Kill Switch

by Jonathan Maberry

  Greene nodded. “That is an appealing thought, of course. An end to the cause of war. By inference it would cancel out greed because there would be no limit to the things one person could possess.”

  Prospero brightened and nodded enthusiastically. “Then you do get it.”

  “I understand the benefits of such a scenario,” said the doctor. “But it’s a dream, Prospero, and dreams are only dreams.”

  “That’s just it,” said Prospero, a strange light igniting in his eyes. “What if they’re not dreams? What if, when we dream, we’re somehow looking from our world into another world? What if everything people dream is that? What if all dreams, no matter how weird or wild or crazy, are people seeing other versions of the world, other universes where maybe the same rules of physics don’t apply?”

  The boy leaned forward, his fists clenched.

  “Doc, that’s what is going on in my dreams,” he continued, his voice dropping to a terse whisper. “The people of my world, the gods of my world, and even the slaves—the shoggoths—they all whisper to me. They want me to build the God Machine. They know I can do it. They want me to come home.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE VINSON MASSIF

  THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS

  ANTARCTICA

  AUGUST 19, 10:55 P.M.

  A city?

  It made no sense.

  None.

  Bunny said, “Who built this?”

  “No one,” whispered Top. “You know how deep we are, Farm Boy? We’re beneath a hundred million goddamn years of ice. Maybe twice that. No one had ever built no city down here. No one ever lived here.”

  The presence of the city—the sheer scope and complexity of it—made a lie of Top’s words.

  We stood there, dwarfed by it. It was as if the builders of ancient Egypt had constructed a megalopolis on the scale of New York or Hong Kong. Only bigger. Much, much bigger. We stopped talking about what we were seeing. It was an impossible conversation, and the echoes of our voices seemed incredibly tiny in that vastness. It made us feel like ants. It took us ten more minutes to reach the bottom of the slope.

  “All that excavation equipment,” murmured Top. “And the tunnel we followed to get down here. Erskine and his crew were looking for this. Maybe the Chinese and Russians, too.”

  “How’d they know?” wondered Bunny. “With all the iron in the rock, they couldn’t have seen it with ground-penetrating radar. How’d they know it was here, Top? How’d they know?”

  Top shook his head. “That’s one more question to add to a long damn list.”

  He cut a sideways look at me as he said that.

  Fair enough. I needed those same answers, and for the same reasons.

  “Spread out and scout the area,” I ordered.

  Aside from a confusion of bloody footprints and a few pieces of dropped or discarded gear, we saw no further traces of people down here. That should have been a comfort, but it wasn’t.

  Top called, “Hey, Cap’n, you seeing this?”

  “Yeah,” I said, gaping at the city. “Of course I see—”

  “No,” he said, “over there.” He pointed to a space between two of the titanic blocks. I hadn’t noticed it at first because it was nestled closer to the ground and was dwarfed by this impossible architecture. There, half-hidden in shadows, was a machine. We approached it with caution. My heart was still beating wildly and there was cold sweat on my upper lip.

  Bunny stumbled a couple of times because he kept looking at the city instead of where he was going. Guess I wasn’t the only one who was out of it. And that was deeply troubling. Even with everything we were seeing, we were above becoming slack-jawed tourists. Except right now that’s what we were.

  “Get your fat head out of your white ass, Farm Boy,” snapped Top.

  Bunny twitched and gave Top a brief, blank stare that showed a lot of fear and a lot of incomprehension, then his eyes cleared and he nodded.

  “This is nuts,” he murmured.

  “Well, no shit,” said Top. He was trying to sound casual, offhand. He didn’t. There was a quaver in his voice.

  “Come on,” I said, walking down a steep granite slope toward the object. Our shoes had gum-rubber soles but they still managed to send rhythmic echoes up into the frigid air, and distance warped the sounds as they bounced back to us. The noise sounded like the muffled heartbeat of some sleeping thing.

  Because everything down there was on such a cyclopean scale, it took longer to reach the machine than I expected. And when we got there it was larger than I thought. It was built like the mouth of a tunnel, thirty feet high, with a series of inner rings that stepped back at irregular intervals. The primary structure looked to be made of steel, but there were other metals, too. Lots of exposed copper, some crude iron bands, gleaming alloy bolts, and long circular strips of what looked like gold. Heavy black rubber-coated cables were entwined with the rings of metal, and coaxial cables as thick as my thigh snaked along the ground and ran farther down the slope to where a series of heavy industrial generators were positioned on a flat stone pad. Sixteen generators. Lots of power.

  The tunnel stretched back so far it disappeared into darkness. Top shone his flashlight down the gullet but the beam simply faded out after fifty yards. I leaned around the outside to see that the tunnel was built into the wall. There were blast and drill marks on the stone to show that they had bored into the heart-stone of the mountain. The throat of the machine looked like it ran deep into the bedrock.

  “What the hell is this?” asked Bunny.

  Top cut me a look. “Hadron collider? I mean, what else it could be?”

  Bunny touched the bundles of copper wire. “Doesn’t look right, does it? Different than the big one at CERN. I read about that.”

  “So you’re an expert in damn collider design now, Farm Boy?” Top smacked Bunny’s hand away from the machine. “Don’t touch nothing. We don’t know shit about this thing. Might be something nuclear. Don’t know, can’t say, so don’t touch. Besides, you already been bitch-slapped by a mutant penguin. You want to get your balls blown off, too? No? Good, then stop getting grabby.”

  “Copy that,” said Bunny, taking his hand back.

  I tapped my earbud for Bug. It took a few tries and when he came on the line I couldn’t understand a word he said because of the static.

  “Cowboy to Bug, do you copy?” I said it again and again. Static. Maybe a fragment of a word. Nothing I could understand. Just in case it was my gear I had Top and Bunny call in. Same thing. And we couldn’t hear each other on the team channel. We stood for a moment in silent frustration.

  Top said, “Interference? Iron in the mountains could be eating the signal.”

  “What’s the play?”

  “Take some pictures and then we’ll leave it alone,” I said. “We have bigger fish to fry.”

  “Like finding out why everybody lost their damn minds,” said Top. “And whether we’re at war with Russia and China. Little stuff like that.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Little stuff like that. Kind of interested to know where the hell Erskine and the rest of the Gateway geeks are.”

  “Kind of thinking they’re somewhere with their throats cut,” said Top.

  “Maybe. But there were our own people mixed in with the Chinese and Russians. I’m actually not leaning toward this being an invasion. More like a shared problem.”

  He nodded, looking unhappy. “Some kind of bioweapon that messes with people’s heads?”

  “Or something,” I said, nodding.

  “Sheee-eeee-eeee-it,” he said, dragging it all the way out.

  “Okay,” said Bunny, “but what do we want to do about the city? Are we going into it?”

  “Not unless we have to,” I said. “Let’s document this machine, then find the Gateway team.”

  “When we do,” said Top, “I’m going to be okay with beating some answers out of someone. I’m going to go ugly on them and make it hurt.�
��

  “Hooah,” said Bunny.

  “I’m in,” I agreed.

  We each took out small but powerful ultra-high-res cameras and began documenting everything. The machine, the city, everything.

  As he worked, Bunny very quietly said, “Do not let my calm, cool exterior fool you gentlemen. I am a really short step away from freaking the fuck out.”

  Top was leaning in to take flash pictures of the interior of the big machine. “Hell, Farm Boy, don’t go thinking you hold the patent on being sphincter-clenching scared. I would give your left nut to be ten thousand miles away from right here.”

  “Is ten thousand miles really far enough?” mused Bunny.

  The cameras went flash-flash-flash. Water dripped behind us, somewhere in the city. And several times I heard the soft, shuffling feet of heavy and awkward bodies. I couldn’t see more of the penguins, but we could smell them. Bunny kept throwing uneasy glances over his shoulder. His face and shirt were still stained with his blood. It’s always hard to keep your best game face bolted on when you’ve already been hurt by something this strange. It didn’t help that our intel didn’t match the situation on the ground. Or that we had no way to get fresh orders. Normally I don’t mind operating without a leash, but this was beyond me.

  It was beyond anything I could have imagined. The plots of nine hundred science fiction movies began rumbling through my head. Bunch of guys trapped in a remote place with inexplicable weirdness. Some unseen force picking everyone off one at a time. Those things never end well.

  Top pointed into the opening of the machine. There was a tunnel that ran backward into shadows. “Looks like this thing curves down. There’s something just over the edge but I can’t get a shot. Think it’s safe to stand up on the edge to get a better—?”

  Before he could finish, the machine suddenly pulsed. No other word for it. There was a sound like the electrical kick of a starter. A growl that was cut off almost at once. And for a split second the first dozen rings of the tunnel flashed as LED lights hidden in the recesses throbbed once.

  Then … again.

  A third time. Each time there was that chunk sound, as of a giant engine trying to start and failing.

  If that’s what it was.

  “Damn it, Farm Boy,” bellowed Top, “what did you touch?”

  But Bunny was standing on the far side, twenty feet back from the mouth of the tunnel, camera raised to take a wide-angle picture. “I didn’t touch anything.”

  The lights and sound pulsed once more and then paused. That’s how it felt. A pause. The activity did not feel as if it actually stopped. There was a feeling of awful anticipation as the whole cavern suddenly fell silent. Bunny hurried over and we stood there, staring down into the tunnel of darkness.

  “What the hell—?” began Bunny, and then his words were also cut short as a thousand lights suddenly flared on with a brilliance so intense that it was like being stabbed through the brain. It was an almost physical blow and we all cried out and staggered back. As we stumbled, we all tried to turn and run.

  But we weren’t fast enough.

  Out of the depths of that black throat came a massive exhalation of foul air that struck us with hurricane force, plucked us off our feet, and hurled us up the slope. That air was thick and humid and smelled of rotting meat. It exhaled at us as if the tunnel was the throat of some great carnivore. We were big men carrying heavy equipment, but in that belch of black wind we were nothing and it vomited us from the entrance. We hit hard on the stone ramp and rolled a dozen feet. I tried not to breathe in that foul wind, but the impact knocked the air out of my lungs and I gulped in a breath through sheer reflex. It was horrible. It was the worst smell, the worst taste I’ve ever experienced, and as soon as I stopped sliding I rolled over, tore the balaclava away from my mouth just in time, and vomited. I could hear Top and Bunny retching, too. The whole world seemed to swirl around me and my stomach heaved again. And again. Even when my stomach was empty I could not get that terrible taste of rotting meat out of my mouth.

  The machine pulsed once more, and light flooded the cavern, bleaching out all colors, casting everything into sharp lines of black and white. The light was so monstrously intense it felt like I was being burned by it.

  Then …

  Nothing.

  The light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The pulsing machine noise stopped and there was some indefinable quality to the silence that let me know that whatever this was … had stopped.

  Our flashlights and BAMS units and everything else, every piece of equipment we owned, went dead.

  We damn near went dead, too. I slumped down, feeling spent and sick and weak. Feeling swatted flat. Feeling like nothing at all. Bunny groaned and flopped over on his back. Top was on hands and knees, head hung, lips slack and wet, eyes bugged and staring.

  I turned my head …

  … and …

  … looked at myself.

  No, it wasn’t a reflection.

  I was on hands and knees looking at my body, my face, my own eyes staring back at me with total shock. The other me flinched back away.

  “Wh-what—what the fuck…?” I said.

  Or, he said with my mouth and my voice.

  I—the other me—was still on hands and knees. I raised one hand and reached out toward him. Toward me.

  There isn’t a way to say this because there wasn’t any way to be this. My brain felt different. There were other thoughts in there that weren’t my thoughts.

  I saw Lydia Ruiz, one of the most senior members of Echo Team, there. Laughing. Wearing only bra and panties as she walked across the bedroom floor toward the bathroom.

  Only it wasn’t my bedroom. I’ve seen Lydia in her underwear before. I’ve seen her naked once when we all had to strip out of contaminated clothes. But not like this. She was in frilly underclothes, not the plainer stuff she wore when going to war. She was singing along with a Bruno Mars song, translating it into Spanish as she sang. Then she unhooked her bra and hung it over the doorknob as she entered the bathroom and leaned in to turn on the tap.

  I wanted to look away. I really did. This was not mine to see. This was not anyone’s to see. Not even Bunny, who was her live-in lover. Lydia was in a private moment and my being there—however and in whatever way I was there—was an intrusive and violative act.

  I said, “No!”

  But I did not say it in my own voice. I said it in Bunny’s voice.

  The me over there gaped at the me here. I blinked.

  And then it was me—inside my own flesh—staring at a bug-eyed Bunny who knelt nearby, one hand extended toward me, confusion and terror in his eyes. He collapsed flat on his chest and his eyes glazed. I fell over onto my side. Now that memory of Bunny’s had somehow followed me.…

  Followed me where exactly? Home? Back?

  I mean … what the Christ just happened?

  The memory of seeing Lydia in that private moment made me feel grubby, like a peeping Tom. That was not for me to see. It did not belong to my experience. And yet the memory was there. Fading … but there.

  I closed my eyes. This was a dream. I was probably concussed. Or something. It wasn’t real. Could not be, no matter how real it felt in the moment.

  I lay there, uncertain of how to even think.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE SECOND PULSE

  BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW LIBRARY

  765 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSSETS

  FOUR MONTHS AGO

  The candidates stood behind a curved row of podiums. Seven in all, each from different states but all from the same party. All vying for the same party endorsement and the same office. Each of them holding forth on why they—and definitely not their colleagues, and in some cases friends—should become the most powerful man on Earth.

  The moderator, Wilson Fryers, was the dean of the university’s law college, and was both a son and nephew of multiterm congressmen. His textbooks crossed the line
to become bestsellers, and his latest, Thinking It Through: Smart Politics for the 21st Century, had jumped back to the New York Times and USA Today lists as soon as this debate had been announced. Because of his firm hand with the candidates and his challenging questions, he was currently trending higher on social media than any of the six men and one woman who were trying to sell themselves to the voting public.

  The auditorium was packed, with handpicked political science undergrads in the front rows and a lottery selection of students, press, and celebrities filling out the rest of the seats. Secret Service agents were stationed around the room and, Fryers knew, dressed in plainclothes and seeded through the audience. The debate was the last before the national convention, and the millions watching knew, as Fryers did, that this was going to come down to two key players. So far there was an even odds split on which of them was likely to get the full party endorsement. The trajectory of this debate would almost certainly settle that.

  “Next question,” said Fryers. “Remember, please, that each of you will have two minutes for your statement and then we will open it up to the audience for follow-up questions.”

  The candidates nodded, though some of them were obviously wary. The questions from the audience had been vicious. Polite, but uncompromising. Fryers loved poli-sci majors. No one asks a harder question, and most of them were better schooled in politics than the gameplayers on the stage. The disparity between what these kids wanted to know and the politicians were willing or able to say was obvious. And embarrassing. Fryers felt like Caligula at the games. There was blood on the sand and the lions were still hungry.

  “This question is on immigration,” said Fryers, and he saw the flinches. He could imagine seven sphincters suddenly tightening. Nobody in politics wants to field open questions on immigration. It was an enduring hot-button issue and when things were this deep into the primary process, there was no more room for verbal gaffes. Just as there was absolutely no sage answer. No matter what a candidate said it would polarize a portion of the national audience. Fryers was sure that if he asked if the sky was blue, the politicians would have a similar hesitancy, because somewhere out there was a lobby group, religious group, environmental group, or special interest group who fundamentally disagreed. It was maddening, unless you were the moderator and any kind of controversy jumped your social media and book sale numbers.