“As they violated me,” she said tightly, totally uncaring about her state of undress, “I shut myself off. I disengaged my emotions. I became hard, cold.” She sneered at him. “Your Ice Queen was born.”
What could he say? Tell her about his own past, his own demons? Tell her about the monsters that kept him awake at night, the screams that still echoed in his head, the faces that haunted his dreams? Words were meaningless he knew.
Instead, slowly, he removed his own t-shirt and stood bare-chested before her. Her eyes roamed his body, but not focussing on the firmness of the muscle or his well-toned abdomen. Instead, she focussed on the hideous scars that marked his chest also- slashes, tears, burns and bullet-wounds. A living testament to a lifetime of violence.
“I have scars too,” he said, his voice low, husky, wrought with emotion.
Slowly, gently, they stepped together, as though pulled by the magnetism of the revelation of their pain, the imperfections inflicted upon their otherwise flawless bodies. Both were coldly calculating, shut off from their emotions, devoid of feeling to the outside world. Nadia hid her pain behind a mask of cold detachment; Raine hid his behind a veil of cool indifference. But now, for tonight, without uttering another word, they both conceded to reveal their scars to one another. Scars that ran far deeper than the flesh.
With a terrified quiver, her lips brushed his. He let her take control, somehow aware that this was the first time in a very long time for her. They were like opposites driven by the same source. She had broken away from human contact; he had immersed himself in it, finding brief moments of salvation in the delights of the female flesh.
Carefully, he moved his hands onto her hips. He felt a tremble quake through her, a desire to let go perhaps, but she didn’t. She pressed her lips more firmly against his. He traced his finger up the curve of her back, the sensation sending an entirely new tremble through her body. She felt the touch flare in her belly, a sudden yearning, a longing.
She reached out and closed the door, blocking out the midnight sky, then took his hand and led him to the bed.
“Nadia,” his voice whispered. “We don’t have to-”
“Shh,” she placed a finger on his lips then removed it and replaced it with her own lips. They were still gentle, soft and probing and Raine felt that closeness excite him in a way he hadn’t experienced for so long. He had become so used to heated, animalistic passion, like that night with Lake, that he had forgotten the intensity of such intimacy. “No more words,” she whispered.
Then, as promised, without another word, they proceeded to undress each other, hands probing, lips tasting. They fell onto the bed, their naked bodies wrapping around one another, consuming one another.
For one night at least, their pain was forgotten; their scars were healed, and the two casualties of the brutality of the world, at last, found peace.
King awoke to the scarlet haze of predawn. His body was soaked in a cold sweat and the lingering sentiments of a bad dream toyed with his mind, vague images, faces obscured by the mist of slumber, hidden just beyond reach. But the first thing he thought about was his dead father and he knew that was a lingering tendril of the dream.
Despite only a few hours of disturbed rest, he felt reinvigorated, alive at last following the tedium of the last two days since he and Raine had found Kha’um’s stash.
He felt he had purpose again, as though whatever it was that had occurred in his dreams had helped him to come to a decision. One, he realised, that he had already come to but hadn’t quite been ready to embrace.
Slipping stealthily out of bed, trying not to disturb Sid who lay wrapped up in the sheet beside him, he pulled on his cargo trousers, t-shirt, socks and shoes but, just as he was about to open the door, he turned back to the bed. Carefully leaning over, he kissed Sid gently on her head then looked at her serene, beautiful features.
“Don’t hate me,” he pleaded to her sleeping form, then he slipped out of the room and made his way across the base. The sun had not yet risen but it did cast a molten glow amidst the eastern clouds. Bird song sang from the trees and a cool breeze brought out goose bumps on his arms but he ignored it all as he headed directly towards the dull grey building block in which the base’s bio-hazard lab was situated. He flashed the ID card he had been issued at the two NATO soldiers which stood guard by the entrance then stepped into the long sterile corridor, retracing his steps to the hazmat lab.
Following the retrieval of the Moon Mask from the wreckage of West’s plane, it had been brought here and surrounded by NATO troops. The only people allowed into the building, as per the agreement Langley had made with the NATO commanders, was the U.N. scientists and SOG team.
Rudy O’Rourke and Garcia sat on plastic chairs outside the entrance to the hazardous materials lab. The team had been taking it in turns to guard the mask since it had been brought here.
“Hey Doc,” O’Rourke greeted him. Following the events of the past days, King no longer felt like an outsider but was beginning to detect a sense of camaraderie from the Special Forces unit. “Early bird gets the worm, huh?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he explained. “Something’s been bugging me about something I noticed on the mask yesterday.” Due to his ‘immunity,’ King had been the only person allowed to examine the mask. Covered head-to-toe in a hazmat suit, he had spent several hours the previous morning poring over all the pieces of the mask, as well as the ‘fake’ mask in hopes they might reveal a clue as to the final piece’s location. “I wanted to get in there and take a look.”
O’Rourke winced a little. “You know I’m not supposed to let anyone in there without Gibbs’ direct authorisation.”
“He gave me his authorisation yesterday, remember,” he replied innocently. O’Rourke still wasn’t convinced so King added; “Call him then, he’s only going to say yes anyway, but probably be grouchy about being woken.”
O’Rourke sighed. “Go on,” he said reluctantly. This was the only egress to and from the sealed lab and a security screen was affixed to the opposite wall of the corridor. “I’ll help you suit up.”
Several minutes later, after O’Rourke had checked all the seals on King’s hazmat suit, he opened the decontamination unit’s door and King stepped in. As the door was sealed behind him, a blast of mist hissed out of the unit’s vents and cleaned his suit. Once the process was complete, a red light on the opposite door turned green and King pushed into the hazmat lab.
Utilitarian, the room was airtight and its reinforced walls were lined with lead. Designed precisely for the purpose of containing any hazardous material, it was the only place on the base where the tachyons couldn’t escape and do any harm. Nevertheless, as an added precaution, the mask had been left sealed inside a new lead-line case on a workbench in the centre of the room.
King proceeded to unclip the case and open it. Staring back at him were the three pieces of the Moon Mask forming a broken circle. They were lodge securely in the case’s foam padding which held them together in their nearly-complete state. One by one, he plucked each piece of the mask out, turned it over then lay it back down, pushing it firmly into the padding so that the inside of the mask faced upwards.
Then, hesitating for only a second, he reached up and ripped his hazmat suit’s hood from off of his head. The blast of the lab’s air was cool and refreshing.
Almost immediately, as he had expected, O’Rourke’s voice echoed through the lab’s speakers: “Doc, what the hell are you doing?! Put your hood back on!”
But King knew the soldier wouldn’t barge into the lab until he had donned his own suit. By that time, it would be too late.
Reaching tentatively into the case, King clutched the edges of the foam innards and carefully peeled it out. It had effectively ‘glued’ the three pieces together and he raised the entire conglomeration to his face. He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Then settled the mask onto his face.
Instantly, he felt a wave of nausea
sweep through him and he staggered, reaching out with a hand to steady himself against the worktop. But the worktop was not there! Instead, there was the wooden wheel of a ship, then the stone altar of a temple, a metal bulkhead, a brick wall, and then nothing, and he fell forwards, tumbling into an abyss of emptiness. He felt his eyes searing as though they were on fire. He felt his brain swell within his skull and throb like a pulsating star. Images flashed before his eyes, a thousand faces, a thousand landscapes, some he knew, others which were as alien to him as another world.
Then, unable to control the searing agony, Benjamin King dropped to the ground and screamed.
The screaming didn’t stop for hours.
47:
The Philadelphia Experiment
New York City,
USA
“Okay, okay, I’m coming already!” Rasta-Man-872 shouted to whoever it was that was incessantly pounding his door bell.
Of course, any preconceptions of Rasta-Man-872 being of African origins went out the window the moment one took a look at the ultra-skinny five-foot-one mousy-looking man whose skin was as pale as a polar-bear’s hide. The ambiguous dreadlocks which went down to the middle of his back and the brightly coloured clothes he wore looked ridiculous on him but Rasta Man didn’t care. He often said that he was a black man trapped inside a white man’s body. His walls were adorned with posters of Bob Marley, ultraviolet lights cultivated his crop of marihuana and when he talked he tried to put a Jamaican inflection into his boyish voice.
He peered through the peek hole and was surprised by who he saw on the other side. He quickly opened the door. “Alex Langley, how’s it going, mon?”
“Not great, Rasta. I need your help.”
“Shit, what happened to you?” As Langley stepped hurriedly into the light of Rasta Man’s basement apartment, his bedraggled state became apparent. His normally immaculate clothes were torn and smeared with dirt and soot, his face was covered with flecks of ash that had landed on him and a number of cuts and bruises were evident on his features. The hair on the right side of his head had been singed and now felt like a matted mass of hard nylon and his face still stung from the blistering heat, but he’d been lucky. Far luckier than Mrs Braun.
Following the explosion at her house, he’d spent several minutes clambering through the wreckage, shouting her name, but as there was little left of the house, he quickly forced himself to acknowledge that there would be even less left of her.
He’d quickly scrambled into his SUV, struggling to control the shock and the adrenaline, and then raced away from the burning wreckage. The sounds of emergency sirens had howled through the air but he knew he couldn’t remain on the scene. Someone was trying to keep Phoenix a secret; they’d silenced the Brauns and, having escaped, he’d be next on their list.
He’d driven fast back towards New York City, taking a circuitous route, always looking in his rear view mirror expecting to see someone come back to finish the job. Once in the city he’d dumped the vehicle, taking his laptop, phone and gun with him, then descended into the subway system, doubling back on himself numerous times. Twice he’d surfaced, hailed a cab, driven to a different location, switched to a different cab and then a bus before descending back to the subway.
He hadn’t become as stale in the years since he left the CIA as he’d thought, he’d realised. All his training, all his experience had kicked back in.
Confident that he had lost any tail he might have had, he finally made his way to the home of the only man who could help him, hidden in a dingy, windowless basement flat in Queens.
“I don’t have time to explain,” he said, pushing his way into Rasta Man’s main room, ignoring the crop of marihuana.
“It’s for medicinal purposes,” Rasta Man defended himself. “My back’s been giving me-”
“I need you to access an encrypted file for me.”
Rasta Man was the best at what he did, and what he did was hack.
Nathan Raine had been the first to ‘recruit’ the gangly boy years ago on a previous mission. Back then, Rasta Man had gone by his real name of Elliot Basingstoke, the son of a Queens Café owner. Bullied at school for his nerdish tendencies, he had come to the attention of MIT who had offered him a scholarship. But, always weary of authority, following the daylight robbing of his parents’ café and their murders, he’d retreated underground- literally. He lived now on that narrow line between villainy and normality, surviving by hacking rich peoples’ bank accounts and sieving off small amounts of money- enough to buy the high grade computer equipment he needed but not enough to get noticed. And he hacked. He hacked into banks and private corporations. He hacked into politicians’ files and government databases. And he even hacked into the military database. But he knew the limits. He knew that the government allowed him and the other world class hackers of modern society to get away with minor infringements which were posted online in conspiracy theorist websites. All they did was deny the theories, label Rasta Man and his ilk as ‘whackos’ and ‘nutters’. But if he ever tried to break through the military’s inner firewall, they would be down on him in no time and he’d never see the light of day again.
Langley was about to ask him to do just that.
He opened his laptop, already powered up, and spun it around on Rasta Man’s desk which was cluttered with computer towers, monitors, hard-drives and card readers. Rasta Man crashed into his plush swivel-chair-on-wheels as though it was the command chair of the Starship Enterprise and began tapping at Langley’s keyboard.
“Phoenix,” he read, his hands flying over the machine in a blur. Screen after screen appeared until all of a sudden a loud tone erupted from the speakers and a warning screen shot up. Rasta Man jumped back as though he’d just been bitten by a Rattle Snake.
“No way, mon,” he said in a panic.
“Rasta, it’s important,” Langley said. “Can you do it?”
The young man looked even paler than usual. “Sure I can do it, but there is no way I’m gonna. That file is protected by half a dozen firewalls, it’s encrypted up to its teeth. I’m guessing there are only a handful of people in the world that can access it.”
“Which is why I need your help,” Langley said smoothly. “Think about it, what this file contains could be the scoop of the century- it’s a conspiracy theorist’s wet-dream.”
“And worst nightmare,” Rasta added. “Al, listen to me, mon. I can hack it, but Uncle Sam’ll know what I’m doing the instant I start. They’ll be here in less than ten minutes- NYPD to begin with, just following orders, locking me down. Then the Fed’s will show up in their suits, then I’ll find myself in a torture chamber under the Pentagon somewhere while they water-board-out-of-me what I saw. Then, if I’m lucky, I get to spend the rest of my life in a high security military prison, probably shacked up in a cell with some six-foot-seven beast who takes a liking to my tooshy.”
“Elliot,” Langley said, his tone serious, no-nonsense. “If you don’t do this, thousands, even millions of people could die.” The young hacker looked as though he was about to be sick. “I’ll protect you. You’ve hacked my record, I’m sure.” He didn’t deny it. “You know my history- I was the commander of the most elite Special Forces team in the world. I can make you vanish, like a ghost.”
Rasta Man gestured at his array of computers. “I don’t want to vanish. This is my world-”
Langley fished into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He threw it at Rasta who instinctively caught it. “It’s yours,” he said. On the hacker’s puzzled expression, he explained. “All the money I have in the world, which is a lot, Elliot, a lot- it’s yours. I’m not going to need it where this path is going to take me.” He looked the young man in the eyes, catching his gaze and not letting it go. “From the moment you start hacking the file, we’ll have, I estimate, about seven minutes before NYPD arrive, directed by the DOD’s cyber-terrorist unit. How long will it take you to download the file onto a disk drive?�
�
Rasta’s mind was racing as he calculated the time he’d need. “If I have all the programs I need open and ready before I start the hack, I can get into the file in under a minute.” He glanced uncertainly at the screen. “But it’s a big file. Even with the speed of my computers it’ll take about four minutes to save onto a portable disk.”
“Then you make the hack,” Langley explained, “you download the file. That still leaves us two minutes to get as far away from here as possible before-”
“Two minutes isn’t enough-”
“Two minutes is an eternity,” Langley snapped, “if you know what you’re doing. And trust me, I know what I’m doing. We can be out of the city in under an hour, then you can go buy yourself a penthouse suite in Miami full of computers and a harem of whores to cater to your every geeky desire. What do you say . . . mon?” he added with a smile.
Rasta Man took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. “Okay.” Then, with renewed energy he swung back to his desk and plugged Langley’s laptop into one of his many computer towers and began pressing buttons. “It’ll take a few minutes to get ready to make the hack.”
“Take your time,” Langley replied. “Do you have another machine I can use? I want to follow up on another lead.”
“Sure.” With a tap of another keyboard, another of Rasta’s many plasma screens lit up.
“All I need is an internet connection.”
“There,” he said, with one hand opening a basic internet connection on Langley’s allocated machine while continuing his own efforts. Langley sat down and typed USS ELDRIDGE into the search bar. It was the name of the ship Mrs Braun had said her husband had served on which she believed had triggered his emotional problems and his interest in radioactive related illnesses.
“Whoa, you’re really getting into this conspiracy theory stuff, mon,” Rasta said, peering momentarily at the results screen.
Moon Mask Page 50
