Riley turned to follow his gaze. All of the cell doors were unlocked and open, except one.
The last.
The two men looked at each other and then, wordlessly, made their way down the corridor toward it.
Much to their surprise, they found the cell occupied.
The man looked Indian to Riley, though he supposed he could have been Pakistani, Turk-ish, or any other Middle Eastern ethnicity. He was short, somewhere in the neighborhood of five and a half feet, and of small stature, with dark curly hair and an ungroomed beard. He wore a tattered blue jumpsuit with the now expected Eden patch on his right shoulder. From the accumulated grime on his exposed skin, including his bare feet, it was obvious it had been several days since he’d had the chance to shower.
The straw flooring had been pushed into a pile in the corner and the man was lying either unconscious or asleep on the exposed floor. On the other side of the room were several large jugs of water and a stack of canned goods. Obviously, he’d planned to be in there awhile.
Riley watched as Cade tried the cell door, discovered it locked, and then rapped sharply on the glass door several times with the barrel of his gun.
Inside the cell, the man shifted in his sleep, but did not awake.
Cade turned to his companions. “I want this door open and I don’t care how long it takes or what we have to do to open it.â€
“Got it,†they answered and went to work. First Squad hadn’t found anything of note in the opposite cells so they were called back to join the others. Davis had a fair degree of experience with locking mechanisms and he was called over to assist Olsen as they worked to find a way around the electro-magnetic lock that held the door firmly shut. The rest of the men set up a perimeter and prepared to meet any unexpected visitors.
Halfway through their efforts the man inside woke up. He raised himself on one elbow and blinked weary-eyed at them. Riley watched as he first rubbed his eyes and then, apparently deciding they weren’t figments of his imagination, rifled through his pockets until he came up with a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He slipped the glasses on.
“Hang on!†Riley shouted to him, hoping the man could hear him through the thick glass. “We’re going to get you out.â€
The master sergeant was unprepared for what happened next. The man inside the cell jumped to his feet and rushed the door, shouting, the excitement on his face obvious. But the thick glass stole anything the man tried to say to them.
As Olsen and Davis continued to work, Riley tried to indicate with hand signals that they would have the man free shortly and to just sit back and relax. Unfortunately, that only seemed to get him more worked up.
“Think he’ll answer our questions?†Duncan asked.
“I don’t care whether he wants to or not,†Riley replied. “He’s the first living soul we’ve seen in this place and I suspect Cade isn’t going to give him a choice.†Riley couldn’t blame him, either. He wanted answers, too.
It took Olsen and Davis almost an hour but they eventually got the door open. The second they had, the prisoner pushed it open and stepped out of the cell.
“Oh thank God! Am I glad to see you!†He smiled at them all and then turned back to Riley. “You got him, right? Tell me you got him.â€
Misunderstanding, Riley replied, “Yeah, we got him. Father Vargas is resting comfortably in a hospital not too far from here. We can take you to see him shortly.â€
The man froze and a strange expression washed across his face. “Vargas? You got Vargas?â€
“And like I said, he’s all right. As soon as you can tell us what happened here, we’ll take you to see him.†Riley was speaking softly, gently. The man was obviously emotional and he didn’t want him to get any more riled up.
“I don’t give a shit about Vargas! Tell me you killed it! That’s all I want to hear.
That you blew its divine ass all the way to kingdom come, where it belonged.â€
Divine ass? What the…â€Look. Why don’t you tell us your name and we’ll go from there?â€
The former prisoner stood there, staring. Riley was about to repeat his request when the man flew into action. They had never expected he’d tried to barrel his way through several well-armed men and the prisoner was able to get past all three of them, rush up the hall, and reach the door to the central corridor before Riley, close on his heels, brought him down with a picture-perfect tackle.
Now the man turned violent. Kicking and thrashing, he did what he could to throw Riley off of him, shouting all the while. “Get off me you stupid son-of-a-bitch! You have no idea what you are doing!â€
“Then why don’t you explain it to us,†Riley laconically replied, making no move to get up. His six-foot-four, 240 pound frame easily held the smaller man to the floor.
“All right, Riley. Let him up.â€
Cade had come down the hall and was now standing in the doorway to the central corridor, his pistol held casually in his hand. Riley had seen him use that weapon without hesitation when he didn’t get the answers he wanted and one glance at the prisoner’s face made it clear that he understood the unspoken threat in Cade’s stance, too.
Riley stood, then reached down, grabbed a hold of the man’s bicep, and hauled him rather reluctantly to his feet as well.
“Who are you?†Cade asked.
The man sullenly stared at the floor and didn’t respond.
Cade sighed. “We can do this the easy way or…. I’m Commander Cade Williams and you are?â€
For a moment the man was silent and Riley expected he’d have to get a little rough in order to get some answers, but then the prisoner rounded on Cade. “You stupid fool,â€
he said, his face inches from Cade’s own. “You have no idea what you are doing here and if you were smart you’d get the hell out of here while you still could. This isn’t an issue for the Army.â€
“With all due respect, I believe I do know what was going on here, but it would certainly be easier if you could fill in a few details. Let’s start with your name.â€
An exasperated snort. “Bhanjee. Dr. Manoj Bhanjee. Chief Geneticist.â€
“Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, now was it?â€
But Bhanjee wasn’t willing to engage in pleasantries, however. “Look, idiot, I don’t give a flying fuck just who you are or how many men you have with you. Unless you’ve got the entire U.S. Army out there, I was about 100 times better off locked in my little hidey-hole back there.â€
Something in his tone struck a chord with Riley. The man clearly felt he was safer locked up inside a cell, effectively cornered like a rat in the hole, rather than out here with them. It wasn’t the glowing endorsement Riley’d expected from someone they’d just ex-tricated from the inside of a glass box.
Apparently the comment hit home with Cade, too. As Riley watched, he pulled the patch off his eye and turned to look at the glass walls around them.
“They’re warded. All of the cells are warded!â€
The prisoner glanced at him, his expression changing from anger to curiosity, but when he spoke up his scathing tone hadn’t changed. “Of course the cells are warded. Do you think we’d have tried to contain them with only bullet proof glass?â€
Whatever Cade was going to say in response was lost as he whipped his head around to face the entrance they’d passed through more than an hour before. As he turned Riley could see that his good eye, his left, was still closed, which meant whatever he was seeing was coming to him through the ghost-white orb that was all that remained of his right.
“Reapers!†he shouted into the radio and a moment later the double doors at the end of the hall burst open
as the surviving demons from their earlier battle smashed their way through them.
The creatures came on without thought to tactics or strategy and this was just fine with the members of the Echo Team, who wanted nothing more than the chance to avenge Callavechio€™s death. Cade’s warning had been enough for Chen and Ortega, positioned about fifteen feet back from the entrance, to prepare themselves for the assault and in seconds the central corridor had become a shooting gallery. The demons were constrained by both the bullet proofing of the glass and the warding etched all over its surface, effectively limiting their options. They had no choice but to funnel straight down the hallway toward the two men, which was just what they wanted. Their MP5s roared, the sound echoing in the confined space, and the slugs tore into the flesh of their foes with what to Riley appeared to be reck-less abandon.
As the men from First Squad held off the initial assault, Riley and Cade moved into position behind them. On a radioed command from Cade the two men in front went down on one knee, allowing the newcomers, now standing behind them, to open fire also. Riley’s Mossberg thundered in counterpoint to the crack of Cade’s pistol, and both weapons played a syncopated rhythm to their companions.
The demons were, quite literally, cut to pieces by the withering hail of gunfire.
By the time Duncan, Olsen, and Davis had moved into position to back them up, the firefight was over.
In the silence that followed, a muffled cry came from the other end of the hall.
Riley spun around.
Down at the other end, he had the barest glimpse of Dr. Bhanjee being wrapped in inky black wings and they were gone.
The corridor was empty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FRANKENSTEIN’S PLAYROOM
With Dr. Bhanjee gone, their chance of learning first-hand just what had happened here disappeared with him and a sense of gloom settled about the group. That they could have been so careless as to leave him undefended was troubling to say the least. Cade knew it was simply a result of having constantly to be on alert, the pressure slowly chipping away at their awareness and control, but that didn’t make things any less disappointing.
With no choice but to continue their search, Cade ordered the team to leave the cell block behind by passing through the door at its other end.
What they found there only added to their growing disquiet about the place.
The room was clearly a laboratory, and a sophisticated one at that. Olsen wasn’t a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but he considered himself an intelligent man and knew the difference between a microscope and an MRI machine. The equipment in this room, however, defied his understanding. Everywhere he looked there was some new contraption measuring heaven knows what.
But what really caught his eye were the two rows of glass tanks in the center of the room and he crossed over to them to have a look.
They were cylindrical in nature, about eight feet tall, and filled with a thick liquid that was slightly yellow in color. If anything they reminded him of giant specimen jars full of formalde-hyde and the comparison was especially apt for in the last tank on the left, the only one containing anything other than the liquid, there floated the naked body of a young man.
Stepping closer, Olsen could see that he just might have to rethink that characterization.
The body was clearly humanoid; a torso from which extended two arms and two legs, with a head supported by a neck of the proper proportion. But where there should have been a face there was only a blank expanse of flesh, like a bare canvas before the painter has arrived, and Olsen couldn’t help but stare. No mouth. No nose. No means of air intake. How had it grown to be this big without the ability to breathe? The blankness of the face didn’t appear to be the result of an injury, so how had the thing survived for so long?
The body was slowly shifting in the fluid in the tank and Olsen attention was drawn to its upper left shoulder as it came into view. From its neckline to the middle of its back the body was covered with a fine goose-down like set of feathers. Even stranger, those feathers quickly changed to a set of iridescent scales that were interwoven with each other and covered the entire rest of the thing’s left side down to a spot behind the left knee.
Just what the hell was this thing?
Riley walked up as he stood there, staring. “Now that’s an ugly son of a gun.â€
Olsen nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He normally would have been the first to make some lighthearted wisecrack, especially in a tense situation like this, but this thing in front of him was just so inherently…wrong… that he couldn’t find it within himself to do so.
Riley must have sensed his mood, for he turned serious suddenly. “Once, a number of years ago, I had the opportunity to enter a section of the archives I’d never been admitted to before.â€
Olsen didn’t need to ask just which archives he was referring to. For a Templar, there was only one, the Archives, the great collection of information and artifacts that the Order had been gathering and cataloging for centuries.
“If memory serves, it was just after I’d transferred into Echo. We were facing a rash of attacks by some unknown cryptid and managed to get some fairly decent casts made from the bite marks on the seventh victim. Cade sent me down to the vaults to see if I could match any of them with the various specimens that had been collected over the years, particularly the ones that had been catalogued at the turn of the century.â€
Riley turned to face him and in his eyes Olsen could see a reflection of the horror he’d seen that day. “I’ll tell you something. What I saw down in that vault, what we as an Order actively collect and store for future studies, make this oddity seem tame in comparison.
The world’s one strange place, there’s no question of that.â€
As if to punctuate his statement, the thing in the tank suddenly jerked as if awakening abruptly from a long sleep and its hands slapped palm down against the glass. In the center of each palm was an eye of jet black that stared out at them. After a moment, one of them winked.
The shock of realizing that the thing was not only alive but was also intelligent washed over him like a bucket of ice water and Olsen turned away, more profoundly disturbed than at any other time since entering the complex. Whatever it was that they had been doing here there was no longer any question in his mind that it had been a renegade operation, that the Church never would have condoned it had they known what was happening.
From where he stood Olsen could see eight cubicles against the right-hand wall, the first seven of which contained desktop computers and keyboards, the eight a large network printer, and it was for these that he now headed.
Riley let him go, more than likely knowing he needed time to think.
Olsen stopped at the first workstation and nudged its mouse. The screen powered up as a result, showing the usual Windows log-in, confirming his unspoken hunch that the PCs had all powered off and then up again when the electricity went out. Now if he could only get one to work…
On a whim, he tried the administrative password and log-in that every commercially bought PC is shipped with and was shocked when the machine booted up for him. Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought. Vargas might have brought in some top-of-the-line scientists for whatever they were doing here, but they apparently knew next to nothing about computer security.
But it wasn’t going to be that easy and his grin of success soon faded.
Sitting down to try and access some of the information on the computer, he discovered the various menu trees and file folders had been individually secured with passwords of their own. He could get into the computer, but not into any of the files that were stored on it. He tried various screen commands and work-arounds that he knew, but the computer stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. The desk itself was clear of any paper or notebooks as well.
He
moved on to the next PC and booted it up, only to discover the same problem. One by one, he found them all inaccessible. He knew he could eventually break the security system and access the data, but he didn’t have the time for such a prolonged process right now.
Giving up, he moved to rejoin his companions. As he walked by the final cubicle, the blink-ing red light on the network printer caught his eye. Paper jamb, he thought, stepping past.
Paper jamb.
He turned back to the printer and pulled out the paper drawer. It was empty. Which meant whatever had been printing might still be in the printer’s memory…
Olsen began hunting in the drawers around the printer, looking for some paper, and quickly refilled the receptacle beneath the printer when he did found it. With a quick prayer to St. Michael, patron saint of knights and soldiers, he pushed the reset button on the printer and waited.
Thirty seconds later he pumped his arm in the air in victory as pages of text began to pour out of the device.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WARNINGS
There were eighteen pages in all, each covered with single-spaced type. Close examination showed them to be selected passages from an individual’s personal journal. A glance at the content made it obvious that the journal belonged to one of the scientists, though no names or identifying information was given about either the author or the project in question.
The notes themselves chronicled certain events over the course of six weeks earlier that summer. Certain sections hinted at the larger picture, but without the complete journal they were left with more questions than answers.
Several of the entries were particularly intriguing, like the one from May 23rd.
The process seems to have taken hold, but only time will tell if it will last. Barajas and Orlander are working on a means of increasing the speed of the developmental cycle, but they’ve practically had to start from scratch due to the nature of the specimen and I, for one, am not confident that they can pull it off. We shall see.
Early June held another tantalizing glimpse.
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