by Paul Teague
‘Come with me!’ she says. ‘I’ve figured out how to stop this!’
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The Secret Bunker: The Four Quadrants
Part One: The Quadrants
Chapter One
Armageddon
Twenty thousand kilometres above the Earth a reconnaissance satellite takes a snapshot image of the life below it. It has been doing this every five minutes for the past eighty-two hours. The first photograph that it took over two days ago showed a planet predominantly covered by water, with distinctive landmasses sporadically obscured by crisp white clouds. There is not sufficient definition in each of the images to tell the story of the millions of life forms on the surface, yet at this moment their very existence is in peril.
The satellite is identified by the marking ‘GC-001’. It is the first of multiple devices launched two years ago by The Global Consortium to secretly record these events. Like sentinels, they watch patiently from the skies, impassively recording all activity as the entire planet is shrouded in darkness. Gone are the blue seas and bright, white clouds of the first images, they have now been obliterated by this dense and impenetrable presence.
Satellite GC-001 is just one of a vast matrix of international satellites recording this process. The story they will tell is, as yet, uncertain.
The darkness surrounding the Earth was supposed to be restorative, it was meant to breathe new life into this dying planet. But thousands of kilometres away, obscured by a still, black shroud, drones are launching from a secret bunker one by one, like wasps leaving a nest, intent on harm. They are unseen by the watching satellites whose lying images show a planet that looks peaceful and at rest as it slumbers beneath this dark, enveloping blanket. But a malevolent force has just unleashed the biggest threat that mankind has faced since the first life forms drew breath on the surface below.
Armageddon is described in the Bible as the last battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgement. In the next forty-eight hours this satellite will watch without emotion as humanity struggles not only for its own survival, but for the life of the planet which sustains it. By the end of today, one of those fighting on the side of good will draw a last breath and, soon afterwards, the surface of the Earth will begin to burn like it has just become Hell.
The Day of Judgement is today.
Targeted
This floor is bigger than all the rest. It must be the size of twenty football pitches, it is a vast subterrestrial hangar. There will be one of these in each of the bunkers, the underground control centres which form the four Quadrants of The Global Consortium.
The drones are like nothing he’s ever seen before. They’re smaller than the military versions that he watched in awe on the TV news programmes, but they look immediately more sinister and deadly. There are hundreds of them here, like bats in a cave, still and silent.
In an instant, the drones activate, one after the other. Red lights, the eyes of a devil, illuminate in the darkness. When all of the drones appear to be triggered, a bright shield of light sweeps across the full width of the far wall. It is a sight to behold and in any other circumstances it would be considered a spectacle of great visual beauty.
There is a deep rumble at the far side of the hangar and slowly, surely and deliberately its vast iron sides open up to reveal a dense blackness beyond. The drones launch into the darkness outside and as they enter that bleak nothingness they appear to have been swallowed up by some malevolent force. But it is not the darkness itself that is evil, it is the drones which make their deadly journeys within it.
Unseen by any human eye, they launch at regular intervals, each with a terrible mission. The red lights on the drones are not the eyes of a devil, though they may just as well be. Instead they indicate that the devices are armed, they have become a powerful weapon of destruction. Each one is intent on its deadly assignment – to completely annihilate the other three bunkers which lie beyond in the remaining Quadrants.
Lab Rat
The girl is restrained on a cold, metal operating table. She is no more than sixteen years of age. Unable to move even her fingers, let alone her arms, legs or head, she has been like this for over twenty-four hours now, given neither food nor water. Four small needles have been inserted at angles into the base of her spine. Once every hour for the past twenty-four hours a mechanized delivery system has injected four different liquids directly into her spinal cord.
She hasn’t been told why she’s here or why they have chosen her for these experiments. There are no others like her, she is all alone in this nightmare. Another hour is up. The machine whirs into life once again, and the serums are injected into her one by one. It is the final liquid which she dreads most, the one that results in agonizing spasms which last nearly the full hour until the next injection is administered.
She lets out a scream of pain which echoes down an empty corridor. The only person who’s aware of what is going on here is the man who sits at his desk diligently monitoring the results of this experiment.
His office is plain and undecorated, there are no family photographs or pictures on the walls here. The only sign of who is he is and what he might be are displayed on the badge which is attached to his white lab coat. It reads ‘Dr H. Pierce’.
Awoken
It was never intended that this fighting force should ever see the light of day. Specially selected more than eighteen years earlier, they’d been chosen as part of a series of initial experiments specifically for this purpose.
Tested under the most extreme conditions, each cryogenically frozen body in this room had been included on the basis of their consistent responses in a series of demanding and punishing simulations. Unknown to them, they had been frozen here since the tests ended, waiting for the time when their unique services might be required. That time was now.
The entire population of the Earth was in imminent danger from terrorist saboteurs, their evil ambition to extinguish all life on the planet and extract its rich mineral deposits for sale to the highest bidder. As the power surged through their cryogenic caskets and the blood began to flow once more through their male and female bodies, the awakening cohorts could never have guessed at the battle that lay before them. It would be a battle not only to preserve their own lives, but also to protect the lives of every remaining human being on the planet.
Chapter Two
Synchronicity
‘Come with me!’ she says. ‘I’ve figured out how to stop it!’
I’m stunned for a moment, like a ghost has just appeared before me. I’ve now had over forty-eight hours to get used to this idea since I first thought I’d seen Nat just beyond the bunker doors. The possibility that she might be alive has been churning around in my head all of that time, one minute accepting the possibility, the next cruelly denying myself of any hope. Yet here she is, three years older, much taller now – the same as me – but very definitely Nat. I know it’s Nat. The connection that I lost when her life was apparently extinguished right in front of me is back.
I feel the blood surging through my veins, the spark of a new energy invigorates my entire body and I am once again fully alive. This is how I’m supposed to be. It is like a fusion as we stand together here, we create an energy and it is stronger than it was before, because we are now older. Nat feels it too, she is taken aback by its velocity.
In Dad’s video he said, ‘It’s about you, it’s all about you and Nat.’
‘Work together,’ he’d urged, and now I understand.
Both Nat and I feel it in this instant, this synchronicity tells us everything we need to know. Neither of us can explain it yet, but we know as we stand here facing each other, nourished and energized by this incredible reunion, that the solution must r
eside with us. We are different from other people and we are twins.
Whatever must be done to fight the evil that has been unleashed in this place, we will face it and fight it together.
Others
The three screens in the Operations Centre on Level 3 continued to transmit their urgent messages, unheard by anybody else in the bunker. Like echoes in an empty cave, their pleas were broadcast into nothingness.
‘Quadrant 2 to Quadrant 1, breaking communication protocols to transmit this urgent message,’ came the repeated words.
The Operations Centre lay still and empty, there was nobody here to receive these messages. Moments beforehand a teenager had been here, one who was capable of accessing this area and responding to these people, but the doors had just closed behind him as the screens crackled into life. For now, their cries would go unheard as they became ever more desperate.
20:23 Quadrant 3: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
Magnus watched the screen on his console, deciding not to share it with the entire Control Room just yet. He would need time to assimilate this information, to decide how to process it himself first of all. In training simulations these events had not even been presented as a possibility. Only the bunker’s Custodian was briefed on Tier 6 to Tier 10 alert scenarios, yet he had believed them to be alone in their guardianship of the planet.
He was currently tracking three drones which had just launched automatically from a location in Southern Scotland, UK. The only likely source that he could find was an old Cold War tourist attraction concealed many metres beneath a deceptive and inoffensive looking cottage. This was a pinprick compared to the much larger installation at White Sulphur Springs; it seemed hardly conceivable that a threat could have come from such an unlikely location.
By 20:00 there was to have been zero airspace activity – yet here was the evidence on screen. A fourth light appeared out of nowhere, to accompany the other three. Whatever was happening here, these drones were appearing at one-minute intervals and they were not authorized as part of the core mission outline.
Magnus consulted the E-Pad which was tied in specifically to his biometric ID code. To access guidance for Tier 6–Tier 10 alerts he’d have to triple authenticate his ID. That meant a retina scan, a sweep of brain-wave patterns and a pin-prick sample of his blood.
He moved into one of the meeting rooms that were located around the edges of the Control Room, he didn’t want to draw attention to what was going on here. As Magnus entered the darkened room, in the moments before the lights detected his presence, the trained eye would have spotted a faint yellow light, just below the surface of the skin on his neck. As yet it was at rest, there was no activity, but there was very definitely some device implanted just below the surface of his skin, as if waiting for somebody far away to activate it.
Alive
He watched the pool of blood grow steadily wider as the security team congratulated him on his successful apprehension of the intruder, impervious to the fading life before them. His strategy had paid off well, nobody had registered him as being out of place here and with his limited security access to the bunker, he expected to remain undetected for some time. But to gain this freedom, he had had to take a massive chance with her life and as he watched her bleeding out in front of him, he knew that he had very little time to save her.
‘I’ll dispose of the body,’ he volunteered. ‘Kate wants her out of the way.’
The members of the security team were happy to accept this – after all, they had no reason to suspect anything now. Two of the team offered to collect a HoverTrolley from the MedLab, on which to transport the body to the cremation area.
Left alone for a few moments, he darted towards the woman’s body and took out a device from his pocket. This was not a gadget that you’d see in any normal medical facility. He held it above the area into which he had shot only minutes earlier, but now it healed rather than harmed, sealing the wound and beginning the process of tissue repair that would be required for her recovery.
The woman gave a gasp of life and looked at him directly in the eyes as if seeking an explanation for why this man should want her dead one minute and alive the next.
‘Lie still,’ he commanded urgently. ‘I’ll get you out of here, you’ll need to bear the pain for a while.’
She did a good job, and he alone detected her silent wince as the security guards rolled her body contemptuously onto the HoverTrolley.
‘I’ll take care of it from here,’ he confirmed and headed along the corridor in the opposite direction to the security team, her body still and lifeless as he’d instructed.
‘Stay still,’ he whispered, ‘I need to get you away from the cameras.’
‘You need to get to my family,’ she spoke as loudly as she dared. ‘They’ve switched off their life support.’
‘I’m on it,’ he replied impatiently. ‘They still have a short time before they reach a critical stage. I need to take care of that bleeding first.’
He guided the HoverTrolley towards the dormitory area where only a short time earlier she’d taken sanctuary for the first time. Her bag and laptop were still by the bunks where she’d abandoned them earlier. In spite of the pain that she was in, she still scolded herself for being so careless as to leave them in plain sight.
‘I’m here to help you,’ he said. ‘Your daughter is alive, I believe that you and your family are caught up with whatever is going on here.’
He decided that now was not the time to tell her that it was he who had killed her daughter three years earlier. She had not recognized him so far from their trip to the hospital six days ago, so he was grateful that the Neuronic Device in her neck was still doing its job by controlling the messages sent between spine and brain. He checked that it was still there – as if anything could have removed it. He saw the faint blue light beneath her skin and wondered why she’d been implanted with a blue device rather than any of the other options that were available. This was not his security level, but interesting nevertheless.
‘You knew exactly where to shoot,’ she said to him almost accusingly. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I needed to get you out of there in one piece,’ he replied, ‘and make it convincing.’
‘You need to thank your titanium rib implants for getting you out of that one alive!’
Captive
The device in the guard’s neck had been still for some time, but as James was escorted to the interrogation room, it began to glow once again. He had been exposed as an imposter and sabotaging force, and would be interrogated and punished. There was no law here now, no government to ensure his human rights.
The bunker was under the control of a new force, and they had little concern about rights and procedures. The security team which would administer this treatment was made up of good people, but they were being controlled by nanotechnology which was implanted in their necks. From there the devices made rapid neural connections between brain and spine.
The faint, pulsating glow in their necks was the only indication that these neural pathways were being manipulated by an external force.
Memories could be suppressed or enhanced, instructions given that would be executed without question or hesitation, emotions controlled and inhibited. But in the treatment of this man – James – it was their conscience that would need to be suppressed for what they were about to do next.
Chapter Three
Momentum
What do you say to the twin sister who you’d thought to be dead for the past three years when she reappears before your eyes, almost in a puff of smoke? I’ve seen so much since those bunker doors closed and left me alone and separated from my family in that dark corridor, that I suspect there isn’t much that would surprise me now. I had been convinced at first that I was going to see my mum and family perish in front of me. That possibility has been forced upon me, retracted, and then thrust at me once again in the last forty-eight hours.
I have had to wre
stle too with the possibility of my own death; it feels like I’ve faced more in the past few days than I have since we lost Nat. I just hug her and say her name, ‘Nat’, trying to erase three years of sorrow, loss and emptiness. She hugs me back, she feels it too, but we know that we have limited time here. There is no opportunity yet for catching up and exchanging stories, we have things that must be done – and fast.
‘It’s great to see you Nat, but how are you even here?’ I say.
‘I was never dead Dan,’ she replies. ‘It was all a set-up to make it look real.’
I knew I’d seen her move that day the accident happened, I felt in my bones that something wasn’t right, but why didn’t I say? I curse myself for my inaction, but who would have listened to me? I was thirteen years old at the time, I’m not even totally sure that anybody would listen now.
‘We’re caught up in something really big here Dan,’ Nat continued. ‘I’ve got so much I need to tell you, but we must take quick action.’
‘We have to use the transportation systems together,’ she says. ‘I finally figured it out when you saw me earlier.
‘And those weird buttons in the lift – if we press them together, they take us somewhere, I’m just not sure where yet!’
Of course, that’s why the lift jolted when I touched the buttons – I was halfway there, but whatever it is that lets me operate most things here, it looks like both of us will be needed to fully activate that.