Quiz grabbed the crystal housing Dante’s energy and put it into his backpack with the others.
He then fell to the floor and passed out.
Titan Six
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
The amber liquid was running into the veins of Titan Six as Dr. Beemler monitored the Sentient Assimilation.
“I feel awful,” said Gator.
“I’d forgotten what life was like without the enhancements,” Tank said in a weak voice.
“It’s like withdrawal,” said Aiko. “Every inch of my body aches.”
Hawkeye was feverish and sweating profusely. He knew that Titan Four was probably inside the cube, searching for his team, but he wasn’t going to give the others verbal encouragement in front of Beemler so that the scientist could alert more of the foreign commandos. Things were out of his hands. Powerlessness was not a feeling Michael Hawke was accustomed to. All Titan teams were masters at executing the impossible, of extricating themselves from almost any problem that confronted them.
“Be brave,” Hawkeye muttered.
It was the only thing he could think of to say.
Titan Four
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
Titan Four had ridden the elevator thirty-six levels higher. They were fired upon as soon as they stepped from the cylindrical transportation.
Machine guns roared to life on both sides. Commandos fell quickly, blood splashing onto the cube’s metallic walls amid the raucous gunfire.
Eagle Eye clenched his teeth, eyes shut, and doubled over. His body was a study in pain and shock. He tumbled forward to the floor with a groan.
“Eagle is down!” Blade yelled, still firing his laser rifle at Sents.
“His life signs are falling rapidly!” DJ said. “Activating BioMEMS.”
“Where is Titan Six?” Blade asked, breathing hard.
“Ninety degrees to your right,” DJ answered.
“Got it,” Blade said.
“Blade!”
It was the voice of Grace Nguyen on the COM.
“What, Grace?”
“Eagle Eye is flatlining. Get some epi from your med kit and give him a dose. Stat!”
“Epinephrine,” Blade said, retrieving the preloaded syringe from his kit. He administered the dose in the side of Eagle Eye’s neck directly below the ear.
The fallen soldier opened his eyes as he attempted to speak, but he could produce no words. His neck muscles were rigid.
“Massive trauma to his chest,” Demon reported.
“Do you want me to administer another dose, Ops?” asked Blade. “We’re losing him!”
A long moment of silence ensued.
“We’ve already lost him,” Grace said with resignation. “He’s dead.”
Touchdown
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
Touchdown exited the elevator and stopped, unsure where to go.
“Quiz is one hundred meters to your left,” DJ said, “but there are about fifteen soldiers heading towards the library.”
“Roger that,” Touchdown said.
Touchdown stepped through several portals and entered a hallway. After moving twenty paces, he craned his neck around the corner and saw the fifteen commandos standing outside the Library of the Ancients. He wasn’t going to take them on, even with a machine gun. He was hopelessly outnumbered.
“Ops,” said Touchdown, “the commandos appear to be using some kind of particle beam to seal off the library. There’s a portal there, but it’s shrinking. They seem to be ionizing the wall to make it impermeable. I guess they figure they need to protect the most important place in the cube given Titan’s multiple breaches in their underground secret.”
“You know what to do,” Caine said.
“Yes, ma’am. I certainly do.”
Touchdown reached into his backpack and removed three canisters of nerve gas. Activating them, he leaned over and tossed them at the soldiers.
A sickly green gas quickly spread throughout the area. A few soldiers tried to cover their noses and mouths or simply flee, but the gas was fast-acting. All commandos were on the floor within seconds, bodies contorted in strange positions.
“They’re alive but paralyzed,” Touchdown reported. “Now — to get into the library.”
Touchdown again reached into his backpack and plucked out a concussion grenade. He pulled the pin and hurled it at the wall.
The explosion knocked Touchdown to the floor. The walls shimmered, turned transparent, and then blew outward.
“Good God!” Touchdown exclaimed. “What’s left of the wall is bleeding. The metallic surface is literally leaking liquids of every color.”
“Spare the description,” Caine ordered. “Just find Quiz.”
Touchdown ran through the jagged opening created by the grenade. He found Quiz on the floor, unconscious between two tall rows of crystals carefully stored in latticework structures that extended far into the distance.
Kneeling next to Quiz’s prostrate body, Touchdown opened the aluminum case and retrieved three syringes, which were labeled 1, 2, and 3.
“They’re DNA proteins,” Grace said. “The Genesis Code provided us with the key to counteracting the cellular degradation. Administer them in order. They’ll take a while to work.”
“Already doing it,” Touchdown said.
After the third injection, Touchdown picked up Quiz’s body and gear and slung them over his back. “Come on, little buddy. You’re coming with me.”
Titan Four
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
Blade sighed and stood tall. He was in command, and it was his job to keep the mission on track.
“Heads in the game, people,” he said. “We need to get Titan Six. We can mourn Eagle Eye later.”
His team looked at him, silent and grim.
“Titan Six is in the room to your right,” DJ said.
“There’s no portal,” Blade remarked.
“Touchdown had great success with a concussion grenade,” Caine said. “Move in.”
“The blast could hurt or kill T6,” Demon said.
“You have your orders,” Caine said. “Your primary goal is to destroy the cube. I’ll give you one chance to rescue Titan Six. Go for it. Now.”
Blade lobbed a concussion grenade at the silver wall. The wall vibrated, moving forwards and backwards like a quivering sheet of metal, before exploding. Titan Four immediately spotted T6 lying on slabs.
Hans Beemler and Thomas Burmaster pivoted towards the gaping hole in the wall, their faces painted with the pale color of panic.
“Back-up troops!” Burmaster shouted. “Report to the main lab now!”
Blade led the charge into the laboratory.
“Reach up and start the second drip!” Burmaster called to Beemler.
Both Senex members attempted to turn the valves on the IVs for the next infusion in the Sentient Assimilation Procedure.
Demon and Jet attacked Beemler and Burmaster respectively.
Demon, shoulder down, drove Beemler against the wall. Jet grabbed Burmaster by the throat and landed a solid right hook on the General’s jaw. Burmaster winced and lost his balance.
Blade and Tomahawk leveled their weapons at the two Senex members.
“Move and you’re dead, gentlemen,” Blade announced. “We’re starting to get annoyed with you people.”
“Unhook us,” Hawkeye said. “And get us our helmets.”
A loud wail came from the last slab on the right.
“My hand!” cried Gator. “I can’t feel my hand!”
Titan Six, minus Gator, jumped off the slabs and donned their helmets and gear.
Hawkeye froze when he saw Gator. Color drained from the team leader’s face. The machine gunner couldn’t feel his hand because his hand was no longer attached to his body. It was lying on the floor, fingers twitching.”
“Ops, this is Hawkeye. A piece of shrapnel severed Gator’s right hand.”
“Get the hand
and bag it for reattachment,” Nguyen said. “Bandage the wound while we activate Gator’s BioMEMS.”
“I’ll apply pressure and cauterize the wound,” Hawkeye said, “but we no longer have any nanobots in our bloodstreams.”
“What!” yelled Caine.
“Beemler and Burmaster tried turning us into Sents. Step One destroyed our BioMEMS.”
“Shit!” Grace said. “Give him morphine from your med kit.”
“Titan Four and Six, go to the control room at the top,” Caine said. “The central power source for the cube is located next to the control room. Deploy the plasma weapon on a time delay and then get the hell out of there and back on a maglev. Touchdown will rendezvous with you down below. Let’s have some . . . resolution.”
Demon cuffed Burmaster and Beemler while Tank and Shooter lifted Gator.
Blade turned to Jet. “Pick up Eagle Eye and carry him over your shoulder. We don’t leave anyone behind. Esprit de Corps. We’re taking him home.”
The Titan teams exited the lab.
Touchdown
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
Touchdown raced through a labyrinth of corridors as DJ steered him away from commandos swarming through the cube.
“Get down to the SURP Station,” Caine said. “Wait for Titan Four and Six.”
Touchdown stumbled, dropping Quiz and rolling over on his back. As he hit the floor, he heard the sound of glass breaking.
He knelt by Quiz and his gear. Opening the flap of the young man’s backpack, he saw several dozen crystals and glass disks. A crystal near the top had shattered.
“Keep moving,” Caine said. “We’ve had enough casualties. I don’t need another. Now, Touchdown!”
Casualties? Touchdown wondered what was happening in the levels above him.
He picked up Quiz and the backpack. He’d get the full story later, assuming anyone made it out of the station alive.
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
A man stepped into the glare occupied by Admiral McManus and the man in black. He wore a dark Armani suit and was well groomed. His shiny black hair was combed straight back, away from youthful olive features.
“I had high hopes for you,” McManus said, stepping forward so that Gwen could see his face clearly. “You career could have advanced farther than you ever dreamed.”
“Not in some covert government that I have no allegiance to,” Gwen countered.
“You’ll never understand what Senex really is or what it does,” McManus said. “Your time on this earth is coming to a rapid close.”
Gwen scowled at the self-righteous tone of her boss. “Don’t try to fool me about the happy, carefree relocation of my family to Colorado. You’ve wanted me for yourself the entire time I’ve worked at the CIA. In Colorado, it’s Ben who would have been killed, with some burnt body being identified as his in a car accident.”
McManus clapped slowly and mockingly. “Since you’re about to die, I won’t lie. Yes, I was going to have Ben killed. I think we could have been a successful couple.”
“You’re a lecherous madman,” Gwen said. “And a narcissist.” Gwen smiled sarcastically. “You don’t mind my being truthful since I’m about to die, do you?”
McManus frowned but made no reply.
He turned to the man with the Armani suit. “It’s time.”
McManus stepped back as the man took a handgun from a shoulder holster concealed by his suit coat. It was a dark, long-barreled pistol with a silencer attached.
Titan Four and Titan Six
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
Titan Six once again stood next to the blown-out rectangular window that admitted a view of the cube’s control room.
“The central facility powering the cube is adjacent to the control room,” DJ explained.
Aiko walked to the right where the ever-present hydrogen symbol was embossed on the wall. She pushed it nine times, causing a portal to appear.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said, her mouth open in astonishment. “It’s — ”
“It’s a reactor,” Tank said, staring at a large glass sphere in the center of the cube’s power generation headquarters. “It’s connected by titanium rods to conduits spreading out in dozens of directions.”
“It’s more than just a regular reactor,” Ambergris said. “It’s fusion, a source of power that humans haven’t been able to achieve on any mass scale.”
“Like the sun fusing two atoms of hydrogen to create helium,” said Aiko.
“Right,” said Ambergris. “Fusion in the sun unleashes huge quantities of energy. It’s what keeps us all alive. On earth, scientists are trying to fuse deuterium with tritium. From the readings we’re getting in Ops, it’s what people on earth tried thousands of years ago, only successfully.”
“There’s mention of fusion in The Genesis Code,” Nguyen said, “although we haven’t decoded all of the complex steps necessary to accomplish it ourselves.”
“The energy released in fusion is in the form of extremely hot plasma,” Ambergris said. “If you can release Resolution into the conduits, it should destabilize the existing plasma that the glass sphere is sending to every part of the living cube.”
“Sounds like we could blow away most of Colorado,” said Shooter.
“The cube will be heated by thousand of degrees,” said Ambergris. “There will be an explosion, and then the structure will implode, cool, and degrade into inert elements. The Rocky Mountains will feel a few tremors, but nothing serious.”
“Such a waste,” said Hawkeye, “but Senex is insidious enough as it is without having technology that could make it invulnerable. Let’s rig Resolution for detonation.”
Tomahawk hooked the weapon, no larger than a small carry-on suitcase, to the glass sphere and twelve metal conduits. He typed several instructions on the bomb’s keypad, causing red and green lights to suddenly appear on the exterior of the black metal case.
“Armed and loaded,” Tomahawk informed the teams. “All I need is the correct timing delay before this thing kicks in and feeds plasma to the cube.”
“Maglev trains are advancing on SURP Station 872 from the east,” DJ said. “More troops. Senex knows the facility is in jeopardy. ETA for the reinforcements is forty minutes.”
“Set Resolution for thirty minutes,” Caine said.
“That’s cutting it close,” cautioned Hawkeye. “We have to get out of here and clear of the station down below before it blows. Our safety margin isn’t very large. We need to board the maglev in no less than twenty minutes and then hightail it west.”
“Then I suggest you start to exit,” Caine said. “Rendezvous with Touchdown and Quiz and then push the maglev to its limit.”
“Affirmative, Ops,” said Hawkeye.
Touchdown and Quiz
Surp Station 872
Touchdown, carrying Quiz and extra gear, exited the cube and walked towards the maglev. Within seconds, however, he found himself backpedaling. A line of five sentinels marched from the shadows, their photon tubes charged.
Touchdown knelt slowly and gently laid Quiz on the concrete platform, not daring to take his eyes from the Sents. He had five seconds, maybe ten, before the creatures fired their weapons. He slowly reached for the laser rifle attached to his backpack.
He was in the act of bringing it forward when the tubes of two Sents glowed brightly, discharging their photons.
Touchdown fell sideways, unconscious. Quiz’s body, already immobile, convulsed in a brief spasm and remained motionless.
The Sents then marched down the corridor to the exterior of the cube. They stood in a straight line facing the hydrogen symbol and currently invisible arched portal by which Titan Six had entered the cube. They were obviously waiting for people to exit the massive structure.
Ops Center
Beneath Mount Whitney
“I’ve got something, Mrs. Caine,” said DJ, staring intently at one of her monit
ors.
“Shoot,” Caine said.
“I’ve been trying to get a steady reading on the cube’s energy signature since the mission started, but the energy coming from that monster is naturally massive, plus the readings have been erratic. But I tried something after listening to Joshua talk about fusion. Take a look at this.”
Caine studied DJ’s monitor.
“I recalibrated my sensors to look for deuterium,” DJ continued. “I wasn’t looking for it before since it’s only one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen, but not the most common. It has a neutron, the other isotope doesn’t. It was hiding in the hydrogen band.”
DJ pointed to a small spike on the bandwidth showing the chemical composition of the cube — the various elements from the periodic table.
“Impressive,” said Caine, “but what’s the significance?”
DJ looked over her shoulder at the Titan CEO. “I may be able to tap into the cube’s energy grid if necessary.”
“Good work, but it might be a case of too little too late,” Caine said. “Our teams need to be clear of the cube in a matter of minutes.”
Titan Four and Titan Six
The Cube beneath Mount Elbert
Titan Four and Titan Six descended with their prisoners in one of the many cylindrical elevators inside the cube. An unpleasant voice suddenly spoke through a speaker at the top of the tube. It was Allan Marshall.
“Forgive me, Thomas and Hans,” said Marshall, “but I have to stop Titan Global from debriefing you. More importantly, I can’t take the chance that they’ll return to their floating base and spread the word about Senex, even if in general terms. They know too much already.”
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