Walking beside him was a beautiful Asian woman with straight dark hair and green eyes. She was tall, almost the same height as Paulson, with a slim figure, large breasts, and strong, tight legs. The woman wore a short red dress.
She was inhumanly stunning.
“Welcome, Jeff. It’s good to see you again.”
Paulson greeted him with a warm handshake as always.
“Thank you, Buddy. It’s good to see you again. But I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your companion.”
Jeff shook the woman’s cold hand, and she smiled to reveal perfect white teeth.
“But you have, Jeff,” she said to him.
Paulson smiled but looked slightly uncomfortable.
“This is Claire. She’s changed her look a bit since the last time you saw her.”
“Claire . . . You mean Claire? Wow!”
The last time Jeff had seen Claire, she’d been a blond Caucasian and looked much more robotic and mannequin-like. This woman standing before him looked and moved as much like a human as he or Paulson did.
“I enjoyed my Caucasian appearance, but twenty-eight days and eleven hours ago the Asian population in the United States exceeded that of the Caucasian. I thought it best to adopt the majority facial structure.”
Yes, still a machine, Jeff thought. A beautiful one, but a machine nonetheless.
“Now, as for this base..."
"Wait," Jeff held up his hand. "You need to tell me about Holly."
“Still no word yet. The team is on the ground now, but communication is out, possibly from radiation fallout. We’re trying to reestablish contact.”
Jeff tried not to cry and glanced away. He needed to gather himself and not display any emotional weakness. Paulson was doing the best he could, but it was tearing Jeff up inside to think that his wife may be dead.
Paulson placed his hand on Jeff's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Jeff. We're doing all we can."
Jeff nodded. He wished they could do more.
“Any ideas on who was responsible?” Jeff asked, his voice cracking before he regained his composure.
“They received a com-drive just before the service bot came through with the bomb. A message was sent out from the drive and bounced around the stream using a cloaking cipher before being received by its intended recipient. We don’t know who that is yet, but I have my top experts on it. They’ll find out soon.”
“Sounds like someone from the future is working with someone from the present to put an end to our time travel endeavors. Are you sure this base is safe?”
“Oh, I have a few security tricks up my sleeve,” Paulson said, casting a quick glance over at Claire.
“I’m sure you do. Now, Mr. Vice President, what is this palace you’ve built for yourself here under the desert? And where the hell are we anyway?”
“Let me show you.”
They crossed over to the large window.
“This facility is fifty-three miles south of Baghdad, Iraq, just outside the present-day city of Hillah. However, you may better recognize the ancient name for this place. It was once called Babylon.”
They reached the glass, and Jeff peered inside. There in the middle of the stadium sized room was a hundred-foot-high doughnut, large enough for a plane to go through. It was a design he knew all too well, although on a much grander scale.
Paulson smiled as Jeff’s jaw dropped.
“Welcome to Chronos Two.”
Chapter 19
1:15 a.m., January 15, 2038
Project Chronos, Lechuguilla Cave
The elevator was turning into an oven. If they didn’t get out of it fast, it would become their crematorium.
“There are ladders on both sides; let’s climb to the top,” someone yelled out.
Holly grabbed Chen’s hand and closely following Tony Evangelista, they made their way in the dim light over to the sides of the elevator.
“You two stay with me,” he said. “I’m under orders to protect you at all costs.”
Holly had no doubt that he could. It was truly amazing what the new anti-aging treatments could do. Evangelista, thick and muscular, looked like he could take on an army. He helped Holly and Chen onto the ladder as others started pushing and shoving. Holly lifted her foot, but the heel of her shoe stuck and the bottom layer of rubber peeled off. It was getting even hotter. The floor was likely becoming radioactive as well.
About fifteen feet up, Holly emerged from the ladder onto the roof of the elevator. Chen waved several of their associates toward him, and Holly joined them.
“We’re still about a hundred and fifty feet below the surface,” Jing Wei said.
Holly was glad to see Jing had made it out alive. The elevator jerked again, and Holly grabbed on to Evangelista.
“The brakes aren’t going to hold up under this heat,” Evangelista said as he pointed to the side of elevator.
The rest of the group finished climbing up onto the roof and were looking around, illuminating the dark elevator shaft with lights from their holos. It was a long way up, but they could certainly continue their climb. Several people started heading up and more followed. Holly sure as hell didn’t want to wait on the elevator any longer, so she got on a ladder too.
It was slow going, but her biomechanical arm functioned well, and it had a vice-like grip, generating roughly ten times the pressure of a normal grip. While she hung on with that hand, there was no chance of her falling.
Occasionally she would glance down at the top of the elevator. It was slowly turning red, glowing from the heat of the nuclear hellfire burning under it. Everyone was off it now and making the plodding climb up to the surface. Holly turned back and bumped into Chen’s foot, dangling above her.
“They’ve stopped; I’m not sure why,” he said.
The dozen or so people up above were murmuring among themselves. Holly couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“We need Dr. Chen,” a man yelled out from above. “The doors are locked and require a security override.”
“Let me at it,” Chen said firmly as the people above him moved out of his way, hanging on to the outside of the ladder so he could go up.
As he stepped up, a loud grating sound bellowed out below. Holly looked down and saw the elevator jerk again before falling several more feet.
“Um, Tony, do you know anything about elevators?” she asked.
“I’m no expert, but this elevator likely has four brakes to prevent catastrophic falls. Two have already failed if my count is correct. If another fails, then it will fall.”
Nuclear physics was enough within Holly’s field of expertise for her to know what would happen then. The elevator would hit the bottom of the shaft and create a type of back draft, like the piston in an internal combustion engine did. Then the hot gas from the nuclear explosion, now trapped under the elevator, would explode upward into the shaft. If they were still there when the superheated radioactive blast hit them, they would be burned to ash.
They had to get out, and they didn’t have much time.
After several more minutes, which Holly used to imagine an exploding elevator shaft, a woman called down, “Holly, we need you up here!”
God, what now?
She climbed up, past anxious coworkers, followed closely by Evangelista. When she reached the top, she found Chen standing on a platform in front of two large metal doors and a control panel.
“The circuits have been fried from the outside.” Chen waved his hand in front of the control panel. “There’s no way to get these doors open. I’ve tried to reach someone out there, but all com-lines are down. Do you have any ideas?”
Holly pounded on the steel doors and screamed, “Somebody help! We’re trapped in here! Hello!”
Chen frowned in the dim light.
“I could’ve done that,” he said.
Holly stepped over to the panel. It had clearly been burned out. Even the old keypad control used for backup was inoperable.
A scr
eam came from below. Holly and Chen looked over the platform’s edge. Vertigo instantly washed through Holly, and she grabbed onto Chen’s shoulder for balance.
Fifteen stories down the elevator had broken loose and now plummeted down the shaft. The retreating red-hot glowing box fell away rapidly, sparks flying on all sides. But it didn’t seem to be going at full speed just yet. Perhaps part of a brake was restraining it. But Holly didn’t think that would last much longer. Soon the final brake would fail, and the elevator would plummet at full speed down the shaft.
She shifted back over to the door, careful to keep her balance, and started pounding again. They had only a few minutes, if that. Others from the ladder tried to crowd onto the small platform.
Then someone screamed again, this time the sound grew distant as he or she fell down the shaft. Holly shuddered.
More hands and bodies pressed against her, and others started pounding on the door. The weight of the mob was crushing her.
Then the door shifted under her body.
“It’s opening,” she tried to yell out. But the air was forced from her lungs as more people crowded onto the platform.
The spot where the two doors met buckled, and a gloved hand broke through from the other side, twisting the metal back like Play-Doh. Then it grabbed onto one of the doors and yanked it off. Light poured into the dark shaft.
A boom reverberated from below. The elevator had hit the bottom.
Holly and the others pressing against her surged forward through the now open doors. She fell as the panicked crowd swarmed over her. Heels slammed into her back as the desperate and fearful scrambled over her to get away. She thought she was going to be trampled to death, but someone grabbed her and carried her away in their arms. Her savior was wearing a protective anti-radioactive suit, so she couldn’t see his face.
A low rumbling burst forth from the elevator shaft and grew louder and louder as the room began to shake. They were running through a large storage warehouse full of pallets of canned food and other supplies that were supposed to be taken down to the base later today. The people in front of her ducked behind thick steel columns.
“We’re not going to make it!” Chen yelled out as the rumbling and shaking became louder and stronger.
Holly glanced over the shoulder of the man carrying her and saw a wall of fire erupting out of the elevator shaft. It blasted through the warehouse, rolling toward the survivors. Then Holly felt a jerk, and in the blink of an eye she was cowering behind the nearest pallet of canned goods.
The blast hit like hell’s fury.
Instantly her savior was behind her, over her, using his body as a shield against the blast. The firestorm blew past them, burning through the pallet, intense heat all around. In seconds the whole thing was over.
Smoke filled the room, but the firestorm had passed.
Those unable to make it to safety behind the steel columns were scorched.
Holly rose to her feet, to find the man who’d protected her on fire. Flames flew from his back as his protective suit peeled off his body. Instead of writhing in agony as anyone else would, he casually patted his back and the side of his burned face to put out the flames. Then he reached over and picked up one of the cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup from the warehouse floor, raised it over his head, and squeezed. The soup rained on his head and back like a shower, dousing the remaining flames.
Then the man tore off his burned clothes and the remaining half of his tattered mask.
“Hello, Holly. It’s good to see you again.”
Standing in front of her, smiling through burned lips that were already starting to heal, was Mattie Tedrow.
Chapter 20
5:15 p.m. Local Time, January 15, 2038
Hillah, Iraq
Paulson smiled at the shocked look on Jeff’s face as he stared out at the time travel generator of Chronos Two. It was rare to surprise that man. All things considered, it had been a gargantuan task to keep this base a secret all these years.
Paulson recounted the history of the base.
They’d first started construction after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, although Paulson was laying the groundwork and making contacts months before that. The public premise of the invasion was to look for weapons of mass destruction, but the real reason was to secure Iraq for the construction of Chronos Two.
The funding for the base had come out of the Iraq infrastructure rebuilding funds. Paulson always thought it was funny that no one on Capitol Hill had ever questioned all the hundred-million-dollar girls’ schools they were building here. Of the billions of dollars flowing into Iraq for the last thirty years, only a small portion went to rebuilding. The vast majority went to a much more important project, an ark for the salvation of humanity.
Not only was Chronos Two the largest particle collider in the world powering a massive time travel vortex generator, but it was also an ark of the grandest scale. Noah would be speechless if he saw what they’d built. The completely self-sufficient community could house and feed ten thousand people comfortably. Plus they had a gene and seed bank that contained all the world’s known plant and animal species. If the surface of the planet were inhospitable for humans after E-Day, then they could live underground until they came up with a solution to the virus and nanobot swarms.
“I have to say, Buddy, this is truly amazing. You’ve planned for every contingency here. Why didn’t you tell me about this place before now?”
“I wanted to. But we had a spy working against us in the first timeline, and I wanted this place to remain hidden. Even the workers who built the base were shipped in from outside the country—in windowless planes—and housed in private quarters. For the two years of their contracts, they had no idea where they were or what they were building. We followed Dr. Chen’s and your plans for the actual time vortex generator, but went a bit grander here. And Claire was a tremendous help as well.”
Paulson glanced at his ever-present shadow. Claire’s mental processing power had expanded exponentially over the years, as had her outward human appearance. It was hard to believe she’d been simply a square box when he first got her forty-seven years ago.
“Why here?” Jeff asked. “Why Hillah, Iraq?”
“For the time travel aspect, of course. Babylon was founded in 1894 BC on the banks of the Euphrates. The cradle of civilization. Many believe the Garden of Eden was somewhere around here too. If we want to truly explore our past, then we need to be right where it all started so long ago. Long jumps at Chronos One at Lechuguilla would have been good for exploring old Native American tribes and the flora and fauna of past epochs, but for real interaction with our own civilization, this is the place to be.”
They hadn’t completed any of these long jumps yet, though. Anyone they sent back would have no way of returning to the present. So they needed to build another time machine in the past. They had all the supplies necessary to build a small vortex generator in the distant past, twenty thousand years ago, at a base that would be robotically maintained throughout the millennia. Any research and exploratory teams sent back would be able to access the base and return to the present. But before they could begin any of these grand projects, they needed to survive past E-Day. That was the priority now.
“So with another active time machine here, have you learned anything more about E-Day?”
“No,” Paulson said, the word bitter on his tongue.
Just as with Chronos One, they’d received no communication from the future beyond today. Jumps were scheduled out for several months past E-Day and they had chrononauts ready to go at a moment’s notice with up-to-the second information. There was no reason someone shouldn’t have jumped back to tell them what happened. If everyone lived, they should most certainly get a message, but even if everyone on the surface died, then the Chronos Two base should still be operational and able to conduct time jumps.
It made no sense.
They’d even sent several human chrononauts and bot
s into the future, just past the time of the meteor shower. None of them returned.
The mystery made Paulson’s stomach knot up. He’d been in battle before, but not knowing what would happen, that was something he could never get used to.
They continued walking, and after tours of the control room and other critical areas, Paulson could tell Jeff was tiring.
“Come on, let me show you to your quarters.”
“As much as I’d like to rest, I don’t think I can, worrying about Holly like this. You still haven’t heard anything from your team?”
Paulson was getting concerned as well. He’d sent his best men out there, including Mattie Tedrow, who never failed on a mission. Even his old pal Tony Evangelista was there, running security. The team’s electronics were shielded from EM pulses, so a nuclear blast shouldn’t have damaged them. They should still be able to communicate.
Paulson pressed the side of his eye and the local time—1815 hours—appeared in his vision, along with a timer counting down the seconds to the meteor shower. They had only eight hours. Both digital clocks disappeared a second later. They were certainly cutting it close. They needed to get the survivors, if there were any, transported from Chronos One here to Hillah.
A chime sounded in his mind—finally, a message.
“Mr. Vice President, it’s Evangelista. Are you there, sir?”
Paulson tapped the back of his ear.
“I’m here. Report.”
“The base has been completely destroyed, and we are unable to enter the underground facility at this time due to high radioactivity levels. We do have survivors. They managed to make it to the surface before the blast hit them.”
“Is that your team from Chronos?” Jeff asked anxiously.
Paulson turned his palm over and touched it to activate his holo. Evangelista came into clear view above his hand. He was in a warehouse. Pallets and boxes were smoldering as men in radiation protection gear put the flames out.
“Is Holly Scarborough there?” Jeff asked, panic rising in his voice.
“Jeff! Jeff! Is that you?”
NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two Page 16
