by Darcy Fray
A sound interrupted his search, quiet at first, but gradually increasing in volume. Though muffled, it was a sound that Gordon had come to associate with death. The snowmobile.
He ran to a small outcropping of rocks at the base of the mountain, and ducked behind them for cover. He stole a glance as a twenty-foot section of the mountain opened as effortlessly as a suburban garage door. The snowmobile slowly emerged from the opening, pausing as its driver pulled on his gloves.
Even in the glow of the moonlight, Gordon recognized his father’s killer. His blood ran colder than the snow at his feet. A wave of nausea hit him. He spat out the acidic bile that welled up in his tightened throat and pulled the gun from his waistband. Stepping out from behind the rock, he had the gun pointed at his target. Whether it was the sound of his retching or that of the snow beneath his boots, it was enough to attract the attention of the driver, whose look of surprise was immediately followed by one of recognition. The assassin reached for his gun, just as Gordon’s went off.
The two men shared an intimate moment, holding each other’s gaze for what felt like decades. Gordon imagined he could see the bullet sailing just wide of its target. He felt certain he would soon meet the same fate as his father, at the hand of the same man. Surely it was destined.
The shared moment came to an abrupt halt as the assassin raised his handgun and swung it in Gordon’s direction, but before his trigger finger completed the all-too-familiar motion, a racking cough broke his momentum. A peculiar expression blossomed on the assassin’s face. He coughed again, this time splattering blood over the pristine white canvas before him. A third cough sent him falling to the ground.
An emotional stew of joy, regret, sorrow, fear, dread and hope, washed over Gordon, almost bringing him to his knees. He had always considered himself to be the unemotional type, immune to fleeting feelings that seemed to govern others’ lives, but this was different. A man’s life had ended at his hand and although his actions were justifiable, he feared that he was now no different from the assassin -- a weight he was sure to carry to his grave.
He approached the body, which lay sprawled out at the base of the snowmobile. The assassin’s head was pushed awkwardly to one side; his vacant eyes fixed on the middle distance, aglow in the light of the full moon. Gordon had seen far too many corpses in the last ten days, each illuminating Dmitry’s theory of Dusha in its own unique way. The haste with which energy departed the body was indeed intriguing. Surely it went somewhere?
He crouched down to pick up the assassin’s silenced pistol and noticed a security badge peeking out from the snow. He lifted it, brushing away the icy crystals, to reveal the assassin’s austere gaze. The name under the photo read Tatar Zakhaev; it was both an introduction and a farewell of sorts.
He felt hollow inside.
•••
Tunguska, Russia - The Facility
Fletcher exited the locker room with his head hung low, stealing brief glances as he shuffled down the stark white hallway under the glare of the overhead fluorescents. The mechanical sound of a tracking surveillance camera followed his every movement. It was unnerving.
Notably absent, were doors...and people. He hadn’t passed a single one of either since he’d exited the locker room. The hallway terminated about a hundred yards in front of him, with only one door leading in or out of the cavernous room that flanked him.
Everything about the environs made him uncomfortable. His right hand reflexively reached for the gun in his waistband. As his fingers brushed against the warm steel his jangled nerves immediately settled. A pacifier of sorts.
A loud buzzer broke the spell. The door at the end of the hallway opened, releasing two men into the corridor. Seemingly lost in conversation, they took no notice of Fletcher, who continued his approach. As they neared, Fletcher picked up the muted strains of a song he had long since banished from his memory.
“The final countdown, do-do do do, do-do do do do,” the older of the two sang, atonally.
“I hate you...really,” the other replied. “That virulent melody will likely infect my dreams tonight.”
“You’re welcome.”
As Fletcher passed the two men in the hallway, he brushed shoulders with the tone-deaf singer.
“Hey, watch where you’re going,” the man scolded as he spun around to catch a rear view of Fletcher receding down the corridor.
Not breaking stride, Fletcher raised his arm in apology, smiling to himself as he looked down at the security badge he had artfully pulled from the man’s lab coat pocket.
The smile faded as he gazed through the window of the door before him. “Bloody hell.”
•••
Rysevo, Russia - Farmhouse
Operation Golden Boy caught the occupants of the farmhouse by surprise. The MH-X, Stealth Black Hawk’s whisper of a sonic footprint, was easily buried by the stormy winds, while its silver infrared suppressant finish and thermal masking allowed the MH-X to cross over into Russian airspace undetected. A ghost in the night.
Inside the aircraft were twelve Navy Seals from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly referred to as Seal Team Six, two pilots from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and one Russian-American translator. Wearing full winter camo, each Seal carried a silenced Heckler & Koch MP7, silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol, extra ammo, infrared goggles and a laminated photo of Gordon, codename Tesla. Their orders were simple. Bring Tesla back alive at all costs.
The MH-X hovered forty feet above the ground just fifty feet behind the blue farmhouse. Eight Seals fast-roped to the snowy ground below. The MH-X pulled up and flew into position above the farmhouse. The remaining four fast-roped down to their rooftop infiltration point.
Within twelve minutes of their arrival, Team Six killed five armed men, discovered one deceased female and captured an unarmed Swiss national by the name of Peter Grumman.
“Where is he?” Lieutenant Commander Chip Harrow shouted as he held a silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol to Peter’s temple.
“He?” replied Peter. “I’m afraid I’m the only ‘he’ left. Surely you mean ‘she?’” Peter calmly replied, his pulse barely elevated.
“The woman upstairs is dead,” Harrow barked. “You have ten seconds before you join her.”
“Women. There should be two women upstairs,” Peter replied with a bit more urgency. A smile slowly crept across Peter’s face. “She did it. She jumped.”
The Seals found Harper face down in the snow...she was ice cold to the touch and her right leg had rotated one hundred and eighty degrees so that her foot was now pointing skyward.
Navy Seal Lieutenant Michael Collins plucked her ID from her back pocket. “What the hell? US citizen. She’s from LA. Crisp. Harper Crisp.” He bent down to feel her pulse. “Barely.”
“Get her and Swiss Miss to the bird, stat,” Harrow directed, “and put her in a hypo-wrap.” He looked down at his watch. Running time on the mission was Twenty-two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Time to deliver the bad news to Washington.
•••
Tunguska, Russia - The Facility
Fletcher held the hijacked badge up to the door’s security panel, triggering its green glow of approval. As the door buzzed open, he entered the tubular ballistic glass-walled capsule, which offered an expansive view of the achromatic chamber before him.
He had never seen anything like it.
The brilliant bleached light pouring from the room assaulted his tired eyes, beating them into a submissive squint. He blinked in disbelief, as if the simple gesture would somehow either validate or invalidate the inconceivable sight before him. The surreal shifting wall contained what appeared to be hundreds of bodies, harnessed in haloed head braces. The kid’s right. They’re harvesting the energy of the soul.
Fletcher checked his watch. With less than an hour remaining before the depopulation of a major American city, he exited the capsule and stepped into the sepulchral chamber.
With the
ir attention fully dedicated to their handheld computers, not a single one of the six other men in the room looked up when the door opened. Scientists. Odd bunch. Able to spend their lives buried in microscopic particles, but blind to the life-size humans around them.
He spotted Dmitry immediately. The others buzzed around him like worker bees to the queen. Fletcher continued his approach, still formulating his nebulous plan with each step.
It was Dmitry who noticed Fletcher’s presence first. A fly in the ointment. The moment their eyes met, Fletcher knew the ruse was over. He ripped the Sig Sauer Sig P226 from his waistband and pointed it directly at Dmitry’s head.
“Drop ‘em,” Fletcher shouted. The five scientists surrounding Dmitry complied immediately, allowing their devices to fall to the floor.
“Now get on the ground, face down. All of you except for him,” Fletcher barked as he held aim on the center of Dmitry’s forehead.
Dmitry defiantly continued to type away on his device. “Drop it now or die, Dmitry.”
“And you would be?” Dmitry asked as he glanced up.
“The guy who’s going to end your little science experiment.” Fletcher motioned the gun toward the device Dmitry still held in his hands. “Now.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Dmitry remarked, pointing to the gun.
“And why’s that?” Fletcher asked, stepping over a scientist, as he approached Dmitry.
“Just one bullet will set off a chain of events which may alter the very course of mankind,” Dmitry calmly stated as he entered one last code into the device, before throwing it to the ground, where it shattered into a dozen pieces.
A red light on the upper corner of the wall of death began to blink rapidly and a large LED clock next to it began the countdown.
“Event initiated. 90, 89, 88… “ A computerized female voice spoke calmly from an overhead speaker.
The jarring reminder of his abbreviated operational timeline was the only excuse Fletcher needed. He had come too far and given up too much to fail. As he thought of Harper, the side of his pistol slammed against Dmitry’s pronounced cheekbone, sending a spray of blood across the floor.
Unfazed, Dmitry slowly turned his head back to meet Fletcher’s fiery gaze. Blood flowed freely from his gaping laceration. “Are you finished?” Dmitry’s eyes were empty. No fear, anger, pain, joy, regret. It was the look of a man who was unreachable and Fletcher knew it.
“Stop the countdown...now.” The edgy tone in Fletcher’s voice slowly transmuted to one tinged with anxiety.
“Mine seems to have broken,” Dmitry replied as he gestured toward the shattered device lying at his feet.
“77, 76...” the voice announced from the speaker, immune to the unfolding drama.
“Why are you doing this? Money? Power? What did they promise you?”
“As you might have guessed, they promised me the world,” Dmitry chuckled. “But that’s not the reason I do it. I do it simply because I can.”
“What would Sarah think of you now?” Fletcher challenged.
“Sarah is, now...nothing but a figment of my imagination,” Dmitry retorted, coldly. “That card has already been played and I lost.”
“61, 60, 59...”
Fletcher thought he caught a slight shift in Dmitry’s resolute stare. He had opened a window that had long been closed.
“I lost my wife too.” Fletcher’s voice cracked slightly as the words spilled from his mouth. “Buried her at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.”
“How poetic. Is this the moment where we share our histories and forge a friendship based on common ground?”
“No, I can see the only common ground we share is resting beneath our feet. This is the moment where we lose our footing. Stop the countdown or I will shoot us all into oblivion.”
Dmitry stood as still as the stars above.
“38, 37, 36...”
Fletcher looked down at the five scientists. “Is there an override?”
An older male scientist lifted his head off the ground as he addressed Fletcher, “Yes, but he’s the only one who can initiate it. He’s not lying about the gun.”
“Is that a safe room?” Fletcher asked as he gestured toward the tubular capsule.
“In theory, yes, but --“
The question would remain half-answered. All of the scientists’ heads fell to the ground at the same moment. The remote-triggered cyanide release killed them within seconds.
Dmitry grinned as he looked up from the bulky watch he wore on his wrist. “Did they really believe the RFID implants were for solely for identification purposes? Money-drunk fools.”
Fletcher threw a booming right hook, sending Dmitry plummeting to the ground.
“They’re no better than me,” Dmitry remarked, as he pushed himself back up to his knees.
“Perhaps not, but they’re entitled to a trial by peers, not by a psychotic boffin.”
“15, 14, 13...”
“And me?”
“You? Well, you would be the exception. I’m afraid I’m your judge and jury. Any closing arguments?” Fletcher asked as he slowly began walking backwards toward the safe room.
“They’ll get what they want, one way or another.”
“8, 7, 6...”
“But they won’t get you,” Fletcher responded as the flexor tendons in his trigger finger tightened.
•••
Tunguska, Russia - The Facility
The explosion of blue light impregnated the night sky, illuminating the remote wilderness for hundreds of miles, followed, moments later, by a deafening sonic aftershock which rattled Gordon’s bones to their very core. Concussed, he stumbled back, tripping over the assassin’s corpse that lay at the base of the snowmobile. He landed awkwardly, face to face with the man he had killed. The assassin’s skin had begun to take on a ghostly blue tint and his eyes were frozen open, staring right through Gordon. Horrified, he shoved the man’s body, which rolled stiffly to the side.
Fletcher.
Gordon scrambled to his feet, staggering toward the mountainside entrance with a primal determination. His vision was blurred and a high-pitched tone rang in his ears. The blue light lingered in the upper atmosphere, painting the evening skies with an eerie otherworldly glow. The countdown on the moon had ceased.
He entered the stone-walled alcove cut into the mountainside, which housed a handful of snowmobiles and ATVs, as well as a high-tech surveillance hub.
A security booth lined with a wall of LCD screens rotated through a series of live shots from both inside and outside the facility.
Gordon’s eyes darted rapidly back and forth between the shifting screens, looking for any sign of Fletcher. For that matter, any sign of life at all. The endless corridors on each level were empty, the locker rooms were empty, the dormitory was empty, the bizarre looking cavernous white room was empty...not a soul anywhere.
Gordon took off down the corridor, double-checking each of the four levels in the facility.
It was an empty gesture, but one he felt obliged to make.
They were all gone.
He approached the door at the end of the very last hallway and turned the doorknob. It was locked. He pulled the assassin’s ID card from his pocket and held it up to the door’s security panel. The buzzer startled him and he practically leapt into the tubular capsule. The thick glass walls were now sheathed in undulating tendrils of violet light. The effect reminded him of the treasured plasma globe that had entertained his younger self for hours at a time. He held his hand to the glass, half expecting the tendrils to converge upon it.
He pushed open the heavy steel door and entered the main chamber. It was unlike anything he had ever seen.
A sci-fi morgue. Death hung in the air like a sickly sweet perfume.
He did it. Dmitry really did it.
The realization spun his thoughts in a million different directions. Was it proof of an afterlife? If the soul existed as an energy beyond the life of its host, it certai
nly became a possibility.
A blood stain on the otherwise pristine white floor caught Gordon’s eye. He crouched down and ran his finger through it. Still wet. Next to the stain lay one final clue.
A sunflower seed. His heart sank.
A piercing red light flashed above his head, followed by an announcement over the intercom.
“Code red initiated. 30, 29, 28...,” a computerized female voice announced.
Gordon’s eyes scanned the room. He picked up one of the scientist’s handheld computer devices and randomly pushed a few buttons. The screen remained unlit. Nothing. He tried another. Same. He tucked the device in his waistband and ran from the room.
As he sprinted down the long corridor, the countdown continued. “25, 24, 23...”
The four flights of stairs passed by in a moment. Staggering from exhaustion, he stumbled back into the alcove.
“12, 11, 10...”
Gordon jumped on the snowmobile closest to the exit. The keys were in the ignition. It turned over. He throttled out of the cave, as the countdown continued in his head – five, four, three, two, one. A massive fireball, followed by yet another ear-shattering boom, blasted out from the opening, singeing his back as he sped away.
With the mountain behind him and the wide open tundra ahead, he felt the immensity of the universe and his small place in it.
•••
One Month Later - Pasadena, CA- Pasadena General Hospital
The last month had passed by like the countryside through a bullet train window. It was all a blur to him.
With Wilkinson at his side, Gordon had undergone a taxing series of debriefings and formal inquiries. It felt like every three-letter US government agency wanted a piece of him, yet none of them asked the right questions. They all seemed captivated by the minutiae of the moment and blind to the bigger picture. The what, where and when of it all was far too obvious for Gordon’s booming intellect; it was the who and the why that demanded his attention. And sure, it was easy to pinpoint Dmitry as the mastermind, but he certainly wasn’t the grand architect.
