The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  But she was in pain. Terrible pain and fear.

  His consciousness filled with the images of bombs.

  No. No! There were still five within her. Ready to go off! Her body would never survive that—there was too much damage already. What could he do?

  COME WITH ME. I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. I HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN.

  He saw her standing with him in a formless place, her slim body radiant with light. He reached out to take her hand. The world moved….

  In an instant they were with the first bomb. The surroundings looked like lung tissue, porous and stretched. Blood cells and fluids swirled by, instantly familiar, yet different, the whole area suffused with a silver haze. He was surprised to see that the weapon no longer dwarfed him. Instead as he drew closer, he found it the size of a large beach ball. Intrigued, he let go of Emma, placed his hands on either side of it, and began to squeeze.

  Pain stabbed at the base of his skull. He shook it off and squeezed again. Emma came forward and added what strength she had, though he could see the toll of the effort in her face.

  Suddenly it was done. The milky globe shattered into a spray of shimmering gems that fell in slow motion to form a sparkling mist at their feet—deadly molecules incinerated into harmless atoms.

  On to bomb number two.

  Time blinked.

  Heart muscle this time, the contractions rapid and powerful. The body was terrified, facing death. He knew the pressure waves should be buffeting him without mercy, but he felt none of it. This bomb was anchored to tissue, yanked back and forth with the ferocious currents. He reached out a fist—the harbinger of death disintegrated in a spectacular blossom of flame.

  Bomb number three, was in the spinal cord. Swiftly annihilated. But after its destruction Emma’s form crumpled with exhaustion. His own head throbbed and lances of fire shot up and down his neck. He clasped her hands, willing some of his strength into her. They made it to number four, in what he took to be the carotid artery—after a long effort, vanquished it, but the world swam sickeningly. With a shock of horror, he realized that Emma’s phantom image had begun to fade. She floated listlessly, and didn’t respond to his touch.

  Emma no! Without her help he couldn’t find the last bomb.

  He gathered her in his arms and willed them into the ether. Colors, textures, smells and sounds whirled past them. The straight path he began became curved, twisted, knotted, darting aimlessly in one direction and then another. He couldn’t find the way alone! He pressed his face to hers and tried frantically to reach her mind. There was no change. Was there?

  He drew his face away, and became aware of the bomb, floating silently behind her. A gossamer honeycomb formed the backdrop, glinting at its junctures like the facets of jewels.

  Her brain.

  Before he could react, he saw a tiny crack begin near the top of the shell, and spread jaggedly downward. Launching himself toward it like a projectile, he clutched the globe fiercely to his chest and pressed with all his remaining strength. Agony ricocheted like shards of glass through his body. His head was ready to explode. The world sizzled with shooting sparks of lightning, impaling him like daggers.

  Then nothing. Silence, deafening in its totality.

  The bomb was gone.

  Slowly, so slowly, he became aware of his physical self again. Random shapes and colors bled into one another until they formed a coherent whole: a world of familiar things. The real world—the normal world, if those terms still had meaning. He could not move, could only lie there gulping fresh air. Then, at last, he crawled toward Emma’s still form, wrapped his arms around her, and held onto her like life itself.

  Darkness swallowed the world and it was a very, very long time before he felt anything else.

  70

  The submersible was sinking.

  That bilious surge in his gut was half-weightlessness, half-fear. He’d begun to surface before the power died—now the weight on the end of the manipulator arm was pulling the craft back to the bottom, pitching the bow downward. How far would it fall?

  Christ! The impact with the seabed kicked most of the breath from his lungs. The rest leaked out in a low moan. Helpless... he was totally helpless. He drew his hands to his face. Were his eyes open or not? Open, he thought. There was a blue luminescence at the edge of his vision, so faint that he might be imagining it. Or it might be outside light through the viewports—light only in contrast to deeper blackness inside the pod. As he lowered his arms again, the blue glow made ghostly apparitions out of his fluttering hands and struck a pale gleam from fluorescent gauges: eyes in the night.

  Though the vent overhead still gave a sibilant hiss, he felt his chest tighten in anticipation, fearful that the next breath would be thick with poisonous carbon dioxide, and the next after that…empty.

  He fought for control. There were things he could do—he’d trained and practiced until he could find his way around the submersible blindfolded.

  Sightless, just like now.

  A long screech made him jump, his mind filling with primal images of creatures of the deep.

  Bullshit! It was only some scrap of wreckage the hull was sliding over—the sub was still on the shallow slope, not at the edge of the precipice. Not yet.

  He could manually trim the ballast. The risk was that it would weaken the smooth steel hull’s contact with the ocean floor—make it more vulnerable to the downward-flowing current that might carry it to the brink.

  The shell of his world cried out again, squeezed in a tightening vice.

  Should he increase the inside pressure? Or would it merely steal away his last reserve of life-giving breath, destroying any chance of a last-minute rescue?

  Don’t lose control. Help will come.

  What help? Without ship’s power, he couldn’t signal, couldn’t tell them where he was. The crew topside on the rig knew where he’d been working, but once he’d begun to surface they would have left their scopes to get the crane ready to retrieve him. When the sub lost power it wouldn’t have fallen in a straight line. There was a strong current running, especially downward toward the deep. Unpredictable cross currents could have pushed him many meters to the side. Sonar would be confused by the clutter of wreckage scattered over the bottom. The water was black as the Pit.

  The craft would someday be retrieved, but its pilot might be long past retrieval.

  The sub tipped and returned, tipped, and hung poised in the balance. Would it roll? Down slope lay the mother of all cliffs. The pipelines ran another two thousand feet into the abyss to a place where his steel cocoon would be crushed like a discarded paper cup.

  He flung his arms out for a handhold, tried to dig his heels into the floor as the hull tilted farther, and still farther. It passed the point of equilibrium and a forest of toggle switches gouged his scalp as the world somersaulted. Then it stabilized upright for a moment, but he could feel the hull shift, sliding across the ocean floor. It rolled again. Slipped. Twisted.

  His air was almost gone. The dim, winking lights that had kept him company like eyes in the night were going out, too. Soon his own spark would join them.

  The sub should have surfaced on its own. There was an emergency circuit designed to drop ballast automatically if anything happened to the pilot, or in the event of a serious power loss. It required regular intervention not to jettison the ballast, and it should have been foolproof.

  No such thing.

  His mind was becoming sluggish. The air that fed it was slowly turning to poison. How long before his mind lost all power? Would his body conserve its energy, to keep the vital brain cells going just a little longer? What if there was an errant organ or greedy muscle that stole away those last sparks of life first?

  A short circuit. What if there was a short circuit in a peripheral system of the submersible that was robbing it of power—paralyzing its motive systems, and interfering with the emergency overrides? Just a trickle of current diverted the wro
ng way. How could he possibly find it?

  He couldn’t. Not in time.

  It was a thief, and it was killing him. He had to kill it instead.

  With the last of his strength he began to pound his fists against the instrument panels. It was one of the instruments, he was sure. One of them was hiding the short circuit that was stealing his life. If he could only smash the right one, the drain would end and the fail-safe would trigger. The dead would rise again.

  He was like a demon, staggering, punching, kicking… his fists flinging droplets of blood as they shredded on broken glass. One system after another crumpled and shattered beneath his assault. The last few lights went out, but still he continued his rampage, pummeling, battering, his heart hammering with the brutal effort. He slipped on shards of glass, fell hard against sharp metal, raised himself again, leaking more blood, and threw his body around the blackened cabin in a frenzied attack on anything he could reach.

  He didn’t even know when he succeeded. The rasping of his frantic breaths hid the sound of the ballast being jettisoned, the hull scraping free of the imprisoning rocks. It was only as he pitched forward in exhaustion and defeat, that he felt the capsule lurch and begin to rise. He had no strength to lift himself from the floor. Oxygen-starved blood filled his brain with dark fog.

  He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a dream when the submersible rose to the surface at last and a forgiving sea cradled it once more. Bright rays sprayed through the thick glass and filled his mind to overflowing. In this new light he saw that he was not insane. He never had been.

  # # #

  “She’s out of the woods, that’s the main thing.”

  Truman Bridges was speaking to Devon Kierkegaard. Their faces went in and out of focus as Hunter raised himself in the bed.

  “Doc… it is you! I thought I was dreaming when I heard your voice.”

  Bridges was startled and began to laugh, then quickly stopped himself, putting a hand to his side.

  “It’s wonderful to hear your voice, too, Mr. Hunter. You’ve been in a coma. Then, finally last night, you showed signs of coming out into a normal dream state. But don’t try to get up too quickly. You’ve had surgery.”

  “Surgery?”

  “I’ll explain later.” Bridges winked. “Look who’s here.” As he pointed, Hunter realized that the doctor was in a wheelchair, dressed in the gown of a hospital patient. What had he missed? He felt like massaging the base of his skull to ease the pain there, but his touch was blocked by a thick dressing. Then his blurry eyes followed the psychologist’s extended arm.

  It was Emma, and beside her, Lucy Tamiko with her arm in a sling. Emma’s wheelchair was pushed by Skylar Tyson. They distributed themselves along the side of Hunter's bed, and Emma shyly took Hunter’s hand. A hint of jealousy crossed Tamiko’s face, but then a genuine smile returned. An orderly shepherded an intravenous bag and hanger beside Emma, then left the room.

  “That equipment hasn’t kept this young lady from spending most of the past twenty-four hours in this room,” Bridges observed. “As soon as we would let her out of bed herself.”

  Hunter was stunned to see her looking so well. “How long have I been out?”

  “Nearly a week,” Kierkegaard answered. “Six-and-a-half days since the attack.” He saw the look of puzzlement. “The man who attacked you—Emma’s husband—was part of a larger assault.”

  “Six-and-a-half days!” The submarine pilot shook his head. Then he noticed there were faces missing from the group. “Where’s Gage?”

  Kierkegaard had to clear his throat. “Kenneth was killed.”

  “He died trying to protect me,” Tamiko said, tears filling her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Hunter said softly. “He was a good man. I wish I’d known that sooner.”

  “Yes, he was.” Kierkegaard nodded. “And there was more to him than any of us knew, including a connection to a certain associate of ours in Washington.” He gave Hunter a meaningful look.

  “And Lorelei?”

  “Dr. Mallory…was the mole.” Kierkegaard’s words clearly caused him pain. “She’d been involved in a scandal years ago… had been the close associate of a researcher who was accused of selling technology secrets to a foreign power. His guilt seemed to be confirmed by his subsequent suicide. Apparent suicide. The charges against her were dropped, and I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt—she was truly brilliant at her work. Now it appears that trust was misplaced.” He looked up from his hands. “However, her… partners had no further use for her.”

  “I can’t say I’m sorry I missed all that.”

  “You weren’t the only one,” Kierkegaard continued with a sudden smile. “Skylar slept through it all!”

  The scientist nodded. “It’s true. I was in the small lab, trying to work out how to re-tune our scanning equipment. I was listening to Mozart rather loudly on a set of headphones….”

  “And then he passed out from exhaustion and slipped under the desk,” Tamiko finished. “After the attack our people searched the whole building, and there he was, sleeping like a baby.”

  Hunter joined in welcome laughter, then turned to Bridges. “What about you, Doctor? When I came into Emma’s room I thought you were dead.”

  “Not far from the truth. The bullet nicked my left lung on the way through, but I knocked myself out on something as I fell. Poor Vitale, though—clean through the heart.” He bit his lip.

  “Was it Emma you were talking about, who’s out of the woods?”

  “Yes, indeed. She’s recovering well. Incredibly well, considering all of the trauma her body has undergone.”

  “The best of tender, loving care,” the young woman said, smiling at her doctor.

  “And so, the crisis has been defused,” Kierkegaard added. “The surviving attackers aren’t talking much, but their equipment and other clues speak for them. Our Washington associate says that good progress is being made to round up all of those behind this vicious scheme, and bring them to justice.”

  The submariner understood the reference. “Uncle Frank” would not escape his due.

  “But what was it all about?”

  Kierkegaard shrugged.

  “It’s still technically a secret, but….” He smiled. “The president is about to spearhead a world trade agreement that will be finalized at the upcoming G20 summit. It’s designed to prevent a repeat of the global economic collapse earlier this century, by blocking the ability of a small number of players to dominate world markets. Which means it will prevent some very powerful people from achieving the nearly supreme power they so desire.” He looked into their faces. “The clues investigators have gathered so far implicate some multinational corporate interests. Very big players in Silicon Valley and the energy industry, particularly. It’s not the first time potent conservative interests have taken drastic measures.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Hunter continued, “Why threaten Emma in such a complicated way. Why not just kidnap her?”

  “You can sometimes kill heavily guarded people, but it’s not nearly so simple to get them away to a hiding place undetected. On the other hand, someone can be infected with nano devices with a surreptitious pin prick, or infected food, or perhaps soon even a handshake. I think it was also intended to send a message that what we’ve just been through could easily happen again. No-one is safe.”

  “The bomb technology is still out there. Someone will use it again.”

  “Yes, but perhaps not soon. The scientist responsible has been taken into custody. We should have recognized his handiwork earlier. A man named Griffon.”

  “Griffon?” Tyson looked startled. “A brilliant man. A brilliant…rival.”

  “Yes.” Kierkegaard looked very uncomfortable. “Nine years ago, when a congressional appropriations committee was deciding whether or not to fund our project, Griffon was the chief competitor. He was working on methods to deliver medicines to precise locations in
the body—cures, not poisons—much more efficient than oral or intravenous drugs. He was very outspoken against our project claiming that it was too prone to adaptation as a weapons system.”

  “That’s ironic. Especially since that fact probably worked in your favor with the committee.” Hunter said. Kierkegaard gave an awkward shrug.

  “After the committee’s decision, Griffon went bankrupt. He’d incurred huge debts and may have had a gambling problem. Obviously that made him an easy target for someone with deep pockets but less altruistic motives. Yet Griffon claims he was duped and I believe him.”

  “Duped into torturing an innocent woman?” Tyson’s face showed more anger than Hunter had ever seen there.

  “His new funders told him they were pacifists, trying to stop the creation of nano-weapon technology. The president himself would be the victim, brought to the brink of death but not killed. The resulting outcry would kill our project and any others like it.”

  “And he believed a fairy tale like that?”

  “I suppose he wanted to believe it, Lucy. The chair of the appropriations committee all those years ago is the man we now call the president.”

  “And so a great medical discovery was perverted into an instrument of death,” Tyson said in a soft voice. It was a sobering prospect.

  A pair of nurses appeared in the doorway. The elder of the two said, “I’m not one to stand in the way of a party, but all of these patients need more rest.”

  “A couple more minutes, please,” Hunter asked. “I just woke up. I need some answers.”

  Tamiko offered, “Skylar and I can go,” and ushered him out of the room. The nurse who’d spoken gave a reluctant nod and led her companion a little way down the hall.

  Hunter lowered his voice and asked, “What about me, Doctor? You said I had surgery. What for?”

  It was Kierkegaard who answered. “That device we implanted in your neck somehow burnt out. It fused into a solid mass. We don’t know what happened, but whatever the cause, it also destroyed part of your