Callsign: King II- Underworld (16 page)

As the door closed, plunging them back into silence, King tried again. “Dr. Copeland, I overheard your conversation with Brainstorm. We both know that you need to shut it down, at least until you can understand these other effects. That’s all I’m asking.”

Copeland started at the mention of Brainstorm, but then sagged back into his chair. “What difference would it make now? The general is right; the soldiers will mop up those creatures and that will be the end of it.”

“And if he’s wrong?” Pierce said. “I’ve been down there, in the caves where they live. There aren’t just a few, or even a few dozen. There might be thousands of them, and your machine is calling them like a dog whistle. How long do you think those soldiers can last against an onslaught like that?”

“They only have to last eight and a half minutes,” Copeland sighed.

King leaned down to look the physicist in the eye. “That’s twice now you’ve mentioned eight minutes.”

“We don’t want to run Bluelight longer than that. With each proton annihilation, the local atmosphere heats up. If it gets hot enough, the gases in the atmosphere will spontaneously enter a state of runaway fusion. If that started, the Earth’s atmosphere would catch on fire.”

Nina was incredulous. “Oh, you have got to be kidding. It never occurred to you that this might be a bad idea?”

“The thermal effects are completely manageable. I monitor the temperature constantly throughout the process to ensure that it never goes anywhere near critical. Eight and a half minutes is the upper limit of the green zone. It’s this other thing that—”

The sudden cacophony of battle indicated to them all that someone had just entered the control room. King glanced over at the approaching soldier and wondered how the battle was going. “That other thing has taken dozens of lives. You’ve got to stop it, right now. You’ve surely got enough data to figure what it is about the process that drives these creatures nuts. Shut it down until you can come up with a fix.”

Copeland nodded slowly, and King knew he’d finally gotten through to the man. He placed a reassuring hand on the physicist’s shoulder and turned his chair around to face the computer terminal.

He heard Pierce speak to the soldier who had just entered. “Sergeant De Bord?”

Two voices spoke, almost at exactly the same moment. The first was the electronically produced and amplified female voice of Brainstorm. “Dr. Copeland, you must disregard Mr. Sigler’s request. A complete activation cycle is the only way to ensure that the threat is neutralized.”

The second voice was completely unfamiliar. “My apologies, Dr. Pierce, but I fear I have misled you. I am not De Bord.”

Something about the Russian accent sent a chill down King’s spine.

34.

King knew without looking that the newcomer was pointing a weapon at him. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Is this guy working for you?”

There was a pause, and for a fleeting second, King feared he’d read the scene wrong. Then Brainstorm responded. “Whom are you addressing, Mr. Sigler?”

“Who do you think? This is all your show, right? The remote-control puppet master? I know that you’re the money behind Bluelight. I just want to know if you’re also the reason I’ve got a gang of Russian hitmen chasing me all over the country.” King turned slowly toward the ersatz soldier. “I only ask because if he pulls the trigger like I think he’s about to, he’s just as likely to kill Copeland. Now, if he’s not working for you…”

“You have made a valid point, Mr. Sigler. Mr. Sokoloff, please avoid doing anything that might harm Dr. Copeland.”

King breathed a silent sigh of relief that his hunch had been right. Brainstorm had been behind the attempted killing in New York, and now it seemed his hired assassin was here to finish the job. He recognized the man’s name. Ivan Sokoloff was probably the most notorious hitman ever to have lived, with an alleged body count of nearly five hundred victims. Officially, he’d been found murdered, but many had suspected what King now knew to be the truth: he had faked his death and gone underground.

He seized on this slim advantage, turning to Copeland. “I bet you didn’t realize the kind of people you’re dealing with. Your research is safe, DARPA will fund you, but you can’t take your orders from Brainstorm anymore. Shut it down.”

“Dr. Copeland, you have your instructions,” Brainstorm said quickly. “Allow the test to continue.”

“No,” Copeland seemed to sit up a little straighter. “He’s right. This is insane. We should have suspended operations after the first incident. I’m turning Bluelight off.”

“Dr. Copeland, if you continue with this course of action, it will be necessary to compel you with the threat of lethal force.”

“Lethal…?”

“Mr. Sokoloff, if he does not move away from the workstation immediately, you are authorized—”

The end of the threat was lost as the report of Sokoloff’s M4 filled the room. Blood sprayed across the computer screen and Copeland slumped forward, his head smashing into the keyboard.

King reacted instantly, diving over the desk as Sokoloff triggered another burst. The 5.56 millimeter rounds scorched the air where he’d been standing. He shouted, “Run!” and then kept moving, scrambling for cover, but there weren’t many places to hide and the exits were all completely exposed.

King’s mind clicked into combat mode; everything he saw was evaluated on its potential for use as a defensive weapon or to provide cover against incoming fire. Unfortunately, the cheap pressboard desks and tables didn’t offer much of either, and he realized he was going to need some kind of miracle to stay alive.

What he got was no miracle.

35.

Pierce kicked himself for not having seen through the phony soldier’s fake accent. But never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined that one of the Russians who had attacked them in New York, would follow them here, masquerade as a soldier and then actually help him survive a foray into the underworld, all in an effort to get closer to King.

When the first shot was fired, he grabbed Nina’s hand and pulled her down behind a table. He heard King’s admonition to run, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go. Still, putting a little distance between them and the gunman seemed like a good idea.

The door burst open and over the incessant crack of thunder, a bone-chilling wail filled the room. Pierce suddenly realized that taking a bullet had just become a secondary concern. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw three of the towering hairy creatures rush into the room, eyes red with rabid fury. With Nina’s hand still locked in his, Pierce zigzagged through the maze of workstations, racing for the door at the far end of the room. Behind him, the crunch of wood and plastic being demolished indicated that the invading creatures were taking a more direct route.

Pierce flung open the door and rushed through into the middle of a dimly lit hallway. There was an exit sign to the right, but going back outside was a frying pan to fire proposition, so he veered left. There were several closed doors lining the hall, and Pierce tried the knob of the first one he came to. Locked.

“Find one that’s open,” he shouted. “I’ll take the left side.”

Nina dashed past him to test the doors on the right side of the hall, while he moved down to the next. Locked again.

“Got one!”

At almost the same instant that Nina shouted, the door back to the control room exploded off its hinges and slammed into the opposite wall.

Pierce whirled and leapt across the short distance to the open office where Nina urged him on. As soon as he was through, she slammed the door behind him.

Pierce saw that they were in a lunchroom. The two tables and a scattering of chairs offered nothing in the way of a hiding place, but he saw a way to put the refrigerator against one wall to use. Nina divined his intent, and working together they quickly rolled the heavy appliance across the floor and positioned it in front of the door.

“That’s not going to stop them,” Nina warned.

“I know.” He scanned the room again, looking for anything that might help them survive the assault. He dashed over to the sink counter and yanked open the cupboard. The space was occupied by a small refuse can and a few bottles of cleaning supplies, but he saw that there might be room for a person of slight build to hide there. He cleared the area out with a sweep of his hand. “Hide in here.”

“What about you?”

“Just do it. I’ll think of something.”

Her eyes widened as she realized the sacrifice he was preparing to make, but she complied, squirming into the cramped cupboard. “Good luck,” she whispered as he closed the cabinet doors, sealing her in.

Pierce knew luck was about the only thing that would save him, and the sudden pounding from behind the refrigerator blocking the exit door indicated that his luck had run out.

He scanned the room again, then started opening cupboards and drawers, looking for anything that might be useful in warding off the impending assault. Aside from the tables and chairs, the only things he saw were a small microwave oven, a toaster and a case of bottled water on the counter, along with an honor jar filled with loose change. In one drawer, mixed in with an array of spoons and spatulas, he found a long knife with a serrated edge, but the idea of using it against the monsters seemed laughable.

The refrigerator jumped a few feet away from door, and Pierce instinctively rushed to it, and made a futile effort to brace it with his shoulder. He managed to push it forward a few inches, but then something hit it again from behind, and knocked him back. He fell into one of the tables, banging his hip painfully on one edge, and went sprawling onto the floor.

Wincing from the bruising injury, he rolled over just in time to see one of the hair-cloaked creatures advance into the room. Its red eyes met his gaze, and with a nerve-shattering scream, it started toward him.

36.

King knew that Sokoloff was now the least of his worries.

Copeland had been overly optimistic in his belief that the Army could hold off the assault for eight minutes. According to his still running chronometer, only about six minutes had passed since the activation of the Bluelight device—six minutes in which the creatures had seemingly materialized out of the mist and managed to either find a break in the perimeter or completely overrun the soldiers. And now, the only person who could have stopped it all by shutting down the experiment was dead.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

Eight and a half minutes is the upper limit of the green zone
, Copeland had said. In his mind’s eye, he saw a temperature gauge with green, yellow and red segments. The imaginary needle was almost out of the green now, advancing relentlessly toward yellow and red. In perhaps in as little as five more minutes, the antimatter explosions in the Earth’s magnetic field would grow hot enough to set the world on fire, and there was no way to shut it off.

But there’s got to be a way to stop it
, King thought.

He couldn’t tell if the creatures that now flooded into the control room were actively looking for him or just destroying everything in sight, but either way, he only had a few more seconds before they found him, crouched beneath a flimsy computer desk. King decided not to postpone the inevitable any longer.

He scrambled out of concealment, taking in the room like a game board, with the towering Mogollon Monsters arrayed like enemy pieces, blocking his path to the objective. He didn’t see Sokoloff, and entertained a fleeting hope that the beasts had already taken care of that little problem. Taking a deep breath, he hurled a chair at one of the creatures, hoping to distract it more than anything else, and then launched himself in a low sprint for the exit.

A sweeping arm grazed him, knocking him off course, but he rebounded off the doorframe and scrambled into the darkened foyer. The door to the outside had been completely torn away, and beyond it, the world strobed between night and day as lightning—or rather charged plasma from the atmosphere—flashed like the cameras of a dozen crazed paparazzi on the red carpet. The frequency of the flashes was increasing, with several flashes per second, and the constant roar of thunder resonated through King’s torso like the mother of all woofers.

He burst out into the open, slowing only long enough to take in the carnage. The soldiers hadn’t been completely annihilated, but the few remaining survivors were clustered around a Humvee to his right, fiercely repelling more than a dozen monsters. Their battle was drawing more creatures in like the gravity well of a black hole. The area to his right was eerily deserted, with wrecked and abandoned Humvees jutting up out of the waist high mist. King swerved in that direction and resumed running, staying close to the exterior of the building.

As he rounded the corner, he was exposed to the full fury of the artificial lightning storm.

The air was alive with heat and electricity. He could feel the static crawling on his skin as he raced along the side of the building, toward the precipice overlooking the abandoned pit mine. The mist hid the exact location of the drop, but as he neared the place where the silvery fog seemed to cascade out into nothingness, he cautiously tested the ground before each step, getting as close as he dared.

There, at the edge of the vast manmade crater, he got his first look at the Bluelight device.

The actual structure was unremarkable. It didn’t look much different than an oil rig or an industrial manufacturing facility. At its center, perhaps half a mile away, and several hundred feet below on the floor of the pit, was an upright column, similar to the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant, surrounded by catwalks and miles of wires and tubing. King assumed that the column was heart of Bluelight, the proton gun that was currently firing a steady stream of subatomic particles into the sky, but if the discharge was accompanied by any sort of visible effect, it was impossible to see against the arc-welder bright flashes of lightning. The plasma bursts were being gathered by three metal towers that looked like radio transmitter aerials, each taller than the proton emitter, positioned as points of a triangle around the center.