The Secret Bunker Trilogy

by Paul Teague

  All electronics leave a trail and Doctor Pierce’s message was no exception. Of course, nobody would ever have found it if they didn’t know it was there in the first place – it was only because Dan had shared the information about the private messages that they even knew to look for it in the first place.

  Magnus talked Simon through a few procedures via the Comms-Tab. Simon transferred the encrypted code sequence back to Quadrant 3 so that the tech team there could begin an analysis. Once they could speak to Doctor Pierce directly it was possible that things might become a little clearer. Simon looked around the Operations Centre and wondered about its purpose. It had been meant to lie here unused and undiscovered, yet clearly this all had a purpose in the great plan.

  He thought back to snippets of information that he’d heard whilst doing routine work for The Global Consortium. Nothing was substantiated, but being around so many Consortium staff for so much of the time, you’re bound to hear things that perhaps you’re not meant to.

  On the screen to the left of the Operations Centre were huge, digital schemata of the bunker. He’d not really got a sense of the shape of the bunkers as he’d been walking through them, other than that there appeared to be four levels, and each level was based around a long corridor which was curved on the lower two levels. The diagrams on the screen made it very clear though. Levels 1 and 2 were rectangular and uniform, built on a simple, grid layout, probably more than half a century ago, Simon supposed. But the two levels below them had a curved edge, as if they were built at a different time – or for a different purpose. ‘Quadrants’ was the ideal way to describe them.

  But there was something more intriguing about the diagrams for Simon. Below the plans for Quadrant 1 were what he assumed must be smaller exploded maps of the remaining three Quadrants. Each was based on the same principle. Only he noticed that each Quadrant was curved differently, so that if joined together they would form an annulus, a huge circular construction.

  That was all very well – it made perfect sense to replicate each of the designs wherever the actual buildings were located. But there was a fifth plan which was troubling Simon. This set of diagrams was completely unlike the others. They showed a new area, a hub, which was spherical in shape.

  In isolation, none of this information would have been remarkable, but Simon had just realized something that had been staring him in the face since the first day he’d started officially working for The Global Consortium all those years ago. It was concealed in the logo: a square in which was set a circle. The circle was divided into four quadrants and inside the circle was the spherical centre of the entire arrangement. There was another location, and it was at the heart of this entire operation. The Quadrants were just additional parts – the heart was where all the power resided. And if he was piecing together those snippets of overheard conversations correctly, this operational hub was not based on this planet.

  It was somewhere above Earth, orbiting in space.

  01:32 Quadrant 2: Balaklava Bay, Crimea

  We seem to be moving from one bad situation to another. The first thing I looked for when Viktor gave us his surprise greeting was a neck device. Sure enough, he has a faint purple colouring under his skin, but it’s not pulsating. The red devices in Quadrant 1 looked like they were working overtime, but Mum’s and James’s devices are at rest, as were the green Neuronic Devices in Xiang’s bunker. Everybody in Viktor’s bunker has the devices fitted. Nobody seems to be aware of these things except for us. Magnus is analysing them right now and I’m looking forward to hearing what he has say.

  If we get that far.

  Viktor has separated us, so Mum and James have been taken off somewhere and Nat and I have been escorted to Level 3 of this bunker. I say ‘escorted’, but it was more case of Nat and I being coerced to give Viktor and his security team access to the lower levels. He doesn’t seem to realize that he could just use the electronic glove devices that Mum and James are using – they’re extremely hard to see when they’re not activating anything, so I’m guessing that we’re best keeping that secret to ourselves for now.

  Viktor isn’t cruel or unpleasant and we don’t appear to be prisoners, but, at the same time, I wouldn’t call us welcome guests. He takes us to the Operations Centre, leaving his security team at the lift doors along the curved corridor. Interesting, he doesn’t want them with us.

  We step inside the Operations Centre. It’s a virtual replica of the one in Quadrant 1 where I’d received the secure message from Doctor Pierce. Viktor relaxes once the doors have closed – it’s like somebody defrosted him.

  ‘Nat, Dan, welcome to Quadrant 2, Balaklava Bay. I am sorry to be so abrupt with you.’

  His English is good, but I can tell that he’s speaking with a Russian accent. More knowledge gleaned from TV. Whatever did people do before they had all this knowledge and information right at their fingertips?

  These Transporters are incredible – we’re hopping all around the world – and we don’t even have to suffer in-flight meals.

  ‘I have brought you here because I need your help … and I have to ask you to trust me.’

  Nat exchanges a glance with me. We’re not so sure, but we indicate that he should carry on. I’ve read about a ‘poker face’ many times in books before, but now I know what it means. I put on my best poker face, so Viktor can’t tell what I’m thinking.

  ‘You know that what is happening right now is really serious? And that you twins are very important to the final solution?’

  We nod. Nat looks as unconvinced as me that we’re going to actually help to solve this current crisis. As if on cue, a drone missile strikes the ground high above us and a rumble resonates throughout the bunker. That must be all three Quadrants now under constant missile attack. New drones will be arriving all the time. We stopped any more launching, but, from the size of that hangar, loads must have already been launched. There is no better reminder of how important all this is than the constant shaking of the Quadrants as each missile finds it target.

  ‘Like Quadrant 1, we have a military capacity in this bunker,’ continues Viktor. ‘Only I believe that we can use it strategically.

  ‘This bunker is linked to the Black Sea and we are situated within a bay which gives easy water access. I believe that we should launch the submarine drones concealed within these lower levels.’ He hesitates for a moment, then continues: ‘The submarine drones are armed with nuclear warheads. They are very powerful and can do a lot of damage, much more damage than the drones from Quadrant 1.

  ‘We should be thankful that whoever is sabotaging this operation has not been able to activate or control this base. These submarines are far more dangerous than the air drones.

  ‘Nat and Dan, the reason I need your help is that I cannot activate these submarines without you; they are locked into whatever is special about you two.’

  Nat’s thinking the same as me. We both just messed up our poker faces. He seems to be saying that Nat and I can activate a nuclear arsenal. I know there have been many concerns expressed about national security in the past, but this one would have the whole world in a state of panic. Mum can’t even trust me with the TV remote, let alone a nuclear arsenal.

  ‘I am a military man,’ Viktor continues, ‘and I know how this situation will play out. If Quadrant 1 gets the upper hand by destroying the remaining Quadrants, there is no way to fight back.

  ‘If we release the submarines, we do not have to launch the missiles, but if they are off this base, hidden beneath the Black Sea, then they may be used later, by us or ...’

  He’s uneasy now, thinking through another scenario I suspect.

  ‘Or by anybody who is left to fight Quadrant 1.

  ‘I want you to help me to release the submarines, but I promise to give joint control to Xiang and Magnus.

  ‘It may be the only hope that we have against Quadrant 1, and if we have to, it will also allow us to destroy their bunker.’

  I feel like somebody s
hould be dialing the Prime Minister. Have they mixed me up for a world leader? Easily done I suppose. Nat and I look at each other. The more time we spend with each other, the more weird it gets. I know what she’s thinking already and she knows what I’m thinking. It’s not like we have two voices going on in our heads at once – it’s more like we have one voice, but we’re sharing it. Our answer for Viktor is ‘Yes’.

  I’ve seen enough today to know that this is all about options. It’s about leaving as many possibilities open as possible. So that as different options close down, we still have some left, places where we can go. To fight, to hide or to re-group. Wriggle room.

  Viktor leads us to a panel – he’s taken a tablet device out of his pocket to guide him through this process. Nat and I place our hands on a red panel and a digitized map appears on the large screen in front of us. In an instant, what must be well over two hundred dots illuminate on the screen. We know what we just did, and I hope that we made the right decision to trust Viktor. We just armed a fleet of nuclear submarines. And they just started making their way out towards the Black Sea.

  Chapter Two

  02:02 Quadrant 3: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

  Magnus braced himself for another violent tremor running throughout the bunker. Every time a missile hit the ground above it could mean the end for this Quadrant, but he tried to remain calm, steady and focused. Nothing ever got achieved by running around in a blind panic. He was assessing the information that he’d just received from the team briefing.

  Mike was proving to be a huge asset, though his hacking skills were being tested to the extreme by the files within The Global Consortium mainframe. He’d got through the front door, but essentially found himself in a room with many more locked doors. Each lock needed to be picked.

  He’d hesitated for a moment, and couldn’t decide whether to go one lock at a time and take pot luck on what was behind each door, or to take the choice which he knew was most sensible: to go for the big picture first. Figure out the system which keeps all the doors locked, then create the individual keys faster.

  He made the sensible choice, but would still need to crack the first code to work out the encryption basis for the locking system. Mike had decided to share the work, so five more of Magnus’s best tech people had been given wormhole access and let loose on the system. Sooner or later one of them would get that first lock picked.

  Mike hadn’t felt like this for some time, it was good to be competing against the clock with a team of younger, talented coders. Only he’d been around since most of this code had been invented, so whereas they had to learn it, he knew it already.

  Magnus was pleased with Mike’s updates, but anxious that they seemed no closer to stopping the drones. There was better news on the neck devices. They were some sort of electronic and biological implant which was able to control certain parts of the brain by, essentially, hijacking the neural pathways in the spine. It appeared that the devices were dormant by default, but that they could be controlled remotely. Nobody within Magnus’s bunker had any recollection of these devices being fitted.

  Magnus assigned the tech teams two tasks. Firstly, to determine how the devices could be blocked or disabled. Secondly, to figure out where they were being controlled from because, wherever that location was, it would probably help to track down their enemy.

  The final part of the briefing came late as the first encryption analysis arrived mid-meeting on Magnus’s E-Pad. It was unclear from where Doctor Pierce’s secured message had been sent. Several thousand frequencies and channels had been scanned already, but there were many billion possibilities and, even with the amazing technology within the bunker, it took time to check and filter them all.

  However, something had been very clear even from this basic analysis. The message had been sent on a frequency via the X-Band. Although it was not yet certain, that was a very strong indicator that Doctor Pierce’s message had not been sent from one of the four Quadrants. Most likely it had been sent from space.

  Global Consortium Simulation Centre (9 October 2000)

  Kate and Simon were trapped in a room which was being attacked from all sides. They were out of breath, hot and in a heightened state of anxiety. Only minutes ago they’d been awoken at their mission destination. The location had to remain top secret, so they’d been restored to full consciousness just outside the electrified wire fence.

  It had all gone according to plan for the first few minutes, then the Stealth-Shields had deactivated, as if there had been a sudden power failure. The orientation in the building was all wrong, weapons had been fired at them and they’d ended up trapped in this room – confronted by an array of screens.

  On each screen was a live feed of various loved ones: Simon’s mum and dad, working in the garden; Kate’s older sister, studying at her desk at university; Kate’s mum, visiting the grave of her dad; Simon’s brother, sitting in a coffee shop reading the paper. Each person had a target resting on them.

  The instructions had been clear. Either they must accept death or their family members must perish. Observing the simulation in the gallery, a man watched the screen nervously, hoping that they’d make the right decision. He’d only just managed to fend off the attacks and the criticisms after the simulation that had gone badly wrong earlier in the year. His position was assured for now, but any more errors and it was unlikely that he’d remain at the helm of this project.

  Statistically, he knew what would happen, as it did well over 99.9 percent of the time. But he’d lost some self-confidence now, and this was the stage where he always became agitated. Most people made their decision by the time the countdown had reached three seconds – two seconds at the very latest.

  Zero–97/4 and Zero–98/4 – the troublesome test subjects – had made their decision at one second to go in the countdown. The countdown now was on two seconds remaining.

  This couple had worked well as a team. They had bonded in battle instantly, finding a level of communication and understanding in the heat of an intense drama. Two seconds – Simon and Kate looked at each other. One second – a small nod of understanding. He cursed as he watched the monitor, this was the second team to go to the one-second point, it meant only one thing.

  Only he was wrong. The problem with human beings is that they’re unpredictable. Statistics will tell you how most of them will behave in a certain situation. But with free will comes individuality, and Simon and Kate – or Ten–32/7 and Ten–32/8 as they would be referred to in the test results – had decided to assert their free will in a completely different way.

  James and Amy played for time, both sustaining injuries in the process. Simon and Kate did something equally courageous and unpredictable. They called their tormentors’ bluff. They laid down their weapons, sat on the floor, and stared at their persecutors on the monitor cameras. ‘We refuse to make a choice!’ shouted Simon.

  The simulation team were so sure that all the results could be statistically predicted, they were taken completely unawares. The main laser console in the room powered up and locked in on both of them. The troops at the door burst into the room and levelled their weapons, ready to fire. The targets on the screens began a five-second countdown, the remote assassins ready to annihilate their family members.

  Kate and Simon held steady, uncertain if they had just condemned themselves and their families to death. There was an urgent electronic sound, which they assumed was the laser powering up … then, nothing. The monitor screens disappeared. The soldiers and the laser gun in the ceiling disappeared. The troops who had been pounding on the windows disappeared.

  They were in a massive hangar space which was marked out by row upon row of green grid lines. They thought they were alone but both were suddenly aware of movement at the far end of the hangar area.

  In the brief moment before they were rendered unconscious by laser fire, both Kate and Simon just had time to realize that whatever it was that they were looking at, it certainly wasn�
�t human.

  Experiments

  For much of the three years that Nat had been away from her family, she’d been asleep, kept in a state of permanent stasis in a pod of the same type used in the bunkers. She’d been woken and put to sleep, then woken and put to sleep again. She had not been aware of the passage of time, except when she was awake and the experiments were being carried out.

  Nobody ever spoke to her. There were no words of comfort, no explanation as to what was going on. Bit by bit, she accumulated information about her situation.

  Firstly, she was sure that she wasn’t dead, though if there was a Hell, it might have been something like this. Secondly, one man was in charge here – he held a lot of power and the people around him were extremely frightened of him. Thirdly, whatever it was that they were after from her, they were struggling to get it.

  The man in charge would be furious after the experimentation sessions. There was a secret locked deep inside her that he was trying to access, but, for whatever reason, it was eluding him.

  It took her several months to piece together these fragments of information. She would have a few minutes after being woken, and she would compel herself to remember, in spite of the pain of the tests.

  They would lay her on a cold, metal operating table. She was unable to move: she had recovered full consciousness after stasis, but they obviously needed her stunned and docile so that she couldn’t run away. She would be left there for hours at a time sometimes.

  No thought was given to her comfort, no food or drink was offered. She never felt hungry or thirsty, so she assumed that whatever happened in the pod between these horrible sessions took care of all of that. If only there was something to manage the fear and the dread.