Mutation

by Michael McBride

  The jungle provided cover all the way down the mountainside and to the fringes of the ancient mecca, where Barnett again consulted Dr. Clarke’s map of the subterranean structures. Another update had defined even more detail of what appeared to be a veritable underground city beneath their feet. It must have taken the Olmec decades to bury their entire civilization, leaving behind cryptic altars and giant heads that served as a warning to people so far removed from this primitive society that they could no longer understand the warning well enough to heed it.

  They couldn’t see the main ceremonial complex that formed the trapezoid shape of Reticulum to the northwest, but the rain striking the open field instead of the ceiling of leaves created a sound differential, a blank space they kept to their left as they searched through the trees, brushing aside palm leaves and ceiba branches, shoving through saplings and chest-high weeds, navigating buttress roots, vines, and lianas until their GPS coordinates aligned with the location corresponding to Zeta Reticuli.

  “This is it,” Barnett said.

  “I can’t see a blasted thing through all of the trees,” Morgan said.

  Barnett realized how ridiculous the notion of arriving and immediately finding some major archeological discovery that had somehow eluded everyone else for nearly three millennia sounded, but no one else had ventured into this rainforest armed with such advanced and detailed imagery. Somewhere directly below them, under some unknown depth of backfilled soil and tree roots, were two structures that aligned like the twin stars from which the organisms responsible for the creation of Subject Z were believed to have originated. They just had to figure out how to reach them.

  And they were running out of time.

  “Anyone committed to spending the majority of their lives burying the only home they’d ever known likely wouldn’t leave behind an entrance,” Morgan said.

  “So what do you propose we do?”

  Morgan slipped off his backpack, removed a hard case roughly a foot long and half as wide, and looked at him with an impassive expression.

  “We make one of our own.”

  Barnett offered a crooked smile. He knew exactly what was inside the case. After all, he’d personally requisitioned it on the off chance they ran up against something beyond the capabilities of traditional armaments, something that might have ended this threat way back at AREA 51 a year ago had Richards’s team had access to a means of destroying the ice cavern and dropping millions of tons of ice right down on the creature’s head.

  “I’ll start digging,” he said.

  While the earth was soft from the rain and held its form reasonably well, carving a hole using only branches, rocks, and his bare hands took some doing. The shaft was maybe eight inches wide and six feet deep when he finally encountered resistance. He could barely see the flat stone at the bottom, but they wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was the roof of a buried building or simply a slab of bedrock until after Morgan worked his magic.

  Each of the M112 demolition blocks was eleven inches long, two inches wide, an inch and a half thick, and composed of more than a pound of C-4. The military-grade plastic explosives had the consistency of clay and were stable at just about any temperature and under any environmental conditions. The only way to trigger its explosive potential was to deliver a localized shock wave from a detonator.

  Morgan removed four blocks and the corresponding detonators and handed the case to Barnett.

  “Hang on to rest,” he said. “You never know when they might come in handy.”

  Barnett shoved the case into his backpack and watched as Morgan peeled off the Mylar film backing and used the pressure-sensitive adhesive to stick the blocks to the end of an eight-foot-long sapling he’d stripped of its branches. He inserted the blasting caps so they stood from the mass like the spikes of a mace and lowered the sapling into the hole, trailing the long cords wired to the handheld detonator, which, when triggered, would convert the explosives into compressed gas that rapidly expanded outward, turning the shaft into a crater and cutting straight through the earth and the roots of the surrounding trees.

  “Might want to take a few steps back,” he said.

  Barnett retreated about twenty feet and took cover behind the massive trunk of a kapok tree. Morgan shoved through the branches and crouched beside him. He held up the detonator and looked at Barnett, who gave the order with a nod.

  For a heartbeat, the world stood still.

  And then the ground dropped underneath them. The air filled with dust, dirt, and wooden shrapnel. A wall of superheated air roared past them.

  Several seconds passed in silence before debris rained back down to the ground all around them.

  Barnett stood, shielded his eyes from the dust and smoke, and headed toward a crater easily ten feet wide. Chunks of rock and tentacle-like roots protruded from the sloping sides. He stood at the precipice and stared down at the bottom, where a ring of broken stone blocks framed a black maw, through which he could see little more than motes swirling in the darkness. He shouldered his rifle, slid down the loose earth, and perched at the edge of the hole. Below him was a vast space of indeterminate size, from which cold air that smelled like a tomb seeped. He switched on his flashlight, but even its powerful beam illuminated little more than the faint outline of the debris cone from the explosion.

  He glanced back over his shoulder and tried to catch one final glimpse of the sun through the treetops before consigning himself to the darkness, but the storm clouds denied him. It was a fitting send-off for where he was going. He slid his legs over the edge, shined his beam down between his feet, and dropped into the darkness.

  38

  TESS

  The Hangar

  Tess’s wrists were bound so tightly behind her back that she’d lost all sensation in her hands. Fortunately, she could feel them against her rear end, although not as acutely as the tip of the blade Maddox had pressed into the underside of her jaw. It had found a nerve, which sent electrical currents through the entire left side of her face and head when he applied even the slightest pressure, but at least she could tell by the trickle of warmth running down her neck that he had yet to cut too deeply.

  “Please . . .” she whispered and immediately regretted the movement, which sent a lightning bolt of pain from behind her eye into her skull.

  Maddox shoved her down the hallway toward her office, where the illusion that she possessed critical information that he desperately needed would be quickly shattered. All he had to do was run a simple search of her computer to discover that any reference to the star Aldebaran was tangential at best. She needed to find a way to distract him. Even if she did, however, she would only be able to fool him for so long, and she had no doubt about his willingness to use the blade. The man she’d known for the past six months was gone, if he’d ever really existed at all.

  “Get in there,” he said and shoved her so hard that she lost her balance. With her arms bound behind her, she had no way of bracing for impact. She landed squarely on her chest. Barely turned her head in time to keep from cracking her chin on the floor. Hit her forehead instead. Felt her eyebrow split. “Stand her up.”

  Unseen hands gripped her by either shoulder and lifted her to her feet, where she struggled to find her equilibrium while blinking the blood from her eye. She caught Maddox’s stare and understood with complete certainty that this was where she was going to die.

  “Aldebaran means ‘The Follower’ in Arabic,” he said, becoming increasingly animated as he spoke. “It was given that name because it rises in the sky after the Pleiades star cluster, which features prominently in ancient Mesopotamian and Native American creation myths. It’s the eye of Taurus, the second symbol of the Zodiac. Two of twelve. It appears to be the same color of red as Mars when they pass in the night sky. Two spheres, side by side. That was the message you sent to Roche. What’s its significance? Tell me what it means!”

  Tess glanced up at the row of monitors on the wall, hoping to God that Al
debaran aligned with an ancient Egyptian structure, anything other than the open desert.

  Maddox caught her looking. Gripped her by the back of her neck. Squeezed. Jerked her around behind her desk and shoved her face right in front of the satellite image of Giza.

  She prayed for strength, for him not to see her pain and fear, but her cheeks were already damp with tears, and her chest hitched with every word she spoke.

  “I haven’t been able to identify it on the map yet.”

  “Well, now’s your chance. And you’d better make it count because it’s the only one you’re going to get.”

  Tess strained against his grip.

  “I need my keyboard.”

  “If you make so much as a single errant keystroke, you’ll experience pain beyond anything you’ve ever imagined.”

  He released her and, with a flick of his wrist, sliced her cheek. Blood welled to the surface before she even felt the sting of the blade parting her flesh. She clasped her hand over it to stem the bleeding, took a seat at her desk, and struggled to manipulate her system with a single trembling hand.

  The overlay of Orion appeared on the satellite map of Giza, the archer’s belt aligning with the pyramids. She scaled the constellation of Taurus to match and mentally tried to predict where Aldebaran would align.

  Footsteps pounded down the corridor. The man in the camouflage tactical mask burst through the doorway.

  “We’ve picked up a Black Hawk heading straight toward us,” he said. “ETA: two minutes and counting.”

  “Is everything in place?” Maddox asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then give the order for the men to assume their positions and let me know the moment it touches down. I want you to personally monitor remote access to the system. We need them to be able to get past the firewalls, but not too easily. Make them work for it.”

  “I’ll start the five-minute countdown at the first sign of cyber intrusion,” Camo Mask said and hustled back in the direction from which he’d appeared.

  Maddox turned to face her, again with that horrible smile on his face.

  “You heard him, Dr. Clarke. You’re on the clock. You have less than seven minutes to figure out the location in Giza that corresponds with Aldebaran, or you’re going to bleed to death in that very chair.”

  ROCHE

  Roche’s stomach lurched as the helicopter rapidly descended. It barely pulled up in time to settle gracefully onto the tarmac between the derelict buildings concealing the Hangar. He was still trying to don his Kevlar vest when the leader of the special ops team threw open the sliding door and hopped out onto the cracked concrete.

  “I’m coming with you,” Kelly said.

  “The hell you are.” Roche exchanged his headset for a tactical helmet, unbuckled his harness, and headed for the open door. He had to raise his voice so she could hear him over the rotors. “You need to stay on this chopper. It’ll take you to central command for debriefing. We need someone with knowledge of the inner workings of the Hangar on the outside.”

  “I’m not letting you go in there alone!” she shouted.

  “These guys are special ops. I couldn’t be safer.”

  He could tell how badly she wanted to argue with him, but he leaned in and kissed her before she could. The simple truth of the matter was that one of them needed to go with the team to bypass the retinal scanner and voice recognition system so they could access the elevator, and Roche was infinitely more qualified to assume the risk than she was.

  “They don’t need you down there,” she said. “I need you up here. With me.”

  “I need to know you’re safe.”

  “But you just said—”

  He kissed her again and took a quick step toward the door. She caught him by the hand and looked him dead in the eyes.

  “When this is over, we’re out of here,” she said. “Just the two of us. We’re leaving this place and starting over from scratch. I want things to be like they were in England. Let these people save themselves for a change.”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand.

  “There’s nothing in the world I want more.”

  While he meant every word, he could tell by the tears in her eyes that she didn’t believe him, and it broke his heart.

  Roche released Kelly’s hand, climbed out, and pulled the door closed. He didn’t look back for fear of losing his resolve. These men were going to need his help to circumvent the Hangar’s physical defenses while the cyber team attempted to regain control of the system. Both teams needed to be perfectly synchronized or the elevator’s incineration system would render them ashes before they reached the first sublevel.

  The men ran low along the front of the Hangar and disappeared through the lone ingress. By the time Roche caught up with them, they were nearly to the end of the maze of decrepit crates and rusted airplane parts. They crouched near the final approach to the elevator, where they’d be visible on any number of closed-circuit cameras. Command had been able to override external surveillance and loop the live feed preceding the helicopter’s arrival. Unfortunately, they’d only had time to acquire five minutes of footage and were struggling to access the partitioned internal security system.

  “Walk me through it,” the team leader whispered through the speakers in their tactical helmets.

  “The elevator’s armed with multiple countermeasures,” Roche said. “The retina and voice scanners are fairly standard, but once we’re inside, we have to contend with aerial dispersion systems armed with a biological incapacitant capable of putting you down for the count and a chemical accelerant that burns at nearly five thousand degrees Kelvin.”

  “Leave those to us. You just be prepared to do exactly what I say, when I say it. Without hesitation.”

  Roche nodded. He would have felt a whole lot more comfortable if he were carrying an M4A1 rifle like the others, but he was content to let someone else take the lead for once.

  The rotors thupped outside as the Black Hawk prepared to lift off. The sooner Kelly was safely in the air, the better he’d feel.

  “We’re in the system,” Command said. “Prepare to move on my mark.”

  Roche racked his brain in an effort to anticipate what Maddox would do. He knew even more than Roche did about the technical capabilities of the base and had undoubtedly set a trap for anyone attempting to breach its security. Whether or not he knew they were already here was irrelevant; he knew they were coming and would be ready and waiting.

  “Now,” Command said.

  The men sprinted out into the open, toward the elevator.

  A thunderous explosion nearly knocked them off their feet.

  Roche turned and saw a blinding light passing through the maze of crates. Flames raced up the front wall from the doorway and spread across the ceiling. Thick black smoke roiled into the building.

  “No . . .” he whispered and sprinted toward the conflagration. “Kelly!”

  TESS

  Tess watched Maddox from the corner of her eye as she manipulated the digital overlay of Taurus. While he seemed distracted by whatever was happening aboveground that had caused the entire bunker to shudder, he never diverted his attention from her for anywhere near long enough for her to resize the image. As it was, he undoubtedly knew just as well as she did that Aldebaran aligned with a swatch of open desert riddled with barchan dunes that made it look like the surface of the moon from the satellite.

  A pair of men in matching featureless black tactical masks wheeled a cart carrying a laptop and various wires and electrical components into the elevator. A pneumatic ratchet screamed as they bolted it to the floor.

  “Time’s up, Dr. Clarke,” Maddox said.

  She could tell by the tone of his voice that he’d seen through her ruse. She placed the overlay of Taurus in its proper place and looked away from him.

  “Aldebaran is meaningless, isn’t it?” he said. “You used it to send a coded message to Roche. That’s how he figured things out so quickly
.”

  Tess stared blankly at the screen in front of her as though in the hope that a matching structure might miraculously rise from the sand.

  “Rigel’s our destination after all,” he said. “Not that it makes much difference anyway. Our team is already en route from Turkey and should be on the ground within the hour. Even if Dr. Evans’s team somehow managed to survive, there’s no way they’ll be able to get there before it’s too late.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. The adrenaline had faded, leaving her physically depleted and mentally resigned to the inevitability of her fate. “You were one of us.”

  “But I’m not,” Maddox said and looked her right in the eyes. “I’m something vastly superior.”

  Tess searched his startlingly blue eyes for any sign of humanity but found none. He pulled her chair back from the desk and hauled her to her feet.

  “You gambled and lost,” he said. “There’s no shame in that. I would have killed you in the stairwell if you hadn’t, so you succeeded in buying yourself a few extra minutes of life. I should probably even thank you for leading the team outside into our ambush. I guess if time is all you want, I can reward you with a little bit more.”

  He shoved her ahead of him. Out of the office, across the corridor, and into the elevator. His men had removed the panel and hardwired the laptop to the inner workings. Its screen displayed systems and functions she didn’t immediately recognize, but the red bars presumably indicated they’d been disabled.

  “Any moment now,” Maddox said.

  39

  JADE

  25,000 feet above the

  Mediterranean Sea

  The roar of the propellers was so loud she could barely hear the scream of wind shear. Jade would have felt a lot more comfortable if she could tell where the armed men were, or even if she could stretch out her legs. She’d removed the battery from her cell phone with the intention of drying out the two pieces. All she needed was a single phone call or, failing that, just enough charge that her GPS beacon would pop up on the screens back at the Hangar, where, hopefully, Roche and Maddox were in a panic trying to find them, but so far it had been a complete waste of time. At least it gave her something to think about other than the fact that they were undoubtedly hurtling toward certain death, whether by the gun of whoever discovered them hiding inside the cargo hold of this truck or by the catastrophic end the being that had once been Hollis Richards had told her to stop.