“Do not be afraid,” Alexander said, looking as relaxed as ever. “The weapon made them nervous. You’ll be fine...until I’m finished with you.” He spun on the chair, facing Rook. “Now it’s my turn to ask the questions. Who are you?”
Both remained silent. Torture would not gain that information. Alexander could see as much. “Very well. We all have our secrets. But I know you’ve been to the University of Athens. Interrupted our recovery efforts.”
“Hope you got my phone message,” Rook said.
Alexander grinned. “Indeed. You spin words like a minstrel. But it seems you also found what they”—he glanced into the shadows—“were unable to retrieve. You were lucky to turn on the lights. As you can see, they’re quite sensitive. Now, what is your interest in George Pierce?”
“He’s a friend,” Rook said.
“And?”
Queen sighed. Divulging information had not been the plan. “He’s been poisoned.”
“Indeed. By whom?”
“A genetics company.”
“For what purpose?”
“According to you, that isn’t information worth sharing with the world,” Rook said.
“Clearly you thought I could help with this poison. Why come here otherwise?”
“We didn’t know what we would find,” Queen said. “Agustina Gallo. Those were the last words Pierce spoke before he fell into a coma.” Queen held up the Herculean Society symbol. “He drew this symbol in his own blood.”
Alexander sat up straight. Interested. “That doesn’t sound like Dr. Pierce to me.”
“He wasn’t himself,” Rook said.
“Then, what was he?”
Again, they stayed silent. In the silence Queen could hear clicking from the shadows. The yellow eyes had disappeared, but she could sense the two...things in the dark.
“He found something, didn’t he? Something dangerous? Something men...would kill for.” Alexander rubbed his chin, then looked at Queen. “Please. Tell me where he found it. What country?”
Queen figured that knowing the country would do little good in figuring out what ancient Greek artifact had been found halfway around the world, so she divulged the information hoping it would keep the conversation going and buy more time to turn the tables. “Peru.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Nazca?”
“How did you know that?” Rook asked. “Another bug?”
“It can’t be...” He was on his feet now. “A genetics company you said?”
Rook nodded, noting that the aggressive tone in Alexander’s voice had been replaced by concern. “You know what he found, don’t you?”
He looked them both in the eyes, sizing them up. His countenance softened. “Follow.” He led them across the room, away from the shadows, toward a row of glass-faced refrigerators. “Do you know what the Herculean Society does?”
“Protects the ‘legacy of the historical Hercules,’“ Queen said.
He nodded, then continued toward the refrigerators. “We have led the world to believe that Hercules was a god among men; that his prowess and stature were out of reach to all of humanity. In truth he was a scientist of sorts. The first geneticist if you will.”
Steam billowed from the refrigerator as he opened it. He reached in and pulled out a test tube holder that contained six vials, each filled with brown liquid. He took one out and shook it, clouding it to near black. “I never thought I would need these...”
He replaced the test tube holder and handed all six vials to Queen. “The elixir will block the genes that allow for regeneration. It was a temporary fix for the Hydra. For Dr. Pierce...” He shrugged. “Two for the creature. A small dose for Dr. Pierce should be effective. Use the rest to make more if needed. Eternal life is a burden. A curse. The planet will not be able to survive an eternity of the human race.”
She looked at the vial, then back to Alexander. “You’re letting us go?”
“As I said before, some secrets are better left buried. The Hydra should have never been exhumed. History will repeat itself yet again.” Alexander pushed their shoulders, turning them to the exit. “Go. Now. You will not be harmed. Go!”
“If you know so much, you could come with us,” Queen said. “Help us.”
He laughed. “You would have me locked up when finished.”
“We can make arrangements.”
“I’m afraid not. I long ago promised someone I loved that I would refrain from getting directly involved in the world’s problems. I’m afraid this is the best I can do. You see, unlike the rest of the human race, I honor the past. Now go!”
Alexander shoved them forward, and neither slowed. They had what they came for and knew how to find him again if need be. They raced up the stairs and entered the main cavern. The people working on the Neanderthal artifacts stood and watched them wind their way through the maze of strings. A few moved toward the back of the cave, but then stopped. Rook looked back. Alexander was there, motioning that everything was fine.
As they approached the bright Mediterranean Sea through the dark cave, Rook took hold of Queen’s arm. “Something he said just registered.”
“What?”
He pointed to the test tubes. “Two for the creature...”
49
New Hampshire
Bishop paced in the small Honeymoon Cottage living room. It was uncharacteristic for him to show any kind of impatience or exasperation, but given that others in his position had succumbed to madness by this point, he was doing well enough. King sat at the dining room, looking at the screen of a laptop. The silhouetted view of Deep Blue looked back.
“I had the map you sent analyzed and compared to topographical maps of the area surrounding the campgrounds. If the map Beck gave you is accurate...and not some kind of trap, you should find Manifold somewhere beneath Fletcher Mountain. I’ve got a team covering every square inch of the site for possible entry and egress points, but they’ve covered their tracks fairly well.”
“If Knight followed protocol we’ll have all the intel we’ll need.” He pet Thor’s head.
“I’ll contact your PDA if we find anything,” Deep Blue added. “Good hunting. Oh, and King...the gloves are off. I don’t care what kind of a coverup we need to generate at the end of this. Manifold cannot be allowed to skip town again. Do whatever it takes.”
The screen went blank.
Bishop stopped his pacing. “We ready?”
King turned and faced Bishop. “Think you can contain that rage building within you for a little while longer?”
“You know I can.”
“Then let’s go.”
The two men climbed into the Chevy Tahoe with Thor. The engine roared as King pulled out of the pine needle-carpeted clearing that served as a driveway and drove through the campground. As they passed by the quad, King took note of the pickup soccer game, and farther beyond, at the baseball field, two long strings of kids playing red rover. As much as he wanted to wipe Manifold off the map, doing “whatever it takes” could not involve allowing these people to be hurt. He frowned as he realized that was probably why Manifold set up shop at this location—off the beaten path, but human shields abounded.
After passing through the campgrounds, they drove up a tall hill and discovered what looked like an abandoned kids camp. The GPS tracker on King’s PDA showed their current position was just under a mile from Knight’s signal. Not wanting to get too close and set off security, they pulled into the woods, covered the vehicle with camouflage netting and pine branches, then set off on foot, fully armed and led by Thor.
After ten minutes of hiking, off path, toward Knight’s signal, they came upon a clearing full of cabins. They crouched at the side of an incline, searching the area for signs of movement, organic or electronic. Seeing nothing, they stood and moved up behind one of the decrepit brown cabins. King checked the PDA. “We’re right on top of the signal.”
The trees above swayed in the breeze. Bishop looked up. “Or the signal’s on top
of us.” He placed his machine gun, muzzle up, against the cabin, locked his fingers together and lowered them, palms up. King placed a boot within Bishop’s large hands and was quickly launched to the cabin’s roof. He laid low on the roof, waiting in silence to see if the movement had garnered any kind of response. Even the snapping of a twig would be enough to tip him off. But other than the twitter of birds and swish of wind through pine needles, the forest was silent.
He turned his head the other way and found Knight’s backpack, rifle, GPS transmitter, and an open can of SprayTrack. He shut off the tracking unit and placed it into the pack, which he dropped over the side to Bishop’s waiting arms. While Bishop hid the pack inside a rotted fallen tree, King leaped down from the roof with the rifle and SprayTrack. He slung the weapon over his shoulder before kneeling down to Thor. He held the can out to the dog. “Do your stuff, boy. Stay quiet.”
The dog whined in response. The “stay quiet” command had been developed to keep dogs from barking when stealth was required.
Thor entered the U-shaped campsite, sniffing the ground. He stopped in the middle of the dirt road and whined again. Scent found. “Follow. Slow.”
The dog began following the trail, walking at a casual pace with his nose to the ground. King and Rook kept pace, from twenty feet within the woods. Anyone watching the road would see a loose dog out for a stroll.
Twenty minutes into following the scent trail, King noticed a tree mounted camera sweeping back and forth. It was small and camouflaged, but its movement in a direction opposite the current breeze gave it away. They waited for it to point toward Thor, then bolted past before it swung back around. Best-case scenario, they wouldn’t think anything of the dog. Worst case, they had a shoot-to-kill order for the special ops dog, too.
After another five minutes of slow going, mostly to be sure they didn’t trip any alarms, they saw Thor stop and sit. The trailed ended at an overgrown vertical wall at the base of the mountain. This was, no doubt, an entry point into Manifold’s subterranean facility, but they couldn’t get any closer. Queen had noted, in her report on Tristan da Cunha, the amount of visual, infrared, and motion sensors the Manifold facility had had. He doubted this would be any different. They would have to find another way in.
King whistled a command that would sound like any of the local birds, but Thor recognized as a simple command: go home. The dog stood, turned, and just as casually backtracked. He would follow the SprayTrack back to the campground, their own scent trail back to the Tahoe, and the car’s scent back to the cabin where he would wait for their return.
Laying low in a patch of tall ferns, King turned on his PDA and waited for a connection. He looked at Bishop, whose eyes were still on the hidden entrance. He looked like he was about to blow the door down and open up with his machine gun until every last living thing inside keeled over. When he saw Bishop’s hand on a grenade he realized that might actually be what he had planned. He placed a hand on Bishop’s arm. “Soon.”
Bishop took a breath, released the grenade, and nodded.
A text message scrolled across the PDA’s screen as it was received and decrypted. It read:
Found ventilation on Fletcher. Also, potential helipad. Actual pad obscured. Same as Amazon. Take your pick.—DB
A map of Fletcher Mountain loaded next. Two vents were marked with red circles. The helipad with a blue question mark. “Thoughts?”
“I think I’m too big to fit in a vent shaft.” King smiled.
“Good point.”
After circling the base of the mountain for a half mile, they began their upward climb. The grade was fairly even, but fallen trees and scads of oddly shaped boulders slowed their climb. After reaching an elevation of one thousand feet, they headed sideways again, stopping twenty minutes later on the opposite end of the mountain, directly above a helipad. Once again, the trees had been cleared diagonally so that a helicopter would have to fly into and under the canopy. The pad was currently empty, but two armed guards stood to either side of the pad, scanning the forest below.
King looked at Bishop, whose facial expression asked a very simple question, “Now?”
King nodded, but then held his index finger to his lips. The message was equally simple. Kill them quietly. The men split up, each moving toward their intended target. The battle for Manifold Alpha was about to begin.
50
New Hampshire
With widening eyes, Knight peered through the large glass window, forgetting for a moment to conceal himself as he watched a spectacle beyond comprehension. The forty-foot-long, twenty-foot-tall, and equally wide room was brightly lit from above. Red lines stretched across the highly polished hardwood floor. But it wasn’t the boxy room’s size or lack of decoration that held his attention, it was the two people throwing themselves around the space, grunting, stretching, and occasionally cursing when the ball was missed. A racquetball court in a science facility would have been odd enough. But the two players on this court fought for the ball and victory like combatants at the coliseum. It would have normally been an impressive sight, except that the man and woman inside looked older than Knight’s own grandma. Pushing eighty, at least, if not older.
Their sweat-soaked white hair lay plastered against their heads. Their muscles looked firm and healthy. Only their faces defined their age, wrinkled and wizened. The man dove for the ball, missed, and slammed into the glass in front of Knight. The man’s lip split, but as he stood and regained his composure, the lip healed. The man noticed him, gave a smile and a wave, then went back to playing as the woman smashed a devastating serve. The two were back at it, playing what had to be one of the most intense games of racquetball Knight had ever seen. They had regained their youth. They were happy to be alive. So happy that they didn’t notice Knight’s unusual black garb or the silenced weapon in his hand.
As his sense of reality returned, Knight noticed a video camera mounted high in the corner of the court. The couple was being watched. Guinea pigs. But a success story? Knight wasn’t sure. For all he knew, one of them might break a hip, go mad, and eat the other. He stepped away from the window, steering clear of the camera, and proceeded down the hall. He passed rooms full of exercise equipment, a basketball court, a boxing ring, and a pool. The facilities were probably created to entice new minds to work for Manifold, but they clearly never got a chance to use them. Not only was there not a soul around, but the equipment looked brand-new. Of course, there was always the likely possibility that the scientists chose not to use the equipment.
He entered a men’s locker room at the end of the hallway. He checked for security cameras. He didn’t think there would be any, but he wouldn’t put it past Manifold. They didn’t seem to have any compunction when it came to issues of morality...or in their case, immorality. After seeing no visible signs of security, he rifled through the lockers. Most were empty. One held a candy bar wrapper, long since discarded. One of the last he checked held some clothes. He looked them over. Plaid pants and a yellow button-down shirt. They no doubt belonged to the old man playing racquetball, and would do little to help him blend in. On a whim he pushed open the bathroom stalls, one by one. The first three doors clunked open. The fourth made a thud. Knight looked behind the door and smiled. A long, white lab coat hung from a hook on the back of the door. Knight slid it on and headed for the door.
As he rounded the corner out of the locker room he slammed into something moving fast and fell to the floor. Dazed, he sat up and looked at the person above him, expecting to see a security guard. Instead it was the old man, reaching down with a hand and a smile. “You all right, son?”
Knight took the man’s hand and stood. He forced a smile. “You’re built like an oak tree, sir.”
“Thanks to you people.” The man slapped Knight’s shoulder. It hurt. A lot. “You’ve gone and found yourself a miracle cure.”
“I didn’t catch your name on the memo,” Knight said.
“Bobby Jackson.”
“
And how did you find out about the program?”
“I was in Plymouth Hospital. Terminal cancer. Few weeks to live. Your fellas came and picked me up one night. Snuck me right out. Next day I was shooting hoops. Today racquetball. I’m a new man.”
“And your partner on the court? How is she?”
“Louise? She’s fantastic.”
“Your wife?”
“My wife has been dead for forty years, son. And I hope she gave up looking down on me a long time ago, ‘cause I’m aiming to get lucky tonight.”
Knight laughed. “Well, good luck with that, Bobby.”
“Luck won’t have nothing to do with it,” Jackson said as he entered the locker room. “I’m the only one in her age group that can keep up!”
Knight couldn’t help but smile at the old man’s innocent enthusiasm. Youth regained had to be an amazing feeling. But the ramifications were disturbing. Manifold was close to success, if they hadn’t already achieved it. Knight hurried down the hall trying his best to look like a scientist in a hurry. As he passed the racquetball court, the woman exited and flashed a healthy grin. No dentures, either. Her teeth had grown back in. “Good game, Louise?”
“I’ll get him next time,” she said, then headed toward the locker rooms. She rounded the corner as Knight entered the elevator. He pushed the button for the next floor down, labeled L.
When the doors opened, he entered the hallway looking as casual as possible. He took a left without hesitation and didn’t bother looking for security cameras. To anyone watching it would look like he knew exactly where he was going. Thankfully, he found the beige hallways well labeled and full of scientists wearing similar lab coats. He passed signs for archives, cryogenics, computer lab, and, most disturbingly, a morgue. But none held his interest enough to check out in person. His chosen target was well labeled above all others: Research Wing.
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