Guardians of the Four Shields: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

  As they traveled deeper, the warren again grew more modern, like the corridor leading to the bright room moments earlier. Jules assessed they progressed under the lakebed. They passed through a chilly cavern that opened into what looked like a natural cavity but was being treated like a warehouse, with boxes, shelves, racks, and tall cupboards. It was smooth. No stalactites, no uneven ground.

  It was like an entire campus underground.

  “Good job that guard didn’t look too hard at us,” Dan said. Another irrelevant and obvious comment.

  “They’re all in a hurry,” Jules said. “This isn’t a military facility. It’s a minimally staffed corporate project. They don’t want anyone here who shouldn’t be. And if they’re putting on extra workers, it’s to prepare for something else.”

  Tane said, “Dignitaries? Once they have their shield up and running?”

  “Don’t know. And we’re not going to any supervisor. This way.”

  Jules led them to the right, the direction seeming to go back on themselves. He recalled the curve of the passageway near the corridor the woman had directed them away from, and added it to the angle into this warehouse-type section. Sure enough, it led to a closed door with an armed soldier outside. He spotted them when they were twenty yards away and shouted.

  “He says we can’t be here,” Tane reported, his head down. “We must leave.”

  Although he lacked the gift for language that Bridget had, Jules picked up a lot and worked things out faster than anyone he’d known. He’d already digested a few phrases since listening to Tane translate several times, but he was far from understanding Korean yet. However, he’d figured out what the soldier was trying to convey from the tone. And he’d already slipped his baton from up his sleeve where he’d stashed it.

  With a sharp jerk of his arm, Jules flung the baton straight and hard, striking the guard in the forehead. The man in uniform staggered, fumbled for his gun, but Jules was already on him. A blow to his gut, a jab to his windpipe, and a swiftly applied choke hold followed.

  He was down.

  Not dead. But down.

  The door wasn’t locked and led to a vestibule and a second door. This one was locked. It resembled something on a ship, with deadlocks and a seal, handles to turn rather than a knob to twist. Jules could see in through two small panes at the top, both as thick as his hand. Dan and Tane crowded behind him, taking it in turns to watch their backs.

  It was an odd setup. A machine similar to the one back in Project Ahua dominated the far wall but was somehow simpler in design. The shield taken from Alabama hung in place high above the panel, the orb to the side was currently dead and gray, and it was attached to a crude chamber, the same dimensions as Ahua’s. Jules only then realized the Ahua folks had made theirs more comfortable, while this was just stone with a reconstructed front door of what looked like opaque glass, yet Jules somehow believed it was something else, a natural crystal, perhaps. It was all connected. All ready to go.

  Awaiting the orders of the people entering from a wide-open doorway at the head of the room—it led from the modern corridor down which the female soldier had forbidden them from wandering.

  “It’s them,” Tane hissed, this being his turn to watch.

  “Who?” Dan asked from his position, slumped like an exhausted worker a few feet inside the storage depot.

  “Ah Dae-Sung, Ryom Jung-Hwan and—”

  “Sally Garcia,” Jules said, surprised at the venom he injected into the words. “They’re getting ready.”

  Accompanying them, three men in lab coats scurried to the panel beneath the orb. Movement higher up caught Jules’s eye, and he craned to see. There was a catwalk covering three quarters of the lab with a heavy machine gun mounted at one end, like something taken from a helicopter gunship. Someone checked the weapon over, as the techs were sorting the ground level controls.

  Jules concentrated on the panel, the few buttons, including a comically large red one. An abort switch. It wasn’t like the complex setup of modern computers tapping into the ancient. This was more stop-start.

  He angled his view to find more items embedded in the roof. Two more shields but different shapes to the Alabama one, and he guessed there was another out of his sight. To his left he could see a fence, a sturdy chain-link model, with only darkness beyond this.

  “What are they doing?” Dan asked.

  Jules focused on the main trio who observed the technicians from a distance. Those in lab coats must have studied this on Ryom’s behalf, prepared all the cables, melding old and new, and applied their knowledge to Ah Dae-Sung’s ability in the field.

  First Sally Garcia. Then Gilim.

  “It’s the epicenter of their experiments,” Jules said. “The shields are in place, the orb looks ready, and the activation chamber—all connected. All ready to go. Just needs a—”

  A flash filled the small window, dying as fast as it bloomed, its only remnants the dots and swirls dancing in Jules’s vision.

  “Someone taking photos in there?” Dan said, coming forward to swap with Tane.

  Jules blinked until he could see more than he couldn’t and resumed his vantage. The lights were on now, the orb a spinning mass—somehow multicolored yet black at the same time, like an oil slick suppressing a rainbow in strong sunlight. Ah Dae-Sung, Ryom Jung-Hwan and Sally Garcia lowered darkened goggles, having plainly expected the burst of light. Then they all chatted briefly before the Executive shook Dae-Sung’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Sally received a firm nod.

  Jules said, “Whatever they’re doin’, it’s gonna be soon.”

  “She’s leaving,” Dan said from the window.

  Tane asked, “Who?”

  “There was only one ‘she’ in there,” Jules said. “The mad prof.” He beckoned Dan over. “Okay, I’ve got our bearings. We know they can’t do anything without the big guy, and since Sally ain’t stickin’ around, she must be going somewhere important, right?”

  Dan said, “Probably, yeah.”

  “We stop that, we might stop the whole thing.”

  Tane thought for a moment. “Take away the component they need rather than take down all of it.”

  Jules said, “They could still do a lot of damage if they don’t have Gilim. But will they risk it?”

  “No way to tell. But let’s try this first, then circle back if necessary.”

  Jules glanced at Dan, who nodded. Jules nodded, too. “Stay together, or split up?”

  “Harpal, you read?” Tane tried. No answer. “Okay, let’s follow her. We learn what we need to learn, then act on it. But one rule: if one of us gets caught, the others carry on. No negotiating, no hostages.”

  Jules kept his lips tight together.

  Dan gave another nod, this one hesitant. “This is too important to worry about one person. Or two.”

  “Okay.” Jules suppressed the hot acid in his gut, seeing the logic, knowing both were correct. “We carry on until it’s over. No matter what.”

  Now they were all inside, Harpal was no use to them perched up on the hillside next to the dam. He was still curious about what the people were doing on the face that would require scaffolding. It couldn’t simply be to facilitate repairs, nor the makeup of the construction. It descended from above, as if hooked on over the top and dropped low over the sweeping, almost sheer wall. They were equidistant from one another, too, another indicator this wasn’t for maintenance.

  Of course, it might’ve been for something that needed tending to periodically, like cleaning air vents. It was just that Harpal had seen nothing quite like it before.

  Could be a defensive measure we didn’t pick up on.

  He needed to see, but two men who looked bored as hell guarded the closest access. They hadn’t spotted him land on their blindside, nor as he scrambled for a better view of the landscape. He figured they’d grown complacent after months or even years of not much happening and couldn’t have been alerted to any problems below.

 
; With no artificial light except the yellow phosphorus bulbs around the dam itself, Harpal moved slickly over the arid escarpment, natural troughs and rocks giving him sufficient cover to reach the gate unseen.

  Closer, he made out a path winding from the guard station down the side of the structure, widening to a single-track road—presumably to get supplies and equipment up there when needed. The path over the top of the dam was wide enough for two buses side-by-side, although the fence was more for show.

  Harpal drew closer, recalling the drills Dan had forced him to endure over the years, training he’d accepted might be useful one day. But Special Forces tactics were imprinted on Dan, whereas Harpal was more about stealth and deception. In an urban setting he might have been able to pose as a lost tourist, but here it wasn’t an option.

  Patience was key in such approaches. Harpal had crawled as far as he dared.

  From the kit brought with them he took a snub-nosed Walther and fitted the suppressor. It wouldn’t altogether silence the gunshots, but if he was fast enough, they wouldn’t echo around the valley like firecrackers at New Year. He checked the slide, chambered a round, set himself, and scanned the target area once more.

  Two men. Non-military uniform. AKMs, holstered pistols, radios clipped to their shoulders.

  Okay. Just go for it.

  Harpal glided out and speed-walked directly toward the pair. Two-handed grip. Aiming at one of them. His feet landed side-first, rolling his boot sole all the way to the toe before lifting the foot again—a technique closer to silent than tiptoes. But not completely silent.

  One guard looked directly at him.

  Harpal squeezed the trigger, snapping the man’s head back and dropping him in place. The other watched his comrade fall, so shocked he probably didn’t quite believe it was real. By the time he brought a second hand to his AK, Harpal had shot him too. He checked the pair were dead, then scaled the two-meter fence, landing scruffily on the other side.

  The dam curved away from him, the walls on either side coming up to his chest, so he kept himself low. If anyone was monitoring cameras up here, it seemed unlikely he’d go unnoticed, but the lights were dim and there were no eyewitnesses, so he had a chance. Hopefully, he’d be gone before anyone came to investigate.

  Scurrying fast, gun at the ready, he arrived at the first of six scaffolds. It reminded him of booths he’d seen at concerts where lighting and sound mixers were stationed. At least the top of the section was. Harpal climbed up, checked for movement and sound, found none, and continued to the edge.

  The latticework of thick steel poles and wooden platforms swayed an inch or two, but with nothing but five hundred feet of thin air between himself and the gulag below, a couple of inches of give was like riding a roller coaster. He withdrew from the edge and lay flat on his belly, pointing his gun into a hole through which the top of a bamboo ladder protruded.

  The next level down was empty.

  Again, he listened before venturing on, taking the ladder, and arriving one floor below. A cold breeze picked up, rattling the planks as if it had waited for him to get here.

  All he could see was open air on one side and a smooth, sheer wall the other. Now he wondered if they designed this structure to support the weight of a human adult. He’d kept his backup ‘chute, but if the poles and planks disassembled without warning, he’d have no chance to leap free. And yet, he descended the ladder—lashed together with something resembling grass but was a strong material akin to twine—to another level.

  On this next floor, the wobble was more pronounced, his mass destabilizing it further. Looking on the bright side, he had only one more level before he ran out of room.

  The ladder jiggled, the bottom of the scaffolding hanging together by swaying joints. Wooden floors, steel structure, bamboo ladders. What a combination.

  As he touched down onto the final network of planks, his own knees trembled.

  “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

  The wind whistled as if in reply, a haunted house eeriness leaving him very lonely indeed. If an angry, restless spirit popped up beside him and ordered him BEGONE, he would obey and not look back. When no ghost showed itself, Harpal returned to the matter at hand, searching for what function these uniformly spaced drop-off points could serve. It didn’t take him long. And what he discovered made him wish for a haunted house.

  “Bridget, Charlie, you there?”

  Charlie answered, “Thought you were on radio silence.”

  “Emergencies only. This counts.”

  “What’s up?” Bridget asked. “Is everyone okay?”

  “At the moment, yeah. But this whole dam is wired.” Harpal kept his hands behind his back as he peered at a five-foot-square block set into the brickwork, with wires entering and leaving a sealed metal box, leading along the dam’s face to the next hooked-on scaffold. “It’s daisy-chained too. Like your comms nodes. If one blows, they all blow.”

  “What does that mean?” Charlie asked. “They’ve sabotaged the place?”

  “I don’t know what the trigger is. But if it gets pulled, the gulag disappears along with everyone in there. And it wipes out everything in its path for miles.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  They still don’t trust me.

  Sally Garcia kept a shadow in the form of a stocky Korean man in a too-tight khaki-green uniform who carried a gun on his hip and seemed incapable of smiling. He spoke no English except for the occasionally monosyllabic word like, No, Go, You, Here, and Please. By far, his most common utterance was Please, which may have been an attempt to mollify her but just came across as passive-aggressive, each Please being accompanied by a curt gesture, making it more of an instruction than a polite request.

  Point at the door: Please.

  Gesture to halt: Please.

  Smile, checks her pockets for the tenth time: Please.

  Besides, no amount of manners alleviated the threat of the firearm.

  Was it a mistake? Going all in with the people most closely aligned to her goal instead of those most closely aligned to her ethics? They’d forced her into it, after all.

  No. The people she’d trusted back in California were as bad, just in a different way. They had seemed okay, but had used her for their own ends, prepared to discard and silence her at the first opportunity. Her work would be forgotten or—as the breach of her private files attested—she’d be buried under the same debris as the plethora of tin-foil-hat-wearing nut jobs out there.

  Except she wasn’t crazy. The past few days proved it. And over the coming hours, she’d show why all those people—her peers, her so-called friends, thousands of faceless keyboard warriors on the internet—should have believed in her.

  Having switched the machine on, all they needed was the final component, hence her departure from what they’d called the Conduit Chamber. She’d picked up her shadow on the way and navigated the passageways outside before crossing the short path to the science annex. Although it was built in the same style as the ancient structure in which the orb was housed, it was as up to date as a person could imagine, like stepping through a time portal from the past to the future. White walls, disinfectant pods, a double-thick sealed door to be opened by authorized personnel only—one of the few security measures they’d allowed her to access.

  The guard stood to the side and gestured to the palm-reader. “Please.”

  Sally placed her hand on the flat glass and waited. The scanner beeped happily, a green light flashed on above her, and a hiss signaled the first door sliding open, louder than she remembered from last time. More of a pop.

  Her minder then leaned against the side, his arm barring her way.

  She put her hands on her hip and said, “Oh, heavens, what’s the problem?”

  The stocky soldier’s lean turned into a slump with his eyes half-closed. Blood dribbled from his mouth as he slid down the wall, his uniform stained red.

  A scream jettisoned up her throat, but a gloved hand over her mouth sile
nced it. Her assailant pinned her arms to her sides and turned her to face the opposite direction.

  Two prisoners approached, one with a smoking gun that had a large addition to the barrel. The louder than usual hiss—the pop—from the door had been the suppressed sound of a bullet, which struck her minder in the chest, killing him outright. But where did these poor, unfortunate people get a gun? And what did they hope to achieve if—

  “It’s okay, Professor,” said the person holding her from behind. “Just show us inside.”

  She nodded, recognizing the voice. When the hand left her face, she said, “Tane? Is that you? What are you doing here?”

  “Inside,” said one of the others, his hood still up, clearly Jules Sibeko.

  Sally led them into the anteroom, Dan Vincent dragging the guard’s corpse with him. Like the entrance to the facility in New Zealand, the sliding door closed behind them, then nozzles sprayed them with disinfectant, misting the entire unit. She was trying to work out if they were now working with the Executive or if this was some sort of raid. She guessed the latter but wasn’t worried.

  Shielding her eyes and mouth from the spray, she said, “It’s too far along.”

  “What’s on the other side of here?” Dan asked.

  “The laboratory.”

  “He means security,” Tane said.

  “Oh, I can’t say. They’d be very upset with me.”

  Dan poked her with the gun he’d used to kill the guard. “Quickly, before this opens. Or you get to head out first.”

  Sally couldn’t understand his harsh tone. It wasn’t like she’d done anything to him personally. Perhaps he was a sore loser.

  The spray ended, having coated them with a fine film. Dryers kicked in.

  She said, “Okay. Last time, there were two guys.”

  “Cameras?” Tane enquired.

  “Only the ones on the outer door.”