He returned to the table, fists clenched. Maybe they were watching him. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of going nuts.
Taking long, deep breaths, he tried to force himself to remain calm. But the longer he sat there, the more he boiled over, until he found himself pressing his fingers into his palms with his filthy overgrown nails.
You’re going to get yourself killed, he thought to himself.
The only way he was going to get revenge was if he played it cool. If he did that, then he had a chance to bring down this entire shadowy organization.
Watch, listen, learn.
The words his dad had taught him echoed in his mind.
Timothy let his hands relax and closed his eyes, counting to ten.
When he hit ten, he took a deep breath, then counted to ten again. Over and over, a silent meditation. He tried to think of good thoughts. Like what it had been like to be back on Peaks Island. The trees and water surrounding him. Being able to spend time with Tasha, running off together with their friends to go hiking and explore the landscape, spending long nights on the shores.
He had no idea how much time had passed when the door finally clicked and slowly creaked open. Timothy tensed, sitting as straight as he could.
A balding doctor, maybe fifty years of age, walked into the room wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard. Behind him, two bearded men wearing fatigues stood guard with machine guns.
They remained in the hallway, and the doctor kept the door open.
“State your full name,” he said.
His eyes may as well have been pools of darkness, not the kind that Timothy remembered on his doctor at home. This man had seen too much death.
“Your full name,” the doctor entreated.
“Timothy Lance,” he lied.
The doctor looked down at his clipboard and scribbled something onto the paper. Then he moved over toward the table.
Timothy flinched when he reached out for him.
“Relax. I’m going to do some basic tests to make sure you’re healthy.”
Timothy wasn’t sure if he believed that, but he decided it didn’t matter. The two guys with machine guns in the hall gave him no choice but to obey.
For the next thirty minutes, Timothy endured many of the same tests he remembered from his normal physicals with his physician. The doctor took his blood pressure, listened to his heart and lungs. He even made him stick his tongue out, using a wooden depressor to see the back of his throat.
When he finished, he scribbled some more on his clipboard and left without saying another word, closing the door behind him.
Timothy tried to relax on the cold seat. All he could do was wonder what the hell all that had been about.
When the door opened again, the doctor returned and gestured for Timothy to follow him into the hall.
The two guards accompanied them down the narrow passage with a tiled floor and white walls. The air carried a sterile smell, like a laboratory.
They took a right at an intersection and entered a hall with glass windows. More armed guards stood outside a set of doors with biohazard signs.
On the other side of the glass windows, scientists in bulky hazmat suits worked inside an open laboratory with metal tables. Several of the workers surrounded a clear plastic container with some sort of rodent inside.
Timothy slowed to get a better view.
“Move it,” said one of the escort guards.
They passed another lab where a monkey with bandaged legs screeched inside a cage, rattling the bars with its hands while a scientist watched.
What the hell were they doing down here?
His mind raced…
He had assumed they were checking his health, like the doctor said. Now he wondered if he was about to become a test subject.
They continued past more labs, but these were empty and dark inside.
Not completely dark, Timothy realized.
He stopped, squinting to try and make out what looked like glowing eyes. The eyes belonged to a bulky animal that trotted on four legs, moving toward the window.
“What in God’s…” Timothy whispered.
The doctor turned and walked back to Timothy while one of the guards laughed.
“You aren’t afraid of dogs, are you?” he asked.
This was no dog inside the dark room. Not anymore. The beast was a monster with thick muscles and a spiky back. Veins bulged from light brown skin.
“Let’s go,” said the other guard. He elbowed Timothy hard in the back, pushing him forward. They didn’t stop again until they got to another wing of labs. The doctor stopped at a door and opened it with the flash of a keycard.
“Come with me,” he said to Timothy.
They walked into a white laboratory, the guards staying outside.
At the center of the room was a single person in a white coat. He had his back turned and was working on something on a metal cart next to a chair with leather straps.
Timothy’s eyes turned to the cart, inspiring a pang of nausea. On the top sat two long needles, a black collar, and an open tool kit.
“Sir, I’ve brought the recruit,” said the doctor.
“Ah, Timothy,” said a familiar voice, as the man in the white coat turned.
Dread snaked its way through Timothy’s insides.
It was Nick.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward a chair.
Timothy hesitated at the sight of the open leather straps on the arm rests.
“What are you going to do?” Timothy asked. He shivered, unable to hold back his fear or his thoughts. “You going to turn me into one of those creatures?”
“Wow, you must really think I’m the monster, huh?”
Timothy didn’t reply, and Nick followed his gaze to the metal cart with the tools and the needles.
“Oh, those…” Nick said. “Well, you didn’t think we were going to induct you into our army without some insurance, did you?”
He laughed.
The doctor picked up the collar.
“We didn’t live in the shadows all this time because we’re stupid,” Nick said. “We’ve planned every move.”
“You’ll wear this until you can be trusted,” the doctor said.
“Now have a seat,” Nick said, his voice deeper.
Timothy did as instructed. His mind whirled trying to figure a way out of this. But he came up with nothing. The doctor walked around the chair and started tightening the leather straps around his arms and legs.
“This one’s a healthy young man,” he said.
Nick nodded and patted Timothy on the shoulder. “That’s good, because you, my friend, are going to be very important to our master. I’ve been told he has special plans for you.”
“Master?” Timothy asked.
“In time, you’ll learn more,” Nick said. He grabbed a syringe with a long needle and held it up toward a light.
Timothy recoiled.
“Don’t worry.” Nick flicked the syringe, loosening a couple bubbles. “I didn’t just lie about my family being dead. I also lied about being a dentist. I was actually a lab technician. Something that’s come in very handy for our plans.”
Timothy swallowed hard, wondering what else Nick had lied about.
There was one thing he knew for sure.
The collaborators were far better organized than anyone on the outside had imagined.
Nick stuck him in the arm with the needle, and a wave of heat rushed through his veins. Then came a feeling of cool relief and exhaustion.
Timothy tried to keep his eyelids open, but they grew heavier by the second. His vision started to blur as he watched the two men prepare the collar and what looked like a small microchip.
Any illusions he had about escaping vanished.
As he drifted off, he thought of his dad. He knew in his heart that his father would have wanted him to forget about revenge and focus on stopping whatever these men had planned.
You ar
e the only one that can stop them now, he heard his father say. I trained you for this.
And then there was only darkness.
***
“I’m moving the kids to a shelter just in case,” Beckham said through the intercom.
Kate stood on the other side of a glass window in the laboratory trying to make sense of what he had just told her about the juvenile scouts. She was alone in an antechamber to the larger lab, trying to keep calm.
All of a sudden, she felt trapped, like the mastermind in the main chamber. And the thought of Javier and the kids hiding in a basement shelter in a place she told them would be safe sent a pang of regret through her.
“Don’t worry, Kate,” Beckham said as if he could read her thoughts. “Horn and I’ll make sure the kids are okay. You just focus on your work.”
“I’m trying but…”
“Really, everything will be fine, I promise.”
She wanted to believe that, but if the Variants really knew the mastermind was here, there would be hell to pay. Her husband helped make her feel a little better, but still there was the burning question about the juveniles and how they would have known the beast had been brought here.
They hadn’t connected the creature to the external webbing network, and the top-secret landing during the dead of night had only been known by the science team and trusted military members.
She hit the intercom button. “Do you think Colonel Presley has taken care of any collaborators here?”
“The colonel is confident we have nothing to fear.”
“But you aren’t.”
Beckham hesitated. “No, I’m not.”
Sammy entered the room behind her and said, “Doctor Lovato, we need you back in the lab.”
“Just a moment,” Kate said.
Sammy nodded and exited back to the main lab.
“Go,” Beckham said. “I’ll take care of things. The kids, collaborators. I can handle it.”
She looked at the clock. It was seven thirty-five.
“I still plan on taking my break to see you all if I can,” she said.
He put a hand on the glass and she matched it with her gloved hand.
Kate returned to the lab, trying to manage her heartbeat. She was shaken up by the news that juvenile scouts had been spotted around the outpost, but decided to keep it to herself for now. Saying anything could throw off her team, and she trusted they would be alerted if it was absolutely necessary, by staff or by her husband.
Focus, Kate, you have to focus.
She and Carr had to unravel the mystery of the mastermind network. There was no room for failure. As soon as she reentered the chamber, she spotted Carr hunched over a lab table. By him was Sammy and another computer engineer engrossed in their work.
All around, she noticed the same determination in the other scientists, engineers, and lab technicians. Dressed in white cleanroom suits and masks, they worked hurriedly at the banks of computer terminals and filtered between the huge iron columns in the center of the three-story room. Others carted supplies and samples to different lab benches.
The twenty-person team was a significant upgrade from when it was just her and Dr. Pat Ellis in the early days of the war. But while she had not grown as close to Dr. Carr as she had been with Ellis, at least she respected the man’s work and drive. It would be people like him, intelligent and steadfast, that enabled them to survive the coming days and weeks, the crucial tipping point of the war that they were currently losing.
Kate crossed the lab to Doctor Carr and Sammy, navigating the maze of lab stations and bustling staff.
While she had grown accustomed to working with this large group and this enormous space, there was one thing she would never get used to. The constant odor of rot and sour trash that her bunny suit couldn’t mitigate.
The beast responsible for that smell lumbered in the middle of the room like a huge lump of crumpled red tissue. Snores that sounded like horrifying growls echoed through the room.
Long red tendrils, some as thick as anchor chains and others as thin as spaghetti, hung off the creature. Those were the remnants of the webbing network that had secured the monster to the cathedral back in New Orleans. Steel chains held it in place, attached to iron columns stretching from floor to ceiling.
“How are we looking?” Kate asked when she reached Carr.
He turned in his full white bunny-suit and facemask. “I think we’re about ready to bring you in. Follow me.”
Sammy joined them as they went to a bench filled with computer terminals and sat about six-feet from the creature’s restrained claws. Two other computer engineers worked at the keyboards.
Next to them was a clear bioreactor about the size of a football. A series of micro-electric arrays connected the blob of red webbing tissue growing inside the bioreactor.
Sammy gestured to the bioreactor. “The connections are complete.”
“Good, then the last thing we have to do is connect the webbing to the mastermind,” Kate said.
Carr stood next to the bioreactor with another micro-electric array in hand. The device looked to be nothing more than a series of circuits and metal prongs that Kate didn’t know much about. She certainly wasn’t the expert in brain-neural interfaces, but people on the team around her were.
Sean joined them with his arms folded across his chest.
“We’ve prepped the connection tendril,” he said.
“Bring it over, please,” Kate said.
Sean walked over to the beast’s open palm, approaching fearlessly. Kate was a bit shocked to see him acting with such confidence. It was almost like the imminent threat from outside had sparked new courage in the young tech. From the mastermind’s hand, he dragged a red vine of tissue.
It looked like an enormous piece of stringy, chewed bubble gum.
Sean clamped the tissue into a vice on the table right next to the bioreactor. Carr then connected the micro-electric array.
Next, Sean moved a large surgical lens into place above the vice gripped-tendril.
“Okay,” Sean said.
Carr bent down and peered through the lens to help him surgically attach the probes from the array into the tendril. Connecting nerve bundles one-at-a-time required expert precision.
To an outsider, what they were doing might have looked like nothing more than connecting some wires to a few chunks of meat. Kate’s nerves were alive with coursing electricity, adrenaline pumping through her vessels.
This was the ultimate experiment, connecting a mastermind to computers loaded with the programs the collaborators had been using to communicate.
No one in the Allied States had ever done this—and it could change the course of the war in their favor.
Carr pulled away from the tendril and nodded. “It’s connected.”
Sammy leaned toward the monitor on her bench. A moment later she looked up. “Holy shit, I’m already getting something,” she said. “An electrical pulse.”
A long groan escaped the monster’s bulbous lips.
The click of weapons being shouldered echoed around the room from the soldiers standing guard.
Kate tensed up, but the monster quieted once more.
“What else are you seeing?” she asked.
“I’m getting a constant pulse,” Sammy said. “It looks to me just like a repeated signal to let the collaborator software know that the beast is connected.”
“Hmm,” Carr said, twisting to look at the beast. “Nothing in English yet?”
“Not yet.” Sammy typed something on the keyboard. “Let me adjust something on our end.”
Text scrolled on her screen. A series of 1s repeated over and over. Like they were appearing at the beat of the drum.
“I think I’ve got this tuned right.” Sammy pointed to the screen excitedly. “The ‘1s’ appear in the collaborator program when the mastermind is present, but not actively communicating. Kind of a neutral state.”
“So how do we get it to a non-neutr
al state?” Kate said.
Sammy gulped, locking her gaze with Kate. “I think it’s waiting for an input. We need to experiment with it.”
“You can type a query that’ll be translated through the webbing to the beast, right?” Kate asked.
Sammy nodded.
“Ask it: What are our commands?”
Sammy typed the words onto the computer terminal and hit the enter button. Everyone moved closer to the screen.
For a second, nothing happened. Just a series of more 1s and the low rumble of the comatose mastermind’s breathing. Then the beast started twitching. Some of the severed tendrils draping off its body whipped like live electrical wires fallen from a power line.
The lab technicians retreated behind the iron columns. The soldiers around the perimeter advanced toward the center, their weapons trained on the monster. The giant’s eyes fluttered open, and its yellow reptilian pupils flicked back and forth, surveilling its surroundings.
The soldiers closed in while the science team backed away.
Kate held up a hand, hoping to keep the soldiers from acting too hastily. “Don’t fire!”
“Increase the anesthesia!” Carr ordered.
The beast pulled its legs and arms toward its body. Then it started to stand. Metal protested as the columns and chains resisted the strength of the monster. Pops like rivets breaking loose sounded from where the columns met the ceiling.
“We’re losing it!” Sean yelled.
The soldiers moved closer, weapons up.
“Hold your fire!” Kate yelled.
“More anesthesia!” Carr snapped at Sean.
Kate watched Sean work quickly to increase the dose. She could feel the tension striking like lightning between the soldiers and the research team.
If the beast broke free, it could kill everyone here. But if they killed it, they would lose everything they had fought for. This was their only chance at uncovering how the Variants and collaborators were coordinating their attacks.
The beast took a faltering step, fully upright now. It let out a bellow that shook the ceiling, releasing dust. A few bolts fell free and clanged on the floor.
Researchers scattered as it took another step, dragging the huge IV lines attached to its body.
Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno Page 23
