The Templar Chronicles Omnibus

by Joseph Nassise

The shock of realizing that the thing was not only alive but was also intelligent washed over him like a bucket of ice water and Olsen turned away, more profoundly disturbed than at any other time since entering the complex. Whatever it was that they had been doing here there was no longer any question in his mind that it had been a renegade operation, that the Church never would have condoned it had they known what was happening.

  From where he stood Olsen could see eight cubicles against the right-hand wall, the first seven of which contained desktop computers and keyboards, the eight a large network printer, and it was for these that he now headed.

  Riley let him go, more than likely knowing he needed time to think.

  Olsen stopped at the first workstation and nudged its mouse. The screen powered up as a result, showing the usual Windows log-in, confirming his unspoken hunch that the PCs had all powered off and then up again when the electricity went out. Now if he could only get one to work…

  On a whim, he tried the administrative password and log-in that every commercially bought PC is shipped with and was shocked when the machine booted up for him. Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought. Vargas might have brought in some top-of-the-line scientists for whatever they were doing here, but they apparently knew next to nothing about computer security.

  But it wasn’t going to be that easy and his grin of success soon faded.

  Sitting down to try and access some of the information on the computer, he discovered the various menu trees and file folders had been individually secured with passwords of their own. He could get into the computer, but not into any of the files that were stored on it. He tried various screen commands and work-arounds that he knew, but the computer stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. The desk itself was clear of any paper or notebooks as well.

  He moved on to the next PC and booted it up, only to discover the same problem. One by one, he found them all inaccessible. He knew he could eventually break the security system and access the data, but he didn’t have the time for such a prolonged process right now.

  Giving up, he moved to rejoin his companions. As he walked by the final cubicle, the blinking red light on the network printer caught his eye. Paper jamb, he thought, stepping past.

  Paper jamb.

  He turned back to the printer and pulled out the paper drawer. It was empty. Which meant whatever had been printing might still be in the printer’s memory…

  Olsen began hunting in the drawers around the printer, looking for some paper, and quickly refilled the receptacle beneath the printer when he did found it. With a quick prayer to St. Michael, patron saint of knights and soldiers, he pushed the reset button on the printer and waited.

  Thirty seconds later he pumped his arm in the air in victory as pages of text began to pour out of the device.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There were eighteen pages in all, each covered with single-spaced type. Close examination showed them to be selected passages from an individual’s personal journal. A glance at the content made it obvious that the journal belonged to one of the scientists, though no names or identifying information was given about either the author or the project in question. The notes themselves chronicled certain events over the course of six weeks earlier that summer. Certain sections hinted at the larger picture, but without the complete journal they were left with more questions than answers.

  Several of the entries were particularly intriguing, like the one from May 23rd.

  The process seems to have taken hold, but only time will tell if it will last. Barajas and Orlander are working on a means of increasing the speed of the developmental cycle, but they’ve practically had to start from scratch due to the nature of the specimen and I, for one, am not confident that they can pull it off. We shall see.

  Early June held another tantalizing glimpse.

  June 14 – Unlike the earlier failures, this time the growth rate seems to be holding steady at plus 3.68. We’ve had four days without an adjustment and it looks like it has finally become stable. At this rate the specimen should be fully grown in just a matter of weeks, rather than the eight months it had taken with the first attempt. I take back what I said; Orlander is a genius!

  Several of the entries were similar. All of them referred to the experiment in evasive terms, as if even the writer was afraid to name just what it was that they were doing, though Olsen suspected he might be putting his own subconscious spin on things. Page after page of growth rates and maturation cycles, or starts and stops as the various attempts petered out or took different tracks than had been expected. More than once the writer cursed their failures. Blame was tossed about with abandon, as if everyone but the writer was responsible for the latest setback or failure and in the process Olsen learned several of their names. The reconstruction team would at least have a place to start in identifying the dead.

  The tenor of the journal changed with the last few entries. Apparently the subject of the experiment was not cooperating in the way they’d expected.

  July 6th Questions are now going unanswered. Subject B exhibiting the petulance of a teenager, refusing to do the simple tasks or carry out the smallest requests. His demands continue and this has some of us worried. Vargas intends to continue with the stated protocol.

  July 9th Violence for the first time today. Jackson’s arm was broken when the evening meal was being delivered. Vargas has ordered Subject B to be isolated for a period of 48 hours. I’m certain it’s a mistake.

  And then nothing more.

  The ambiguousness of the notes was further proof that they had lost a valuable resource when Dr. Bhanjee had disappeared. He could have cleared up any number of their questions, Olsen was sure of it.

  He brought the notes over to Cade and let him know how he’d come to possess them. The Knight Commander ordered him to strip the hard drives out of a few of the PCs; they’d take them back with them and see what they could uncover with the right time and the proper tools.

  *** ***

  When Olsen was finished, they left the creche room behind, this time with Riley on point. For the next twenty minutes they passed through several corridors filled with a series of additional labs, but nothing of interest was uncovered in any of them, and Riley began to feel like they were simply spinning their wheels on this level as room after room passed by without further clues. He was getting ready to call a short break when an odd thumping noise reached his ears from just around the next corner. Hearing it, Riley gave the signal and stopped. Behind him the others did the same.

  Cade came up the line and settled against the wall next to Riley. “What have we got?”

  The master sergeant inclined his head toward the bend in the corridor ahead. “Listen.”

  After a moment, the sound came again and this time Cade heard it, too. “Any ideas?” he asked.

  “Not a one.”

  “Then that doesn’t leave us much choice, now does it?” Cade turned and signaled to the others that they were to stay in place while he and Riley checked things out.

  They advanced carefully toward the bend in the corridor ahead of them. When they reached it, Riley removed a small mirror from a pocket of his fatigues and held it out at an angle before him so that he could see around the corner without exposing himself. He took a long look and then pulled his hand back.

  Passing the mirror to Cade, he said, “You’d better take a look. It’s Bhanjee.”

  They switched positions, Cade extending the mirror around the corner, just as Riley had. With it he could see that the hallway continued for another twenty feet before ending at a reinforced pressure door. Attached to that door was the stripped body of a man. Bruises covered him from head to toe and there were more than a handful of open, bleeding wounds across his flesh as if he’d been cut by a knife. He was arrayed against the door in a classic crucifixion pose, with his arms stretched out on both sides and his feet placed atop one another. Even from this distance Cade could see the large spikes that had been driven through
his limbs to hold him in place, one in each arm just above the elbow and another through his feet. The odd thumping sounds were a result of his hands flapping like trapped birds against the door as he twitched in pain.

  His head hung downward, giving Cade only a partial glimpse of his face, but even in the small surface of the mirror Cade could see that it was, indeed, the missing Dr. Bhanjee.

  Taking his attention away from the wounded scientist, Cade angled the mirror first in one direction and then the other. By doing so he could see that there were no other entrances into the corridor, so they couldn’t be flanked if they moved forward. An attack through the ceiling seemed unlikely, as did one coming up through the floor. Which meant that there were only two directions that they had to worry about; back down the hallway behind them or through the door to which Dr. Bhanjee was nailed.

  He turned to Riley. “Feels more like a warning than a trap.”

  “Agreed.”

  Cade gave it a bit more thought and then apparently made a decision. “All right, let’s see if we can get the poor bastard down.”

  Riley listened in as Cade called Olsen over the tactical net and gave orders for the rest of the team to move up to their present position. In a low voice, he explained that First Squad would be in charge of keeping them safe while the members of the command unit would see what they could do about getting Dr. Bhanjee free. Chen and Callavechio were ordered to guard the approach down the corridor, in case anything tried to come up behind them. Ortega and Davis were assigned the task of keeping their eye on the door ahead of them, so that they wouldn’t be surprised by anything coming from that direction. Riley and Cade would remove the spikes from the doctor’s arms and legs while the other two men supported his body in order to keep him from falling once he was free.

  Hearing the plan, Riley felt a great deal of sympathy for the formerly obnoxious scientist. The next several moments were going to be very hard for Dr. Bhanjee.

  Once everyone understood their respective roles, Cade gave the order and the team moved into action like the well-oiled mechanism that they were. Those assigned to provide cover swiftly took their positions, while he, Olsen, Cade and Duncan moved in on the good doctor.

  He must have heard them coming for the flapping of his hands increased in tempo, slapping against the door like fish in a net, and he twisted his head from side to side in unconscious denial of what he thought was coming. A panicked whining came from him, increasing in volume as their footsteps grew closer.

  Riley cringed at the sound; no human being should ever be reduced to such fear and pain.

  “It’s Commander Williams, Dr. Bhanjee. Take it easy, we’re here to help you. We’re going to try and get you down.”

  It took a few moments and more than one repetition by Cade, but finally what he was saying seemed to get through to the wounded man. The doctor visibly relaxed when he understood it was not his captor coming back to torture him further, his hands stopping their panicked fluttering and his head slumped forward on his chest in exhaustion.

  Cade reached out and Riley watched as he gently lifted the man’s head.

  What had been done to him was hideous.

  Dr. Bhanjee’s eyes had been torn out, the sockets now raw bloody wounds in the canvas of the man’s face. His lips had been stitched together with what looked like electrical wire and a word had been scrawled across his forehead in blood.

  Riley might not read Hebrew, but he knew his Biblical Greek well enough.

  Paradidomi.

  Betrayer.

  Someone was very unhappy with this man.

  His teammates stepped up and grasped the doctor’s arms and body, supporting him under the armpits, doing what they could to take the pressure off his lungs and give him a chance to breathe a bit easier. Cade looked over at him, silently asking if he was ready for what was to come.

  Riley nodded.

  They had no choice; it had to be done.

  Riley moved forward and grasped Dr. Bhanjee’s right forearm, locking it firmly in place against the door, preventing it from moving. He nodded again to Cade that he was ready.

  Using a set of pliers from Olsen’s tech kit, Cade placed one foot against the door beneath the doctor’s arm, grasped the protruding end of the spike with the teeth of the pliers, and hauled backward with all his might.

  Bhanjee screamed in agony, tearing his sewn lips apart..

  Riley was not surprised to see a tear on Duncan’s face before he turned away; he felt like crying himself. The spike had barely moved. The pain had to be excruciating and at this rate it was going to take awhile before the spike came free. Never mind the other two that would have to follow the first.

  Cade went back to work.

  It took them more than twenty minutes just to work the first spike free. Dr. Bhanjee lapsed into unconsciousness after a few minutes, unable to bear the horrible agony, and Riley found himself offering a silent prayer of thanks that he did not have to listen to the man’s agony any longer.

  The second and third spikes took even longer. By the time they were able to gently lower the doctor to the floor, Riley’s sympathy had turned to raging anger. Whoever had done this would pay, he vowed. No matter how long it took. He hadn’t liked the man, had despised him a bit even, but no one should have to undergo such pain and suffering at the hands of another.

  As they got up to give him some room, Bhanjee gave a quick little hiccup and then stopped breathing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Damn it!” Riley knelt beside the body, yanked Dr. Bhanjee’s shirt open, and began giving him CPR, cursing their luck all the while. Fifteen compressions, one after another. Tilt the head, pinch the nose, expel air into the lungs. Sit back up. Start pumping again, one…two…three…four…

  He gave up after twenty minutes, unable to get Dr. Bhanjee’s heart restarted. Rocking back on his heels, he did what he could to catch his own breath.

  Cade wasn’t about to give up that easily, however. He suspected Dr. Bhanjee had known far more than he’d let on and he wasn’t about to let him take that information with him to the grave if he could help it. It was time for the gloves to come off.

  Literally.

  He let the others know what he intended.

  Riley wasn’t happy with the idea. “You sure about this?” He glanced around them and from his face it was clear he had serious concerns about their present position. “This isn’t the most secure location, you know?”

  “I’ll be quick. I don’t want to be lost in his memories for long; his last few moments weren’t all that pleasant and I don’t want to relive them unless absolutely necessary.” Cade knew he was going to get some of it, no matter what he did, but he hoped that the man’s close proximity to death would have had him mentally focused on more important matters there at the end.

  Reluctantly, his exec nodded his agreement and then set about doing what he could to provide Cade as much security as possible. The rest of the men were ordered into two concentric circles, one inside the other, with the Knight Commander and Dr. Bhanjee’s body at the center. Ortega was in charge of the outer ring, with Riley taking control of the inner one. When he was satisfied with the arrangements he gave Cade the go ahead.

  Cade knelt on the floor and stripped off his gloves, just as he had back in the walk-in freezer. He remembered his failure there, but quickly dismissed it as irrelevant. Lingering psychic impressions often dissipated within forty-eight hours and they’d had no idea how long that man had been dead when he’d tried to read him. But they’d just watched Bhanjee die; his final thoughts and feelings were still locked up in the shell of his body and Cade was confident he could tease them free.

  Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Cade reached out and put his bare palms on either side of Dr, Bhanjee’s face.

  As soon as he did, a kaleidoscope of images surged past, as if Bhanjee had, indeed, seen his life flash before him there at the end. Cade struggled to narrow his focus, to separate the wheat from th
e chaff, and get something meaningful form the montage that played on despite Bhanjee’s passing.

  Heat.

  Sand and rock. The quiet hiss of the wind as it skittered across the ground and echoed softly in the trenches they’d dug that morning.

  “Who else knows?” asked a voice.

  “No one. I’ve been working this end of the trench all day by myself. You’re the first to see it, other than me.” Bhanjee answered and in his response Cade heard all the guilt and pain that the decision would eventually cause.

  A flash of darkness and then he stood in a conference room, confronting a grey-haired man in white lab coat. Underneath it Cade could see that the man wore a blue jumpsuit. They were having a heated argument and Cade could feel his disdain and contempt for the man in front of him, but he couldn’t make out the words or understand just what the fight was about.

  The other man finally threw down his pen in disgust and left the room, leaving Bhanjee to stare smugly at the closing door.

  Now the real work can begin, he found himself thinking, and his pulse surged.

  Flash.

  Another scene swam into view and this time Cade found himself gazing down at a deformed mass of flesh that vaguely resembled a human being lying stretched out on a steel table in a lab somewhere. Various parts of it were recognizable for what they should have been. Those short, twisted appendages had tried to be arms. That long thick trunk might have later developed into legs. And in the center of that bulging mass that served as its head, clear as day, was a human eye.

  As he watched, the eye turned and looked at him.

  He felt the tears running down his cheeks now and held his breath as the thing opened up a gaping maw in the center of its chest that might eventually have served as a mouth and shrieked its rage and humiliation at him.

  Flash.

  The scene changed a fourth and final time, the transition so sudden and so jarring that Cade was almost swept away in its unstoppable tide.

  Agony.

  Sheer unrelenting agony as the spike pierced his feet and sank deeply into the metal of the door behind. His throat, already raw from seemingly endless screaming, let loose with another long peal of pain and misery that rang up and down the corridor.