The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

46

  Time was his enemy. With the sea, and the dark.

  The dark and the sea were one, and time was their weapon. It would steal his breath, his life. He had no defense.

  The submersible rocked, teetering on a last stable place—a shelf that had caught it unexpectedly, and could just as readily let it go, passing the craft to the deadly drop that would crush it. By then he might be past caring. Time was inexorably robbing him of air.

  The fragile shell rocked back and forth. Its rocking became the rhythm of breath: rasping in, then reluctantly escaping. There weren’t many breaths left, and a shroud of sadness began to surround him.

  The mission was going to fail. There was no escape for him, and that meant there was no escape for her, either. There were too many enemies, and he could not defeat them all.

  The darkness was crystallizing, brittle and transparent. Through it he could see marauding blood cells swooping down on Primus… hunting it, seeking to dislodge the craft from its mooring, and sweep it away to be lost among the endless channels of the bloodstream. Even now he felt the jarring impact and sensed Primus shift.

  No! No, it could not be allowed to move. Tucked between a pair of straggly polyps there was shelter, a partial protection against assault. Cut loose into the bloodstream, Primus would be at the mercy of ravenous cells, bent on its destruction.

  He rasped another breath… two.

  There was another impact—and this time the sub broke free.

  Desperately, he willed his mind into the rigid shell around him, and fought for control of it. There was resistance like pushing through a wall of toffee… pushing… stretching….

  Finally breaking through.

  He became Primus, tumbling and spinning along the current, focusing every effort into regaining stability and control. The sea called to him, urging him toward a strange outcropping of cells just ahead. He sought it, circled it, merged with it.

  And knew he was safe. For now.

  Darkness returned to hide him. The sea smiled, and cast a cloak of calm over him.

  It was time. Time to…

  “Wake up. It’s time to wake up, Hunter. Kierkegaard just called.” Tamiko swept the covers from him and gave him a playful shove. “He’ll be checking your room next and wondering where you are. I’d just as soon keep that between us, for now.”

  The air was cold on his naked skin. Yet the remnants of the dream left him with a curious warmth. That was a first. He couldn’t remember that dream ever ending pleasantly.

  Tamiko jarred him from his reverie with a toss of his shirt that caught him in the face.

  Time to get back to work.

  # # #

  Tyson was in the control room when he entered. “The log showed a blip of activity from Primus a little while back, but I think it was just an anomaly. All systems check out fine. Maybe a spike in electrical potential around the ship or something like that. Anyhow, it’s all ready for you. Good luck.”

  Hunter suited up and plugged in. He relaxed his body, focused his mind and slid into another world.

  It was at once familiar, and suddenly strange. Something was different. Something was wrong.

  He took a long look around, trying to fit the details he saw into the picture his mind still held from the previous mission. Smooth, liquid shapes and ruddy-colored tones had become as normal to him as a landscape of grass and trees; but the pattern around him was not the same as when he had left the ship the evening before.

  Primus had moved.

  Impossible. The submersible couldn’t navigate on its own. Had one of the other team members taken it for some kind of joyride?

  He couldn’t believe that. Unless…

  He remembered the unknown stranger’s warning about a mole within the project. Could one of them have been hiding an ability to pilot the sub? If so, why use it now? What had they tried to do while he slept?

  He took another look around, hoping to spot something familiar, then checked the map display. The ship had moved, but it was still in the same small artery in the lining of the left lung. He had moored her between a couple of protruding polyps for the night, planning to wait until the next day when he was fresh to re-enter a larger vessel nearby and make the transit to the right lung. The distance traveled was negligible, but the implications were enormous.

  If someone had truly hijacked Primus, the project was in terrible danger, and he’d have to report it to Kierkegaard immediately.

  He was preparing to unplug, when another thought occurred to him. Could the ship have broken loose on its own? The current wasn’t as powerful as elsewhere, but it was persistent.

  That would mean the craft had found another safe mooring purely by accident—had not only encountered a suitable outcropping of cells, but had also managed to jam itself securely among them. What were the odds of that?

  Astronomical.

  Then someone had guided it. The mole was real. A nightmare was real.

  Wait. A nightmare.

  The truth hit him like a punch in the gut.

  There was a nightmare. His nightmare… the dream he’d had just before Tamiko had awakened him. Primus had broken free from her moorings, and he had brought her under control and steered her safely to shelter. Right into another outcropping.

  Right here.

  He pulled his hands slowly back from the controls and shivered.

  How could that be? How could he unconsciously control Primus with no connection whatsoever to the VR equipment—and from a room a couple of hundred feet away from both control room and clinic?

  Was there any other plausible explanation? He sorted through the fragments of the dream that he could remember. The details seemed completely authentic—just the way it would have to have taken place.

  He had come to accept that his mind had forged a link with Primus that went far beyond the VR system itself. He’d seen too much evidence to deny that. But if the link could develop without mechanical assistance at all, even in a dream…

  The implications were terrifying.

  What if his dreaming mind wrecked the ship? What if Primus caused irreparable injury to a vital organ while careering through the bloodstream without conscious control?

  He could commit murder in his sleep.

  47

  “That’s not Kevlar. Shit, Kellogg, What is that?”

  Chavez had been carefully cleaning his HK MP5 submachine gun when their group's leader came around the corner of the building. Beside Chavez, Rakov snapped his head up, sucked a last lungful from his cigarette, and ground the butt into the dirt. Chavez welcomed a diversion to break up the boredom after being up most of the night, practicing maneuvers. His eyes were still irritated by the sunlight as he swept them up and down the figure in front of him.

  Kellogg was dressed from neck to boots in a fabric suit with a matte black finish. The torso had a bulky stiffness that could mean a Kevlar vest incorporated into it, but the arms and legs looked to be about the thickness of a hunting jacket. Chavez was already rolling the fabric between finger and thumb.

  He looked up at Kellogg and said, “It feels soft and liquid… pliable. A gel of some kind? What good would that be? Insulation?”

  Kellogg smiled, though it never touched his eyes. “It can make you warm or cool. Water-repellant too. Not quite a gel—a little more complicated than that. More useful. Here…” He pulled his Heckler and Koch .40 caliber pistol from a pouch at his side and handed it to Chavez butt first.

  “Shoot me. Shoot me in the arm.” He turned and walked away about ten large paces, then turned to face his second-in-command, waiting.

  Chavez had more experience in close-quarter combat and the use of small arms than almost anyone in the professional services. He’d been trained and used by the best. He knew what it was like to be shot. It hurt like hell. What was their leader up to? Even a Kevlar vest at that distance was a risk—a few layers of fabric in a sleeve were no protection at all.
r />   “Go ahead. Whichever arm you want.” Kellogg’s voice was icy calm. He stood with his arms slightly out from his sides, a little stiffer than before. The stunt was unnecessary—these men were all professionals, seasoned in various special ops units before going freelance—but they were also men who lived on the edge. A touch of machismo was good for morale.

  “Damn, Kellogg. You’re a crazy bastard.” Rakov showed bad teeth and stepped to the side, to get a better view.

  Chavez shrugged, raised the pistol, took a split-second aim, and cracked off a shot. As Kellogg twisted from the impact of the bullet, he squeezed off a round at the other arm. The effect was as he’d intended. Kellogg toppled onto his backside in the dirt. His face was hard to read, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain as he pushed himself stiffly to his feet and made his way back to them.

  “Couldn’t pick just one arm?” he muttered. “Not a good leadership quality.”

  “Insurance,” Chavez replied with a cocky smile. “Let me look at that.” Kellogg’s jacket sleeves were stiff and hard. There were only the slightest scuffmarks where the two bullets had hit. “What is this stuff? It was soft and flexible before. Now it’s like hard plastic.”

  “It’s called dynamic armor. You’ve never seen anything like it before. And you haven’t seen it now.” The narrowing of his eyes emphasized the words.

  Chavez raised an eyebrow. Rakov took a closer look.

  “Technology that people like us aren’t supposed to have,” the Russian said, nodding. “An embarrassment to our backers if we were to be caught with it. Is it permitted to ask how it works?”

  Kellogg shrugged. “The fabric is filled with micro-miniature tubing containing incredibly small particles that align in a certain configuration when controlled by a magnetic field. I don't know how they do it. We will not be captured with these. It is a measure of the importance of our mission that we have been given them to use. Our employers are determined that we not only fulfill our objective, but also that none of us falls into… unfriendly hands.”

  Chavez smiled grimly. “They don’t want to risk any of us talking and having it lead back to them. That I understand. But to do that they give us technology that could be even more of a giveaway? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “I’m sure a theft has already been staged, should such cover be necessary,” Kellogg replied. “Frankly, my own assessment of our mission included high odds that we would suffer casualties, possibly even losses. Our opposition is necessarily small, but they're well trained and motivated. Our employers decided it was worth a certain level of risk to improve the odds.”

  “Remind me to write them a thank you note.” Rakov grinned. “Does this material react automatically to impact?”

  “No, it’s triggered by pressure switches in the gloves.” Kellogg flexed his fingers. “Your mobility is seriously restricted when it’s active, so you won’t be doing any hand-to-hand combat that way. You’ll have to decide whether your greatest immediate threat is from weapons fire or close quarters attack. It’s not any heavier than Kevlar, and perfectly flexible until activated. You'll all try it out tonight.”

  Chavez leaned against the wall. “Impressive, but I don’t think I’ll volunteer as a live-fire target just yet.”

  Their leader gave another cold smile. “Oh ye of little faith. Nanotechnology is the way of the future. You can ask some experts about that when we meet them at their laboratory—just before you take their future away.”

  48

  Hunter was shaken, but determined not to let himself be paralyzed by fear.

  Bad enough to know that their patient’s life depended on his success, but now he could unwittingly kill her in his sleep! How did he ever get into such a mess? A borderline-alcoholic submarine jockey handed the power of life and death. It was absurd, but it was also real. So he’d just have to deal with it.

  He threw himself full-bore into the next mission and tried to clear his mind of everything else. The result was extraordinary. Maneuvering Primus had become second nature to him. Now, his mind automatically seemed to assimilate the data from the navigation system and the radar pulses, and he found bombs almost effortlessly.

  Twenty-one of them this time. Eight more than in the tissues of the left lung. It was hard to believe there could be so many. The bombs he’d found in other organs must have been from an earlier insertion, far fewer in number. Now he was encountering the cargo of the bomb launcher: unknown dozens of bombs likely released after he had cleared the kidneys and the liver. It was disheartening to think that he’d have to search those organs again.

  The high concentration of bombs in the lungs seemed to show that the launcher had loosed the remainder of its stored arsenal all at once, and that would only have been done as a last resort if someone knew the launcher was about to be discovered. More strong evidence of a traitor in their midst.

  He swept the thought from his mind as a text message flashed in his heads-up display:

  “Time out. Primus needs recharge.”

  He hadn’t even noticed. He’d destroyed bombs as quickly as he could find them, and the ship used less charge each time and recharged more efficiently than ever. Both pilot and craft had to be getting some kind of assistance.

  He checked the mission time: forty-five minutes longer than he’d ever done before! He should be too exhausted to function.

  He wedged the nose of the ship into a secure position among a group of cells and prepared to unplug. He didn’t want to—some rest right where he was with few distractions and pervasive quiet was more appealing than trying to catch some shuteye in his quarters. He shifted his body to get more comfortable, and closed his eyes.

  Closing physical eyelids makes no difference because the mind still sees. The mind's view is pure and sharp, with no interference from electrical relays or software programs. What it sees is what is there. And more.

  Slowly, slowly, the reddish dome of celled flesh becomes a dome of sunset sky. Floating blood cells are now drifting clouds. Shining membrane gives way to soft grass, wet from a recent shower.

  Well-tended lawn stretches to a nearby field of grain that extends nearly to the swollen disk of the lowering sun. Manicured shrubbery sits against a backdrop of randomly waving stalks, scattered clumps of stunted trees and far-off purpling outlines of mountains.

  There is a quiet peace, but muted sounds begin to impinge. The view sweeps sideways to include people: large people. Noisy people. People only in silhouette from behind, standing in static groups, their gesturing hands seeming to create gabbling sounds.

  They are not many steps away, but the distance appears great. Their height makes it seem as if their heads are in another place. Unreachable.

  Someone is leaving. Someone special. It hurts.

  Father?

  The red-tinged silhouettes move gaily, their voices making nonsense sounds of delight and encouragement, but the trees droop disconsolately. The walls of the house lean weakly. Birds do not fly.

  A cold wind rushes from behind, and ripples the blades of grass suffused with green, and the yellow of pale sunlight.

  Now hundreds of shoes tread the grass—black shoes beneath black pant legs beneath black robes beneath faces—faces without identity that wrinkle with excitement. The sun shines on these faces, and pride reflects from them. Mortarboard hats fly into the air with overpowering and unwelcome noise. Painful. Sound swirls, around and around, like the chaos of a carnival. At the center of it all is a small circle of shadow, a zone of stillness, where light has been taken away.

  The crowd parts for a moment. Beyond it, a car door closes with a sharp sound, then a long, black vehicle pulls away and disappears quickly behind the nameless revelers.

  He was here again. A brief appearance for an important event. Then gone.

  Black shapes mill around aimlessly on the grass, now dull and trampled, blades, twisted and flattened… and it becomes a carpet of thick woolen threads, heavy a
nd somber on a hardwood floor darkened with age. Stark walls rise high to a dimly seen ceiling. There is no light from it. There is no light from anywhere but straight ahead.

  From a doorway with a figure standing in it.

  The shape is tall and strong. The face is unseen—but oh, so familiar. So dear. So special. Will he stay after all? Please, make him stay. But in a moment, the shape is gone, the doorway empty, and its bright light blurs through welling tears.

  The world is too big without him. A world of hard floors, steep stairs, sharp edges, and pain. Too big. Too hard. Too lonely.

  He can keep the pain away. Could have.

  Pain from things, pain from… people.

  He could have protected me.

  A flash of a huge, menacing face. A smile that betrays. A room spinning. Running… running. No escape.

  Pain. Pain and shame, burning hot and choking. Betrayal—keen and acrid like smoke.

  Tears… so many. And whimpering. Where is the whimpering coming from?

  Please stop. Please please please please STOP!

  Hide. Close my eyes and hide. Hide deep, deep inside, where no one can find me.

  Why weren’t you there to protect me, Father? And who have you sent to protect me now? Protect me from within my own body….

  WHO ARE YOU?

  Hunter’s eyes snapped open to an image that was blurred and off-color. He realized that he was seeing the view inside the VR headset: a computer-generated simulation of inner space, flat and grainy. The psychic link had burst like a soap bubble at the force of the direct question.

  Who are you?

  Again she had asked, more urgently than before. Her mind detected his presence, and demanded an explanation, but was it her conscious mind this time? If so, surely she could ask her attendants—even Truman Bridges. Would they lie to her if she asked a direct question? He couldn’t know. There were far too many secrets in all of this.

  Whatever part of her brain was responsible, she would continue to ask the question. How should he answer? Would she accept him, or would her psyche recoil with rejection and angrily choke off the connection?