“I will. Thank you again. I--” I wanted to tell him that they had chosen the wrong person. I was nobody, and certainly not qualified to evaluate an entire biosystem for the Alliance. But I stopped myself before I could say anything stupid. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”
“Good night, Lane.”
“Good night.”
I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself. I needed to lay down. How many hours had I been awake? Twenty or more was my guess, but I couldn’t see a clock anywhere.
The door to my quarters was standing open and I walked inside, closing it as I entered. The light was softer in here, without the harsh fluorescent tone. It was calming. The bed was fairly comfortable. I was out, my eyes closing before I could even change clothes or get under the covers. It was a heavy dreamless sleep.
Chapter 6
The lights were still on when I woke up. The uniform glow penetrated my sleep-filled eyes. I had no idea how long I had been asleep or if it was even morning yet. How long would it be before days and nights would become confused? Every limb in my body ached and my joints were stiff from the exertion of yesterday’s hike and I was utterly freezing. My skin felt hot, but the air around me was so cold. I lifted myself out of the surprisingly soft bed and went to look in the bathroom. There was a small black bag sitting on the tiny counter that contained a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, and a paper-wrapped bar of soap. There was a shower, albeit a small one, but it would be wonderful to scrub the grime from my skin.
The water was not hot. I shivered through my shower, but I wasn’t going to complain. The fact that there was running water at all down here was amazing. That wasn’t a guarantee. So many places had lost water, and electricity for that matter. I was lucky to have lived in Southern Bureau, where the storms hadn’t been as bad...yet. I dried myself with a thick white towel laying neatly folded alone on the shelf. My duffel bag was lying exactly where I had left it the night before. I hauled it up on to the bed and began to unpack, sifting through uniform after uniform. The IPA soldiers all wear blue, but so far Adam and I are the only ones I’ve seen wearing the black outfits. I chose a pair of heavy-duty black pants, and a black shirt. After all the clothes were folded and put away, I opened the lock-box where I had stowed my grandmothers necklace. There was one mirror in the room and I watched myself move. I cringed to see it. My mother always said, “You prowl around like a half-wild cat, Lane. If you would smile a little bit more…” I was never good at putting on appearances, and the suffering that we had lived through takes its toll. I couldn’t help but be wary of my surroundings. I took the mirror off the wall and shoved it behind the dresser.
The necklace glinted against my skin so I tucked it into my shirt. It was a symbol of home, and not for anyone else to see. It was unclear to me why Adam was so mysterious about everything, so I made a mental note to ask Ellis, the soldier we met at dinner last night, what his deal was. They seemed like pretty good friends.
The metal on the door to the lab was cool. I couldn’t imagine how much energy it must take to keep the Shell running. They managed to have this massive fortress deep in the jungle, and yet they only filled the first two floors. They should have everyone from the area come here, especially if there are no threshold events here as Adam had hinted. I opened the door and found he already awake and writing notes furiously at one of the desks.
“Good Morning,” He smiled as soon as I approached him. “How did you sleep?”
“Better than I would have expected, honestly.” It was the truth. I had slept like a rock.
“Good. I’m sure you’ll need it.” He was looking at me now, and I was struck by the strangeness of it all. What a team we would make. Looking as if he had just remembered, he pulled out a small black box, “This is for you. It’s your badge. It will get you in and out of the Shell and you’ll use it for meals as well.”
I took the box and turned it around in my hands.
“Here let me show you.” He grasped my wrist and a shock went through my body. I wasn’t used to casual touch. He took the black box, removing a cap and I could see that it looked like a stamp. His long fingers brushed my wrist before he put the stamp down on my skin. After pushing a button on the side, a quick flash of pain shot through me.
“It’s alright. It’s over now,” he laughed. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt as much if you didn’t see it coming.” He showed me on his own wrist, which I hadn’t noticed before. It had a strange black design, like an electrical grid. I looked at my wrist now, sliding two fingers over the surface of the ink that was on my skin. It was completely smooth.
“Is this a tattoo?” I spoke through my gritted teeth. He didn’t even ask.
“Yes, but it’s not permanent. It degrades after a few months.” His eyes were a lighter grey this morning, and he appeared unconcerned.
“I guess I’m just a little suspicious of military tracking devices,” I said, hoping he could hear the ironic tone.
He laughed again. It was a full breathed, happy sound, and I wasn’t used to it.
“They do actually have positional locators,” he replied. “It’s only in case you wander too far into the jungle and can’t get back, but you have to activate it. If you tap here three times in quick succession, it will send a ping back to the Shell.” He ran his fingers across my wrist again. His skin was warm and quickly pulled my hand away, covering the spot that he touched. I could still feel it even after his hand was gone. I ran my fingers over the black pattern and it began to shimmer and shift, displaying several numbers 909.
“What do those numbers mean?” I asked. Perhaps it was some type of identification number.
“It’s the time.” I couldn’t help but get the feeling he was mocking me. And why shouldn’t he? I didn’t know the first thing about any of this.
9:09 am, of course. That was pretty late, considering I usually get up and run at 6 am.
“So,” he said, composing himself. “What do you plan to do today?”
“Well, I guess I will take a few samples and try to get a data analysis program running on one of these computers. Hopefully, that will get me somewhere.” I started.
“- oh I almost forgot, You remember Ellis? You met her last night.” He commented quickly.
“Yes, She’s part of the team too, right?” I verified.
“Yeah, she is the other member of our team and will be serving as your guide and documentation specialist. She’ll be waiting up in the cafeteria if you need her this morning.” He pointed in the vague direction of the cafeteria.
“A Guide? Like a bodyguard?” I was strong enough to take care of myself.
“Yeah, it’s the policy for civilian contractors like us.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. I wasn’t sure how far the fences stretched, but clearly, there must be something out there they worried about. Hallucinations or mutant jungle creatures, I wasn’t sure which was worse. Or was it me? That made more sense. They didn’t trust me. So Ellis would be my guard.
I returned to the folder he had given me last night. There were only about 10 pages inside. There was a topographical map of the entire Southern Equatorial Rainforest with a question mark and the words sector 4, several sheets of lab results from an area labeled section 18 and pages of repeating data on storm frequency in other sectors of the jungle. None of seemed particularly significant so I set it aside for the moment. I would come back to this after breakfast. I grabbed my backpack with my notebook climbed up the stairs to exit the lab.
The lack of windows in the Shell was eerie. I walked out to the dining hall and though there were some soldiers milling around, it seemed most were already at their workstations. There were probably forty or more soldiers that I had seen last night and it wasn’t entirely clear what they could all be doing here. The dining hall was similarly half empty though there were a few people eating. I walked over to where I had seen Adam go the night before. There was a large screen that was currently blank, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to scan my badge. My w
rist was still a little sore from where the device had tattooed me. It was probably stupidly simple, but I didn’t see anyone nearby to ask. I touched the screen and nothing happened for a moment, but then it simply said in large sunny letters:
Everly, Lane
Good Morning.
A small window unfolded from the wall with a black tray and I grabbed it before the opening could close again. I looked out at the uniform rows of tables and walked back to where I had sat last night. I didn’t see anyone who looked even vaguely familiar. My breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, toast, and a small dish of fruit. It was very conventional in a comforting way.
I let the thoughts in my head meander until a half-formed plan began to arise. The first thing to do would be to set up a statistical analysis of various facets of Sector 4 Biosystem. I would begin with soil samples and bacterial cultures then work my way up the food chain. Hopefully, there was already a library of data on some other section of the forest that had been put together by someone else. That would be very useful in order to make a comparison. Even pre-threshold data might be useful if I could access it somehow.
If there are no particularly significant patterns that arise, I don’t know what would happen, but I wouldn’t think of that. Commander Marshall had given me no indication of how quickly he wanted results on this project. It would be almost impossible to prove that nothing dangerous would ever happen in Sector 4. That would require years of data. I was almost finished with my breakfast when I heard a voice behind me.
“Morning, Lane.” The small soldier clapped me on the back.
“Good morning Ellis,” I responded when she sat down on the bench next to me.
“I guess they told you,” she paused. Her eyes lowered, mouth pressed into a grim line. “I’m your new Guardian Angel,” her expression split into a half-hearted smile.
“Adam did mention something about that, yes.”
“Ugliest guardian angel there ever was probably,” she boasted and flashed a toothy smile. In fact, she wasn’t ugly at all. She had high cheekbones and bright green eyes. With her short cropped hair, she looked like some sort of otherworldly angel, but I remained quiet. She didn’t seem to harbor a desire to be pretty in any traditional sort of way, and I could respect that.
Ellis followed me back to the lab, where I began to rifle through boxes of unopened lab equipment. Adam was already gone. It wasn’t clear to me what his role in the project was, but uncertainty seemed to be a running theme in this place.
“Anything I can do to help,” she asked looking lost amidst the scientific equipment. They had fully stocked the lab, overstocked in fact. There were things in here I was not going to have any use for. I’d have to see if I could get it all moved out of the way later.
I held up a plastic sample container, “See if you can find a few more of these.” I handed her the container and went to grab my notebook, folding the topographical map and placing it inside the cover. I really needed to collect a sample from different points across the sector, to get a broad view. I pulled out the map again, estimating how long it would take to get across sector 4. The location of the gate in the fence was marked, but the rest of the sector was empty.
“Any luck?” I asked. Ellis was arms deep in a box of equipment when she pulled out the containers.
“Is this what you want?” She chucked one of them at me, nearly clipping an expensive microscope on the way.
“That should do it. I need to collect some soil samples today if you don’t mind.” I pulled open the map, showing her a route I had planned. “We should start by heading north around the perimeter of section 4, then cutting back down the middle on the return. That should provide a reasonable sample size.” I turned the map so she could see it clearly.
“That will take us all day.” It wasn’t a complaint, the way she said it, just a statement.
“Then we better get started.” I began walking out of the lab.
“Should we take some of these?” She held up some kind of plastic packet. It appeared to be packaged food rations. I could see that there were boxes and boxes of them behind the other supplies.
“Good thinking.” I replied, “ We can get a wider circuit if we take food.” She nodded in agreement and put more than enough for several meals in her backpack.
We walked into the atrium, and I began to climb the stairs leading up to the hatch, but she grabbed my arm.
“Where are you going?” She walked back in the direction that I had seen the soldiers walking and we walked down a slightly larger flight of stairs, however, they only brought us down one floor before ending abruptly.
“What, did you forget something?” I asked. She shook her head and continued on.
There was a larger set of doors, completely rounded on the top that we entered, a second entrance to the shell perhaps. The doors led to an airlock with another set of matching, windowless, rounded doors. She scanned her tattoo on a small screen and I did the same. The doors retracted into the thick walls of the shell and a long tunnel opened before us. We stepped out of the Shell into a dark earthy smelling passage. The filtered morning light was clearly visible at the end of the reinforced concrete. It seemed the shell had been built into the earth, seemingly in a single piece. The angled opening we just walked out of was the only part of the massive bunker visible, carved out of the Earth. From the vantage point, we could see a nearly infinite expanse of lush green jungle beyond the massive military camp around us. The soldiers were moving around, so small in comparison to the green all around as they entered and exited the tents.
The path around the tents had been worn down by many soldiers stepping in the same place. It was bare dirt at this point. The near-daily rain showers had turned the walkway into a mudslide. I was glad for the sturdy boots I had been issued.
I could see that the tents, more than fifty altogether, were filled with soldiers doing all sorts of things. Some were building things, large sheets of metal and intricately wired screens among other things. Others were scanning and sorting these parts. It seemed a very industrial process, quite at odds with the wilderness all around us. Almost every tent was the same, surely they were producing thousands of these parts, but for what purpose? We passed through unnoticed among the hectic operation. Some of the tents, however, were closed. I could hear soldiers inside them, but I could not tell what they might be working on.
“What was that all about?” I asked Ellis when we finally reached the open mouth of the jungle.
“Well, I think they are trying to expand the Shell. Most of the soldiers that I’ve met here are either trained mechanics or unspecified. There are many parts that have not been fully finished.”
“Unspecified?” I asked.
“Yeah, it usually just means that the person is untrained or too young to be trained in a particular area. They get to do all the grunt work.” She explained. She was looking at the forest as she answered me, her green eyes widening at the sight of the entrance, dark even in the bright daylight.
“But surely they wouldn't need more soldiers out here,” I don’t know why I kept pushing, but there was something strange. They must anticipate more people if they are trying to expand the Shell. That’s what our whole project was about. “There isn’t anything for them all to do,” I said, thinking of all the places that needed help. The Threshold apparently hadn’t reached here yet, so this was the one place where the IPA really wasn’t needed.
Ellis finally made eye contact with me, wrinkled her forehead and said, ”All I know is what I see, and it looks like they’ve been expanding.” She held up her hands as if to make peace. “I just do what I’m told.” She shrugged off the question.
That must be why I was sent to investigate how safe the area is. They were planning to move a large group of people into Sector 4.
We hiked into the forest, which began very abruptly. It was like passing through a veil, and though we left it unspoken, both of us were awed by it. It was greater and more inspiring than any cat
hedral, the light shining down as though filtered through green stained glass, a temple to a different sort of god.
I was happy to carry a lighter pack this time because the heat of the jungle was oppressive, and the heavy moisture in the air held us back. I pulled out the map and marked our location with the numeral 1.
“I’ll take the first sample from right here, close to the Shell.” I used a small tool to take a shallow core sample of the dark topsoil and I deposited it into the first container, which I marked with a matching number. Ellis reached into her bag as I took the sample and she pulled out a small camera. She took several photos of the area. That is what Adam must have meant by Documentation Specialist.
“Where did you go to school, Lane?” Ellis eyed me as I meticulously labeled the coordinates on my sample.
“The AATS,” I replied, not drawing out the name. Saying The Accelerated Academy for the Threshold Sciences made me feel like a pompous jerk. There were so many people who had wanted my spot, who were probably people much smarter than me and definitely more committed to the cause of the Global Peace Alliance. Ellis nodded indifferently.
Emergence: Threshold Series Book I Page 5
