The Solomon Key (36 page)

“What?”

“We may be too late,” Malachi whispered.

No.
Turning, Scott hit the button on his goggles, activating the night-vision, and ran out of the cabin. He sprinted toward the two story building, passing one of the Mossad teams that seemed to have the NASA scientist already in their custody. Reaching the doors, aware that Malachi and the others were following behind, he pushed them open and entered a world of cruelty.

Bunk beds lined both sides of the walls, and he paused only long enough to glimpse the green faces occupying the beds. His heart was pounding in his chest as he moved frantically from one bed to the next. “Jennifer!”

The residents began waking up, stirred out of their sleep by the commotion.

“Jennifer!” he yelled, growing desperate. But only the nutrition-deprived faces of women he didn’t recognize stared back at him, their eyes glowing in the night-vision like ghosts ready to exact their revenge on him — for the part he’d played in making this degenerated world of theirs come to be. Trying to ignore the impending judgment it reminded him of, he burst through another door and entered another section of the building. More bunk beds sleeping more women. “Jennifer!”

“Over here!” someone called out in the darkness. “I’m Jennifer!”

He raced to the voice, to the godforsaken bed it was coming from.

But it wasn’t her.

He swore, leaving the woman groping in the darkness of her world for a hope that would never be. He kept calling out.

And then he saw Melissa Strauss.

She was just getting up to her elbows, trying to make sense of what was happening. He ran right past her. But a second later, he could hear Malachi and the two other agents wrestling her from the bed, taking her out into the snow. He didn’t care. He just continued searching beds, beds that were running out.
No.
This couldn’t be happening. She had to be here. He needed her to be here. “Jennifer!” he screamed again.

The next door he went through took him back outside.
No!
Turning back, he searched for the stairs to the upper floor, and after finding them took three at a time.

Just the male population.

He felt dizzy, his world spinning. He leaned against the wall for support, making his way back down the stairs. “Jennifer!” He stumbled outside just as Malachi and nine others, the scientist in their possession and helping Melissa along, ran past him. Feeling the picture of his wife in his pocket, he ran after them, hoping the scientist might recognize her.

He caught up to them at a tool shed. Except, upon entering, he saw no tools of any kind. Instead, the Mossad agents were all standing around the scientist as he worked a series of buttons on a concealed keypad against the wall. Then the floor suddenly retreated at his feet, revealing a descending staircase. The scientist led them all down into what Scott assumed was the underground facility, though the reason why they’d be heading down there wasn’t entirely clear to him. They had everything they’d come for… except his wife, of course.

They came to a large steel door at the bottom of the stairs, and the scientist slid an ID card through a slot on the wall beside it. The door opened, and they descended another short flight of stairs before coming to another, even larger door. This one required the scientist’s eyeball, voice, name, access code, and fingerprint. The large vault-like door swung outward with a beep, revealing yet another stairwell — three flights descending down into the earth, cinderblock walls surrounding them, emergency lights flickering above.

Pulling the night-vision goggles from his head, Scott stole a glance at Melissa, able now to see her more clearly under the artificial light. She looked terrified, a far cry from her NAU identification photo the news had posted when tagging her as a terrorist. Big black circles surrounded her eyes, her skin pulled tight against her cheekbones and neck. She wasn’t completely coherent.

Coming to another door, the scientist turned and looked at Malachi, whispered, “There’s a guard on the other side of this door. I’ll swipe my card, and the door will release. I’ll go in and walk past him, get him to turn his back to the door. Then you can do whatever it is you do.”

It was pretty clear now that the true reason for them being here wasn’t just to get this guy. They were here to do something else, and the fact that Scott hadn’t been informed about what that was had him uneasy. He was also the only one on the team not equipped with a radio.

The scientist was old, what hair he had left was whiter than the falling snow, his shoulders hunched forward with what Scott knew to be a burden of shame, his heavy eyes revealing as much.

“There’s a long corridor stretching north and south, connecting the laboratory with offices, barracks, and quarters. The whole sublevel is networked into the surface, most buildings having a way up and down.” The scientist swallowed. “At the end of this hall, there’s another door. Behind that door is a long corridor, and there’s usually one or two guards patrolling it. We’re going south, or left. I don’t advise going right. Fifty sleeping soldiers are that way.” Taking another breath, he continued, “There’s another door in the corridor, and then the one that leads into the lab. You’ll be going in at six o’clock, west. A guard will be on the other side of the door, positioned at the top of the stairs. To the right, or five o’clock, is another door and staircase with a guard. Directly beneath you will be a long conference table. There are usually two scientists working through the night and two patrolling guards. Once you get what you need, there’s an elevator on the east wall. It’s a freight elevator they use to transport the subjects, and it’s connected to the warehouse. You may have to take two trips.”

“What about the biohazard protocols?” Malachi asked. “Are we able to gain access to these levels?”

“Given the nature of the work conducted here and the complete lack of government oversight, such regulations are irrelevant.” And then he remembered something else. “You should know that every soldier has the ability to sound an alarm.” Then he dipped his head and swiped the card, releasing the door. He stepped through it and allowed it to close most of the way behind him.

Malachi slowly pushed the door open, once they could tell the scientist and guard were walking away, and shot the soldier in the back of the head. The agents went to retrieve the body, dragging it out of the corridor and into the stairwell.

The scientist looked unmoved by the violence, his soul hardened by whatever it was he had been doing here. He was already at the end of the hall and swiping his card again, pressing his thumb onto a shiny surface and orally dictating a code by the time Malachi and company caught up to him. Once the door opened, the scientist entered the next corridor, looking left and right. He waved a hello to the right. “I’m sorry,” he called out, “but I think something might be wrong with the door down here.” He pointed behind him, to the other end of the corridor and the entrance to the lab.

A few seconds later, a guard walked straight past the door hiding Scott and the elite Israeli team.

Malachi stepped out into the corridor and again shot his target in the back of the head, the process of hiding the body being repeated before continuing on to the “lab.”

Before they reached the door, however, Scott grabbed the scientist by the arm and asked through his mask, “What is this place?”

The scientist looked confused, by both the question and the American accent asking it. “It’s a research facility.”

“Sponsored by whom?”

“It’s not officially sponsored by anyone.”

“Unofficially?”

“The men who comprise our World Government, of course.”

“The NAU?”

“Such people as these are above territorial designations and their governing philosophies...”

“Who’s running it?”

“A secret faction of the new CDC is overseeing it.”

“What’s going to happen to the prisoners?” Scott asked.

The scientist shrugged and looked away. “They’re all implanted with microchips. They can’t cross the electromagnetic perimeter that surrounds the camp.”

That would explain the lack of security, Scott thought. “What about her?” he asked, looking over to Melissa.

“Hers has been removed.”

“When?”

But Malachi interrupted. “Let’s go.”

While the scientist went to work opening the door, Malachi checked in with the four agents manning the guard towers.

“
All clear
,” came the response through a blast of static.

Scott could feel the tenseness growing in those around him.

When the door slid open, it invited them to an even brighter length of passageway, and
their black uniforms looked ridiculous contrasting it.

“Remember, there’s a guard on the other side of the next door, another guarding the door on the right, and one standing down on the floor against the left wall. There are two patrolling guards and at least two scientists working. You need to take them all at once, or they’ll trigger the alarm.” The scientist raised his card to the mechanism beside the final door.

“Wait,” said Malachi.

He paused, hand elevated over the swiping mechanism.

“How long will we have once the alarm sounds?”

“Five minutes.”

“And the alarm, how far does it sound?”

“Like I said, this is a black site, and whoever the new president is, I guarantee he doesn’t know about this place. It would light up a few switchboards across the country, but outside response would take at least a day.”

“Okay,” Malachi responded.

The Mossad agents gripped tight their assortment of weapons, ready for a swift surgical strike.

“What’re we doing here?” Scott quickly whispered in Malachi’s ear.

Malachi brushed him off.

They piled out onto the metal staircase overlooking the enormous room, shooting immediately. The guard that was standing right beside the door went backwards over the railing. A soldier standing by the elevator sprayed blood up the wall behind him while the third guard atop another metal staircase took bullets in the shoulder, chest, head, and stomach before he could react. The two scientists at the long conference table were dropped to the floor, their own blood covering their disgusting work. One of the patrolling guards had just enough time to raise his weapon but never got further than that. A line of holes punched through the dividing wall he was standing beside, tracing up and into his head, exploding it.

“Where’s the other guard?” Malachi asked over his shoulder, his weapon aimed intently beneath him, covering the room.

“No trace of him,” another responded.

Malachi immediately began descending the metal stairs, sweeping the sights of his silenced M4 back and forth, searching for the last person who should be there.

The last one out of the corridor, Scott stepped out onto the staircase and took in the sight before him. It was breathtaking, the magnitude of it overwhelming. The room’s glowing white floor was forty feet below, and it was the size of an aircraft hangar. It was divided into three sections by two standing walls, but the walls were meant only to separate, not conceal. The front of the room, a large open space stretching from the elevator doors on the left to the other staircase on the right, faced no obstructions. Sitting at the work table, those working from there would be able to look straight into any of the three stations. And what they would see, what Scott was seeing now, was science’s version of hell for all the unfortunate people strapped to the beds lined up beneath the low, blinding lights. Rows upon rows of beds, twelve by twelve in the center section alone, contained naked bodies, wires snaking in and out of them and running along the floor before connecting to the walls.

Scott’s throat tightened at the sight of digital charts shining from the multi-touch computer walls, continuous three dimensional readouts fluctuating stats on huge plastic display screens. Images of the brain, DNA strands, a model of the human genome, and other chemical properties that Scott couldn’t decipher, all seemed interfaced with the biology of those sleeping in the beds. But then his eyes drifted right, and he noticed other subjects submerged in tanks full of fluid, hoses coming and going from them. “What is this?” he whispered, now standing alone with the scientist at the top of the steps.

After finding no other guard present, Malachi and his team were now busy working at the computers.

“Transhumanism,” the scientist replied. “Our Brave New World.”

Scott swore and ran down the stairs, thinking only of Jennifer. He ran down the rows of naked and sedated prisoners, his heart beating with a sense of dread so powerful, it was almost paralyzing. He forced his panic-filled eyes on one unfamiliar face after another, but the more he saw, the sicker he felt. Men and women, both old and young, were all staring blankly at the ceiling above them.

Transhumanism
… all these people, and who knew how many more throughout the years, lay sacrificed on the altar of man’s ego. The thought of Jennifer put through such terror was too much for his rational mind to regulate, and as he neared the final bed, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find his wife lying in it or not. Was what had been done to these people reversible? But the last pale face staring up into nothingness was not Jennifer’s. It belonged to a younger woman, though just as beautiful, her nude body strapped to this atrocious gurney so far beneath the earth, robbed of every ounce of dignity and brought down by her captives to the basest level of life — that of an experiment. Her hopes and dreams, her
humanity
, crucified by a world gone insane. Despair and hope collided into him from opposite sides, and though this wasn’t his wife, it could be someone else’s. Someone’s daughter, sister, friend… He tore the ski mask off his face and stormed past the agents, approaching the scientist again. The old man was standing at the foot of the steps and staring out over his product. “What the hell is this?” Scott yelled, pointing behind him.

With a great sigh, the scientist’s weary eyes focused on Scott. “An experiment, each subject chosen for his or her unique genetic makeup. Remember the CDC and Homeland Security’s cataloging of newborns’ DNA? This is,
was
, its natural evolution… if not the intent.” He paused. “The post-humanist agenda. Eugenics. The advancement of the species...” He looked back to Scott. “It was decided a long time ago that biological evolution is too slow for the human species, that we can no longer sit back and wait for it. So this is our attempt at evolution, at achieving our godhood.”