Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  “Rearden, today, less than one percent of Earth’s surface is urbanized, and the chance that any of our great cities would remain over tens of millions of years is exceptionally low. Our research indicates many of the ‘ancients’ closely resemble cephalopods, you know, squid, octopus, and such. No bones to fossilize, just muscle, tentacles, and cartilage. Plus, the Saraph’s body secretes an enzyme upon death which begins to break down the tissue. It liquifies it from the inside out, much like lobsters do today when they die.”

  Cade decided not to mention the fact that he’d been inside a dying Saraph, as even now the thought made him want to vomit.

  Thrall continued, “People seem to think humans are the pinnacle of evolution because we are smart, and we can manipulate our world and create. They seem to believe that it took millions, or even billions, of years for evolution to spit us out as the perfect organism. The truth is, intelligence is not a primary factor in evolution. Many other aspects are more important, breeding rate, life cycles, food supplies, instincts, and adaptability. Larger brains require more energy, more calories. They can actually make an animal more vulnerable. We know the planet was vastly different to these ancients. Inhospitable in ways we couldn’t begin to tolerate. Still, they evolved, they adapted, and they may have had millions more years to thrive than humans have. The ancients understood far more than we do. They may have learned how to master space travel, as well as how to manipulate genetic code. They anticipated Oumuamua in their text and, in fact, may have been the ones to launch it originally. Whatever ultimate peril they faced in the end, meant their species as a whole couldn’t escape it. I can’t imagine what that was. In either case, what they left us was a legacy of knowledge.”

  “And you were the rightful benefactor of that gift?” Cade asked disgustedly. “Who got to decide that, Thrall? How much respect did you show those descendants of the ancients? How fortunate will the people in Tokyo be for all that wonderful knowledge, say in another fifteen minutes or so?”

  “Cade, we may be receiving a response,” Doris cut in over his suit’s speaker. “Also, Coffee is awake, and Trondo seems to be showing signs of improvement.”

  Cade was about to reply to the good news when a warning siren erupted from the control panel, and simultaneously, an interior panel sprang loose from the rear wall. “Thrall, I’d say your ship here will last about as long as Tokyo has. And we are still over a mile off the bottom. You need to use that massive brain and come up with some solutions.”

  Another sound echoed from outside, this one different somehow. Then, Cade knew the reason. Images flooded his mind like a stream of knowledge. “Doris, he’s here. Relay to him I understand and will be ready.”

  Cade lumbered back to the front of the Corsair, punched in a delayed course correction, then turned to his prisoner. “Stand up, Thrall.”

  It took over eight minutes to get Thrall into the spare XOD he’d had stowed in an aft compartment. The man seemed thrilled to have the protection, until he learned he was accompanying Cade down to the sea floor. The lockout chamber on the Corsair was tiny, and both men were crammed tightly together. Cade had Thrall’s suit controls slaved to his own, but the man could activate nothing; he was simply along for the ride. As the pressure tried to equalize, the interior hatch began to buckle. As the exterior doors opened, one of them was blown off its hinges. Immediately, the weight of the water was all around them. Cade was shocked at how much heavier it felt down here, just a few miles lower than he’d been earlier. His system was calculating the external pressure, but he refused to look at it. His heart pounded as his mind dredged up fears that paled in comparison to the reality they faced. Cade looked at the man next to him, the one who’d gotten them all into this mess. He struggled just to lift a leg to take a step and then another, Thrall’s suit parroting the movement precisely. They both stopped and peered over the edge at the seemingly infinite blackness below. Thrall mumbled something incomprehensible; the fear radiating from the former CEO was palpable. “What was that?” Cade demanded.

  His prisoner said nothing for several long seconds before repeating himself. “Sometimes it stares back.” Slowly, the man turned to face Cade, his empty eyes showing no emotion. “You should already know that, Rearden.”

  Together, they stepped off the shiny metal deck plating into the inky abyss, neither knowing if they would survive what came next.

  Thrall’s suit displayed the radar feed, so he saw what Cade saw, but unlike Cade, he had no idea what was happening when a thickly spiked tentacle wrapped around his torso. Then, Henry was there, just inches from his face.

  Cade grasped one of Henry’s shorter tentacle ‘arms,’ and the creature accelerated down and to the north at seemingly incredible speed. Cade wasn’t sure what he’d been doing, but he’d made damn good time getting here. With all the combined technology of Doris, The Cove, and Kalypso, they were now relying on an ancient octopus to guide them to a world-killer device and hopefully help them disarm it. Cade activated both suit boosters to aid their speed.

  “Sea floor coming up in thirty meters,” Dee said. Cade shook his head. While Greg had briefly held the record of deepest diver, now he and this asshat would be tied for the title. He leaned back to try to look up, but the inky blackness was everywhere. Almost seven miles of water was overhead. The thought of it was simply too much to consider, and Cade thought he picked up Thrall hyperventilating. “Breath, you arrogant prick.”

  Henry slowed and allowed them all to drift slowly to an unremarkable point of solid ground. Cade expected muck and silt, but turning on his lights, he was surprised to see rock outcroppings and sand and millions of small creatures drifting through the beams of his light. Henry gently released both men and swam out gracefully to a point about twenty yards away.

  “Thrall, the Icarus device is here—you and I are going to help the Saraph disconnect it. He knows how. If you refuse, I will remotely vent your suit to the outside pressure. I imagine at this depth, you will have about two seconds before you are essentially jelly.”

  Henry snaked a long tentacle down and began pulling something up out of the sand. Cade could see whatever it was moving around below the surface and went to give a hand. The faint blue glow began, and Cade got several images, clearly stating one thing. There is a problem.

  Chapter 100

  “Something’s wrong, Doris. Henry is trying to show me, but I’m not certain I understand.”

  “Cade, I am close to having something like a basic interpreter ready to try. He seems more adept at understanding our concepts and language than we are with his,” Doris answered.

  Cade moved over close to where Henry was attempting to pull up the Icarus device. He followed one of Henry’s tentacles deep down into the sand. Several fuzzy images flashed through his mind as his hand reached out and traced the smooth edge of some sort of case. That would be the device. “Doris, something has been changed from the plans. I believe he’s telling me Thrall’s people made some modifications.” Cade felt one of the anchoring cables. It was about an inch thick and covered in some sort of flexible metallic coil. As he began to pull up on the wire rope, a series of barbed ribs fanned out along the coiled sheath covering the cable. “I think they modified the cable so the anchors couldn’t be withdrawn. I’m going to…”

  “Proximity alert.” Cade’s XOD suit went into combat mode as a large target appeared on the far edge of the scanner. Cade felt a vibration run through Henry. He also now got the sense that the effects of the extreme pressure were causing the Saraph potential harm.

  “Thrall, how many of those damn things did you have out here?”

  Ivans’s suit alarms were going off as well, and he was smart enough to figure out what it was.

  “Three, only three,” the man responded in a voice shaking with fear.

  “You’re sure?” Cade pulled vainly on the anchor cable along with Henry, but it refused to move an inch.

  “I think three. Yes…unless...”

  “Unl
ess what?”

  Doris broke in, “Henry seems to be saying that if the anchors are not freed, the Icarus device will stay active. Cade, Tokyo is beginning to feel the effects. Even if you turn it off, it may take hours for the ozone layer hole to heal itself.”

  Cade shook off the new information for the moment and dropped the cable to face Thrall, who was standing there motionless. “Unless what?”

  “We…we had an incident at another location, Site 21. The lead scientist and his team were killed. The Saraph escaped, it was a very unpredictable one. Since it lacked the enzyme to metabolize any food source other than what we provide, we were certain it starved,” Thrall said.

  “You thought…or you hoped?” Cade asked.“Either way, whatever it is, it’s getting a lot closer.”

  Cade again turned to Henry who had released the cable and was swimming in circles as if pondering the problem. No time to be subtle. He motioned Henry back, then signaled his divesuit to use attachment E. It was a very powerful hydraulic cutting wedge that slipped over his hand and clicked into place with magnetic locks. Picking up the anchor cable, he triggered the cutter which slicked through the hundreds of individual wire strands in seconds. He then repeated this on the three other anchors. He was about to do the same to the radial cables, the ones that presumably carried the signal, when Henry stopped him by inserting his body between him and the device. The bright blue flashing was combined with imagery to convince Cade that doing so would be quite dangerous.

  “Reardon, that thing is really close,” Thrall said.

  Cade was busy trying to understand the complex set of mental instruction images Henry had just sent. “He probably wants to play fetch. He’s your dog, you deal with it. Give it a fucking cookie.”

  Doris broke in, “Cade, Henry’s message is that all the cables have to be lifted out together and the ends joined east to west and north to south. This will close the loop and the magnetic effect will be nullified.”

  Cade saw Henry heading rapidly toward what must be the end of the northern most cable. He ran his hand in the sand to find the western one. Picking it up, he placed it in Thrall’s gloved hand and signaled the XOD to close the grip lightly and follow it to the end. He then went to the southern cable and began doing the same. Within a few minutes, each man had a cable end, and Henry was just picking up his second. Cade rose off the bottom as Henry was doing. He had Thrall’s suit do the same, and they all moved back toward the center to link up. As they neared, Henry flashed the sign for danger again. Cade could now recognize this just from the bioluminescent light pattern. “Each series must be linked at the same time, otherwise you may trigger what I think he is calling a cascading overload,” Doris said.

  “I’m guessing that would be bad,” Cade offered.

  “Dee, take over Thrall’s suit controls and make sure we get these cables connected at the same time.”

  “Certainly, Nomad, would you like some music while you work?”

  “Huh? Fuck, no!” He looked at the three of them and considered the circumstances. “Okay, well maybe, what do you have that’s appropriate?”

  Henry raised the north and east cable couplers up just as he and Thrall did the same with theirs. A soft, but steady, rhythm began from the speakers. “I like that, who is it?”

  “Muse, ‘Time Is Running Out,’” Dee answered.

  Shit, even the subminds are developing a sense of humor. Cade held up three fingers, then two, and then Thrall disappeared in a cloud of glowing blue light and silt. The larger Saraph was still hundreds of yards away, but one tentacle had covered the distance before the sensors even registered it. The Icarus device jerked to one side as Thrall’s suit still firmly gripped his connector. “Dee, release the cable,” Cade ordered. The other suit’s embedded Battle AI was in control, but Dee did manage to free the cable before it severed.

  The song was reaching a crescendo, his time was running out, his breath was running out. Cade never once considered going after Thrall. Instead, he reeled in the western cable until he had both couplers clinched firmly in his grasp. He could make out the man’s screams over the suit comms but focused on what he was doing and thought about McTee and what Japan was facing. He mirrored Henry, who hadn’t responded to the attack either. Both he and the creature holding a pair of cables aloft. “I have no idea which is which is which anymore, bud. You decide if we live or die.” The music hit a peak as he thrust both arms forward and Henry did the same, the connectors arcing briefly as they joined together, then the device itself began to vibrate. Henry flashed the danger sign, and both of them fled up and away.

  The Icarus device was going to self-destruct, that much was obvious. “Shit.” He had to go get Thrall. Cade turned and pursued the path the man had been taken. Henry got in front and again signaled danger.

  “Nomad, Thrall’s suit was punctured by one of the creature’s spikes. A jet of water pierced Thrall’s chest. His vital signs have flat-lined.”

  “Thanks, Dee. Activate self-destruct on the suit, try and take out that Saraph or at least tag it, so we can find it later.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  He motioned to Henry and they both swam up. Minutes later, Cade was looking several miles down as a massive blue explosion lit up the darkness for miles. “Jesus.” Henry hadn’t been kidding. The Icarus device, or the exotic matter, held incredible energy. That was going to bring some unwanted attention to the area.

  “Cade, the Icarus device stopped, you guys did shut it off before it exploded. Ozone layer is beginning to heal, initial reports from Tokyo are bad, but much lighter than we had projected.”

  “Thanks, Jaz.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Cade considered the question. He was sitting on the floor of the lockout chamber of the damaged Corsair, his feet hanging off the back like a kid riding on the tailgate of a pickup truck. Dee was driving him back to the Kalypso and Henry was swimming lazily along nearby. “I’m not okay, Jasmine. In most ways, Thrall was right. We fuck up everything we touch. Down here, everything is magical, beautiful, but even the Midnight Zone is not immune to the ravages of man. I know you and Doris are more interested in space and stuff, but we need just as much attention going toward our own planet, our oceans.” He watched Henry with admiration. The creature overcame his own genetic imperative to help another species instead of his own. Would a human have done that? “We have a long way to go, my friend.”

  Jaz sensed he wasn’t talking to her but continued. “Riley and Doris are thinking of keeping Kalypso as a war prize. No one else actually knows about it. We could retrofit it with whatever we need from The Cove, then we would have a base to use for planet-side research.”

  “Makes sense,” Cade answered. That would mean Doris should probably delete the Kalypso from the prisoners’ minds before dumping them on that island, and they needed to round up the other Founders, but he liked it. “I think we may have a couple of new team members that might also need a home. Kissa and Thera might stay on. I was thinking of asking him formally to join Talon.”

  Jaz replied, “We can offer them a great sign-on bonus. The director had Jimmy seize all related accounts to Thrall and the Founders. Most of it is being redirected to a treatment fund they are setting up for Tokyo, but I feel sure some can be used for enticements. They also located the other sub, the one that launched the device. Jimmy found it was the hacker named Ruslana, and she was trying to manipulate several financial markets.”

  “So what happened?” Cade asked.

  “We don’t know, the currency trading just stopped, and we don’t see any signs of the vessel.”

  “Hey, Henry, you wouldn’t know anything about that would you?” A single image of a gorgeous but frightened looking girl flashed in Cade’s mind. “So, Jaz, about that date?”

  Cade looked at the depth gauge. They were traveling just under a mile deep in international waters. The temperature was just above freezing. “Why don’t you get Chaps to fly you and Cochise down here? I heard of
a little island that I think I’d like to spend some time on. I would enjoy your company and the sunshine. I’d also like to introduce you both to Henry.” Something else occurred to him. Something Thrall had mentioned. What could have wiped out the ancients? The Saraphs had abilities far surpassing those of humans, yet they vanished. Perhaps Henry could help answer that, or more likely, the data stored in his DNA could.

  “Seriously?” Jaz asked excitedly.

  “Yes, Jasmine,” Cade answered. “I may be BSC, but that doesn’t change how I…how we feel about you. You know my secrets, so you can make the choice with eyes wide open.”

  “I’m calling Chaps now. Thanks, Cade.”

  He thought, then, about Mr. McTiernan. He knew Director Stansfield had taken care of everything for his lost friend. The official part had been done. His thoughts were more personal. Always the war, always the soldier. “Hoorah, McTee, hoorah!”

  Cade leaned back against the deck plating still feeling the tremendous weight of the water and all they had been through. The losses, the battles, and the cost of keeping the world from tumbling over the brink once again. “Doris, any idea what Thrall meant when he said it stares back?”

  “Yes, Nomad, he was paraphrasing a quote from Freidrich Nietzsche, ’Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’”

  Cade knew it was too late for him, his monsters had been real for a very long time. Did he have any right in wanting Jaz to be a bigger part of his madness? He watched Henry gliding back and forth effortlessly just a few meters away, then he glanced down again into the darkness below. Sometimes we need our monsters, just to keep the darkness at bay.