Scott’s throat tightened at the sight of digital charts shining from the multi-touch computer walls, continuous three dimensional readouts fluctuating stats on huge plastic display screens. Images of the brain, DNA strands, a model of the human genome, and other chemical properties that Scott couldn’t decipher, all seemed interfaced with the biology of those sleeping in the beds. But then his eyes drifted right, and he noticed other subjects submerged in tanks full of fluid, hoses coming and going from them. “What is this?” he whispered, now standing alone with the scientist at the top of the steps.
After finding no other guard present, Malachi and his team were now busy working at the computers.
“Transhumanism,” the scientist replied. “Our Brave New World.”
Scott swore and ran down the stairs, thinking only of Jennifer. He ran down the rows of naked and sedated prisoners, his heart beating with a sense of dread so powerful, it was almost paralyzing. He forced his panic-filled eyes on one unfamiliar face after another, but the more he saw, the sicker he felt. Men and women, both old and young, were all staring blankly at the ceiling above them.
Transhumanism… all these people, and who knew how many more throughout the years, lay sacrificed on the altar of man’s ego. The thought of Jennifer put through such terror was too much for his rational mind to regulate, and as he neared the final bed, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find his wife lying in it or not. Was what had been done to these people reversible? But the last pale face staring up into nothingness was not Jennifer’s. It belonged to a younger woman, though just as beautiful, her nude body strapped to this atrocious gurney so far beneath the earth, robbed of every ounce of dignity and brought down by her captives to the basest level of life — that of an experiment. Her hopes and dreams, her humanity, crucified by a world gone insane. Despair and hope collided into him from opposite sides, and though this wasn’t his wife, it could be someone else’s. Someone’s daughter, sister, friend… He tore the ski mask off his face and stormed past the agents, approaching the scientist again. The old man was standing at the foot of the steps and staring out over his product. “What the hell is this?” Scott yelled, pointing behind him.
With a great sigh, the scientist’s weary eyes focused on Scott. “An experiment, each subject chosen for his or her unique genetic makeup. Remember the CDC and Homeland Security’s cataloging of newborns’ DNA? This is, was, its natural evolution… if not the intent.” He paused. “The post-humanist agenda. Eugenics. The advancement of the species...” He looked back to Scott. “It was decided a long time ago that biological evolution is too slow for the human species, that we can no longer sit back and wait for it. So this is our attempt at evolution, at achieving our godhood.”
“At the expense of innocent blood?” Scott interrupted, angrier.
“Of course. Do you think people would actually donate themselves to such a cause? And yet many of the medical ‘blessings’ we enjoy today came as the result of experimentation on unsuspecting peoples… or populations. People don’t cry about it as long as they have a treatment for their illness. The end, my friend, always justifies the means… for those who are benefited by it.” He shook his head.
Eugenics. Biotechnology. Scott turned and looked back over the people lying comatose, their bodies subjected to the evil will of those more powerful than themselves. As Malachi walked by, Scott asked, “Is this why you’re here? You could have told me.”
“No.” Then he looked over to the scientist. “Let him tell you.”
Again, guilt loosened the scientist’s lips farther than the question demanded, and he plunged into a session of soul bearing. “Everyone always argued whether the world would turn in favor of Huxley’s vision or Orwell’s. No one seemed to notice that we were combining them, that biotechnology had opened the door to their marriage. Cloning and genetic engineering were just the beginning, bioethics finally silenced from the debate. Progress couldn’t be hampered by some archaic notion of morality. Not when utilitarianism was our religion — the greatest good for the greatest numbers, eliminate useless eaters burdening society…
“T.H. Huxley’s eugenics influenced even Sanger’s Planned Parenthood, hoping to reduce the population of inferior classes.” He was rambling through a tortured soul’s anthem. “Gene patenting, genetic discrimination, germline intervention… we may not have created the dust that formed life, but we manipulated the process so that we could get desired results, creating man in our own image. Cybernetics, joining man and machine…”
He was almost incoherent now. “The Tuskegee Experiment, third-world de-population procedures, sterilization of races, Hitler’s Final Solution...” Then he looked up into Scott’s face, tears almost dripping from his eyes. “You have no idea the magnitude of this dream…”
Scott didn’t need persuasion. “What is this?” he asked, pointing at the experiment behind him.
“A virus. They’re going to blame Russia for a biological attack in order to justify a nuclear response. An antidote has been prepared for those who willingly submit to chip implantation, relocation, or whatever else they’re told, ensuring true World citizenship.”
Scott shifted his horrified gaze over to the experiment again. “These people were test subjects for that?”
He nodded. “Originally for the vaccine. Now for genetic classification. We’ve unlocked the human genome. We can now target the genes incompatible with where the world is heading.”
“Genetic discrimination on a global scale…”
“Eventually. Used to determine everyone’s role in society, even their right to live within it.”
“This biological attack, when is it supposed to happen?”
“Within the year, at least.”
Scott thought of the Georgia Guidestones, its advice not to let the population exceed five hundred million, calling for an age of reason resembling the Earth Charter and Thomas Paine’s little book. They were actually doing it. Two objectives accomplished through one attack.
A loud blasting siren suddenly exploded throughout the lab, a lone guard standing in front of an open door above the other staircase. He was dead before he could raise his weapon, but he’d already triggered the alarm.
Malachi began shouting over the siren. “We almost there?”
“Ninety percent!” the man at the computer shouted.
He turned to the scientist. “Get that elevator down here.”
The old man ran to the keypad on the east wall, almost slipping in the blood covering the floor.
Scott and the other agents took up strategic positions throughout the room, waiting for soldiers to come barging through the doors.
“Ninety-five!” yelled the agent.
“How’s the elevator coming?” Malachi shouted to the scientist.
“It’s on its way.”
The door above Scott opened, and a soldier came through. Scott shot him three times, dropping him to the metal grated platform, his body wedged in the doorway, keeping the door from closing.
“Okay, I have it!” the guy at the computer yelled, waving a disk.
The elevator opened.
“Get in the elevator!” Malachi ordered.
The agents began backing out of their positions, guns still trained on the exits while jumping aboard the elevator that was already occupied with Malachi, Melissa, and the agent with the disk.
But there was no room for Scott or the scientist.
“We’ll send it back down,” Malachi said as the doors closed.
“You gotta be kidding,” Scott mumbled, the sirens drowning his voice.
The door atop the other staircase opened and two more guards came in. Scott swung the submachine gun up and fired before the guards could react. Apparently, they assumed it to be a false alarm, because the next soldier that walked through didn’t even have his weapon in hand. He was sent bouncing down the stairs after the other two.
“What’s going to happen to all these people?” Scott yelled over to the scientist.
“They will never recover.”
“How could you do this?” he asked, waiting for the next soldier to appear.
A tear rolled down his cheek. “I didn’t realize that I was.”
And Scott could certainly sympathize with that. With an eye on the two stairways, Scott walked over to the scientist and pulled out the picture of his wife. “Jennifer Cavanaugh, have you seen her here?”
He shook his head. “I never knew any of their names.”
“You knew Melissa Strauss though!”
He shrugged. “Only because of the instructions I received.”
“From who?”
“In my attempts to purify what remains of my soul, I contacted the Resistance and told them of this place.”
“The Resistance told you about her?”
“I was informed that the Mossad was interested in her, that they were corroborating with the Resistance in a mutual effort to attain any knowledge she might have.”
“Knowledge of what?”
“They didn’t tell me, but I assume it has something to do with NASA’s plan to unite mankind through some type of god hoax.”
“What?” And then he remembered something. “You’re a NASA scientist?”
He shrugged. “I worked with NASA, as we all did. But I am not employed by them.”
Scott was completely lost, but there was no time to get to the bottom of it now, though he would certainly have questions for Malachi later. “How do we shut down the security net so the prisoners above can escape?”
“You have to disable its power source at the other end of the corridor by the barracks. But—”
And then both doors opened, and guards were firing through them, using the doorways as cover. Scott pushed the scientist into the first section of the room, slamming him up against the dividing wall where he was out of sight. Then he leaned around the corner and returned fire.
The elevator opened.
“Go! I’ll cover you!” Scott shouted to the scientist. He stepped out from behind the wall and ran for the north stairs, shooting at the other ones along the way. The scientist scrambled into the elevator, but bullets were tearing up the ground at Scott’s feet, preventing him from joining him. He fired from his hip even as he heard the very distinct sound of heavy metal bouncing across the floor. He turned just in time to see the grenade skip into the elevator, just barely making it past the closing door.
The explosion rocked the laboratory, and the elevator door was crumpled outward like tinfoil, half of it thrown across the room along with pieces of the scientist.
Without hesitating, Scott pulled the pin from one of his own grenades and tossed it onto the platform above him. It landed on the body wedged in the doorway and rolled into the corridor. It exploded, and cries of pain came echoing through the room. Scott ran back to the elevator as he fired at the other door, keeping at bay those behind it. He wasn’t going to be able to use the elevator to escape, so he’d have to go back the way they came in. Stepping into the elevator, he searched the remains of the scientist and found his two key cards miraculously intact. He slipped them into his pocket and ran back to the north stairs, firing until the submachine gun clicked empty. Throwing it aside, he grabbed an M4 from one of the dead guards and took the steps three at a time. Finally getting to the platform, he fired the unsuppressed gun at a soldier who was just coming through the door, the sound of gunfire blasting off the walls. The corridor was clear, and he slipped away from the lab, heading for the very place the scientist had warned them not to go.
The huge door sat closed, staring at him. He had the scientist’s cards, but he didn’t have his thumb, voice, or eyeball. He could hear the footsteps of more troops descending the west stairs, reaching the laboratory floor, and running over to the stairs that would lead up to him. He ran back to the door, the dead body still wedged in it despite the explosion, and tossed another grenade down the steps. When it blew, the force of the blast and a wave of shrapnel lifted three soldiers up into the air and off the stairs. Scott ducked low and fired around the door, striking two more men. When no one else came through the other door, he looked down to the staircase his grenade had just mangled. The metal framework was leaning away from the wall now, twisted and bent from the blast. They wouldn’t be able to come up that way. His backside was safe. Now he only needed someone to open the huge steel door from the other side.
The door began opening before he could get back to it, and he fired as another guard walked through. Running as fast as he could, he threw himself through the air, landing on his stomach as he slid across the polished floor, passing through the doorway just as the huge door began to close. Getting back to his feet, he ran down the corridor, passing the door that led back up to the camp.
The next door he came to opened with the key card, and he found himself in a network of tunnels. He decided to take the most direct route, heading straight down the hall. Eventually, individual rooms began passing him on both sides. Living quarters, he guessed. The card worked for the next door too, and he found himself in a dark room. But the lights were motion sensitive, and they blinked on as he stepped forward. There were multi-touch computer stations everywhere, digital charts and maps, desks, file cabinets… This was a big operation for not having any official funding.
Walking cautiously through the room, he realized that most of the soldiers must have gone topside to try and cut off Malachi’s escape. That was fine with him. He needed all the time he could get. He needed to find the controls to the perimeter fence and figure out how to shut it down.
“Well, well, well.”
Scott froze. His heart stopped, and his scalp was tingling.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here,” the voice stated.
Scott turned slowly, a strong urge for revenge boiling in his blood, and came face to face with Titus Mayhew. Only now, the Christian was aiming a pistol at his chest, smiling.
37
He stood there with a peculiar smile painted to his face, one that told Scott all he needed to know, his suspicion about what had happened to Mayhew confirmed. But even with him here in this place, pointing a gun at his chest, Scott could barely believe it.
Mayhew took a step forward. “So how’d they get you to come along? Did they tell you your wife was here?”
Scott was fighting hard not to raise the M4 hanging at his side. His eyes stabbed icicles. “You took the priest’s other books,” he realized.
Mayhew shrugged. “Guilty.” And he patted his coat pocket with his free hand. “I’ve had them the whole time. Guess Father Baer didn’t get around to telling you how many there were or what was in them.” He smiled. “It was fun listening to you try to make sense of it all, though. I left you the two most obscure and pointless books. The ones without any answers.”
The things that Isaiah wrote about flashed though Scott’s mind. The rose and the cross, Rosicrucianism hiding behind the veil of Christianity. That was what Father Baer had tried to tell him, about the Rosicrucians’ efforts at getting the ring, about their deceptions. That was why he had said to trust no one. Isaiah’s last words to him rung loud and clear: Satan doesn’t deceive by revealing himself as the Devil, he deceives by masquerading as an angel, as a servant of God. Scott’s finger began brushing the trigger. “So are you a Rosicrucian?”
“Two for two.” He shook his head. “Are you surprised?”
“That’s why you made such a fuss about Malachi driving off with the ring.”
“A curve ball I wasn’t expecting.”
“But you had the ring when we were in…” He stopped. “You called the cops on me, when I was in the restaurant.”
He pulled out a cell phone, waved it in his free hand. “I was almost Scott free.” He laughed at his own pun. “No, I couldn’t do that.”
“Cindy,” Scott whispered.
“She was slowing you down.”
“What does that mean?”
“You started looking after her, too. That spl
it your attention in half and dropped my chances.”
“You were using me?”
“Absolutely. You think I would’ve made it this far without you? You were my bodyguard. Didn’t even cost me much.”
A few more things clicked into place. “You didn’t pray with Cindy.”
“Are you kidding me? I don’t even know why you care. It’s not like you believe any of that stuff anyway. Like I said, I had to kill her.”
Rage pulsed through Scott’s being, guilt and shame slamming his conscience against a wall of blame.
“Yep. After the explosion, she was lying there on her stomach, unconscious. It was a golden opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. There was a piece of twisted metal lying nearby, so...”
Scott interrupted him. “I’m going to kill you,” he seethed.
“Not unless you’re bulletproof, my friend.” He took another step forward, waving the pistol. “This is a classic .50 caliber Mark XIX Desert Eagle. You know what this’ll do to you.” Smiling, he changed the subject. “Now, I have a question. Just how is it that you know about Rosicrucianism?” He tone was mocking. “Did you read Isaiah’s book?” He raised the gun higher, at Scott’s head.
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