded. “I agree. I don’t want to be trapped inside this thing either, not knowing what’s going to be on the other side.”

“Look around for any weapons and possibly one of these special Ops suits,” Max said keeping his focus on the depth gauge that registered how close they were to reaching the base.

Simon didn’t hesitate. He started searching all the storage containers inside the vehicle. Nastasia helped as they opened each possible hatch that had a latch or handle.

“Found one,” Simon said, unfolding it and visually measuring it for size.

“Hurry up,” Max commanded.

Nastasia continued searching the interior of the DITV frantically, looking for weapons or armor, but there was nothing—nothing. Reality set in, and she felt a chill. Any soldier, any guard could take her instantly; her mission could be jeopardized. But there was nothing she could do about it now.