Deep Silence

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Gorgon and Sergeant Rock found crates of the stuff these machines make,” explained Doc. “Leave chameleon sensors and move on.”

  Tate removed a bag of nickel-sized devices and they went to work. The sensors had plastic strips on each side. Once the top strip was removed, the sensor was placed against the surface where it would be left. The photosensitive chemicals adapted to the color of the surface within seconds; then the sensor would be removed, the back strip torn off to expose adhesive, and then the device would be set in place. Once placed, they would blend in perfectly and, unless you knew where to look, they would vanish from notice. It took several minutes to tag all of the machines, but the effect would be a constant feed of data back to the Hangar.

  They moved on. Snugged into one corner they found a large cabinet that, when opened, proved to be a false front, behind which was a very large industrial safe. Bunny stepped back and kept guard while Tate took a set of electronic devices from a pouch on his web belt and set to work bypassing the security.

  “This is freaky,” said Tate quietly. “Most dial-type safe locks are three-, four-, or five-digit combinations. This is twelve. Screws the math up something fierce.”

  “Shit,” complained Bunny. “How long’s it going to take you to—?”

  Tate pulled the door open.

  “Oh,” grunted Bunny. “Well, okay then.”

  As the massive door swung open, the darkness was suffused with an intense green light so bright that it made both men throw arms across their faces and wince as they backed away.

  Bunny had to squint to see through the glare. He felt strangely sick and gagged as he stared inside. There were a dozen shelves and each was stacked with pieces of glowing green crystal. Bars and disks, milled tubes and uncut chunks. Hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds of the stuff.

  “Close it,” he gasped.

  “What?” asked Tate, but it wasn’t a response to his statement. Instead he stood there, eyes wide and mouth open, looking like a sleepwalker.

  “Close it,” Bunny growled, and when Tate still didn’t move he stepped forward and kicked the door shut. It slammed and there was an audible click, and the green light vanished all at once. Bunny sagged back and caught himself with a hand on the edge of a machine. He swayed, dizzy and sick.

  Tate dropped to his knees, his big body convulsing, and then he tore off his balaclava and vomited all over the front of the safe. Bunny tried to say something to comfort the new guy, but when he opened his mouth he threw up, too. The thought that ran through his head, though, made no immediate sense.

  I can’t hear myself think.

  Over and over again, while his stomach heaved.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX

  PUSHKIN DYNAMICS

  VOSTOCHNY DISTRICT

  RUSSIA

  The sentries dropped where they stood, their weapons clattering to the floor. Ghost swarmed past me to check up and down the hall, then he came back and sniffed at the bodies. Maybe he could hear the silence in their chests. Maybe there is some canine way of knowing wounded from dead. Probably. They had a dead look to me, too. Inside my head the Modern Man flinched and turned away, ashamed of being part of me, repelled by my actions.

  I removed the magazine from my gun and replaced the four bullets I’d used and rammed it back in place. Then I dragged the bodies out of the way and used my gizmos to bypass the security. It took time, and I felt my face go stiff and wooden as I worked. A defense mechanism. The clinical term for my psychological condition is, I believe, bugfuck nuts.

  As I turned away from the corpses, something caught my eye and I knelt between the dead soldiers. Both of them wore identical rings to the one I’d taken from the guard upstairs. I worked one off a slack hand and peered at it. The ring was heavy, and I figured it was metal around something dense, like lead. There was a cap over what I assumed was another chunk of green crystal. So the cap was what? Protective shielding? Maybe, but there was no actual way for the wearer to open the cap. When I ran the Anteater over them, though, I found that there was a spring trigger activated by a radio receiver. That was odd, but it wasn’t what I had time to think about right then, so I added the two rings to the Faraday bag.

  The massive airlock clicked and then hissed as it swung outward on hydraulic hinges. It exhaled chilled air that smelled of rotting meat. It was like a punch in the stomach and I staggered back, glad that the balaclava was some kind of filter. Ghost growled at the smell and the hairs on his back stood up.

  I braced myself and stepped over the threshold, raising my weapon because every time I’ve smelled something that bad in a lab, things went south. Very far south. This particular stench had a vaguely familiar tang to it, but I could not grab the attached memory.

  Ghost and I moved inside and shifted away to keep from being silhouetted against the open door. There were only a few security lights on. Huge pieces of machinery crouched there in the shadows, their shapes and purposes indistinct. I tapped my earbud for Bug but got nothing at all, and when I checked my wrist computer it told me there was no signal and no chance of one. Bug warned me about the shielding. It was strange for a grown man and a practiced killer like me to suddenly feel insecure about being in what was essentially an empty room.

  On the other hand, I’d been in underground labs before, so it’s not like my fears were totally unfounded.

  Ghost was spooked, too.

  We moved through along the wall and found no switches, so I darted to the other side of the door and there they were. I kept my gun in one hand while I turned them on.

  The overhead lights flared bright, burning off all the shadows, revealing every single detail of where I was and what was in there with me.

  If it had been vampires, demons, hobgoblins, berserkers, or genetically engineered werewolf supersoldiers I would have been less terrified than by what I saw.

  Nothing alive. Not really.

  It was a machine, surrounded by other lesser machines. It was built like the mouth of a tunnel, thirty feet high, with a series of inner rings that stepped back at irregular intervals. The primary structure looked to be made of steel, but there were other metals, too. Lots of exposed copper, some crude iron bands, gleaming alloy bolts, and long circular strips of what looked like gold. Heavy black rubber-coated cables were entwined with the rings of metal, and coaxial cables as thick as my thigh snaked along the ground and ran farther down the slope to where a series of heavy industrial generators were positioned on a flat stone pad. Sixteen generators. Lots of power. The tunnel stretched back so far it disappeared into darkness.

  It looked like the mouth of the big hadron collider at CERN.

  It wasn’t.

  I think my heart stopped in my chest. I had seen two of these machines before. Two this size. One down at Gateway in the Antarctic. The other in the basement of Harcourt Bolton’s mansion.

  And now this one.

  The rotting meat stink came at me in waves from the open mouth of the machine, like some dragon was breathing in a troubled slumber. All around the opening were round slots into which carefully carved stones could be placed. I knew this, even though those slots were currently empty. I knew, without knowing how, that the stones for this machine were not going to be diamonds and rubies and sapphires. Not like the Gateway machine. Not like Prospero Bell’s. No. The stones for this one would be green crystal.

  I stood and stared, wide-eyed, dry-mouthed, terrified at the gigantic God Machine.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVEN

  PUSHKIN DYNAMICS

  VOSTOCHNY DISTRICT

  RUSSIA

  I had no radio, and no way to even contact my team.

  So I did what I could. I took out a small digital camera and took as many pictures as I could. All angles of the machine. And everything else in the lab. I also went to each computer workstation and plugged in high-capacity flash drives to download as much data as possible. My regrets over killing the two guards were diminishing. Wished right then I had all the scientists
working on the project there, along with Gadyuka, Valen, and every damn person they ever met.

  This wasn’t a work in progress. This was a completed machine. In the back of the lab I found a vault that actually had a printed sign: SVOD KRISTALL. Crystal vault. I had to really talk myself into opening it, and my hands were slick with sweat by the time the locks clicked. But then I took another look at the heavy radiation suits hanging on hooks beside the vault, and pushed the door shut again.

  Was there time to put one of the suits on?

  There wasn’t one that fit Ghost. What would that much green crystal radiation do to him? Did I need to risk finding out?

  “Yeah, goddamn it,” I muttered. To Ghost I said, “Ghost, back. Out. Post.”

  It was our shorthand to tell him to go back the way we’d come and stand guard outside of the lab. He gave me a lingering look in which I could read doubt and fear in his brown eyes. But he obeyed and moved off, casting looks over his shoulder as he went.

  As soon as he went out I moved fast. The radiation suits were oversized and went on easily. I unslung the Faraday bag and set it aside until I was sure all the seals were secured, then I reopened the vault, picked up the bag, and stepped inside. There was no immediate splash of green luminescence. They were too careful about that, and I should probably have thought it through better. They had to keep the rest of the lab staff safe.

  Inside there were rows of file cabinets with shallow drawers, much like those used in jewelers’ warehouses. Each drawer was marked by a numerical code, which I ignored. I opened one and there they were. Row upon row of green stones, each cut like a faceted emerald, but of the wrong color. These matched the crystal gun in my pocket and the stone in the guards’ rings. When I picked one up I again noticed how light the stones were; unlike any crystals I’d handled before.

  Every file drawer was filled with them. Most were the same size, but then I found raw and uncut stones of various sizes. I didn’t hesitate and began cramming both kinds of crystal into the Faraday bag. I couldn’t take all of them, but I took a lot. It bothered me that I was leaving a significant number of them behind, so I went outside, closed the vault, unzipped my radiation suit, and removed three large blaster plasters. These are self-adhering high-yield explosives. Once applied they can be triggered by, say, a door opening and tearing them apart, thereby mixing the chemicals inside; or via a small timer the size of a quarter. I used those, went back inside, dumped all of the stones into a metal trash can I brought in with me, and then wrapped them in the blaster plasters. There were enough high explosives in there to blow up half the lab. Not enough, alas, to destroy the God Machine. But I had photographic proof it existed, and it was too big to pack up and cart off. Maybe an airstrike would handle it. Maybe the State Department. Who knows. That was above my pay grade.

  I set the timers, closed the vault door and sprinted across the lab, slammed the big airlock door behind me, and shucked off the radiation suit.

  “Ghost,” I yelled as I ran for the stairs. We got halfway up when thunder boomed and chased us. The whole basement shook, and I hoped that I’d underestimated the explosive power of the plasters. Maybe they’d have vaporized the crystals and done some serious damage to the God Machine, too. From the rumble, I didn’t think many of the computers would survive, either.

  We ran up and up until I found a signal.

  Then I called it in.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT

  THE HANGAR

  FLOYD BENNETT FIELD

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  Bug sat in his sealed computer clean room, listening as Joe Ledger made his field report. The details punched him back against the cushions of his chair.

  “Damn,” he said aloud, even though he was alone, “I kind of hate it when I’m right.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINE

  PUSHKIN DYNAMICS

  VOSTOCHNY DISTRICT

  RUSSIA

  “Okay,” I said to Doc Holliday, “what in the wide blue fuck is up with these green crystals?”

  I didn’t exactly yell, but Ghost gave me a reproving whuff and cut a significant glance at the doorway.

  “Answer my two questions first,” she said. “Are the crystals unusually light in weight? And do they glow at all? Not when you shine light on them, but as if they are lit from inside.”

  “Both. Why?”

  “Shit,” she said. “Listen, Cowboy, we are putting together a field briefing for you on that.”

  “Don’t be coy, Doc,” I said. “If you know something, then tell me right now.”

  “I can’t. There’s too much to go into. Bookworm will brief you shortly,” she said.

  “Bookworm?” I yelped. That was Junie’s call sign, for those rare times she was in the field or advising a field team.

  “It is absolutely critical that you avoid all physical contact with the green crystal, particularly if they glow and are lighter than they should be. It means they have been activated. Don’t ask me what that means, because this is Bookworm’s territory. I’m as much a tourist as you are on this. Follow my orders, though. If the crystals are not in a Faraday bag, then retreat from them immediately. No exceptions.”

  “Copy that,” I said, and then verified that my telemetry was working properly. It was, and so was the rest of Echo Team’s. “Then I think we’re done here. Initiating soft exfil now. Huckleberry, stay with me. I’m going to bring the team up to speed.”

  I tapped over to the team channel and gave them the bullet points. Doc told them again about the dangers of direct exposure to the activated green crystals.

  “Now, listen closely,” said Doc, repeating the same instructions she gave me, then adding, “You need to work the buddy system more than you ever have. If anyone—anyone—begins acting strangely or erratically, you need to get them out of that building. If they begin to exhibit violent behavior, use horsey on them and carry them out. The green crystal affects mood and behavior. We think that’s part of what happened in Washington. You need to evacuate that building right now. Is that understood?”

  There was a beat before we all agreed. And I thought back to how my mood, and Bunny’s, shifted into low gear after I left Rolgavitch’s office.

  “I want everyone to confirm Huckleberry’s orders right damn now,” I growled.

  There was a chorus of emphatic Hooahs. Bunny hit it a little harder than the others, which meant his thoughts had gone in the same direction as mine. We’d both felt it in the car on the way here.

  “Okay,” I said once Doc dropped off the call. “Gather all samples, upload all data and photos. You have ten minutes and drop and go. Evac by teams and converge on the vehicles.”

  That got a much more enthusiastic reply.

  “Cowboy,” said Top, “we still going soft in here?”

  “When possible,” I said. “Mission priority is to get out with evidence. If we can do that without additional casualties, then we play it that way. However—and everyone hear me on this—the future of our country may depend on us getting this evidence back home. Nothing prevents that from happening. Hooah?”

  “Hooah!”

  Ghost whuffed. There was some edge in it, just as there was in the agreement from my team. The day was sliding downhill and we all knew it.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN

  PUSHKIN DYNAMICS

  VOSTOCHNY DISTRICT

  RUSSIA

  Sometimes they start off bad and then the universe decides to really up its game and show you just how truly nasty and weird it can all get when it doesn’t like you.

  Ghost and I made our way along the corridors, doing quick-checks in the various rooms, and suddenly my wrist computer pinged that one of the doors was not the standard metal-covered oak but a solid piece of reinforced steel. When I bypassed the locks I found another high-tech door behind it. Not as intimidating as the airlock downstairs, but clearly intended to keep everyone out who wasn’t authorized to be there. MindReader laughs at that kind of thing, and the door yielde
d to me.

  Suddenly Ghost went into a tense crouch, and a split second later I heard voices inside the room. Two men speaking in Russian. Saying something about a girl one of them was dating who he thought might be sleeping with a guy who lived in the flat above her. They were strategizing on whether to brace the guy and beat the shit out of him. Or maybe kill him. Or maybe kill the girl, too. Every option seemed to be on the table. A couple of real pillars of society. This, for the record, is part of the reason I have rage issues. Besides, most of my buttons had already been pushed, so I was profoundly cranky.

  I listened from the doorway. There was a short corridor inside that led to a T-junction. Light and the voices were coming from the left-hand side; only shadows from the right. I sent a couple of houseflies to check it out and they sent back a livestream of two guys dressed like the guards I’d killed downstairs. Tough, with cold eyes and automatic weapons. On the wall against which they stood was a symbol I know way too well: a plain trefoil, with three circles overlapping each other equally like in a triple Venn diagram with the overlapping parts erased. The international symbol for biohazard.

  We moved to the very edge of the T-junction, and I signaled Ghost to stay. I took a breath, wheeled around the corner, and shot each guard in the head twice. They went right down, and I pivoted to make sure there wasn’t anyone else at this party. There wasn’t. Pushkin seemed to have a pattern. Two special nighttime guards at each of their higher-security labs, and the cookie-cutter guards patrolling the hallways in ones or twos.