by Chris Fox
“I think it’s even worse that that,” Blair said. He set his fork down meticulously and then folded his hands in his lap. “We were stalked by a werewolf that came out of the pyramid. He claimed to be inside the whole time that thing was buried, and from what I’ve seen I believe it’s true. He claims some sort of ancient enemy is coming. That we’re all in terrible danger. He says werewolves were created to serve as champions. So even if we do manage to contain this, there’s something worse coming.”
“Something worse?” Trevor asked. He took a liberal swallow of his juice. Blair didn’t know the guy well, but considering the subject, he seemed far too calm.
“Yes,” Liz interjected. She rested her elbows on the table, gesturing at Trevor with her fork. “We don’t know what, exactly. This werewolf claimed that the HIV virus was the key. He says it’s not new. He says it existed thousands of years ago. Many thousands, apparently.”
“If HIV is so ancient, why did we just discover it a few decades ago? Wouldn’t it have been there all along?” Trevor asked. He dabbed at his goatee with a napkin, a bit of egg spoiling his serious demeanor.
“That’s something you might be qualified to answer, actually,” Blair said, wolfing down a mouthful of eggs. They were hot but incredibly good. “Ahiga, that’s the old man, claimed that the virus thrives on sunlight. He compared it to plants. He says that we’ve entered a new age and that the sun is changing. He also said that a more massive change is coming soon. That we’re running out of time.”
“Shit,” Trevor said, setting his fork down. The blood had drained from his face.
“What is it?” Liz asked, laying a concerned hand on his forearm. Blair went cold. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what came next.
“Well, he’s definitely right about the sun changing. We’ve seen more activity in the last six months than in the previous two years. And the previous two years were more active than the previous ten. About six weeks ago a sunspot began developing. Normally they blow after a few days, maybe a week. This one is still growing,” Trevor explained, leaning back in his chair. “If this Ahiga is right, he could be talking about a coronal mass ejection far, far worse than the one back in 1989. If that’s the case, our power grid will be in shambles. It would be the perfect time for this ancient enemy to make an appearance. Or for an ever-growing army of werewolves to spread across the globe.”
“So if that’s the case, what can we do about it?” Blair asked, setting his fork down. He’d lost his appetite. “Is there a government agency we can warn or some emergency backup plan we can get them to activate?”
“Sort of. I can try contacting the agency I report to, warning them about what’s coming,” Trevor said, finishing his juice. He set down the empty glass, and he shuffled eggs across his plate. “The government definitely won’t listen. The group I’m a part of monitors CMEs, but we don’t have a plan in place for a massive event. Even if I did, we don’t have hard data to show them. Getting it is a serious problem just due to the nature of CMEs. They come in two parts. The first wave will hit earth about eight minutes after it leaves the sun. The second wave, the dangerous part, will arrive two to three days later. No one in the government will take a warning seriously until we see the first part. The best I can do is monitor for that.”
“The whole HIV thing will sound even more far-fetched,” Liz said, leaning back in her chair as she brushed a lock of hair from her face. “Those poor people have been persecuted for decades. Even if Ahiga is right, we have no proof. It will just sound like another unjustified rant from the religious right.”
Everyone was silent as they considered the implications. They knew what was going to happen but couldn’t convince anyone of the truth.
“So what can we do?” Blair finally asked.
“Hmm,” Trevor said. His face lit up a moment later. “Technically, I work for the government, but most of our budget comes from a grant from a private corporation. The government won’t listen, but they might. They make power substations. If there’s even a chance that a lot of their assets will be damaged, they will definitely want to know about it.”
“Until then we can try to determine if this werewolf thing is viral. Maybe understanding it will help stop it,” Liz said, nibbling on a piece of bacon. “That’s something people will listen to. Every government in the western hemisphere must be panicked about the attacks. If we can offer help understanding the cause, at least some of them have to listen.”
“After breakfast we’ll get cleaned up and head into town to get you some clothes,” Trevor said, picking up his plate and bringing it to the sink. “In the meantime I’ll call my friend Erik. I’ll see if he can overnight one of those CellScopes his startup makes so we can do some blood work. He works with a network of doctors, so if we upload the data Erik can probably have it analyzed pretty quickly.”
“All of that’s helpful, but we still need to decide on a long-term plan,” Blair said, wiping his mouth with a napkin and dropping the crumpled ball onto his plate. He couldn’t believe he was about to say this, “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think we need to return to Peru. Every answer we need is in that pyramid. Maybe even a way to stop the werewolves and this ancient enemy.”
“That place is still a death trap,” Liz said, standing to bring her plate to the sink where Trevor had begun washing dishes. “We’d still have to deal with Mohn.”
“I know,” Blair said, bringing his own plate. “But it’s the last thing they’d expect, right? We’ll have surprise on our side, plus the use of the new abilities we’ve been learning. Ahiga will help too, if we can find him.”
“You two want to go up against a fortified Mohn installation?” Trevor asked, shutting off the water and wiping his hands on a dishrag. “Liz is right. That’s suicide unless you get a whole lot more firepower than we have right now.”
“I think we should focus on learning what we can about the virus,” Liz said. “If it is a virus. That and whether or not we can prove that a solar event is coming. That doesn’t necessarily tell us what we need to do, but it’s something we have control over right now. We can at least get some answers, and then hopefully a solution will present itself.”
“That’s pretty much all you guys,” Blair said, suppressing a sigh. “There’s not much I’ll be able to contribute without access to the temple itself. I guess I’ll start compiling information on the attacks. At least we can figure out how quickly this is spreading and get some idea of what areas are affected.” It wasn’t the most valuable research, but it could prove useful. Doing that was better than sitting around.
“That could be important,” Trevor agreed, dropping the rag and heading toward the hallway. “I’m going to go call Erik.”
Trevor and Liz filed out of the room, voices fading down the hall. Blair sat at the table for several minutes, allowing the magnitude of the situation to wash over him. It was all so much to take in. He was lost and didn’t mind admitting it. The answer was the same as it had been every time he’d been overwhelmed in his life. Find something he could do that would move him toward his goal; then do it. When it was done, do something else. Complete enough small tasks and eventually he would reach that goal.
Unfortunately, for that method to work, he needed to know what his goal actually was. What did he want? Wake the Mother? Then what? The uncertainty was horrible. He simply didn’t know enough to make an informed decision.
If only Ahiga were here. Blair was finally ready to listen to the old man.
Chapter 52- We Have Them
Jordan unbuckled his pistol and dropped the sidearm atop the hastily erected desk, dropping onto the cot without bothering to kick off his boots. The sound of the rapidly expanding military base thrummed through the thin plastic wall, troops drilling overpowered by the whine of rotors as a helicopter landed. He didn’t care. That wasn’t going to keep him from sleeping.
Exhaustion didn’t even begin to describe the malaise that had crept into his body over the last f
ew days. It had dulled his reaction time enough that he’d finally decided getting a few hours of sleep was all right. The world was unlikely to self-destruct any more than it already had in the next four hours.
A timid knock sounded at the door. For fuck’s sake, he’d only been out of Ops for five minutes.
“What?” he roared, the single word imbued with all the hell he was about to bring down on the head of whomever had chosen this particular moment to bother him. He hoped it would be enough to scare them into coming back later. No such luck.
“Jordan?” A soft female voice called.
He forced himself into sitting position and reached over to yank the door open; then he dropped back onto the cot. “What do you want, Sheila?”
He’d grown to like the feisty scientist. There was more steel in her than almost every soldier in his command. Not even the Director seemed to intimidate her. Sure, her ire was focused on him more often than not, but her honest criticism was brutally refreshing.
She entered his tiny quarters, closing the door with a soft scraping and dropping into the folding chair next to the cot. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I needed to speak to you alone, and this is the first time I’ve seen you outside of the CIC.”
“It’s Ops,” he rumbled, not opening his eyes.
“What?”
“It’s Ops, not CIC,” he said, massaging his temples with his index fingers. “A CIC is found on a ship.”
“Ok, Ops,” Sheila corrected herself. The chair creaked as her weight shifted. She was silent for a moment. That got his attention. Sheila wasn’t one to hedge. She spoke her mind and didn’t care who heard.
Jordan opened his eyes and sat up, giving her a worried look.
“What’s going on, Sheila? You still upset about Steve?” he asked, the thought needling at something in the back of his mind. Something didn’t feel quite right about how that situation ended, but he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. Not precisely. The memory was fuzzy somehow.
“I checked NPR this morning,” she said, ignoring his question. Her hair was tousled from the wind, her overalls caked with two or three days worth of grime. “The attacks are everywhere. People are posting videos. It’s all over the news.”
“Yeah,” Jordan admitted with a defeated sigh. “It’s past the point of containment. There are reports of attacks all over the southwest, from Texas to California. Even a couple in Europe. I’m not really sure what we’re going to do now. Our only real hope is finding Smith, but I’m not sure even that would help.”
“It might. I’m not a geneticist, so I don’t know,” Sheila said, pursing her lips. “That’s not why I brought it up, though. I think the attacks are building toward something.”
“Building toward what?” he asked, running a hand over a face that felt like sandpaper. He was good about removing the stubble, but even that effort had slipped over the last few days.
“You remember me telling you about the Galactic Procession?” she asked, withdrawing a dusty handkerchief and blowing her nose. She looked like hell, now that he thought about it.
“Yeah, you thought the pyramid was programmed to come back at a certain time, but you weren’t sure why,” he said. He was still skeptical about that, but Sheila was damned smart and he was learning to trust her opinion.
“I’m more sure than ever, and I think I finally know why. There is a lot of sun symbology in the inner chamber. I think it corresponds to a calendar. If I’m right, the symbols show the sun changing somehow,” Sheila explained. She stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocket. “That makes a lot of sense. We know that climate has varied dramatically throughout the past. In fact we’ve only been in the current epoch for about twelve millennia.”
“That’s about how old you said the sediment covering the pyramid was, right?” he asked. He could see where she was going with this, and he was positive he didn’t like it.
“Exactly,” she said, straightening in the chair. A ghost of her fire returned. “Thirteen thousand years ago, Egypt was more grassland that desert. The Andes, where we’re standing right now, was a field of glaciers. Sea levels were three hundred feet lower. The world was a radically different place. Then it all changed in a blink of an eye. The previous epoch, the Pleistocene, lasted for two and a half million years.”
It was a lot to take in. He mulled over her words for long seconds before replying. “So what, you think this ancient culture predicted the change? What does that have to do with what’s going on now?”
“The Pleistocene wasn’t just one long ice age. There were warmer periods and cooler periods. It changed many, many times. I think the pyramid came back now because we’re about to go through another one of those changes,” Sheila explained.
Jordan tried to process it. Either he was more exhausted than he thought, or he was missing something. “So they predicted global warming and decided to get ready for it?”
“Something like that, yeah. If the previous epoch is any indication, it went from cold to colder. I’m betting that this epoch, our epoch, will go from warm to hot,” she mused, raising a hand to stifle a cough. Her skin had gone pale. Apparently he wasn’t the only exhausted one. “But believe it or not, that’s not why I came to see you, well not the only reason.”
“Then why?” he asked.
“Jordan, as I understand it, you were here at the exact instant the pyramid appeared,” she said, expression suggesting he should infer something obvious from her words.
“So?”
“So how the hell did Mohn Corp. know that the pyramid was coming back? If they knew that, then what do they know about what’s coming?” she asked.
The words kicked him in the gut, and he grunted at the near physical blow. She raised an excellent point. He’d wondered since the day they’d found this place how Mohn had known, but he’d missed the obvious. What else did they know? If Sheila was right and some big change was coming, they probably knew about it. The Director probably knew about it. And he hadn’t said a damn thing, not to the senior-most officer on-site.
Jordan tensed as his radio chirped. He hadn’t taken it from his belt when he’d lain down. A few calming breaths later, he plucked it from his side and spoke. “Go ahead.”
“Commander Jordan, we’ve got a hit,” came the excited voice of a communications analyst. Sooner or later he’d have to learn their names.
“I’m going to need more than that,” he growled with a bit more heat than he’d intended.
“Sir, do you remember the attack on the Peruvian coast? The one where Subject Alpha was spotted?” the voice said enthusiastically.
“Yeah,” he grunted, tugging at the neck of his tank top. The tight black fabric clung to him like a second skin, which wasn’t an accident. Tight clothing made it harder for an opponent to get a grip.
“We traced a phone call from where the attack took place. It was made to a residence in California. The same number just called in a report to HELIOS,” the analyst explained. Jordan was familiar with the division. It was a shell company Mohn used to fund scientific research at several of the top universities.
“What was the gist of the report?” he asked, straightening. The analyst might be on to something.
“Doctor Gregg claims that a sunspot has been growing for the last six weeks. Preliminary research confirmed the findings. He believes it could cause a global event.”
“Have you notified the Director?” Jordan asked, rising to his feet.
“Not yet. We weren’t sure if it was worth bothering him,” the analyst said, a note of unease entering his voice.
“It is. Prepare a full report on this Doctor Gregg. Find out who he knows in Peru that might have called him. Also, I want an assault team prepped,” Jordan ordered. He picked up his sidearm and buckled it around his thigh. “Then radio the Director and tell him that I need to speak to him immediately.”
Chapter 53- CellScope
Liz jumped as the computer began chirping an odd melody. She staggered b
ackward in a panic before she recognized it as an incoming Skype call. Trevor’s computer chair tumbled to the floor, the tan carpet thankfully muffling the clatter. She took a deep breath and then righted the chair. Liz reached for the mouse and tapped the little blue icon. It was a 510 number, and the contact had a picture of a smiling man in his mid thirties. Even though she’d been expecting the call her heart still galloped.
“Hello?” she said, sinking back into the chair. A video feed sprang to life, taking up most of the screen. It showed the man from the pictures, dark haired with an enthusiastic smile. He wore a bright blue T-shirt with the word CellScope emblazoned across the chest in white.
“Hi, Liz?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. In the background she could see several people moving between desks in a spacious office. The man continued before she could respond. “I’m Erik. Trevor said you were expecting my call.”
“Uh yeah, that’s me,” she answered, giving a shy smile. She knew it was shy, because the chat program showed a miniature feed of her in the corner. Sometimes she hated technology. What was wrong with using a phone?
“Did you get my package?” Erik asked. A short blond woman entered the corner of the screen. She offered Erik a sandwich wrapped in white paper with a red Jimmy John’s logo. Erik nodded his thanks before turning back to face to her.
“Yes, it arrived this morning. Trevor had to head out on an errand, but he set it up before he left,” she replied. Liz glanced at the far side of the table where the odd device lay. It was roughly the size of a loaf of bread, with a tray on top where the user could insert a microscope slide. A black plastic housing had been built into the blocky base, which held Trevor’s iPhone. The name CellScope definitely made sense.
“Great,” Erik answered, his smile infectious. “Trevor says you need a blood sample analyzed. He says it could be an entirely new disease. Have you taken the sample yet?”
“Yes, I have several of them,” she said, moving her hand to a row of covered slides she’d laid out near the base of the CellScope.
