“And who was this man of such renown?” laughed Blanchard.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that these creatures wanted to destroy mankind and then retake their first estate. Or, to be more precise, they want to use the Earth as a staging area to launch attacks and take back their home. So, in the beginning, they had sex with the daughters of men and their children were predominately soldiers of Jewish DNA.” Isaiah shrugged. “So all they’re doing now is what they’ve done before. No one can say, ‘Here is something new.’ It’s all been done. But they learned from their mistake. They didn’t attack with enough men the first time, and they know it, so this time they’ll attack with an army of billions. A force large enough to finish the fight. So right now they’re preparing a deployment ten times larger than the first. They won’t make the same mistake twice.”
Blanchard laughed, “Nonsense!”
As Isaiah continued, “Right now they’re just using the gateway to gain a foothold in this world because you have the weapon and they want to begin their attack. First, they need the portal so they can build an adequate army. That’s why you’ve probably been losing people lately. You’ve had people disappearing, right? Well, that’s because you’ve got one or more of these things running loose in your halls, genius. And if they’ve taken on flesh and blood, then they have to breath and they have to eat. So they’re already here and that means they’re getting some support staff in place on this planet.”
Blanchard’s face had frozen as Isaiah shrugged, “But since you opened that portal over two weeks ago, that’s probably old news to you. Truth is, by now you should be accustomed to finding bodies with the arms and legs torn off, the heads missing. But there’s no reason, yet, to panic. All they’re doing right now is feeding, not recruiting.” He paused. “When they start recruiting, then you can be afraid.”
Blanchard’s voice was croaked. “Why then?”
“Because, then, they’ll begin infecting this world with their own bloodlines. And when they think they’ve got enough of a half-human army for their purpose, they’ll use the full power of that supercollider to open a portal back to where they were created. And you can choose to be a soldier or you can choose to be a slave. But you won’t be some sorcerer-supreme commanding millions of super soldiers. You won’t be building an empire to the stars because the firmament they’re after isn’t corporal. It’s something higher. It was created first, and it was once their home. But they were cast out. Now, their big plan is to go back with an army powerful enough to take it by force.”
Amanda tilted her head at Blanchard’s silence. She expected laughter or even some kind of rebuke toward Isaiah for being so “shallow” and “unscientific,” but Blanchard had suddenly become visibly nervous. He was motionless. He was sweating. And Amanda could almost see his pulse pounding in his neck.
He wiped his forehead in the coolness of the room.
Amanda stated, “You don’t seem all that surprised about Isaiah’s analysis, Mr. Blanchard.” She stared as Blanchard fixed her with a vacant stare. “What else has happened since my sister vanished? Why are all those men in the pavilion carrying machineguns? Why is everyone so nervous?”
Blanchard sighed, hands relaxing flat on his see-through desk. “To be honest, Ms. Deker, I don’t believe it will hurt to tell you that we have indeed had a series of … events, you might call them … since the incident involving your sister.”
“How many more have been killed?” asked Isaiah.
Blanchard responded with a nebulous gesture, “As with any industry, we have industrial accidents. Some are wounded. Some are killed. We take extensive safety precautions, but accidents in a facility this large and powerful are inevitable. And, then, some of our people have simply gone missing.”
“Missing?” asked Amanda. “They went missing without their arms and legs? Missing without their heads? Did their heads go looking for their legs?”
“We haven’t found all of them.” Blanchard inhaled deeply, released it. “But, in truth, we’re missing two guards, three mechanics, and two electricians.”
Isaiah said, “So this power that you arrogantly think you can control didn’t just take away a few of your folks when you opened that portal, right? It left you with one or more of its own?” He shook his head. “Your arrogance is gonna get you killed, Blanchard. Your death is walking the corridors of this place right now.”
“Your myopic view of power is the only arrogance I see, Isaiah.” Blanchard made no effort to conceal his contempt. “You obviously view everything according to historically and scientifically disproven superstitions and vague presuppositions of what is real and what is not. Presuppositions, I might add, that have been empirically invalidated over the past hundred years by repeated scientific research, and so your conceptions are worse than arrogant. They are ignorant.”
He lifted an arm to the thick window behind him that allowed a distant glimpse of the supercollider. “Here we deal in nothing but pure science, Isaiah, and not black-and-white Sunday School lessons taught by retired, blue-haired English teachers who wouldn’t know the difference between a neutrino passing through a Higgs boson field and a worm crawling through a black lagoon.”
“Captured anything disturbing on your security monitors?” Isaiah asked mildly. “Like anyone being torn to pieces just for the hell of it?”
“No,” Blanchard sneered. “And our central command sees every move inside this facility. So if there were an intruder, human or otherwise, he would be captured or dead.” He straightened his collar. “I don’t mind telling you that our guards are also bonded agents of the Swiss government and have the authority to use deadly force at their discretion. There is not a more secure facility in the world.”
“But the collider hasn’t been turned on again since what you refer to as ‘the incident?’” asked Isaiah. “Right?”
“That is correct because we have spent the last few weeks strengthening the insulation,” Blanchard remarked. “It’s simply part of our normal maintenance procedures, something planned more than ten years ago and had nothing to do with the power surge that temporarily overloaded the ATLAS and the pipes.”
“The pipes?” Amanda asked.
Blanchard gestured obscurely, “That’s what we call the tunnel that accelerates the particles to ninety-nine percent of the speed of light so that the collisions will yield the results ATLAS is designed to measure.”
“The pipes,” Amanda muttered, pursing her lips. “That’s a rather benign phrase for something so deviant. But I guess it should suffice for the witches and megalomaniacs who deserve the electric chair for the danger they’ve unleashed here.”
“Anything is dangerous in the hands of a fool,” Blanchard retorted. “You don’t give a knife to a child. You don’t give a pistol to a blind man. And you don’t give control of the most powerful machine in the world to a bunch of superstitious old fools who don’t understand they hold the past and the future in their hands.”
Blanchard leaned forward. “We are not, Ms. Deker, a bunch of irresponsible cowboys. We are a group of highly disciplined scientists who adhere to a decades-old plan that has been examined by the keenest minds. Do you think this shutdown was a result of the accident?” He laughed. “This shutdown was planned fifty years ago! And so was the startup tomorrow morning! You see, we have timed our rotations, our startups, and our maintenance to a cosmological clock, Ms. Deker, so we know exactly what we’re doing. A cosmological clock, by the way, that your sister sharpened. So the primary objective at this time is to repeat the results of the last collision. But if everyone of Jewish descent is also taken, as your sister was, then we have what scientists call confirmation. However, until we understand exactly why such things are occurring, we merely have an event and not a reason or cause. And facts can only be determined when we understand both cause and effect.” He glanced at Isaiah. “And we may leave ignorant kindergarten stories of gods and d
evils where they belong. In a lockbox. In the attic. With the rest of the antiquated superstitions of the Old World that will soon be replaced by the New World.”
Blanchard rose and strolled to the window behind the desk, hands clasped at his back. “Did you know, Ms. Deker, that Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller had no idea what would happen when they created the first atomic explosion in the Manhattan Project? Yes, it’s true, all of them held genuine concern that an atomic explosion would create a chain reaction of nuclear explosions that would destroy the world.”
He turned back. “You see? Those great, philanthropic leaders of the scientific world had no idea what would happen when they pulled the trigger, so to speak. But they did it, anyway, in the name of science. And, of course, winning the war. But, then again, Germany had already surrendered, so we had already won the war. The last holdout was Japan and whether it was necessary to nuke them into surrender or starve them into submission remains an unending debate. But let me be concise. The salient point is that we now have endless electricity.” He raised an arm to the outside world. “Because of twin nuclear reactors an aircraft carrier can travel at full speed for twenty-three years before it needs refueling. The old things have passed away. This is the day of new things, of a new world, and all because some very educated men took a very calculated risk in the name of progress.”
“So this weapons’ program is for the good of all mankind?” asked Isaiah.
Blanchard laughed, “This is not a weapons program, you idiot! Everything we have done here has been in the cause of preserving life!”
“Of course it’s a weapons’ program,” Isaiah laughed, equally amused. “The fools who came before you didn’t conjure this ten-billion-dollar facility so they could discover the origins of the universe.” He shook his head. “No, Blanchard, they built this machine so they could access a power that would allow them to control the universe. And that’s the most dangerous weapons’ program in the history of the world. More dangerous than any hydrogen bomb. More dangerous than any chimera. And more tragic than any graveyard of regrets. And now, in the name of progress, you’ve got seven dead physicists and seven dead support personnel. And let’s not forget that you’ve got a creature running loose in your so-called secure facility that probably has the strength to kill everyone inside these halls.”
“This imaginary creature that you continue to refer to is a figment of your ignorance,” Blanchard frowned. “Just as your superstitions of gods and devils and demons running loose in this facility.”
Blanchard sat and leaned back, idly running fingers across the glass desk. “In my detached opinion it will be morally justifiable if Director Francois chose to make both of you disappear because you have caused this facility such dangerous inconveniences. I shouldn’t need to tell you that requesting the assistance of the Swiss Police to apprehend you was something we simply do not do.” A pause. “We are expected to handle our own security matters and it is considered imposing, insulting, and even somewhat dangerous to ask for help. That is the unwritten contract we have with this government, and an agreement we have very thoroughly maintained.”
Suddenly a light began blinking on Blanchard’s desk and his face froze and whitened in the same moment. He had risen even before the door opened and Tony stepped in holding what Isaiah identified as a Heckler & Koch MR55.
“Where?” Blanchard whispered.
“Mile 13, Section B,” Tony stated, succinct. “We lost three more maintenance guys. And they’re … still there.”
“Did you seal the section?”
“We shut the sub-doors leading upstairs, but we’ve got nothing on radar and there’s nothing moving on the monitors or infrared.” Tony glanced at Isaiah, shook his head. “As always, it doesn’t register on anything electronic.”
“Who found the maintenance workers?”
“An electrician.”
After a pause Blanchard said with obvious disappointment, “Very well. Notify the Director-General. Put the electrician in isolation. Insure that he talks to no one by radio or phone. And clean up the scene immediately. Report back to me as soon as it’s done. Also, secure these two in the same room and post guards at the door. They are to have no human contact. Refer all inquiries to me.”
All business, Tony shut the door and Blanchard’s gaze fixed again on the light still silently blinking.
Amanda’s voice held no sympathy. “So the little purple light means that you’re up the creek without a paddle again?”
“It’s magenta,” said Isaiah blandly. “It’s the same alarm system used on off-shore oil rigs. Different colored alarms mean different things. Red is for fire. Yellow means poisonous gas. But a magenta alarm means that Jesus has returned and it’s every man for himself.” He focused on Blanchard, who had not moved. “How biblical did this just get, Mr. Blanchard?”
With unconcealed—in fact, unconcealable hostility—Blanchard shifted his gaze as the door opened once more and three guards in black BDUs stepped inside. One guard spoke with formal courtesy, “Ms. Deker? Mr. Isaiah? Would you please allow us to escort you to your quarters?”
Isaiah stood. “Of course.”
“I’ll be glad to change company,” Amanda rose, hoisting her purse. “Good luck hunting your make-believe demon, Mr. Blanchard. And my condolences to the very real families of the very real victims.”
***
It wasn’t quite six in the morning when Tanto led Janet and Susan into an underground tunnel leading into a World War II bomb shelter located less than two miles from the CERN compound.
They had traveled part of the way by river taxi, switched to a street taxi, entered six underground parking garages and left in six different vehicles, sometimes together, sometimes separate, and once in the trunk of a car, before finishing a two-hour ordeal that would have been a ten-minute trip as the crow flies.
Janet knew the answer, but didn’t stop herself from asking, “So this is how you Delta guys sanitize yourself before you meet somebody? You drive all over creation, jump off a few trains, swim a river or two and then show up soaking wet with fish in your hair and bugs stuck to your teeth?”
“Yeah,” Tanto muttered. “It’s a pain in the ass. You gotta drive a hundred miles to go twenty. You gotta switch boats and cars a dozen times. You gotta go into restricted air space so they can’t track you by chopper. You can only lose satellite surveillance in parking garages and you can only do that if you’ve already disabled the cameras. These goons have satellites, bank cameras, hotel cameras, ATM cameras, and traffic cameras under their control every minute of the day. They got eyeballs, man, I’m tellin’ ya. They can find you in the outhouse of a whorehouse.”
Moments later Janet was genuinely surprised when they entered what must have served as a well-fortified World War II bunker. The gigantic underground structure had withstood the test of time with impressive integrity although it was worth considering that it had never been used as a bomb shelter because no nation ever bombed Switzerland. Still, the Swiss had prepared for the worst.
Large lunchroom tables on the lowest level were all loaded with military gear and, although Janet was no expert, it seemed like enough weapons and gear to supply a battalion instead of four Delta commandos and two computer geeks.
“Wow,” Susan said to Tanto. “Do you guys always prepare like this?”
“Always,” Tanto said very seriously. “We are never outgunned. Come on. Let’s eat. The food here ain’t bad. I’d try one of them ham and cheese bagels. They’re pretty good. Ol’ Jackman ate about six of ’em this morning, the greedy bastard. I didn’t think I was gonna get one for myself.”
General Jackman walked forward decked out in black-and-white BDUs and as heavily armed as any grunt Janet had ever seen. Whatever else the general might be, he was no coward. Clearly, he was going to lead his men to victory or the grave. And, either way, he would lead from the front.
“Morning, ladies,” Jackman smiled. “Want something to warm you up? These Swiss boys know how to make good coffee; I’ll give ’em that. It’s over here.”
Munching on a bagel, Roy smiled as Janet approached. He saluted her with a large cup of coffee.
“Yeah, good morning to you, too.” Janet smiled. “So what’s all this? We don’t even show up for our jobs for another two hours and the compound is probably only ten minutes from here.”
“Well,” Roy shrugged, “I’m not sending you in there defenseless so we need to go over a few things.”
“Roy, I’ve told you; there’s no way to get a weapon through security. There are two metal detectors and then they X-ray you before they let you enter the elevator that goes down to the collider. Then you have to go through the same process again to get into the Observation Room. I couldn’t get searched better if I got butt naked which, by the way, I would be glad to do to avoid all that crap.”
Roy shook his head as he resumed eating. “I’m not stupid enough to send you in there with a gun, honey. But we’ve got stuff we can load you up with that will give you and Susan a good chance to make tracks if we can’t reach you. But, hell, eat up first. Have some coffee. Damn, this is good stuff. Wish we had coffee like this at Bragg. The coffee we get at Bragg can stand up without a cup.”
Susan took a seat at the wooden lunch table and didn’t hesitate at the food or anything else as Janet took a place beside Roy. After glancing around the warehouse-sized bunker, she asked, “So what’s with all the weapons? Are we not going with our plan? You seemed pretty sure about it last night. Or this morning. I forget. All this James Bond stuff is making me lose time.”
“Don’t worry,” mumbled Roy. “We’re still going with the original plan. But, to be honest, I’m not a big fan of plans because my best-laid plans all turned into my greatest regrets. Beginning with my one and only marriage.” He paused. “I guess you could say I’m more of an improvise and overcome kind of guy. I like to prepare for anything and everything, which is why I got you girls up early. I’m not gonna send you in there without a couple of cards up your sleeve in case you have to play them. But they’re simple tricks, and we got time.” He motioned. “Go ahead. Eat up. You’re gonna need your strength. Believe me.”
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