Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) (32 page)

“Sir, this is not a recording, this is real time; this man is in your wife’s room right at this moment.”

My heart begins to race all of a sudden. I bend over the security guard and grab his sidearm that’s attached to his hip. When I walked into the room before I looked around for any weapons, just in case a situation arose and I needed a gun.

“Hey! You’re not authorized to take that!”

“I’m your superior officer; I will take it if I need to,” the words barely leave my mouth before I’m out the door and sprinting down the hallway.

It doesn’t take long for me to reach room 203. I charge into the room, weapon held high. The man that’s standing over the bed has a startled look on his face. He’s a rather small person, probably around the same size as Syreena; that works to my advantage. The only way that the man will be able to beat me is if he has a weapon of some kind, it won’t even matter though. A man his size won’t be able to take me out, I won’t let him take me out; too much is at stake.

“Hands on your head! Now!” I shout at him. I aim my gun directly over his heart. Most people would think that you’d aim at his head so that it’d be a one shot kill. It also makes a very large mess to the face and it makes it a lot harder to identity your target. The heart region is a clean and quick kill, if your aim’s true however.

He slowly moves his hands over his head; what happens next is odd, he face brakes into a giant smile, words then follow, “you’ll never stop us.”

“Yeah, ok, we’ll just have to see about that.”

He opens his mouth wide and bites down hard. Before I realize what happened the man’s knees buckle and he hits the ground. I move as fast as I can to him, I’m too late though, by the time I reach him his mouth is frothing up and his eyes are rolling into the back of his head. It must’ve been a very powerful poison to have killed him in only three or four seconds.

I stand up and instantly disregard any thoughts towards the man, I walk over to Syreenas bed and make sure that everything’s alright. I bend over her and place my hand on her neck, she still has a pulse; a huge sigh of relief escapes me, it’s either luck or someone above is watching over me, it doesn’t matter which though.

The alarms from outside are getting louder and more frequent, I don’t give it a second thought though; I’m not going to leave her side until I know that she’s completely safe. I pick up the gun and walk over to the door, it sounds like footsteps are approaching. I don’t get to the door in time though, three figures block the exit. I raise my gun and point at the middle one.

“Whoa! It’s just us Colonel,” Zanning throws up his arms to cover his face, even though it’s a pointless gesture against a gun.

I lower my gun, “what's going on out there?”

“We figured that all military personal that are hospitalized or their close friends and family are getting assassinated while they’re here. These people that are doing this are trying to damaged us and hurt us where we are already wounded.”

“Well luckily I got here in time to stop that guy,” I point over my shoulder to the dead man.

“Why did you kill him? We could have interrogated him for information concerning anymore operations going on within their organization,” the guard states.

“I didn’t kill him; he committed suicide when he realized that he wasn’t getting out of here alive. And what are you doing out of the security room?”

“Power was cut off to that section of this level.”

“Just one exciting thing after another eh?”

Zanning motions to Syreena, “we should get her out of here before anything else happens, and we have no idea if power will also be cut to these rooms, fortunately that hasn’t happened yet,” he walks over to the monitors; his fingers are flying over the interface menus.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m preparing to move her to the cryo tanks before more issues come up.”

“Good idea,” I turn towards the Sargent, “you can leave now if you want, I think we should be able to handle this,” I give him a quick salute.

He salutes me back, “yes Sir! May I ask that I have my sidearm returned?”

“Sure thing, you probably need it more than I do, here. Still a full magazine, I never fired a shot,” I pass him back the gun.

“Good to know Sir,” he takes the gun from my outstretched hand and goes to the door, his weapon is held high just in case he needs to fire.

“Come over here, all you need to do is grab this and push,” he points to the back of the bed; all of the monitors are connected still, “there should be a lift at the end of this hall; we take a right at the end, then another right.”

“Lead on. Com’on Kate, follow us and stay close ok?”

She nods her head.

I completely forgot about what Kate had done only minutes before, somehow she had seen the man in the room before it had ever happened. I’ll definitely have to ask her questions later when we have a little more privacy, hopefully I’ll then be able to shed a little light on the situation.

Most people thought that predicting the future was an impossible feat. When I was in my first year of training in the T.A.R. Division, a very smart scientist had sat down with me during one time in the mess hall. He mostly talked about how he was going to make earth-shattering discoveries that would change our entire outlook on physics.

At first, I hadn’t really paid much attention and just nodded along to what the man was saying, but as soon as the conversation of ‘seeing into the future’ and ‘time travel’ wafted up I had immediately started paying attention. It had been my dream since childhood; going back in time so that I could save my dad. One of which every childless parent probably thought. One day maybe, one day.

The bed is surprisingly light and easy to move, it glides over the floor as if it was on wax. Since the alarms had gone off the hallways have become chaotic once again, maneuvering the bed is easy enough though. It doesn’t take us long to get to the end of the hall.

“Turn here,” Zanning points to the right.

We go around the corner, “and again,” he says.

After making the two turns, the corridor turns into a dead end, sort of. At the end is a grey lift, the door looks older than any other door here.

“Push that,” he points to the tiny black button by the side of the door.

I let go of the bed and walk over to the door; I press the small button, surprisingly it’s an actual button and not a touch pad.

The door creaks open.

“How old exactly is this compound actually?”

“Sorry Colonel, I’m not authorized to tell you that.”

“I want answers once we are done all this.”

“I can't promise anything, Colonel.”

My mind is spinning, everything that he’s said in the last five minutes has only made my theory seem like it can be more and more right.

We hurry inside the lift, it’s a tight squeeze to get in with the bed; the lift probably isn’t designed for something this large in the first place.

Zanning is the one that’s squished up against the back of the lift. “Hit level C-One.” He says as he points at the button at the bottom of the control panel.

I hit the button and the lift lurches downwards.

“Someone is going to owe me and explanation when we are through with his mess,” I say in distaste, in my mind I’d done a great service to my planet before I had been captured. Others must not think the same thing seeing as they’re keeping me in the dark of what might have been one of the greatest secrets of Terra.

It took only a minute or two before the lift stops at level C-1. The doors open up to reveal a white light hallway. It looks similar to the interior of the ships that I’ve been on, only on a more advanced level, the light doesn’t originate from anywhere, but at the same time though it comes from everywhere; including the floor.

“What is this place?” I look back at Zanning, hoping to get an answer.

Zanning just looks at me and diverts his attention to Syreena, “she’s not doing so well.”

“I thought you said she would be fine?” I say it a little louder than I had in mind. That one sentence got my heart racing to an almost uncontrollable level.

“That was before we moved her, I had no idea that her body would respond like this. There’s no telling if she will survive long enough for her to be put into the cryo pod,” Zanning half mutters into his white jacket, it sounds almost like he’s blaming me for what’s happening.

“Don’t think like that; she’s gonna make it.”

It’s one thing to talk negatively, but you can’t help yourself from thinking in a negative way.

She has to make it, she just has to.

I shake my head; it’s bad to let the mind wander into disturbing places. I know it in my gut though that everything’s going be alright. Too much bad has happened lately, something good has to come forth and rise up from the darkness at some point. Hopefully that’s today.

Day 33: Cycle 3: Period 2: Year 2397

My heart is still racing by the time we reach the end of the blinding white hallway.

“Ok, where now?” I ask, it stumps me for a second, nothing’s at the end; it’s just, well, nothing.

“There should be a panel somewhere along here,” Zanning says; he raced his hand all over the wall.

“You mean you don’t even know where it is? I thought you had been down here before.”

“As you notice Colonel,” he says curtly, “this whole place looks the same, now why don’t you be useful and help me look for the pad.”

I run my hand over the seemingly flawless wall. As far as I can tell it’s all just one large piece of white glass-like material.

A clicking sound comes from my right; I look over at Zanning, “ah ha! Here we are,” he exclaims. The place where he’d run his hand over becomes almost transparent; several symbols appear on the small pad.

I look at the symbols, there’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen, “what are those?”

“It’s a combination lock to get the door open.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I point directly at the symbols, “I’ve never seen those types of symbols before.”

“That’s because they are not of Earth origin.”

“You mean this compound was not built by humans?”

“Like I said before Colonel, ask your superior; he will most likely be able to answer your questions a lot better than me.”

Zanning punches in a combination of the symbols, a crack appears down the base at the bottom of the wall, a blast door retracts into the ceiling. What lies beyond the blast door surprises me.

“Is that it?” I ask.

“Yes, that’s it, at least on this level,” Zanning says.

All there is to this entire level is a hallway, and a rather small room with a large tank in the middle with several monitor like objects.

“How many levels are there?”

“Dozens upon dozens. Each is almost identical to this room,” he returns to the back of the bed and begins to push again.

“How come this place is not public knowledge?”

“Because,” he pauses, “because it would cause panic,” he explains.

“Why, because they would realize that we are not the only ones out there? I think they already know that now.”

“Well, before these Hakorians showed up it would have, since then there has been no reason to do so,” he continues to talk, “enough talk though, let’s just get this done, we need to hurry; otherwise we might lose her.”

It only takes a few strides into the room before we’re at the tank, “stop here,” he says.

I let go of the bed.

“Ok, here’s the deal. I can take her out of her coma seeing as we were the ones that put her in it. She will most likely have a few minutes to talk if she is able to muster the strength. As soon as you’ve let her know of the situation -if that is what you are going to do- we must then put her into the tank and begin the freezing process.”

“Do what you have to do Doc,” all I can do now is stand around and wait.

Zanning’s standing beside one of the consoles that are hovering in midair beside the cryo tank. It’s amazing; I’ve never before seen such technology. It leaves the mind to wonder where it had been discovered, and how we had been able to figure out how to properly operate them.

“Colonel,” he waves me over with his hand, “I think we are ready to revive her.”

“Can I have this time with her spent alone?” It’s the one thing that I want the most right now; to spend the last moments with my wife alone, it’ll possibly be months if not years before I’ll return with the proper medicine.

“The way that this will work is I will revive her very shortly. I can give you a minute or two of privacy then I will come back and we will start the freezing process.”

“How come I can't just do this by myself, couldn’t you just tell me what to do?”

“I’m sorry Colonel, it’s too complicated for anyone but me to do it.”

“Alright, I guess I will call you in if anything goes wrong.”

Zannings hands are hovering over the symbols on the console, “shall I begin?”