Red Peaks

by Eton Corrasable

  ‘The answer?’

  ‘...answer…’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘...algor-ithm… the... one... [REDACTED]... wrote...’

  ‘Aiguilles Rouge.’

  ‘...no...’

  ‘No?’

  ‘...no it… but… how... did... kn-ow that? Is that... what-’

  ‘-Yes.’

  Gilt shuts his eyes.

  ‘That’s what I told to..’

  ‘...trig-gered… count… dow-...’

  ‘Countdown?’

  ‘...there... only... hours and... left...until...’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘...algo-rithm... activated... inside... L’s... device... term-inal... spreading...’

  ‘How far?’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Hello?’

  The distortion intensifies.

  ‘HOW FAR?’

  There is a crackling sound.

  ‘...ev...wher...’

  ‘Everywhere?’

  ‘...everywhere...’

  Gilt pulls the device away for a moment and looks at it as, now holding it as if it were an alien object.

  ‘What did she want to know from me?’

  ‘...unclear... oper-ations... that… under… way... when... you... appreh-end-ed...[REDACTED]... may… still… be… in flux… they… may... want... as... much... as we...’

  Gilt focuses his eyes upon the mountain range ahead.

  ‘Send me the countdown. Tell F____ to send in a team to the facility.’

  ‘O…-kay… and…’

  ‘Hello?

  ‘...pl-an..?’

  The device beeps. Looking at it, Gilt makes an adjustment on his watch.

  ‘Plan? Yes, well, I’m working on it...’

  ‘...Gilt-’

  He ends the call. The light is beginning to fade. The sun filters the clouds as it sets behind the jagged peaks beyond. Hues of bright red blend with oranges, purples and crimsons. Gilt looks down from the window, then climbs out of it, descending the hotel wall, before jumping the rest of the way, landing and falling roughly to his feet.

  Retrieving the silver case, he opens the constellation and unlocks the car. Checking the glove compartment, he retrieves his gun. Holstering it, he starts the engine, which immediately roars. Turning a corner, he leaves the road. He waves a hand over the dashboard and the tyres mutate as the vehicle delves into snowy terrain, continuing at speed towards the base of the mountain range ahead.

  16.46

  Flurries of snow appear, blotting out the windscreen. Gilt’s eyelids shut. Then open. His vision is white. A bouquet appears. Petals fall from it. They turn into tentacles. They merge together and form a frosted green crystal, which dissolves into a green mist, through which the shape of an octopus emerges. The silhouette of a figure falls into it. Gilt blinks. The car is continuing at speed.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Base

  17.16

  Gilt slams the breaks as he swerves away from crashing into the base of the mountain. Shutting off the engine, he gets out and opens the boot of the car, opens a compartment and pulls out a grey box. Shutting the boot again, he opens the box and begins putting on the climbing gear contained inside it. Referring to at a map on his device, Gilt looks up and finds a trail to walk up. The light continues to fade. The snow continues steadily.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Mountainside

  17.29

  Removing a device from his backpack, Gilt reaches up and inserts the tip of a piece of black cord into a crack in the rock above him. The tip becomes liquid and expands and sets again. The other end of the cord is attached to a piece of silver metal around his waist, from which other pieces of cord hang. Gilt begins to climb up the side of the mountain. His watch luminously blinks a countdown.

  Saint-Gingolph

  Research Facility

  17.30

  Large vehicles approach the building. A tall man exits the front vehicle with three others. They enter the building through the entrance passage, and approach a computer terminal. One man inserts something into it. There is a bright burst. He removes it again. As they all turn to leave, the tall man makes a call on his device.

  ‘We have it. We’ll proceed according to plan.’

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Mountainside

  17.48

  Gilt wipes off the snow from his watch, under which it continues to luminously blink a countdown. It feels incongruous on his wrist; a relatively microscopic digital element within the otherwise dark, merciless, natural terrain. Taking out his device, he checks his position on a map. Looking up again, he adjusts the direction in which he is climbing. There is a rumble from above. A small avalanche of stones crumbles over him. He clings to the rock face. After a few moments, it passes. He continues climbing.

  18.46

  Gilt’s device trembles. He stops and, fetching something from jacket pocket, inserts it into his ear and listens.

  ‘We will... have... team ready to... deploy... less than... hour... sending... coordinates... now... on my way... now... can you... make it?’

  ‘I’ll try-’

  The connection breaks up. He gets out a red pen and writes some numbers on his wrist. Something not far away above him catches his eye, beneath a plateau above: a vertical line of pitons from a previous climb. Adjusting his direction, Gilt continues climbing diagonally toward them.

  Lake Geneva

  18.48

  Men stand nearby half a dozen large vehicles parked near the edge of the lake. They are getting into black diving gear. ____x stands nearby, leaning over a table with a yellow lantern on it, studying computer print-outs.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Mountainside

  18.51

  Gilt approaches the vertical line of pitons. He reuses them and ascends to the top one, not far from the edge of the plateau above. His hand reaches inside a clump of snow. It reappears with an old bouquet of flowers attached to string. He pulls out a knife and cuts them free. Clutching the bouquet wrapper, which contains only withered old stems, Gilt turns around to lean his back against the face of the mountain. Reaching inside, he removes a small envelope tucked inside the bouquet wrapper. He takes out his device begins to dial a number while at the same time opening the envelope. But as he flips the envelope open, he stops. The envelope is empty. He looks at it forlornly. A strong gust of wind blows. The envelope is caught by a strong gust of wind, which pulls it out of his hand. He watches it drift away, out of sight. Snow continues to fall. Gilt checks his watch. The countdown is coming to an end. He looks out into the distance. As he returns to the rockface to begin climbing down, he recognises something sticking out somewhere just below the old line of pitons.

  Lake Geneva

  18.53

  More large vehicles appear. As they arrive, they park next to the existing ones, while men in black diving suits begin to disappear into the water. As they submerge into the water, bright circles activate around their eyes.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Mountainside

  18.58

  It is dark. Gilt moves down the line of pitons. There is rumbling from above. He looks up, then continues to lodge a tip of a black cord into a crevice. Getting into position, he lowers himself down further. Slowly, he unfurls more rope, until he can reach down to something. It is a small oblong object sticking out of the rock. Gilt wipes the snow off it, revealing a Victorinox symbol.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  (19__?)

  11.31

  As F____ attempts to pull himself up to the plateau above, his trouser leg snags on some rock. Retrieving his Swiss Army Knife, and, reaching down, he swipes and cuts the clothing free. Pocketing the knife again, he clambers up. H_____ continues climbing from below. There is more rumbling. H_____ stops and looks up. Small rocks and snow fall over his face. He carries on climbing. As he approaches the ledge, his trouser leg snags on the same rock. As he retrieves his knife, the rumbling grows loude
r. The knife accidentally drops from his hand. He curses, trying to reach with his hand, which only unbalances him. He looks up.

  ‘F____!’

  Kneeling down near the edge of the plateau, F____ peers down. Looking up, H_____ holds his arm up, outstretched.

  ‘Lend me your knife!’

  There is more rumbling from above. Louder than before. F____ looks up, then back down to H_____. He takes his knife out of his pocket.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Mountainside

  18.59

  The final seconds tick down on Gilt’s watch. He reaches for his device and taps a word into it. The countdown on his watch flickers brightly in the dark. It is starting to approach zero. His device begins to emanate a green spiral. Gilt pauses, as if mesmerised. The spiral turns into mist. As if snapping himself out of a trance, he lets the device drop from his hand. There is more rumbling. He looks up as his climbing device loosens in its crevice above. Gilt slips down the face of the mountain. He scrapes his hands wilding to get a grip upon the face of the rock, but he only stops falling as the device manages to relodge itself further, in a less stable crevice. It slips and relodges itself again. The angle of the rock face from which Gilt now hangs turns sharply inwards. He tries to reach up to grab onto the sharp edge of rock that his cord is dangling from. But it is too far away, and as he reaches out, his body swings, grating the cord against the edge of rock. It begins to splinter. There is more rumbling, and the sounds of large rocks crumbling and falling. As he braces himself for the mini-avalanche, his climbing device begins to loosen in its position again. Small rocks fall over his head, followed by a large what, that manages to gash him in the arm, reopening his wound. Gilt screams out. His voice echoes. Gilt feels his eyes uncontrollably well up, as he looks down below..

  Aiguilles Rouges

  (19__?)

  11.32

  H_____ falls away from the side of the mountain, his arms outstretched. Snow falls as he descends.

  Aiguilles Rouges

  Mountainside

  19.00

  Gilt looks up at the stars, then stares down again. Perhaps towards his fate. His eyes become sombre. Then slowly close. He pictures his current situation from a great distance, a single human life on this vast indifferent rock. As if he were the last man on earth. And, as if moving of its own accord, a hand moves towards the cord as it attaches to his waist. Tears form in the crevices of his eyes. He can’t fight them back from falling. As his hand begins to carefully unhook the cord, it hesitates for just a moment, as if momentarily overridden by another directive. It is frozen by a certain sensation. Fighting back tears, he screams audibly, wrenching his arms up to grab the cord above him in both hands. It splinters a little with each pull. Until the edge of rock above is within reach. He stretches an arm up, trying to extend the very bones inside it. As the tips of the fingers of one hand manage to get the vaguest grip of the edge, the cord snaps.

  Chapter 7: Vertigo

  Aiguilles Rouges

  19.01

  As he falls, Gilt feels the gushing air pass through his being, distorted in time and space. A sense of relief becomes interlaced with the sudden rush of adrenalin. With his body arched downwards, he begins to open his arms, as if embracing the tunnel of snowflakes he plunges through. As if to greet his fate. It feels like time. But this almost religious acceptance is interrupted by another sensation. A feeling from the ring on his finger as it begins to shine. Gilt’s hand reaches around to his backpack for something. After a moment, a parachute floods out above his head. He quickly arches his body, manipulating the strings to navigate himself safely away from the face of the mountain, which his body might otherwise smash and entwine itself with. He makes an adjustment to his watch. It pulses red and some kind of magnetic power pulls at his arm up, drawing him in a particular direction. He arrives at a snowy mound. Unhooking the parachute, he wipes off the snow the car is covered with, gets in and proceeds to drive away at speed.

  Montenvers Hotel

  Chamonix

  19.23

  Arriving back at the abandoned hotel, Gilt get out, grabs a nearby rock, and approaches the wall. Using adjusting the rock in his hand, he proceeds to smash a ground floor window, knocking away the remaining pieces of jagged glass and carefully climbing through. He stands in an unpleasant kitchen space. Alerted by the putrid smell, Gilt approaches a work surface where a multitude of insects engage a large rotting piece of meat, and picks up the large knife lying next to it.

  Reappearing from the kitchen window, Gilt climbs up the side of the wall of the hotel until he reaches the window he originally escaped from. He marches through the hotel suite, down the corridor, and enters the open doors of the lift, and presses the single button inside. It promptly plummets to the bunker area below.

  He approaches Sylvia’s body. She is the one pristine thing within the facade of the place. As Gilt crouches down to her, his eyes shift in emotion. Expressing anger. Then mournfulness. Then dread.

  Underwater

  Lake Geneva

  19.35

  The divers reach down deeper. The shape and outline of a sprawling structure on the base of the lake comes into view. Other people in white diving suits rise up from below, bearing weapons.

  Montenvers Hotel

  Chamonix

  19.36

  Holding something under his arm, Gilt descends from the hotel window and gets back into his car, throwing the what he is holding into the back seat. As he drives away, he refers to the map ____x gave him, which still lays on the dashboard, then checks the coordinates written on his wrist. He turns to look via the rearview mirror to the thing in the back seat. It is wrapped in material. He turns his attention back to the road. After some time, the lake appears in the distance. Gilt’s usual stoic look has turned to despair. He sees the large vehicles, ____x, and some other men. He increases speed. The thing in the back seat rocks. The men ahead turn to see his car approaching. Gilt steers clear of them, driving forward toward the lake. He slowly closes his eyes, increasing speed further. The car lifts off before crashing and slowly sinking into the water, like a casket. Gilt’s eyes remain closed. The car continues to sink. Men in diving suits at the edge of the lake go in after the car. Gilt slowly opens his eyes again as the outer body of the car transforms into an underwater vessel. Internal and external lights come on. Gilt starts to navigate. Delving deeper, he passes opposing teams of divers fighting each other, then notices the team of divers following directly behind him. He slows down a little, waiting until they have gripped onto the back. Adding more power again, he descends further downward. A large sprawling underground structure comes into view. He focuses on a particular section and moves towards it. A circular black door comes into view. Gilt steers closer towards it. Gliding a hand across the dashboard illuminates it. He taps twice. Two glowing blue orbs shoot out, reach the circular door, and dissolve it in a short, intense, blinding glow. With the divers clinging to the back, he navigates into the entrance space beyond. There is a doorway at the end of it. As they enter, another circular door quickly closes behind them. A mechanism automatically starts ejecting water from out of the space. Finally there is just a puddle left on the floor. The men take off their goggles and flippers. Gilt exits the vessel, holding the item from the back seat in his hands, and approaches the door at the end of the space. A feeling of revulsion gently ripples through him. He removes a head from the material covering it. Thick globules of blood drip. Nauseous, he places it in front of a blue square above the door. After a brief scan, a blue holographic representation of her head wraps around the real, severed one. The heavy metal door slowly opens. Gilt turns to the men around him. They proceed to follow him inside. As the door slowly closes behind them, they stand in the middle of a long tubular chrome corridor, curving left and right in either direction. Consulting a somewhat opaque-looking metal diagram above the door, they make a decision to turn left. Gilt turns to follow behind them, but stops as he catches sight of the reflection
of something in the curvature of the metal. Spinning around, he catches a glimpse of the back of a woman dressed in a smart light grey tailored suit. Blinking, he cranes his neck as the woman disappears around the bend in the corridor. Signalling to the others to carry on without him, Gilt continues at his own pace down the long slow curve. The floor vibrates with energy. The corridor straightens out and at the end of it lies a white circular door. As he continues, there is the sound of an explosion from behind, emanating from some other distant part of the structure, the reverberations of which knock him off balance. As he reaches out a hand to steady himself, the chrome melts a little. The whole corridor tilts and bends. His hand leaves an imprint. Perturbed, he turns to rejoin the group, but as if frozen in a moment of malfunction, as if caught in some kind of gravitational pull, his head reverses direction, and turns back around again to face the circular door ahead. As calmly approaches it, the glass softly slides open with a hiss. A white fog emerges, rushing past him. As Gilt enters, blind, the fog elegantly lifts, to reveal baroque nanoscopic silver control panelling arching gracefully together to form a gleaming dome over a large central expanse. In the centre is a chair raised high upon a shite triangular platform, to which many little steps lead up. The back of the head of a man is visible.

  Entrance

  Underground Facility

  20.00

  ____x and other men wearing diving suits and backpacks appear

  outside the sealed area. They break in through the new door that has appeared. Water pours into the entrance space. Gilt’s vessel lifts up.

  The space becomes flooded. Another man taps ____x on the shoulder, pointing at the floating head. ____x nods back to him.

  Silver Grey Chamber

  Underground Facility

  20.14

  Gilt approaches the chair on the other side. He stops. The panelling pulls back from the centre of the dome above the chair. Glass windows are revealed, and finally the lake beyond. A spiralling multitude of deep sea organisms are illuminated by huge lights attached to the exterior of the glass panels.

  Entrance

  Underground Facility

  20.15

  Holding onto the handle of the entrance door, ____x presses Sylvia’s head against the panel next to the door. It opens. As water pours into the corridor, they flood in with it. The door closes behind them, sealing the corridor off again. Getting up again, ____x watches as the other men remove explosive devices from their backpacks. They start placing them along the corridor wall. What is left of the original team reappears. One of them speaks to ____x, who nods and starts to turn back in the other direction.