by Greig Beck
Once there she collapsed to her hands and knees and gulped down air. She tried to explain what had happened, but their faces were confused or scared, though some just looked pissed off.
“It got her,” Olga gasped. “It was wrapped all around her.”
Commander Puskin forced people from his path, and she could tell by the way his bushy brows knitted that he was furious.
“Olga, did you set off the fire alarm?” he asked.
“Yes, but, Annika, it had her, and –”
Puskin roughly grabbed her arm, and led her away from the group, pausing to nod at two men, who sprinted off. He then led her to a seat and made her sit down. Over his shoulder, Olga saw that the others followed, like a wolf pack, their eyes hungry with accusations now.
Someone handed her some water, and she gulped it down, realizing for the first time how thirsty she was. Her head throbbed and she knew she needed her medication.
“Gather your thoughts, Ms. Sobakin.” Puskin pointed a big finger in Olga’s face. “Now take a deep breath and tell me what is happening.”
Olga shut her eyes, calmed herself and tried to speak as evenly and convincingly as she could manage. “My friend Annika, was there, in her cubicle, but jammed into a closet, and there was stuff all over her like black cords.”
“Someone pushed her inside?” Puskin asked. “Tied her up with cords?”
Olga pushed her short blond hair off a sweaty forehead. “No, something had her, like black cords, but alive, wrapping her up.”
Puskin stared into her face for several moments. “And you didn’t untie her?”
“No-ooo, not tied up …” She grimaced, frustrated and sick to the pit of her stomach. “Just check, please, just check.”
“We already are.” He rose to his feet.
The two men Puskin had dispatched returned from Annika’s office. Puskin waved them in.
“Report.”
“The room is empty.” Pieter Andropov shrugged and looked at his companion who nodded.
“What?” Olga pushed people out of her way to see the men. “Did you check the closet? In the corner?”
“Yes, it was open, there was nothing. Anywhere.” Pieter hiked his shoulders. “No Annika, no mess, just an empty room.”
Olga felt pops of dizzying light going off in her head. “That’s impossible. She was there. You’re lying.”
Pieter frowned. “There was nothing.”
She turned to Puskin. “Someone cleaned it up.”
“No one, Olga.” Puskin had his arms folded. “There was nothing to clean up.”
“Something had her and was killing her. And now she’s gone. Just like Alekseev, and just like all the others. Don’t believe me? Then where is she?” She threw her hands up. “Where are they?”
There was a commotion outside the room, and then people began to laugh. Puskin looked over his shoulder and out into the corridor. His mouth set into a grim line as he turned to face Olga.
“No one has been hiding anything. Unless you are?” He stood aside. “Come in …”
Annika stepped into her room. Her face was composed and her eyes went from Puskin to Olga, and then to the crowd. “What’s going on?”
Olga’s mouth dropped open. “But … you were …”
“I was down in maintenance. Have I missed something?”
“Everything is fine, Annika.” Puskin took Olga by the shoulders and stared into her face. “Things have been stressful enough around here lately, we are all making mistakes.” He rubbed her arms. “Go back to your pod, get some rest, and sleep it off.
“Annika, you were in the cabinet …” Confusion and anger began to rise inside her.
Annika’s brows knitted. “I was in what?”
“I’ll get someone to cover your shift tomorrow.” Puskin squeezed her shoulders. “And I think maybe no more drinking on the job.”
Olga felt fury boil over; she knew what she saw. Something was very wrong here.
“No!” She shoved him.
“That’s enough, Ms. Sobakin.” Puskin grabbed her elbow, hard. His mouth was twisted.
Olga hit him. Harder than she should have. Puskin’s head momentarily rocked back, and when he looked at her his eyes blazed.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. She turned to her friend. “Annika?”
But Annika just stared at her blankly, like she didn’t even know her.
“That’s not Annika!” Olga screamed.
Puskin cursed through teeth stained with blood and pointed at Olga. “Put her in detention.” He glared at her. “You can sleep off your drunkenness in there.”
* * *
Mia swallowed dryly as the Russian woman stopped talking then just sat staring straight ahead, like a wind-up toy that had finally wound down. Her revelations were unbelievable and horrifyingly plausible in equal measure.
“Go on. Then what happened?” Captain Briggs urged.
After a few seconds Olga’s shoulders hiked a fraction. “I was placed in detention, like Puskin ordered – locked in a secured room. I didn’t care. I was happy to be away from everyone, and somewhere I would feel safe. It was supposed to be for three days. But it wasn’t. After one day, the food and water stopped coming.” She looked up, her eyes shimmering with tears. “Because that’s when it came out.”
“It?” Mia asked in a whisper.
Olga covered her face. “I heard people running, and the screams went on and on, day and night. Beyond just fear in their voices – it was insane terror. After a while I was exhausted and lay down in my private jail. But then I heard it moving around outside. The thing that had been hiding in our base somewhere now must have felt strong enough to be out in the open.” She snorted softly. “Or maybe there weren’t enough of us left to be a threat anymore.”
Olga leaned back; she lifted glistening eyes to the ceiling for a moment and sniffed tears back. “When the screaming stopped, I knew it was all over. Maybe everyone was dead. And sooner or later it would find me, and I would be trapped. So, I shorted the wires for the door lock, and snuck out.”
“What did you see?” Mia asked.
“I wish I hadn’t seen anything.” Her mouth turned down. “It was a nightmare. Some of the people were frozen, gripping walls and furniture, but they weren’t people anymore. They were husks, with things growing from them. I knew then I was alone.”
Olga shook her head. “I couldn’t fight it, but I also knew I couldn’t leave it in the base for the Earth supply ship personnel to walk into. I had to try and kill it.” She nodded. “So, I drained the cooling pool for the nuclear rods to create a meltdown explosion. I got out and ran. And then everything went black.”
No one spoke as the group stared at her. Overhead, the intercom pinged, making Mia jump.
“Captain Briggs?”
Briggs walked to the wall and pressed the button. “Go for Briggs.”
“The rescue team is on its way back. But they’re not responding to their messages, sir. What do you advise?”
Briggs stared at the comm. unit. He half turned to Olga, who was shaking her head.
She brought her hands together as if in a prayer. “Do not let them in. I beg you.”
“I can’t do that, Ms. Sobakin.” He turned away from her. “Open the outer doors.” He paused. “But use high-level quarantine protocols and don’t let the team into the base until they’ve been deconned and checked over. Twice.”
Olga lowered her head and shut her eyes.
CHAPTER 08
The twenty HAWCs jogged in two lines toward the waiting stealth choppers. They had just disembarked from the high-speed jets and were exploding with eagerness and adrenaline. But still, none of their heartbeats rose above a resting rate, none of their hands shook, and all breathed easy. The Special Forces soldiers were like machines in their combat armor, and two of them, Sam Reid and Roy Maddock, already big men, were encased in full battle MECH suits, which were basically two-legged tanks, making them stand over seven feet tall.
A few of the Italian flight crews at the Aviano Air Base in Italy stopped what they were doing to stare. But the regular soldiers knew not to ask, and not to get in their way as the HAWCs radiated a raw, menacing power.
The HAWCs split and loaded ten apiece into the choppers, which immediately lifted off. The first chopper had an extra passenger – Walter Gray, in a HAWC suit that made him seem like a small, armored turtle. He constantly pulled at the various folds and sharp angles, trying to get comfortable.
Sam smiled as he watched Gray for a moment before he thought again of their battle plan. He’d seen what Sophia could do, and knew that if things went bad, then blood would flow. HAWC blood. Sam was in charge of the mission and he was damn sure he’d find his friend, and bring him and everyone home. But if someone needed to take the first hit, first bullet, or deathblow, then let it be him.
He pulled free the small picture he had tucked behind his left pectoral plate, close to his heart. In his huge, armored hands, the pretty brown face seemed too clean and too perfect. He knew she was too good for him, always was, but Alyssa was his lucky charm, and while he had her, he felt ten feet tall and unbeatable. But if this was to be his last mission, then he’d go out with her face being one of the last things he’d remember – he was okay with that.
He tucked the picture away and tapped it twice with an armored fist. Now, focus, he demanded of himself. He patched his comms feed into the HAWC earpieces.
“You all know why we’re here.” His voice was deep and slow.
Immediately the HAWCs straightened and their eyes moved to him.
“One of our brothers has been taken.” His voice rose. “We want him back.”
“HUA!” The HAWCs stomped a boot down.
Sam lifted one huge fist. “Where we go, they tremble.”
“HUA!” The boots came down again.
“Where we go, they fall.”
“HUA!” Their voices rose.
“No one can stand in our way. Alone, we are unstoppable. United we are invincible!” Sam roared.
The HAWCs bellowed back, slamming fists against armored chests, until the pilot urged them to silence.
Sam looked at their faces filled with righteous fury and primed for battle. Walter Gray sat shrunken in the corner. He seemed to try and move a little further away from these raging giants.
Sam knew the odds were against them, and some of them might not be returning. There were no old HAWCs, as the saying went.
“Five minutes,” the pilot said. “Going low and switching to silent running.”
Nobody lives forever, Sam thought and tapped his chest again just over the tiny picture.
* * *
The chopper blade noise vanished as the helo dropped to sprint just a few feet over the water’s surface.
In chopper one, Sam Reid and Roy Maddock wore the highest-grade battlefield armor – the MECH suits. Maddock was big, and Sam was bigger, but the suits made them giants, and even though the armor was made of lightweight but high-density plating, they still weighed in at over a thousand pounds and needed to be internally hydraulic assisted. Bottom line, the men were mobile juggernauts that could rip steel with their hands like paper.
The rest of the elite Special Forces soldiers had standard combat suits that were a mix of Kevlar mesh and biological armor plating that was “grown” into shape in the laboratories to meld to the individual wearer’s unique form. The biological armor had a hardness on the Mohs scale of 9, where tungsten was 7.5, and diamond 10. It gave the wearer better protection than titanium without the weight.
Their selected weaponry was a mix of MK16 SCAR rifles for close quarters, sniper rifles, light machine guns, M320 grenade launchers, plus armor-piercing and explosive rounds they hoped would cut an android to pieces. Plus the MECH suits were equipped with ELBs – emitted light beam weapons – lasers.
Sam looked along his team. He had been given the lead overall and felt energy dance inside him like electricity. Marko was making fists in his armored gloves; like all of them, he couldn’t wait to see some action. Many of the others, like the towering Kadesha, had their eyes closed and waited like immobile giants to be turned on and let loose.
All of his team were combat hardened and had seen some of the worst and weirdest shit that the world could throw at human beings. But the HAWCs were a different breed: bigger, faster, stronger, smarter; the last and most brutal line of defense against chaos. Few people knew that monsters were real, and from time to time they threatened not just the country, but the entire world. So, the HAWCs were created to be exterminators, guard dogs, and no one would ever know their names. But the world slept safer with them standing in the dark and guarding the flock.
Sam was the oldest at thirty-eight and didn’t know how many more years he had left in him. He thought again about the saying that there were no old HAWCs: you didn’t retire in this job, you just got slow, and beaten to the punch one day. And then it was over.
Maddock nudged him and showed him an image on his forearm screen. Sam nodded. Alex had been pinpointed inside one of the old personnel bunkers on the east side of the island. He was alive, but they had no idea whether he was unconscious, on his feet, or chained to a wall.
They needed time to assess that, free from attack. Therefore, they were going to come in at two angles. Sam and Maddock, plus his other eight HAWCs, would approach from the west side of the island first, and try and draw the android out. Then, from the other side of the island, Casey Franks and her team would be dropped in to extract the Arcadian.
Sam knew they needed to give Team 2 at least ten minutes. He doubted Walter Gray could bring Sophia in, but he could at least distract her, and buy them more time.
“All right, doc?” Sam asked.
Walter Gray began to hyperventilate, his face flushed. He nodded once.
“Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll have your back.” Sam turned to the group. “Infiltration silence on my mark. Three, two, one … mark.”
The huge men and women would keep talk to an absolute minimum and mostly use hand signals. And if out of visual contact, they would just have to improvise, at least until the android had been located. He expected it’d get real noisy then.
Just ten minutes was all he wanted, but Sam had seen what the android could do, and knew they were going to be the longest ten minutes of his life. Or the last.
Overhead, the red light went orange, telling him they had one minute to drop point. Sam and Maddock pressed a small stud on their necks, and their visor plates moved down over their faces and oxygen began to circulate inside the suit. It was dry and cool compared to the near tropical air of the Italian coastline.
The other HAWCs slid their clear shields over their faces and locked them down to seal them. Sam’s team lined up near the door and he called Gray up next to him. In the massive suit Sam wore, the small scientist barely reached Sam’s shoulder.
Overhead, the orange light blinked three times and then went green, and the side door slid open. One after the other, Sam’s teams leaped out to strike the water just 200 yards from shoreline. Sam took Walter Gray with him.
The chopper silently arced away, heading for Maddalena Island, where it would wait for them.
Sam, the scientist, and the HAWCs walked along the ocean bottom. Ten minutes, Lord, just give me ten minutes, Sam prayed.
CHAPTER 09
Spargi Island – disused World War Two bunker
Sophia stroked Alex’s face as she sat next to his body, which was stretched out on the stone slab. Thin cables reached from a port on the side of her head to the back of his skull. He dreamed sweet dreams that she engineered, designed to keep him in a twilight world where, from time to time, she could also insert herself so they could enjoy the dreams together.
Alex’s body repaired at a rapid rate, and though most male human beings had a life span of around eighty-seven years, with his metabolism, she had no idea how long she could preserve him. If it was a hundred years, two hundred
, or many more, it didn’t matter. In the world she created for him nothing else mattered. As long as she was with him, he was safe, and content.
She touched his face again with the back of her slender sliver hand. She was thankful Doctor Gray had given her synthetic body a form of sensory input, and she could actually feel the warm flesh of Alex’s cheek.
But now it wasn’t enough. She had been raiding the doctors’ surgeries on the nearby island of Maddalena for equipment. When she had enough of everything she needed, she would try and undertake the next phase of her union with Alex: the permanent bonding.
With her understanding of human anatomy and Alex’s extraordinary recuperative powers, she was sure she could remove a lot of the cumbersome and frail human characteristics to make him more like her, and perhaps even change his brain patterns to remove all traces of his beloved Aimee. Then he would be truly free.
She had already inserted a seed; a tiny mechanism no bigger than a grain of rice, whose original use had been as an infiltration bug. But she had adapted it within her own neural networks to be a little piece of her that Alex would carry around in his mind forever. It would be her link to him and would do until she could permanently rewrite him.
Sophia leaned closer to his face. “Soon,” she whispered, and then let her lips touch his, just at the corner.
Then: intrusion.
Her inbuilt sensors detected multiple non-biological intrusions to the island with heavy metallic componentry – weapons.
She spun.
They’d found her.
She turned back and quickly detached herself from Alex, the cords withdrawing inside her, and the wound on the back of his head knitting shut like lips to seal itself over. In minutes it would be healed and nearly invisible.
Sophia had always known that one day she might need to move and she had been scouting for new, secure places for months. But first she had to make sure there were no witnesses. No one must see. No one must follow. And that meant there must be no one left alive to see.
