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by Gareth Worthington

  “No, Ma’am,” came the patient reply in a sweet southern accent.

  Lucy checked her watch. Of course, she’d asked the same question fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Any sign of a timer at all?”

  The woman shook her head but didn’t look up from her monitor. “No, Ma’am. Not so far. But this hack is... complicated. I’ve not seen anything like it before. None of us have.”

  A flurry of activity on the far side of the room drew Lucy’s attention. She near ran in her stilettos across the uncarpeted floor, the heels rapidly clacking. “What is it?” she asked the agent, furiously tapping away at his keyboard.

  “I... I mean... we’ve been locked out,” he stammered.

  “Locked out, locked out of what?” Lucy demanded.

  “Project Swiss Mountain. The biomes, the bunkers ...” he stopped typing, hands hovering in mid-air as if one more keystroke might end them all. “They’ve locked down. And we’ve lost control.”

  “What?” Lucy barked again.

  Waltham stormed into the command center. “What’s going on?”

  Lucy spun, her eyes wide. “We’ve just lost Swiss Mountain. What the hell, Jim?”

  He shook his head, leaning over his agent, staring at the screen. He tapped a few more keys which cleared the giant wall monitor of all information save a map of the world punctuated with bright lights where the other biomes and bunkers were located. Next to each was a no entry icon. “We only achieved two percent capacity before we lost control,” he said.

  Lucy’s mind reeled as her stare darted from Paris, to Shanghai to Perth. Two percent. That was no coincidence. Two percent of the total population to be ushered into these safe-houses was to be made up of the intellectual elite. They were given this privilege on the understanding it was their responsibility to rebuild if the worst happened. They were also the first on the list to be moved. The Nine Veils had effectively just taken them all hostage.

  “What the hell is going on, Jim?” Lucy said, her voice wavering as she fought back tears.

  “I don’t know Madam President. But, I’ll find out. We’ll crack this and find those bastards.”

  His words were not comforting. She just watched the USA’s best cyber team lose even more control. They needed a miracle. They needed an orb to find the Nine Veils. Lucy wiped her face and pushed a lock of unruly blondish hair behind her ear in defiance. “Get me an outside line to Jonathan Teller. I need to speak with Teller.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Location: Ten nautical miles north of Skagen, Denmark.

  Teller sat in the diving chamber aboard the Vina, a massive research vessel owned by the Danish Thyborøn War Museum. It felt like a lifetime since Teller had been near the ocean and submarine—a time before the NSA, a time before Freya.

  Ten miles north of Skagen, the sea was choppy even for the seventy-meter monstrosity on which he and his crew were traveling. Here, the Skagerrak and Kattegat seas clashed as if nature itself was battling for which body of water would emerge victorious. This marine skirmish was the reason the German U-boat for which Teller was about to dive had been missing for so long—the current had dragged the submarine’s carcass far away from where it was believed to have sunk.

  He surveyed his new crew: another team whom he did not know, assembled from a few Navy Seals—who happened to be stationed at Thule Deepwater Port in Greenland—and some of the museum’s scientists to ensure the wreck was treated with some respect. His gaze roved to the most important members of this rag tag team: the Stratum. It took a little convincing of the Alpha Base leadership, but four Huahuqui and their symbiotes had been dispatched to Skagen. Three female Huahuqui and one male, whose names he could neither remember, let alone pronounce. Their human counterparts were four women in their late teens.

  Teller eyed the young women. Despite abilities such as accelerated healing and a stronger bond with animals, they would not be allowed to dive—none had the training or experience. Not like KJ or Nikolaj. Teller had taught them to dive at a young age, even in the frigid Antarctic waters. Nikolaj was competent, but cautious. A conscientious diver who refused to push boundaries and always followed protocol. KJ had taken to diving as if he had been a dolphin in another life. Much like his father, the boy was comfortable in the ocean, and the water and its inhabitants seemed comfortable with him—schools of fish and pods of cetaceans following KJ and K’awin wherever they went. If Teller was honest, the boy was probably one of the best divers he’d ever worked with. Of course, Teller would never tell him that. KJ was well aware of his talent; over enthusiastic and wholly arrogant. A dangerous mix when diving. Teller sighed. On a mission like this, in the turbulent waters, he would really have no one else than KJ at his side. Now, instead, he would have to rely on these Huahuqui. They would be the most skilled underwater, and most likely to find an orb should it be down there.

  “Teller?” one of the Navy Seals, a broad, clean shaven man, said.

  “Uh, Phelps, right?”

  “Yeah. You have a satellite call. The president.”

  Jonathan swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, and took the phone. “Madam President?”

  “Jonathan, where are we on the orb?”

  “I am just about to dive now. There is no guarantee, but if it’s down there I’ll find it.”

  There was a lasting silence on the phone.

  “I understand,” she said finally.

  “Is there something else?” Jonathan pressed, impatient to begin his mission.

  “Project Swiss Mountain,” she began. “We... lost control.”

  The words were dense, pushing their way slowly into his brain. He blinked slowly, unable to focus on anything. Did she just say they’d lost control of Swiss Mountain? What did that even mean?

  “Jonathan?”

  Teller gripped the dive knife in his free hand, squeezing the handle as hard as he could. “Sorry, yes. Lost control? Lost control how?”

  “They’ve been locked down. No one in or out.”

  “Are there people inside?”

  The president seemed to hold her breath for a moment. “Yes. The protocol was to move those at the top of the list first. Scientists, artists, musicians, mathematicians... It’s a few thousand people, globally.”

  “Shit.” The word just slipped out. “Sorry. I just don’t understand why... unless... unless they were planning to blow the stations and save a few of us?” He shook his head, disagreeing with his own theory. “But irradiating the whole planet would render it uninhabitable for decades. Would the bunkers even last that long?”

  “I don’t know the answer. But the importance of finding the orb is greater than ever. If we can link to them, maybe we can find out.”

  “I know, I know. If it exists, I’ll find it.” He began to lift the phone from his ear. “Thank you, Mad—”

  “One more thing, Jonathan.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your sons. They never landed in Shanghai. Somehow they rigged the computer’s AI and parachuted out long before it landed.”

  Jonathan’s chest inflated with anger, disappointment, even guilt, swirling and colliding inside him until none made sense. In the middle of all of this, KJ and Nikolaj were galivanting off to who knew where, doing who knew what. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, breathing through his nose. Think Jonathan. Think. Trust them. KJ was rash, but not stupid. Nikolaj was contentious. They must have had a reason. “I’ll go find them,” he said. “When I’m done here.”

  “You need to concentrate on the orb.”

  “And I will. I’ll take it to the scientists at Alpha Base. Freya is there, she can act as a liaison for you. I won’t be any help if—when I find it. I’m better off finding the boys and preventing an international incident with China.”

  The president audibly murmured but then conceded.

  “Thank you, Madam President.”

  “Good luck, Jonathan.”

  The call clicked off and Teller handed the phone back to
the seal.

  “Fuck sake,” Teller said through gnashed teeth and sheathed his dive knife.

  “Problem,” Doctor Skarsgaard, Head of the Museum, said as he adjusted the hoses on his dry suit.

  “Kids,” Teller replied without looking up. “I’ll deal with it later.”

  “Ah, I know the problem,” the skinny wire-haired man replied. “Mine are all grown up, but always come back to the nest.”

  “I kinda have the opposite problem.”

  Skarsgaard nodded. “Often, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’m sure you were just the same when you were young.”

  Jonathan didn’t reply. KJ was not his son, and Freya had refused to have more children for fear of them suffering her disease.

  “Come,” Skarsgaard said, clearly recognizing Jonathan’s pained expression. “We should go while the weather is good, this wreck is quite the find. We’d always wanted to raise it, but never found the funding. It will be a pleasure to investigate.”

  Jonathan nodded in agreement. “So, what are we looking at here? What’s the situation down there?”

  Skarsgaard led Jonathan into the briefing room, followed by the Navy Seals and the four pairs of Stratum. A monitor on the wall showed a three-dimensional multi-beam generated image of the submarine, or at least part of it.

  “The bow of the 250-foot-long submarine,” Skarsgaard began, “is stabbed into the seafloor some 400 feet below the surface, slanting upward with the boat's stern floating 65 feet above the bottom of the sea. We will be able to search the stern, but it is very unlikely that it will be possible to enter anywhere else.”

  Teller nodded then looked to the four young women. “Did our aquatic friends understand?”

  The women murmured their acknowledgment. The Huahuqui were good to go.

  Even in a dry suit, the water was freezing—the cold penetrating through his thick Alpaca socks and two layers of shirt and pants. Teller had forgotten how much he hated dry-suit diving. Everything felt sluggish, clumsy, primarily due to the fact he had to control buoyancy by adding or releasing air into the suit. Nevertheless, without these cumbersome suits he and his rag tag crew would die of hypothermia damn quickly.

  The sea was dark and uninviting, light attenuating quickly until they had to rely on their lights and comms. Teller had buddied up with Phelps, while the other Navy Seals had taken the scientists. The Huahuqui had been fitted with flashing strobes attached to harnesses, making it easier to track them, though they swam so quickly it was difficult to keep up.

  Releasing air from his suit, and pointing his weighted feet downward, Teller allowed himself to sink slowly toward the position of the submarine. Even more than dry suit diving, Teller hated night dives. The pitch-black water and absence of sound was claustrophobic. Only frequent checks to his right, keeping Phelps in view, helped calm the panicked feeling growing in his chest. He peered down to ensure the faint strobing from the Huahuqui could still be seen.

  Here in the inky darkness, cut off from almost every sense, thoughts and emotions repressed over the longest time seemed to take the quiet opportunity to emerge and invade Teller’s mind. The frustration of not being able to move, see, hear, or feel as he would want was now a stark reminder of how Freya, the love of his life, felt every day. This level of frustration filled her emotional cup to the brim so that she was quick to snap or attack at the slightest provocation. It was easy to become irritated with her demeanor. Yet, his own dissatisfaction was not with her deteriorating condition—that was at least an enemy he could combat with medicine and therapists—but with her pushing him down the priority list of her life. KJ was at the top. He always had been. It wasn’t that Teller was jealous of KJ, or wished the kid away, but he often wondered whether the devotion was as much to do with motherhood as it was to do with her son’s growing similarity to his late father.

  A sadness grew inside Jonathan, a sorrow at not being recognized for the sacrifices he had made—to raise two children who were not his own, to care for Freya as her health faded, to agree to never have his own children, and finally to step away from his own career aspirations so he could do all these things. Perhaps most frustrating was that, while in his heart he hoped Freya saw his efforts, KJ seemingly did not. Teller was the enemy and Kelly Graham was a hero who could not be dethroned. Heroes come in many guises, thought Teller. They don’t all wear capes. Still, it was undeniable: as KJ grew so did the legend Kelly Graham. The memory of the man seemed to inflate and become more fantastical every year; the brave hero who gave his life to save the world. The legend. Except he didn’t. Yes, he’d trotted the globe and played his part in saving the world, but he’d died trying to save one woman—Victoria McKenzie—from her ungodly bond with Wak. And in her devolved state she’d killed him.

  Jonathan sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly—the bubbles crashing about the glass of his mask. Victoria. He hadn’t thought of her in a long time, and no one knew what happened to her. The CIA had tracked her for a while, but after several years it seemed she was simply on a pilgrimage. Teller’s feet hit something hard and metallic and he jolted to a stop. Suddenly aware that he’d drifted off into thought, his heartbeat quickened. “Phelps you there?”

  The comms inside Teller’s full-face mask buzzed with static.

  “Here,” Phelps replied then waved his flashlight, so Teller could see him not more than twenty feet away.

  “You think we’ll see any corpses down here?” Phelps said, swimming closer.

  “No,” came Skarsgaard’s voice over the comms. “The fish would have picked the bones by now. You may see some uniforms and skeletons.”

  “Peachy,” Teller said. “To boldly go and all that.”

  “A Star Trek reference?” Skarsgaard asked.

  Teller had forgotten no-one here knew his little quirks. “Forget it.”

  “I have the pulse induction detector and my assistant, Erika, has the very low frequency detector. We’ll make a sweep of the seabed around the submarine,” the professor said.

  “Understood,” Teller replied. “I’ll follow the Huahuqui, see if they can sniff something out.” Jonathan opened the strap on his flashlight and fixed it to the top of his mask, freeing both his hands, then adjusted the buoyancy of his dry suit to allow him to swim along the exposed keel of the submarine.

  The huge tube poked from the sand like a giant metallic mollusc. Time had transformed the vessel into a reef, teeming with animals, sponges, and plant life. Rather than the colorful bouquet of reds and oranges seen in the tropics, here herring and mackerel gave everything a silver, mirrored, effect as if the ocean were alive with shards of glass that reflected the divers’ lights in the dark. Teller couldn’t help but wonder if Hans Christian Andersson’s Little Mermaid might swim by. He wanted to make a joke about green women, but realized that, again, there was no-one here who would appreciate the humor.

  As Jonathan and Phelps skimmed the rusted and crusty surface of the U-boat, following its angle down toward the seabed, Jonathan noted that all four of the Huahuqui had gathered at a single spot, a few feet from where the metal tube disappeared into the seabed. Fighting the current, and pushing through another school of silver fish, he descended until he reached the bottom. Here the hull of the ship seemed to have split, perhaps under its own weight or through the stresses of the current on the aft portion. The tear was considerable.

  “Hey Skarsgaard, you nearby? I think we may have something here,” Teller said into the microphone.

  “Where are you?” came the reply.

  “Starboard side. Seabed, maybe ten feet from the vessel’s entry point.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Skarsgaard was true to his word. Moments later he appeared over the hull of the U-boat, his Navy Seal buddy in tow, and drifted down to where Teller was—careful not to blind anyone with his flashlight. The Huahuqui were swirling around and around, their gills floating and flitting with the motion of the water. The strobes on their
backs flashed incessantly.

  “Here?” Skarsgaard said, pointing at the seabed.

  “Inside, I think,” Teller replied.

  The professor looked to the rip in the hull of the submarine, swam over and waved his pulse inductor detector, a handheld device that looked much like a metal detector beachgoers may use, over the gap. “There’s definitely something in there,” he said. “Not clear what. It’s not a precious metal, but whatever it is, there’s a strange signal. It’s not sea trash.”

  Teller swallowed hard. “I guess we go in.”

  The gash in the metal appeared larger than it actually was. It took a little maneuvering, particularly with their tanks, to squeeze through without tearing their dry suits or accidentally slicing a hose on a jagged edge.

  Inside the submarine, it was even darker. Their flashlights provided little in the way of illumination. Instead Teller had to use his cone of light to follow the professor, who himself seemed to be guided more by the pinging of his instrument than sight. From what Teller could see the sediment had been swept inside the sub, probably through the opening, filling the cavity. It wasn’t quite full to the seabed level outside, but it was damn close.

  The professor homed in on a given area of sand and pointed. “Somewhere here.”

  Phelps began digging with a short metallic shovel. Silt and sand billowed up obscuring what little light they had. Occasionally he’d grab a metallic box, inspect it, and throw it to the side, letting it float away. After several minutes of furious gouging, he stopped. “I’ve hit something,” he said. “Hard. Really hard.”

  “Okay, let’s pry it out,” Skarsgaard suggested.

  Phelps delved back into his ditch, shoving his gloved hands into the sand and pulled.

  “You okay there Phelps?” Teller asked.

  Phelps grunted with effort then backed off. “Okay whatever that thing is it’s buried good, I can’t pull it out.”

  “The detector says it’s just a couple of feet below the surface. And it’s maybe five feet across. Box shaped. It can’t be that hard.”