Forsaken

by Michael McBride

  Regardless of the mechanism, it was the nature of the booby trap that concerned Evans. Why had the bodies of these supposed gods been entombed where no one was likely to ever find them and why had they been left guarded by a species that would no doubt slaughter whoever came in search of the remains? Was it because they didn’t want grave robbers to disturb the eternal rest of their gods, or was it because they feared what might happen if their gods ever got out? The Teotihuacano had called theirs the “sleeping god,” which, by the mere definition of the term, suggested there was also a waking state. As absurd as it sounded, it was that notion that had brought him down here from his accommodations on Level 1.

  Evans turned toward the opposite dry-erase board and leaned on his crutch, which he absolutely despised. It chafed his armpit and made him feel like an invalid, but it was far better than the alternative. His entire right leg was immobilized in a soft cast while his injuries healed. The surgeon had done a remarkable job of repairing the muscle and closing the wounds, or so he had told Evans multiple times, although they still itched like nobody’s business.

  He stared at the statue of the woman with the snout and antlers of a deer. While they had assumed the corpse in the sarcophagus Dr. Bly discovered was male, it could just as easily have been female, and the once-living embodiment of this stone goddess. Two deities from this pantheon, both similarly entombed and guarded by creatures capable of overcoming any of the weapons of the time, linked by the discovery of their tombs thousands of miles apart and mysteriously connected by the activation of a pyramid beneath the Antarctic ice. Both gods were immortalized in the Grand Gallery outside the chamber responsible for the physical metamorphosis of Subject Z, the very creature that had dispatched one of its drones to the burial site of the Feathered Serpent God in Mexico and somehow infected Les Dutton to effect its own escape from FOB Atlantis, along with the body of this very stag-faced woman. But not without first slitting the throat of its drone and spilling its blood onto her remains.

  While Evans had been beating his head against the wall trying to figure out why, Jade had made the connection. The legs in Bly’s video had provided the answer. When Subject Z had lifted the ancient remains from the sarcophagus, the legs had dangled from its arm, while those of a mummified corpse would have been brittle and incapable of bending at the knees without someone physically breaking them.

  Again, he thought of the inscription above the maze. If the creatures left to defend the sarcophagus had merely been in an extended period of suspended animation, was it so hard to believe that the gods themselves weren’t, as well? And if that were the case, then were these sleeping gods even human at all?

  Evans feared that the answer, as insane as it sounded, was of great consequence.

  Prior to the events in Antarctica, he would have laughed at the mere suggestion that an alien race had ever visited the Earth. But now that he’d seen the proof of it with his own eyes, he could feel the threat it posed at the very heart of his being, and he was forced to contemplate the reason these beings had come in the first place, which—if the drone that spoke in the voice of Hollis Richards were to be believed—was nothing shy of enacting the end of the world.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Jade’s voice startled him. He turned to find her standing in the doorway with an apple in either hand. He shook his head, but gratefully accepted her gesture anyway.

  Jade joined him in his re-creation of the Grand Gallery and looked over the photographs of the sculptures.

  “Do you think they’re real?” she asked.

  “Of course. I saw them with my own eyes. Probably even took these pictures.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.” She looked him in the eyes when she spoke, as though searching inside of him for an answer beyond that conveyed by his words. “Do you think they’re really gods?”

  “Gods?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Do I think they’re real and not products of fiction? Yeah, probably. But do I think they are omnipotent beings descended from the sky . . . ?”

  He didn’t know how to finish his thought, so he let his words dissipate into the silence.

  Jade nodded.

  “I’m not sure what I think, either.”

  She gazed around the rest of the largely empty room. It wasn’t until that very moment that Evans realized he’d already made plans for what to do with the rest of what he inwardly thought of as his office.

  “Barnett offered to fly me back to Nigeria,” she said.

  “Are you going to take him up on it?”

  “As much as I want to help the UN and the people of Africa, I don’t know if I can just step back into that life, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Evans said. “It seems almost unreal now, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled wistfully and disappeared inside of herself for a moment. It was a rare unguarded moment for a woman who was the living embodiment of a fortification.

  “So what comes next?” he asked.

  “The remains of Hollis Richards are scheduled for autopsy tonight. I’ve already gotten authorization to participate.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Evans held her hand. It took her several moments to meet his stare.

  “I thought you were leaving,” she said.

  “So did I.”

  “It’s what Hollis said, isn’t it? You believe him, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  She smirked.

  “That makes two of us. If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be in a secret underground bunker waiting to do an alien autopsy, I’d have probably laughed myself to tears. And yet”—she gestured with open arms to the room around her—“here I am.”

  “Here you are,” he said, and pulled her closer.

  “Everything changes if we go down this road,” she said.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  Evans slid his fingers through her hair, cupped the base of her skull, and brought her lips to meet his. Her hand slid around his waist and drew his hips against hers. Her lips parted and—

  “I can’t leave you guys alone for two seconds, can I?”

  Evans withdrew and leaned his forehead against Jade’s. He didn’t need to look back to know who it was.

  “You really need to work on your timing, Anya,” he said.

  “And you need to find a better hiding place.”

  “We weren’t hiding,” Jade said.

  “Oh, I could see exactly what you were doing.”

  “What can we do for you, Anya?” Evans asked.

  “I thought you’d want to see this.”

  She strode into the room and held out a piece of paper. It was a computer printout of a photograph. Evans glanced at it and started to return it to her, but pulled it back when his brain caught up with his eyes.

  “Where was this taken?”

  “Mosul.”

  “Iraq?”

  “Unless you know of a different one.”

  “I mean, you’re certain it was taken in Iraq?”

  “Director Barnett said the picture was taken by a Kurdish soldier fighting to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State.”

  Evans’s heart rate accelerated as he studied the photograph.

  “When do we leave?”

  53

  ROCHE

  “You’re telling me the drone used some sort of internal homing mechanism to follow the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field,” Barnett said.

  “Is that somehow less plausible than following a star chart drawn on a cavern wall thousands of miles away?” Kelly asked. “Think about it. How else could it have navigated by that map if it spent the majority of its time hiding in the hold of a ship?”

  They sat at one of the long tables in the conference room outside of Barnett’s office. The walls were positively covered with photographs from both Teotihuacan and Atlantis. There were pages upon pages of eyewitness accounts, maps, drawings, and an
ything else that could possibly be of use.

  “We don’t know for certain that’s how it traveled,” Roche said.

  “How else could the drone have gotten off Antarctica?” Barnett asked.

  “Subject Zeta got a drone to release it from its cage.”

  “You think it walked a drone through the rental agreement for an airplane and taught it how to fly?”

  “Maybe Richards—”

  “The drone.”

  “Maybe the drone swam.”

  “That far? And in water that cold?”

  “It survived outside of the base for several months,” Kelly said. “We have proof of that. Maybe its skin provides a superior amount of insulation.”

  Barnett sighed and pushed back from the table. Roche understood his frustration. They’d been talking in circles for days now and had yet to get down to the real issue, which was why Subject Z had gone straight for the entombed remains upon its release, and why it had dispatched a drone to Mexico in an attempt to do the same.

  “At this point,” Barnett said, “I care less about how the drone got all the way to Teotihuacan than I do about figuring out where Subject Zeta is going. I’ll be damned if I’m letting it get off the continent.”

  “We know for sure that the drone didn’t just flag down a passing ship,” Roche said. “There are only so many vessels willing to brave the sheet ice, even fewer shipping lanes through the Southern Ocean, and the nearest port is a thousand miles away from Atlantis.”

  “Unless it took a plane.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  “You’re missing my point,” Kelly said. “If it can sense gradations in the Earth’s magnetic field, it could easily find its way to the South Pole and the research station—”

  “Amundsen-Scott,” Roche said.

  “There are planes flying in and out of there all the time in the summer,” Barnett said, “but they’re few and far between in the winter.”

  “They still send trucks on the South Pole Traverse.”

  “The ice road from McMurdo? If Subject Zeta reached the station, it could very well get to anywhere in the world.”

  “Assuming that’s its goal,” Kelly said.

  “And also assuming it survived the flooding,” Roche said. “All of this speculation is predicated upon it making it to the surface before we undammed the lake. It would have basically had to head straight for either the elevator or the ventilation shafts the moment it secured the remains. It could very well have drowned down there and we’ll never know.”

  A uniformed agent entered without knocking, walked directly to Barnett, and whispered into his ear.

  Roche scrutinized the director’s expression, then glanced at Kelly. She’d seen the same micromomen-tary flash of concern, too.

  “Bring it up on the monitor,” Barnett said.

  The agent placed an iPad on the table in front of the director and stepped back.

  When Barnett woke the screen, a video file was already primed and loaded.

  “Who sent it?” he asked.

  “The DoD via the NSA, who plucked the transmission from the NSF.”

  The mere mention of the National Science Foundation told Roche everything he needed to know. The NSF was in charge of the United States Antarctic Program, which operated McMurdo Station, the largest settlement on Antarctica and the hub through which all personnel and cargo either going to or coming from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station had to pass.

  Kelly was right.

  Barnett pressed the “play” icon and the screen filled with an image of what looked like a warehouse. Crates were stacked against the far wall beside a rack of wooden pallets. A forklift sat unmanned in the foreground. The field of view panned to the right and revealed an open garage stall and the inside of the semi-trailer backed up to it. The audio quality was poor, but it sounded like the man holding the camera said something about a bear, although it was common knowledge that there wasn’t a single species endemic to the continent. A second later, Roche understood what he meant. The bearded man sprawled at the foot of the mound of cargo looked like he’d been attacked by a wild animal. His face had been cut clear to the bone and his neck lacerated so deeply that Roche couldn’t be sure if the man’s head was still connected to his trunk.

  “How long ago was this?” Barnett asked.

  “Maybe eight hours,” the agent said.

  “That’s a long time. How many ships have departed since then?”

  “Just two.”

  “I want eyes on them right now.”

  “Way ahead of you. Morgan sent the pilots to the Arcade the moment we received the video.”

  Barnett leaped from his chair and hurried down the hallway. Roche and Kelly didn’t wait around for an invitation. By the time they caught up with Barnett, he was already entering the room they called the Arcade, which, in a way, almost reminded Roche of a Dave & Buster’s. The four consoles at the back of the room looked like video games with their pilot’s chairs, joysticks, and multiple monitors. There was a refreshments table with a cappuccino maker, boxes of protein bars and hard candy, and a mini-fridge full of energy drinks. There was even a seating gallery for spectators.

  Barnett walked straight up to the men manning the stations, while Roche and Kelly hung back in the gallery, where they had a clear view of all the video screens. The men worked in two-man teams, one controlling the movements of the drone, the other its remote sensing devices. A large central screen was positioned between the two units and alternated feeds from the smaller, dedicated monitors. Those in front of the pilots each showed a different ship. Both were shrouded in mist and sailing through black waters spotted with ice floes. The vessel on the left had the telltale red and white markings of a Coast Guard icebreaker. The one on the right was heavily laden with multicolored shipping containers and the enormous cranes used to unload them. Roche could see no sign of panic on either ship.

  “What am I looking at?” Barnett asked.

  The agent manning the sensors to the left responded.

  “USCG polar-class icebreaker Northwind. Departed McMurdo Sound six hours ago. Currently one hundred twelve miles north-northwest of Ross Island. We’ve been in contact with the CO, who’s ordered an all-hands search of the vessel, but has yet to find anything. He insists they’d progress at a much faster rate if we told him what we were looking for.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Barnett said. “What about the other one?”

  “Behemoth,” the other scanner said. “General cargo vessel registered in the United States. Commercial and project fleet. The captain says they unloaded seventy-six shipping containers at McMurdo and still have nearly as many onboard.”

  “What’s their destination?”

  “South Georgia Island.”

  “I want every inch of that ship searched before it reaches port.”

  “The captain says it would take days to search all of the containers.”

  “Tell him we don’t have days,” Barnett said. “How far apart are the ships?”

  The pilot on the left zoomed out, and the screen showed the cargo vessel trailing in the wake of the icebreaker, maybe a quarter mile back.

  “No one gets off either of those boats until—”

  A drumroll of footsteps from the hallway. Morgan burst into the room.

  “Switch to the closed-circuit channel,” he said.

  The central monitor abruptly cut away from the Southern Ocean and to what appeared to be a live news broadcast. The voiceover and the words scrolling past on the bottom of the screen were in Spanish. The images were obviously taken from a helicopter and showed a dense pine forest at the base of a bald, snow-covered mountain. Black smoke gushed from the trees, several of which were actively burning.

  “Where is this?” Roche asked.

  “East of Rio Grande, Argentina,” Morgan said.

  The helicopter banked around the churning smoke to get a better view of the orange and white airplane that had crashed into the forest, tear
ing up entire trees and leaving a deep furrow in the hard earth. The tail had broken off and only a single wing remained attached to the fuselage. The camera zoomed in on the wreckage. It was the same model of plane upon which Roche and the others had been initially flown to Richards’s Antarctic research station, the same kind likely to ferry passengers to the mainland from McMurdo.

  “No,” Roche whispered.

  Barnett glanced back at him as understanding dawned on his face.

  The roiling smoke and the dense branches nearly obscured the ground, but Roche was certain he saw a silhouette with a spindly body and an elongated head moving quickly away from the wreckage through the pine trees.

  54

  JADE

  “I can’t tell you that what I’m asking of you won’t be dangerous,” Barnett said. “Nor will you receive the thanks of your grateful nation. No one will ever know what you do here. What I can say is that we are in desperate need of your skills and expertise, now more than ever before.”

  The director had gathered them in the conference room in the wake of the announcement that Subject Z had reached the mainland. Jade perched on top of the back table beside Evans, while Anya and Tess occupied the chairs beside their legs. Roche and Kelly sat at the table in front of them.