Nix puts on his good demeanor and a smile, "Winning or losing?"
"Hey, Director. I'm getting better, but solitaire isn't my game. I do much better when I play myself at poker, because then at least one of my hands wins," chuckles the guard.
Mr. Nix joins in on the laugh, "True that. Playing with cards instead of on the computer, I see."
"Grew up playing computer card games. Being stationed in DC around the historic buildings and monuments, it brought out a retro side in me. Besides, when I shuffle the cards an algorithm is not doing a virtual shuffle, old Lady Luck and random chance are mixing it up. Something more palpable and exciting with the game when the cards are physical, not digital."
"I completely understand where you are coming from. Computer games offer levels of difficulty that makes me feel the computer is manipulating or cheating within those zeros and ones. Real-life games don't have levels of difficulty. They rely on the skill of the player to win or lose, not finagling from artificial intelligence." Mr. Nix glances at the monitors, "Not much going on I gather."
"We don't have any prisoners inside there, Director, only this new woman who just came in, I think with you."
"Yeah, she's with me. Behaving, I hope."
"Like a well-fed hound dog. Told her to wave at the camera if she is in need, but she hasn't asked for a thing. I'm just babysitting your friend until the Council gives the green light."
"I'm going in to talk with her."
"Sure thing. I'll open her cell when I see you at her door. Regulations require that I close the cell door after you enter to talk with her. You understand."
"I do. I wrote them," smiles Mr. Nix.
Out of the small side room, Mr. Nix places his hand on the reinforced security door and waits until the guard buzzes it open. After Mr. Nix passes through, the security door latches behind him. He then walks between the cells until he reaches the one with Agent Strong inside and stands in front the closed cell door. As Mr. Nix looks up at the security camera, the cell door automatically slides open.
At the sound of the sliding cell door, Agent Strong turns her head and sits up on the edge of the bed. After stepping into her cell, the cell door automatically slides closed. Mr. Nix steps over to Agent Strong; she stands to greet him.
"Are you having fun?" asks Mr. Nix.
"I got cleaned up, fresh clothes, a hot meal, and took a nap, so I can't complain," says Agent Strong.
"Did they explain to you why you are in here?"
"They said it was until I pass whatever clearance I need to go through. Said I could be in here a couple days. Granted, I am weary of being the person inside the cell instead of putting someone in one, but everyone has treated me well, and I figured you wouldn't have brought me here if I had anything to worry about. I trust this is temporary, and I'll be out of here real soon doing what you brought me to do: help save the world."
Agent Strong smiles and smirks to herself at the thought. Mr. Nix gives a dry smile, unable to join in her joviality. He feels he has betrayed her, and she doesn't know it yet.
Mr. Nix speaks soft and barely moves his mouth, as if he doesn't want his lips read, "I need you to listen and do exactly as I instruct. There is one lone security guard in the observation room monitoring us. These cells are wired for sound, but the audio is muted. Because you are not considered a threat, and I'm in here with you, the guard won't even pay attention unless you yell or jump around. So, I need you to be still and calm while we talk."
"Why? What's going on?" whispers Agent Strong, but with much concern.
"Just listen. We are in a bit of a conundrum here. I met with the Council, and there were Greys in the room."
"What!" says Strong in an excited whisper voice.
"Stay calm and listen. Your life depends on it. The Greys infiltrated the Committee. That is why we saw a Grey craft patrolling the tunnel on the way in. I cannot say if the Greys have brainwashed the Council, or if the Council has come to their decision, but they are working with the Greys to preserve, or guarantee, that a small faction of humans will survive. I don't agree with them, and I don't want to join their efforts."
"What do you mean 'a small faction'? Do you mean save themselves and let everyone else perish? Like my family?"
"I want to stop them, but I had to pretend I was joining the cause, that I was onboard. Despite my position, if I refused and showed defiance in a room with Greys, they would not hesitate to kill me. I did what I had to, to keep both of us alive. I have a plan, but you must pretend with me that we are onboard with this, and let no one, I repeat, no one know otherwise. Don't even bring it up to me unless I mention it to you. Do you understand?"
"So, the Committee serves these aliens?"
"Remember, I told you they are ancient indigenous Earth species. And no, they only control the Council and those people stationed here at the headquarters. The other Committee facilities and offsite agents, scientists and soldiers are still operating as a resistance. The Council has not contacted any Committee resources outside headquarters yet. That is what they want me to do. Go out in the field and convert the rest of the Committee personnel to supporting the Council's decision to side with the Greys. That is why I want to stop them here, before their control spreads."
"What is your plan?"
"I will have to wait for the right moment, but if I kill a Grey here inside the Committee headquarters, it should cause the Greys to no longer trust the Committee, and end this collaboration."
"That's your plan?" asks Agent Strong a little too loud.
Mr. Nix makes and expression of silence, "Yes. I haven't worked out the details..."
"I don't mean to be skeptical...no, actually I do. That's a terrible plan. You want to kill one of these things, before they kill you, in a fortress full of people you say are on the Grey's side. What I hear you telling me is your people here will kill you before or after you kill the Grey, and as an outcome, you are hoping the Greys have a one-eighty change of heart and turn against your Council who has already agreed to do their will. What if the Greys don't? Or if your Council convinces these Greys you acted alone? Maybe killing you and handing your corpse over to them will prove that? Maybe you die before you kill a Grey, or fail in your attempt."
"That is true with any mission. Success is never guaranteed. We could have failed trying to get here. Does not mean I should not try."
"But getting here, you and I worked together. And I believed in my mission to help humanity, inspiring me to push onward. You are asking me to pretend to support something that doom's my family and is against everything you told me I will be fighting against, for the long shot that you can kill one of these things on hopes of a miracle outcome that causes the alliance between your headquarters and these creatures to crumble. I believe you can pull off killing one of these things, but I don't agree killing one will cause this weird Human-Alien partnership to stop. Assassinations galvanize people and purpose, not cause them to fall apart. That has always been the mistaken assumed outcome to assassinations."
"You don't understand the situation like I do."
"No, but it seems you don't understand the situation fully either. You can't say your plan will definitely work, and you had no idea this Grey alliance existed when you brought me here, or I hope not. I'd like to believe you didn't ask me to join and become an agent knowing your people were siding with the Greys."
"No, I didn't."
"And I'm not a spy. I am a law enforcement officer. I can't pretend to support something that threatens to destroy everything and everyone I swore to protect. Posing to go along with the people who decided the lives of my family are insignificant. I couldn't hold face knowing I want to shoot them in theirs."
"Coming here and fighting against the Greys wasn't a guarantee you could save your family."
"I accept that. But I would have been trying to save them, fighting to stop it. If my family dies while I pretend to support your Council and these Greys, I am sacrificing my family to protect myself. I
can't be that selfish; that is not why I came here. Not why I followed you. I'm sorry Mr. Nix, I can't do that. I am probably signing my death warrant, but I can't do it."
"But you have to," pleads Mr. Nix.
"No, I don't. I'm telling you, this sounds cheesy and childish to say, but I'm heartbroken. I believed in you and your cause. You are asking me to betray that for a long shot scheme that I don't think will work. I became a cop because I believe in good people, and that you can stop bad people and make things better. I don't believe you can kill a drug kingpin and suddenly have his minions turn into law-abiding citizens. Those types of people will always work for their own self-interests and don't care what is right or wrong. They will side with whichever benefits themselves the most. The people in this underground place have decided to help these Greys to save their own lives. If you succeed in turning the Greys against them, any change of heart to side with you will only be to save themselves and not because they see the error of their ways. Mr. Nix, I can't be a part of it. Might as well lock me in this cell never to leave because I will not support what you are asking of me. I hope when you are pretending to be on their side, planning the moment of this grand assassination, that it was worth sacrificing me, and those others who will die because you stopped fighting for them."
They stare at each other.
Agent Strong bows her head and continues, "I don't know much about you, Nix, about your life before, but you act like a man that at one time was a husband, maybe even a father, but you gave it up to be a part of an organization that was going to make the world a better place for them. Worth sacrificing your life. You gave something up, I can feel it. This, this here, isn't what you gave it up for, is it? Does it matter if your plan is to turn the Greys against the Council works if pretending to help them costs innocent life? Think of what you gave up. What I gave up. Think of everything we left behind. We aren't doing this for us, we are doing it for what we gave up. I can't do this plan you propose. My heart is telling me you can't either."
Mr. Nix drops his guard, shame rolling over his face, "When I met you, Agent Strong, I knew I needed you. That I could depend on you. I just didn't realize how much. Pray with me."
"What?"
"Pray with me."
He grabs her hands and moves her toward the front of the cell by the bars, then kneels in front of her, parallel to the bars. Reluctantly, she kneels facing him. He closes his eye and bows his head, and so does she.
Mr. Nix then begins to whisper, "You are right. And I am sorry for even considering otherwise. I think I can get us out of here, but I need you to do exactly what I say the moment I say it without hesitation. As soon as anyone realizes we are leaving headquarters without authorization, security will be dispatched to stop us with lethal force. I designed this entire bunker decades ago, and when I did, I installed secret failsafe options to ensure that if there ever was a coup or takeover, I couldn't be imprisoned in my own cells. I never told anyone, even the Council, to make sure those safety measures were not removed. These new renovations to headquarters didn't change the architecture, so they should be in place."
"Can we get out of here?" she whispers.
"It will get us out of confinement, not this bunker."
"Do you have any weapons?"
"No. We might get one on the way, but we won't make it if we fight our way out. We're outmanned and outgunned."
"So how do we do it?"
"Run for our lives. First, we hope the guard is more interested in solitaire than watching us. Keep looking like we are praying. When I say 'go', drop to your belly and crawl."
Mr. Nix reaches to his side without looking, and places his hand on the first bar in a section of six vertical bars that connect between the floor and the first supporting cross-plate. Grabbing the eighteen-inch bar, Mr. Nix squeezes and turns the bar hard a half turn to the right. He then grabs the next short cell bar and turns the bar a half turn to the left. Reaching for the third short bar in line, Mr. Nix rotates that bar a full turn to the left. Holding the fourth short bar, his wrist twists that bar a quarter turn to the right. Grabbing the fifth, he gives that short bar a full turn to the right. As soon as he completes the motion, the five bars he manipulated drop into the floor, flush with the surface, leaving a gap between the floor and cross-plate to crawl out.
"Go," orders Mr. Nix.
Mr. Nix drops to his belly and crawls out the cell through the opening, with Agent Strong doing the same. Once out of the cell, Mr. Nix grabs the sixth short bar and gives it a full rotation, causing the five receded bars to pop out of the floor back to their original position. On their feet, they quietly hurry to the reinforced steel security door locking off the confinement section.
Mr. Nix whispers, "As soon as this door opens, we need to incapacitate the guard in the room to the left."
Lying on his belly, Mr. Nix snaps off a vent cover along the floor, and reaches his arm deep inside. Groping around, he touches a switch on the side wall of the duct. He flicks it and the security door unseals.
As Nix pulls out his arm and closes the vent cover, Agent Strong rushes through the door into the side room. The guard looks up from his solitaire game to see Agent Strong diving at him, knocking him off the chair, causing cards to fly. While Agent Strong wrestles with the guard reaching for his hip-holstered gun, Mr. Nix comes into the room and kicks the guard in the head, fazing him.
"Grab his gun and back off," orders Mr. Nix.
As the guard shakes off the head strike, Agent Strong grabs the guard's gun and steps back. Mr. Nix takes an electric stun prod from the wall, activates it, and pokes the guard, causing him to shock convulse before going unconscious. Mr. Nix sets the stun prod aside and pulls a pair of handcuffs from a drawer, clasping them on the guard's wrists.
"Help me," requests Nix as he grabs the guard's shoulder.
The two drag the guard into the confinement section on the other side of the steel security door, then seal it shut.
With Mr. Nix leading, they sneak through hallways, looking around corners from concealed positions, making sure the passage is empty before continuing. At the next turn, the two hide and wait for base personnel to walk the corridor away from them. Once gone, Mr. Nix and Agent Strong go halfway up the corridor until they reach a windowed door with a pad scanner on the wall. Through the door window is a dead-end hallway containing a bank of elevators. All with their doors open to this floor.
Nix places his hand on the scanner, and the door unlocks. They pass through the doors and move to the elevator bank. As they reach the first elevator, alarms sound.
"They must have found the guard. We need to hurry," says Mr. Nix excitedly.
Once both step onto the elevator, Mr. Nix activates the elevator controls. The door close, and the elevator jerks upward. As the elevator ascends, Mr. Nix turns to Strong, grabs her around the waist and lifts her.
"What are you doing?" asks Agent Strong, surprised by his action.
"Look up. Open the panel on the ceiling."
She sees a square panel on the roof of the elevator with a small turn latch. She twists it, and the panel pops open downward into the elevator.
"Now climb. Hurry."
As Agent Strong grabs the edges and pulls up, Mr. Nix pushes her legs until she is on the roof of the elevator. The walls of the elevator shaft whip by as the elevator races upward at high speed.
"Help me up," ask Nix as he jumps and grabs the edge of the opening. He struggles to pull himself upward, his wounded shoulder weakened by the injury. Agent Strong reaches down and pulls on his arms, trying to help. Blood stains seep to the surface of his bandages and through his shirt as Mr. Nix winces from pain while struggling to climb.
Finally getting himself onto the elevator top, Mr. Nix reaches down, pulls the panel closed and latches the panel shut.
"Lay as flat as you can. Now!" yells Mr. Nix.
They both lay flat against the roof of the elevator as it nears the end of the ascent. At the top, the elevator brakes to
a stop with steel girder beams supporting the shaft ceiling only inched from their heads.
The moment the elevator doors open, three trigger-ready guards with assault rifles storm onto the elevator, finding nothing. After a quick looking around, the head guard locks the elevator controls on this floor. He then speaks into his communicator.
"There is no one on this elevator. I've locked the other two elevators so they can't take them up. We're now headed to the west wing elevator bank, to make sure they didn't use that one, sending this up as a diversion. Double back on searches down there to make sure these elevators aren't a distraction while they head for the subterranean tunnel exits...Understood...On our way."
The guards rush off the elevator and their footsteps fade. After a moment, Mr. Nix pops open the ceiling panel and drops into the elevator. As he lowers himself, he winces. The blood on his shirt becomes saturated, his wound stitches opening. As he grabs his shoulder, blood seeping through drips onto the floor. Agent Strong climbs down and grabs Mr. Nix.
"Are you ok?"
"No, my stitches opened."
"Should I close the panel?"
"I'm dripping blood on the floor. They will know we were here when they come back after checking the west wing elevators. We got to get out of here now."
Holding his shoulder, Mr. Nix hurries off the elevator and along a pipe lined side tunnel. Strong follows, pulling out the pistol she took from the guard and keeping it ready, glancing behind to make sure they are alone. After a couple turns, they come into the small utility room lined with water and drain pipes, a first aid cabinet, and the small access door to the narrow tunnel they took from the restaurant to this building.
"Should I grab first aid?" asks Agent Strong.
"No time. We must go now!"
Nix opens the narrow access door leading into the tunnel and rushes into the darkness. Agent Strong follows behind and closes the door.
Nexus of Time Page 46
