“Uh...” a male voice returned. “How do I know you’re not here to kill me?”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Jack answered.
“But how do I know you’re not?”
“Listen, you can take our word for it or keep the door closed and we’ll force our way inside, but then you’ll have to deal with us anyway, and we’ll be a lot more pissed off!” Jack told him assertively.
The seconds of silence became a minute, and as Jack was about to order Bridges to go to work on the keycard access panel, the man spoke up again.
“I-I’m opening the door,” he informed them.
Jack stepped back and took aim at the door while his team took on a similar stance off to his left. There was a beeping sound from the keycard panel and then the door began to open inwards. A timid, scrawny looking man was waiting on the other side. He had a rounded crown but his head ended in a long, narrow jaw. He had curly locks of dark hair and dark eyes, and looked to be about the same age as Bridges, but didn’t strike as imposing a physical presence. The man was clearly part of the same security team as the undead they’d seen, the gray uniform with black body armor making it a natural conclusion. Jack looked at the empty holster on his left hip, and briefly he wondered if the man was about to present a weapon, but he quickly backed away from the door, his hands raised.
“Don’t shoot!” he pleaded.
“I told you, we’re not going to harm you,” Jack responded, approaching the door and pushing it all the way in. He swept the room for any previously unseen member of the security team.
“Who are you?” Tyrone demanded, coming in behind Jack and flanking to the right corner.
“I’m Jeff Miller, Redshield Security.”
“Do you know what goes on here?”
“There’s some kind of research lab on the floors below, but I don’t know what they research.”
“So, I bet the zombies were a pretty big fucking surprise then, right?” Bridges questioned.
“You could say that,” Jeff responded. “Can I lower my hands?”
“Ty,” Jack stated, his companion, understanding his meaning, approached the security guard and patted him down for weapons, while Jack kept his assault rifle trained on his target.
“Clean,” Tyrone reported, taking a keycard out of Jeff’s pocket and tossing it to Jack, who observed that it had a wide teal stripe and a narrow violet stripe horizontally across the card. He pocketed the card then returned his attention to Jeff.
“Lower your hands,” Jack issued. “Sit down. Bridges, the computer.”
Jeff went around to the sofa and sat down, folding his hands in his lap. Bridges took a seat at the computer on the right, tapping at the keyboard and moving the mouse while Jack focused on their prisoner.
“Emma, Ridgewell, Smith, get over here. If you run into trouble, Ty and I will meet up with you,” Jack instructed. He wished he was there to escort Emma, but the truth was he needed to stay at the security station to help keep an eye on their prisoner.
“Okay, Jack, we’re on the way,” Emma responded.
“Yep. If we get lost we’ll just look for the trail of dead zombies you left behind,” Ridgewell commented.
“Bridges, access the security cameras and keep an eye on them,” Jack ordered.
“Will do.”
It took them about five minutes, and Jack kept an eye on their progress through the cameras the entire time. It did appear as though the infected had been wiped out, but there were a lot of rooms they hadn’t secured, and although there were a large number of cameras, there still seemed to be blind spots. However, when he saw Emma and the others through the windows, he felt far more comfortable, and smiled at Emma as she came through the door, an expression she returned. Tyrone shut the door behind them, and Emma went over to Bridges to help him with his terminal while Ridgewell went over to the other in the opposite corner.
“Okay, now that we’re all here, Bridges I want you to find the security lockdown and seal off all the other doors to stop any infected wandering out behind us. Ridgewell, get into the system and try to find out what you can about the self destruct system, get Bridges to help you if there’s anything blocking you.”
“Wait, self destruct system?” Jeff asked, panic lacing his tone as he started to stand - an action he ceased then reversed when Jack stared at him.
“I’m assuming your employer didn’t tell you everything that was going on here,” Tyrone stated.
“Well, I’m pretty new here. I was transferred from the facility over in Chicago to provide campus security,” Jeff told them.
“And who do you work for?”
“Bolvinox. Have you heard of them?” Jeff wanted to know.
“From time to time,” Jack responded. “So, what happened here?” Jack demanded. Jeff looked ashen at the question, then nodded.
“I guess I could tell you.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Tyrone informed him darkly, leaning against the door.
“So, well, I guess it all started a few days ago. I was here when there was a... Wait, I’m sorry, self destruct system? Are we going to be blown up?”
“Focus, Jeff,” Jack told him firmly.
“I just don’t want to, you know, explode.”
“Neither do we. Now, what happened?”
Jeff took a deep breath and started again.
“I was on shift when we got informed there was a big wig coming down from the, uh, head office I guess.”
Jack was beginning to hate Jeff’s excessive usage of the word ‘guess’.
“I wasn’t sure what it was about, but I was told he was going to the research levels down below. I think they were close to finding something they were looking for, because the scientists who came up looked pretty excited when they came out of the elevators. Well, some of them. A few for sure. The others looked... stressed, I guess.”
“Did you overhear anything?”
“Something about...” Jeff trailed off and thought about his answer for a few moments. “I think I heard an X. Some kind of material X or something. I also heard the word ‘breakthrough’ a few times.”
“Okay, so what happened to cause all of this?”
“I don’t know. The alarm went off and I asked my boss, Clive, what it meant and he said there was a containment breach down below, and our job was to clear the dorms in preparation for evacuation out through the main elevator and to prevent anyone from coming up from the lower levels.”
“That worked out well,” Bridges commented from behind Jack.
“It did at first. Clive locked down the elevators, assembled people ready to evacuate... and then our systems started going screwy.”
“Screwy?”
“Like they were being controlled by someone else, I guess,” Jeff said. “The elevator from below started coming up and there were those things in them. I mean, people I recognized but they weren’t them anymore. Clive... Clive had left me in here to keep an eye on the monitors and I told him over the radio about the monsters arriving from below, that’s when he told me to engage lock down, but that didn’t work either. I wanted to help, but I was stuck in here because the only door that locked was this one! All over the radio there were people dying out there!” Jeff exclaimed suddenly, tears forming in his eyes. “They were... They were eating people!”
Jack couldn’t help but feel a hint of sympathy for the young man.
“What happened next?” Jack asked, his tone softening.
“We, uh, we needed to try to save people,” Jeff said, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Clive wanted to keep the zombies, that’s what he called them, away from the people at the main elevator, you know, the one that went up to the storeroom. So he went back into the campus and tried to lure the zombies back to the elevator bank... you know, the ones that go down to the lower levels. He wanted to get as many of them in an elevator with him as possible then take it back down. He was going to sacrifice himself to save people, you know.”
/>
“And then?” Tyrone probed.
“He got like twenty of the zombies in there but the elevator didn’t work. It wouldn’t go back down and they... they ate him. Then they went through to the campus. The security team by the main elevator managed to secure the big metal doors for a while, but from what I understand they had people who had been bitten in there with them. A bunch of them died and came back as those things, then somehow their doors were opened remotely. When that happened, the things that came up from the lower levels made their way inside... Those people... All those people...” Jeff trailed off, seemingly unable to complete his sentence.
“It’s all right, Jeff,” Jack told him, approaching and laying his hand comfortingly on the man’s shoulder for a moment before stepping back. “Have you learned anything about what’s happening below since?”
“No. My door wouldn’t open until recently, and my access to the lower level’s security system is restricted, so I couldn’t see if there was anyone or anything left alive. When my door did unlock and I went out to look, the monsters came back. I barely got inside and barricaded it before they ganged up outside the door. I was hoping someone would come eventually, but I couldn’t get word to anyone outside so I’ve been living off the stuff in the vending machines.”
Jack nodded. It didn’t seem as though he knew more than he was telling; he was displaying all the right emotions, and body language signals suggested he was telling the truth, but Jack couldn’t, or more correctly wouldn’t rule anything out. He didn’t plan on leaving Jeff alone, just in case he had some greater access to the security system than he was revealing.
“Ridgewell, do you have anything?” Jack asked, turning away from Jeff. Ridgewell was busy on the computer and spoke without turning in his seat.
“That depends on how you look at it.”
“Just give me a simple answer, Ridgewell,” Jack told him a little shortly.
“Okay. I can confirm that there is a self-destruct system in place and that it’s not currently active.”
“That sounds good,” Bridges said.
“Doesn’t it?” Ridgewell questioned rhetorically. “Unfortunately, there are two stages to the self destruct device. The first is the incendiary component; it cooks the labs, the infected holding pens and anywhere the infected might have reached. It actually appears as though each floor has a ceiling of napalm that can be ignited and dropped inside, which is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. The second is the explosive component, which, you know, goes bang. Both of them are supposed to be automated and go off within sixty minutes of a containment breach, but obviously that didn’t happen and it’s currently disabled.”
“So we’re not in imminent danger from the self-destruct system?” Jack wanted to know.
“Not that I can see.”
“Can you do anything to disable the device remotely?”
“Nope. Actually, according to these logs, the ability for the system to be triggered remotely was disabled.”
“So we just go down to the fifth floor and you can do your thing,” Bridges piped up. “Then I don’t have to poke around in the security system of a giant bomb.”
“Uh, you can’t,” Jeff stated, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “We’re on level one, and Clive told me that our keycard only gets us down to level two. You need to be someone from level two to get down to level three and so on. You either need to find a level five security card to gain complete access or go down the floors progressively.”
“That complicates things,” Tyrone declared.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Okay, first things first, do you know about the secondary entrance to this facility through the silver mine?”
“The what?” Jeff returned, looking bemused.
“Great,” Jack said as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t entirely clear on the best way to proceed, but their objective seemed clear. First, they needed to get to level five and get Ridgewell in a position to disable both self-destruct devices. Secondly, they needed to acquire as much of the research as possible, which led him to a question for Emma.
“Emma, can you access their research files from here?”
“No, that seems to be on a system on one of the lower levels,” she told him, turning away from the security terminal to respond.
“Figures,” Jack said exasperatedly. “Can you access their external communications from here?”
“Let me see,” Bridges responded, tapping away at the keyboard.
FROM HER POSITION ON the lower level, Hall found herself staring up at Maxwell in his office. One of their analysts was relaying details of a report coming in from a squad in Dewbury to her, and although it was vitally important information she needed to be aware of, Hall’s attention was elsewhere. She couldn’t help but wonder what secret undertaking Maxwell was part of that led to his comments earlier. Of course, a part of her was flattered that he thought so much of her he was grooming her to take his place when he was gone, but there was a mystique about Maxwell that made him seem... invincible. There were stories about Maxwell that claimed he’d been an operative back in the sixties, engaging in Cold War espionage, thwarting enemy agents and bringing down crime organizations that were a threat to the world at large. Some suggested it was Maxwell who was actually the Director of the Coalition, but this seemed unlikely. Hall didn’t know exactly why it seemed unlikely as she’d never met the Director, no one had - save for the Generals who headed up the Coalition - but she felt that if Maxwell was in charge of the Coalition he wouldn’t be spending so much time on the front line.
“Captain?” the analyst drew Hall back into the moment. She looked down at his face, staring blankly for a moment while she remembered what she had been doing, then nodded.
“Very good. Send the information to my tablet,” Hall instructed, moving away and going up the stairs onto the catwalk. She proceeded left and went to Maxwell’s office door, knocking before letting herself in.
“Elizabeth. Anything new?” Maxwell asked. He wasn’t smoking for a change, and seemed to be working on something - something he didn’t want her to see, as he closed the lid of his laptop as she entered.
“Nothing yet. We lost contact with Jack during their descent into the facility,” Hall answered, shutting the door behind her.
“Well, I’m sure we’ll hear from him soon.”
“I’ve managed to get some more on General Haddenfield, sir. Would you like a briefing on him?”
“Certainly. From the top, Elizabeth, in case I’ve missed anything.”
“General David Haddenfield served from the seventies until just a few years ago - at the time of his supposed death. He was on the ground in Bosnia in the two thousands, and also involved in the Gulf War while at the rank of Major General. He got his bump to Lieutenant General for actions in Mosul, and bumped further to General a short while later - at around the same time he was approached to join the Coalition. He was popular with politicians, and given that his career wasn’t overly spectacular, I think that had more to do with his rise through the ranks than any particular skill he possessed.”
“So the Director probably recruited him to leverage his political connections,” Maxwell commented.
“It seems plausible, though given the privacy surrounding the Director, who can really say,” Hall returned. Maxwell smiled.
“Continue, Elizabeth.”
“Once he joined the Coalition, he supervised a number of clandestine operations we carried out in the Middle East. Information on those has been compartmentalized and I’m still waiting for it to become available, but I have learned that in two thousand and ten Haddenfield received a one hundred million dollar budget to participate in an unnamed research project.”
“One hundred million?” Maxwell asked, cocking an eyebrow in surprise.
“Yes. There’s even a notation that there was additional funding of an unspecified amount available upon request.”
“Is there any information on th
e nature of this project?”
“It appears to have been biological in nature. It’s coded as a defense project, but there’s no further information at all - not even to say it’s classified.”
“But this was definitely a Coalition project?”
“Not entirely. It states that Haddenfield would be working in conjunction with another agency, but not who they were. It also lists Haddenfield as a liaison between us and the other agency.”
“Most interesting,” Maxwell declared. He reached into his pocket, retrieved his cigarette packet and tapped one out, lighting it before speaking again. “So, twenty ten puts us well before the satellite project that recovered Genetic Material X. Did anything else happen of note in that year?”
“Uh...” Hall trailed off, swiping to a separate tab on her tablet. “Not really, sir. The United Space Project was closed down, and there were of course conflicts across the Middle East for the rest of the decade. According to the records, the Coalition was involved in stabilization efforts, though I imagine you know more about those than I do.”
“Yes, it was a difficult time,” Maxwell commented. “The United Space Project though, what was that?”
“That was a multinational, though private, effort to build and maintain a space station in orbit around the Earth. It fell through after there was some kind of accident in which a number of astronauts were killed.”
“What happened?”
“An accident aboard the station caused one of the exterior walls to blow out. This resulted in depressurization and the loss of twelve lives in total: two astronauts outside the station and the other ten inside.”
“Did they recover any part of the station?”
“I believe some of it fell out of orbit and landed in the Pacific, but some parts were recovered by an unnamed team just before the financial collapse of the project.”
“Most interesting,” Maxwell commented.
“How so?”
“Well, research shows that a biological collection device was attached to a satellite and this is where Genetic Material X came from, correct?”
The Z Directive (Book 2): Mutation Page 8
