The Kafir Project

by Lee Burvine

  Danni stopped at an inner wall that had a metal hatch in it. It looked like something you'd see on a military vessel. She yanked on a latch. Air hissed around the seal as the pressure equalized.

  Danni looked back over her shoulder at Rees and Morgan, the white clouds of her breath puffing out more rapidly from the exertion. "It's gonna get pretty bad now."

  Morgan was shivering visibly. "Yeah, 'cause it's ... so nice and toasty right here."

  Rees felt himself shivering too, as badly as when they hauled him from the bay. Until just now, that was as cold as he'd ever been in his entire life.

  The old records were falling fast today.

  Danni climbed carefully through the hatchway. Dark in there, but Rees could see her waiting for him on the other side.

  He placed his hands on the rim of the hatchway for balance and started through. "Ow! What the..." He reflexively let go of the rim. His palms felt like they were on fire beneath the gloves.

  "Sorry, sorry," Danni said. "Shoulda warned you. Don't touch any metal in here for more than a second. Even with the gloves. Here, take my hand."

  Rees did, feeling like an idiot. He should have known that. He needed to concentrate better. But the cold was sapping his energy. Mental energy too, it seemed.

  He reached the other side of the hatchway and turned back, offering a hand to Morgan and passing along Danni's warning.

  As Morgan's faced brushed by his, Rees could see her eyes watering from the bitter cold. The tears didn't fall, though. They just frosted up in her eyelashes.

  After Morgan passed through safely, Rees stood up and looked around the strange space they were in.

  They had entered a spherical room, maybe fifteen meters in diameter with a flat floor. Difficult to gauge the dimensions. The walls were coated with some matte black material. Dials and indicators on the machinery emitted the only eerie illumination.

  Rees's ears and nose had stung painfully for the last minute or so. But seconds after they entered here that sensation stopped abruptly.

  They'd gone numb.

  A pity, really. He kind of liked his ears and nose. It would be a shame to lose them.

  "Say hello ... and good-b-bye to Alan." Danni gestured toward the center of the spherical space.

  A dark cube, about a meter along each edge, hung suspended on gossamer wires that looked like a spider's web made out of ruby-red, laser light.

  Even with his life hanging in the balance, Rees couldn't help but marvel at it. That little box up there contained more computing power than all the world's normal CPU's running together in massive parallel. Much more. Great episode for the show there.

  Danni led them to an area just underneath the cube. Rees felt his limbs growing slow and heavy. The shivering had stopped. Probably bad news there too.

  "Sh-shit." Danni was looking down at the floor near her feet.

  Several vertical pipes penetrated it right there. Probably for the helium pre-coolant. Next to them lay what appeared to be a kind of access plate.

  It was bolted shut.

  "C-c-crawlspace?" Rees barely managed to get out the word. He wondered how much longer he'd be able to speak at all.

  Danni nodded.

  So that was it. Their only way out lay under a bolted plate.

  Morgan started searching the nearby area. Hunting for a wrench, Rees assumed. With any luck, the techs kept one handy.

  Danni, with the least body mass of all of them, looked terrible. Even from what little Rees could see in this low light. She looked as though she might fall over any second.

  That would be a disaster. Heat conduction. If she fell, her whole body would be in contact with a surface that sucked energy away much faster than this air did.

  She wouldn't last two minutes like that.

  "C-crouch." Rees told her. He demonstrated by getting down in a crouch himself, hugging his shins.

  Danni nodded and did it. She seemed to understand that the position would reduce her exposed surface area. She'd lose heat more slowly, at least.

  But her eyelids were already drooping.

  Instinctively Rees wanted to go to her. Huddle together, try to warm her up. But with time running out, buying Danni a couple more minutes wouldn't help anyone. He'd just lose any opportunity to do something genuinely constructive.

  Whatever he tried, it would have to be soon. Because Rees was beginning to feel quite comfortable.

  And very sleepy.

  CHAPTER 32

  LIFE IS STRANGE, Agent Thom Merriweather thought. He took the stairs two at a time, eager to get out of the computer building ahead of the explosion he had set into motion. Plus he wasn't any spring chicken anymore, and the freakish cold in here was aggravating his damned arthritis.

  Merriweather's DCIS counterpart back east had just cooked DNA evidence to fake that a scientist died in a lab explosion. Now here he was on the West Coast making sure another scientist really would die in a lab explosion.

  Was that irony? He wasn't sure.

  When he returned to this building with a CSI team, he would plant Special Agent Morgan's gun in whatever remained of that room down there. Ballistics would show it had been used to kill Agent Gibson. The other three deaths? Accidental. Caught in the explosion. And nothing would come back to Merriweather. Except another big payday from the Office.

  He reached the ground floor and exited the stairwell into a hallway. And immediately spotted Gibson's meaty partner, Swain, coming his way.

  "What the hell?" Swain frowned at him. "You're supposed to be on the fire exit."

  Merriweather just kept walking. "I was. Then one of the guys who works here came out a minute ago. Said we all had to leave the area immediately. Some kinda leak. I'm just passing on the word."

  "Where's Gibson?"

  "Ran into him downstairs. He's right behind us. So c'mon, let's go."

  Swain strode right past Merriweather toward the stairwell door.

  Merriweather called after him. "Hey, Gibson's on his way up. We'll meet him outside."

  "I'm not leaving the building without my partner." Swain opened the door into the stairwell. "What floor was he on?"

  "I don't know. Anyway I told you, he's headed up now. C'mon, they want us outta here."

  "What did I just say? I'm not going without Gibson. Now how many floors down when you last saw him?"

  "All right. Okay."

  Merriweather had Morgan's gun tucked in his waistband, in the small of his back under his coat. He reached behind, pulled it, and in one motion brought it up and fired.

  But he must have squeezed off the round before his arm got all the way up. He was going for a solid head shot. Instead the bullet caught Swain in the chin with an explosion of blood, teeth, and bone.

  Swain fell back into the opened stairwell doorway, spinning as he dropped. He hit the floor on his hands and knees and scrambled down the stairs out of sight.

  Still very much alive, at least for the time being. And he was armed.

  Well, that's a big aw, shit. Merriweather had to press the attack now. He couldn't take a chance on Swain ultimately surviving that shot.

  He looked around for something he could throw in the doorway ahead of him. A distraction before following it down into the stairwell.

  "Agent Merriweather."

  Merriweather whirled around to face the voice.

  The head Livermore security guard, Neery, was standing there with his weapon holstered. "I radioed when we saw you weren't at the fire exit anymore. But ... oh, Jesus."

  Neery was looking past Merriweather, toward the stairwell door. Merriweather glanced back.

  Bright red blood spatter on the doorframe. The security guard must've spotted it.

  Merriweather pointed toward the doorway. "I wounded one of the suspects. The armed woman. She's a DCIS agent named Morgan. Bitch is a goddamn traitor. She took off down the stairwell."

  Neery looked like he was gonna shit his pan
ts. "What do we do?"

  Merriweather's mind leaped ahead through the possibilities. The body count was rising. The story was getting too complicated. He didn't want to add this security bozo to the list of deaths he'd have to maintain he had nothing to do with.

  Neery's expression suddenly changed, from worry to confusion. "Wait, whose gun is that?"

  "What?"

  He was looking at the gun Merriweather held in his hand. Morgan's gun. Merriweather realized he'd accidentally flashed his shoulder holster, a second ago when he raised his arm to point. His service piece was still in there.

  Neery had seen both weapons.

  "You know, you have a surprisingly good eye, my man." Merriweather raised his gun to kill Neery, and heard a shot go off behind him. He ducked as he turned.

  Swain stood there in the stairwell doorway, bracing himself on the frame. Tough sonofabitch. Looked like something from a goddamn zombie movie. Lower half of his face blown off. Shredded gore hanging where his mouth and jaw should have been, dripping blood and spit.

  But Swain had missed his shot, and Merriweather wasted no time in pumping three quick rounds into the center of his chest. Tough guy or not, Swain dropped for good this time.

  Merriweather turned back around to take care of Neery.

  Neery drew his weapon and fired. Unbelievably fast.

  Merriweather felt the thump of the bullet and took a halting step backwards. No pain, not yet. But all the strength drained out of his body. He couldn't even raise his arm to return fire.

  He didn't want to do it, but he just had to look down.

  A hole in his jacket. Right over his heart.

  He looked again at Neery, frozen there. Smoke curling up from his gun. Looked like something out of an old Western.

  "What are you ... a goddamn cowboy?"

  Everything felt light, even as it all turned dark.

  Life is strange, was Thom Merriweather's very last thought.

  CHAPTER 33

  STANDING THERE AT the center of the Core, Rees had only one overwhelming desire. He just wanted to lie down. A little rest and he could think more clearly. If he could just close his eyes for a moment. Only a moment.

  And he knew if he did, it would be the last mistake he ever made.

  Danni was nodding off down there in her crouch. The hypothermia getting to her too. She couldn't have much time left.

  Morgan was still searching for a wrench. She wasn't having any luck there.

  That meant it was all up to Rees.

  He struggled to think under the drug-like torpor induced by the penetrating cold. There was no safety in backtracking. No way out there. He had to figure some way, any way, they could open that access plate and go forward, get out of there through the crawlspace.

  And if they couldn't?

  Then when the cooling system blew up, dousing them all with liquid helium-it would actually be a coup de grace. At least it would all end quickly.

  First thing, he needed to stop imagining the cold as an enemy. Too romantic to be useful right now. The cold was simply a fact. Facts were never the enemy. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed, as Francis Bacon had more or less put it.

  What did nature say about cold?

  Lack of heat is basically reduced atomic motion. Which affects...?

  A nebulous idea struggled to take form in Rees's head. So damned tired and bleary.

  His eyes landed on a valve there in the cooling pipes, just above where they penetrated the floor. Near the access plate. The metal access plate.

  An image came into his mind then. A ship. A huge, passenger liner.

  The Titanic.

  Yes. Yes, there were possibilities there.

  He wanted to ask Danni if that valve was what he thought it was. He sucked in a lungful of the super-cooled air, preparing to speak. That set off a dry coughing fit. White spots danced in his field of vision.

  No. Don't you pass out, goddamn you. Can't pass out.

  Rees clamped his mouth shut and breathed through his nose. He managed to get the cough under control.

  He would just have to open that valve and see if he was right. In any case, he didn't have any time or any other ideas.

  He squatted and grabbed the valve's handle with a gloved hand. No burning sensation now. The cold had numbed his hands so badly he couldn't feel anything. In fact, he could only confirm that he gripped the handle because his eyes were telling him so.

  He pushed. His fingers slid right off. No real grip left. The signal from his brain couldn't reach the muscles in his half-frozen hand.

  He tried again with both hands this time. He leaned down too, so that his chest crushed his fingers hard against the valve handle.

  Something moved. But had he only just slipped again?

  He pulled back to look. No, he hadn't slipped. The valve handle really had moved.

  Just then Morgan came over to his side.

  "W-wrench?" Rees asked.

  She shook her head. She had a length of heavy pipe. About two feet of it. She was shifting it from hand to hand. That made sense. It would probably freeze her fingers solid if she held it firmly for too long.

  She gestured Rees away, then bent down and wound up to swing the pipe at one of the bolts. She was lining up almost parallel to the side of the bolt, but at a slight angle. Rees saw what she was trying to do. Loosen the bolt with a glancing blow. A trick Rees had used once or twice with a hammer on a stuck nut.

  Morgan swung the pipe. When it struck its target, it spun right out of her grip and clanked to the floor. She was having the same problems with her numb extremities.

  Her idea wasn't going to work. He would have to follow through with his own plan.

  He pushed Morgan to get her attention, then pointed to Danni crouched on the floor near the access plate. "M-m-move her."

  Morgan apparently understood what he was asking for and didn't seem to care why. She was probably out of ideas too. She slid her arms under Danni's armpits and dragged her up and away.

  Rees grabbed the valve handle again with both hands. And again he pinned his fingers down with the weight of his torso. After a moment's resistance the valve snapped down into the open position.

  He fell back, putting some distance between himself and the valve. Clear liquid began to flow out.

  Helium, liquid helium. It was a release valve. Just as he'd hoped.

  The helium hissed and boiled as it began to pool up on the floor. Like water being poured onto a hot griddle.

  The puddle of helium spread out from under the release valve, and soon reached the access plate. In a few more moments it had covered the plate entirely.

  The helium boiled so furiously that the puddle stopped growing. It had reached a stasis between liquid coming in from the valve and gas going up into the air. Good. Evaporative cooling was sucking all the heat energy from the metal plate. The first step in his plan.

  Now Rees had to guess how long to wait. Too soon and there would be no effect. Too long and the whole cooling system might blow before the next step of the plan.

  Morgan watched. It wasn't clear that she understood what his aim was here. Rees didn't have the capacity now to explain.

  Brittle fracture. Metals under extreme cold lose their ductility.

  The Titanic sank in part because the hull didn't deform when it struck the iceberg. It shattered. The iron in the Titanic's hull plates had unusually high sulfur content. At about five degrees below zero Celsius, the temperature of the seawater she sailed through, the high-sulfur hull plates had become extremely brittle. Better iron wouldn't have done so, not at those temps. But nearly all metals did when the temperature got low enough.

  That access plate down there would be a cadmium alloy, to resist the extreme cold. But it wasn't designed to be exposed to the evaporative cooling effects of liquid helium phase-shifting into a gas.

  That's what Rees was counting on.

  He judged that it ha
d been long enough. The pipe Morgan dropped still lay nearby. He retrieved it and whacked the valve handle up and shut, cutting off the flow of liquid helium. In moments the pooled helium had all boiled away.

  Rees shifted the pipe to his other hand, and knelt next to the access plate. He raised the pipe over his head and slammed it down with all his strength, square on the center of the plate.

  It made a loud clang. The pipe flew from his hand and clattered to rest nearby.

  Rees inspected the access plate again.

  Not even cracked.

  Not a scratch on it. If the metal had been rendered brittle by the liquid helium, then the impact of the pipe just didn't generate enough force to shatter it.

  It had been his best shot, and he'd failed.

  Oddly, Rees felt no fear. Perhaps because there was no uncertainty to be anxious about. There was no way out now. And soon it would all be over.

  He felt Morgan pushing him away. She gestured at him, to pull Danni back further. She zipped down her parka. Then she removed her gloves.

  At first Rees thought she was hastening the end. Sure. Why wait? Why not just let the cold in and fall asleep?

  Then he saw her fumbling for the gun in her shoulder holster.

  She understood Rees's basic plan. And she had an impact generator much more powerful than that length of pipe. In his mental fog, Rees forgot all about the gun Morgan took off the dead man in the anteroom.

  He helped Danni shuffle backwards with him, away from Morgan and the access plate. Nothing in there provided any real cover, so he coached her to crouch down with him, and turn away.

  Then he positioned himself between her and Morgan. They would just have to hope that any flying fragments or ricochet wouldn't wound them too badly.

  Rees nodded to Morgan, then turned away and waited to hear the gunshot that would either save them or signal the end.

  When it came, the report wasn't as loud as he'd expected. Maybe the material lining the walls here dampened the sound.

  He turned around to look.

  The bullet had split the access plate into three pieces. But the bolts still held it fast to the floor. It continued to block their exit.