by Nick Thacker
He hadn’t dropped more than a few inches.
“Bennett!” Hendricks yelled. “You go that slow, we’ll be here all day. Or we’ll be here until the Chinese cut your line. Then we’ll be peeling you off of —“
His voice cut out, no doubt stopped by one of the other team members waiting down below.
Again, he pushed out from the cliff and this time loosened the line he had gripped in his right hand. He felt the rope slide along the inside of his left palm, the telltale sign of moving downward. His feet landed again a second later, and he looked up. He was satisfied to see that he’d made it a good ten or fifteen feet. Before his fears crept back into the forefront of his mind, he pushed off the wall a third time.
It was another five pushes before he made it to the bottom. Or, at least, to the others. He saw Julie next to him, smiling.
“Good job,” she whispered.
He nodded once, still shaken but glad they were done.
“Why aren’t we on the ground?” he said, after realizing they were all still hanging on their lines, spread out around him.
Reggie answered. “No more rope, boss.”
“We can’t see the bottom,” Joshua said, his voice calm and even. In any other situation, the man’s voice would have been reassuring. Now, however, Ben wanted to punch him.
Ben felt his blood run cold. He flicked his right hand to jiggle the rope, still not daring to look down, and saw the end of the rope fly upward, only a few feet of slack left.
“I shined a light down,” Hendricks said, “but it turns to black only a few meters down. Damn flashlights are worthless.”
No, no, no, the fear came tumbling back like a train bearing down on him, and it was all he could do to force his hands to lock in place and not just let go. It would at least end quickly that way, he thought.
He looked at Julie, and saw the fear in her eyes. She had forced the smile earlier; she hadn’t wanted Ben to know the truth. But it was true, no matter what she did.
They were literally at the end of their rope, hanging from the edge of an Antarctic cliff.
With an entire army bearing down on them.
CHAPTER sixteen
He had read through the few details given on the developer. A young man, 29 years old, from Indonesia. If the file had been any other subroutine, or if Colson hadn’t been fully aware of the particular nature of the information the man was transcribing, he would have thought Hasan Nessef was just a contract coder, someone the company had hired temporarily because he was cheap and quick.
But Colson did know what he was working on, at least on a small scale. He knew what this subroutine was intended to replicate — it was his job to cull through the files and straighten out any programmatic deficiencies and clean up the data. Because he was in charge of collecting the myriad files and streamlining them into an organized whole, he had to have a basic understanding of the larger project they were working on. They had done a fantastic job of keeping their cards close to their chest, but Colson hadn’t been hired because he was an idiot.
From day one he had known there was a reason the company had hidden their research station at the bottom of the world, in Antarctica. He’d known there was a reason they had spent an unbelievable amount of money on security, flying in their employees, scientists, and researchers under cover of night and doing everything possible to stay out of radar range. And he’d known there was a reason they’d turned themselves into an impossibly complex hierarchy of management at the station, establishing a bureaucracy that resembled a Fortune-100 company rather than a 30-person crew.
There was a reason for all of it. He’d known, but he didn’t ask questions. He’d done what he was told, and they’d given him pieces of information every few months, trusting him more the longer he’d shown his loyalty to the company. It had been easy, considering there was nowhere — literally — he could go. He was trapped in this prison under the ice, to sit and stare at lines of code all day, every day, until they’d finished the project — the reason — behind it all.
So, while he didn’t personally know Hasan Nessef, he knew the young man was more than just a lowly hired gun. This particular subroutine was top-secret, and they would not have allowed contractors to transcribe it. Instead, the handful of developers on Level 3 would have been the only ones to have access to it.
As the doors to the elevator opened on Level 3, Colson was reminded of his relative status in the organizational food chain. Even though he was technically Nessef’s boss, the men and women doing the actual work of transcribing the data into signals a computer system would understand were thought of as the ‘geniuses,’ and therefore vastly more important than Colson and his boss, Angela Stokes. As such, Level 3 featured something Level 7 was completely bereft of: decoration.
Beautiful vines covered the center wall on the floor, somehow being lit with grow bulbs and defying the zero-sunlight design of the subterranean station, and more potted plants, including a massive palm tree, dotted the perimeter of the floor. To Colson it looked like an eastern European mid-priced hotel atrium, one that had had more thought than money put into it.
He also felt a slight pang of jealousy when he noticed that there were restrooms on both sides of this floor. One directly to his left, just next to the elevator, and, judging by the signs on the ceiling, another set at the opposite end.
Should have told them I had no management experience, he thought. As he walked towards the center of the space, heading for the massive vine-covered wall and the door within it, he passed a small, unassuming cubicle and desk.
Nessef, Hasan, Developer.
The guy even has his own plaque. Jonathan wondered if that was something he could request, or if it had been given to the employee as some sort of incentive. Without lingering any longer, Jonathan continued toward the door, and pushed it open after a quick knock.
Three people waited on the other side of the small conference room table. Angela Stokes, her boss, a man who looked fresh out of business school, and Hasan Nessef himself. Hasan was bug-eyed, clearly feeling out of his element standing around the middle-management folks, and he was even more perplexed when Colson entered.
“Colson,” Stokes said, immediately moving to close the space between them and begin her habit of ‘close talking.’ “What’s this about?”
“It’s about, uh —“ he glanced at her boss.
“He knows,” she said without hesitation. “He brought it up to me. He knows there’s something going on; there’s a reason the timeline’s been shortened.”
“Right,” Colson said. “Okay, good. Anyway, I found it.”
Three sets of eyes stared back at him.
“It’s in a file Nessef transcribed.”
Hasan Nessef’s eyes somehow grew even wider. Colson was worried for a moment that if he kept talking, they might just fall right out of the kid’s head.
“Anyway, it’s a transcription that’s crucial to the mainline subroutine we’ve been working on. I mentioned we kept getting parse errors; I believe this file is why.”
“There is nothing wrong with my transcription!” the kid blurted out.
“No,” Colson said, “I’m not saying there is. What I am saying is that the file has an odd set of instructions inside it. They’re not the same syntax as the rest of the subroutine.”
“Not following you, Colson,” Stokes said. Stokes’ boss was unreadable, a stoic expression he must have taken a class on at business school plastered across his face. “Syntax?”
“Uh, like style, really. Everything we’ve been coding has just been a transcription from the mainline, right? It’s all just a copy of what’s already there, except we’re translating it into a language a computer can understand.”
She nodded. Her boss stared.
“So I came across a section of code that was transcribed — again, a translated copy of what was already in the program — but I noticed that it had a slightly different style to it. I wasn’t sure what it was, because it
looked jumbled and a little messed up.”
“My code is not —“ Nessef started.
Colson held up a hand, and Nessef quieted down. Colson felt a surge of adrenaline with the slight power move, but kept going. “Again, Nessef, I’m not here to accuse you of anything. First of all, the code is correct — there doesn’t appear to be any transcription errors in the file. Second, the reason I called you in here is because I believe the transcription refers to a segment of the mainline subroutine that’s been jumbled on purpose.”
Colson waited and watched Stokes’ and her boss’ faces. He saw the slightest movement in the man’s eyes, but thought it may have just been a twitch.
“Stokes,” he continued, “this is the reason. This is why they’re rushing the project to completion.” He turned and addressed her young boss. “Listen, uh, sorry — didn’t catch your name — I know this might be news to you, and I know there are like 15 people above you in the chain-of-command. But you have to try to get them to listen.”
“Mr. Colson,” the man said, his voice gravelly and sounding far older than he looked. “What exactly am I supposed to try to convince them of? That you’ve found an anomaly in the program? You do realize this entire project is somewhat of an anomaly, and that there are many anomalies found within —“
Jonathan was shaking his head profusely. “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Anomalies are one thing, but this… this snippet of code, it’s something else entirely. I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but it’s different. I’m telling you — and I promise you — if you build this subroutine into the mainframe, there’s no going back.”
“Why would we be worried about going back? What does that even mean, Mr. Colson?” the man said. “We have been working on this project for close to a decade, in some way or another. You know the stakes, and you clearly understand a bit more than someone of your station should know.” With this last sentence he glanced over to Angela Stokes. She clenched her teeth, but continued looking at Colson.
“Furthermore,” the man said, “I do not appreciate your taking a matter this sensitive in nature into your own hands, for any reason. The fact that Mr. Nessef is now involved is yet another failing on your part. I’m willing to allow you to continue work on the project with the understanding —“
“I’m out,” Colson said.
“Excuse me?” he and Stokes said in unison.
“I told you,” he said. “I’m out. I quit.”
At this, Stokes’ boss smiled, a slight, straight grin peeking out from the side of his mouth. “Mr. Colson, if you weren’t aware, there is a contractual obligation in place with each of our employees. Even if there were not, you do realize we are under a thousand feet of ice?”
Colson nodded.
“And you do realize that you are on the continent of Antarctica?”
Again, he nodded. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m not continuing on. This is morally, ethically, and all other kinds of wrong, and it’s definitely illegal. If it’s not illegal here, then somewhere.”
Stokes’ boss eyed Colson for a moment, then leaned sideways toward Stokes. He whispered something, then Stokes’ head fell to the ground. After another few seconds, she withdrew a phone from her pocket and began dialing a number.
Colson felt his blood run cold.
“Mr. Colson,” the man said. “Please accompany me back to your desk on Level 7. There is another matter I would like to discuss with you.”
CHAPTER seventeen
Ben looked at the edge far above him, wondering if he could make the climb back up without proper footwear, when a silhouette appeared.
Two other shadows joined the first, then more, and soon his vision was completely filled from left to right with the silhouettes of Chinese soldiers.
“Guys…” he said.
The first human-shaped shadows to appear at the edge lifted their gun-shaped shadows and pointed them directly at the group. Ben didn’t have time to move before the shots began raining down. He felt the fire of a bullet’s graze singing past his arm, too close to be considered a total miss.
He gritted his teeth and kicked out with one foot. His body, still hanging helplessly from the end of the rope, started spinning and swaying back and forth. The others were moving similarly, each climber trying to become as difficult a target as possible.
So far the ruse was working. None of the group had been hit, and Ben continued swaying, proving to himself that he had in fact found something he feared more than heights. Hanging from a rope above an endless chasm while being fired on by soldiers was certainly something worse.
“Ben!” he heard Julie yell out to him, and he looked over. She wasn’t looking back at him but instead had her attention on the soldiers at the edge of the cliff. A few of the soldiers were still firing, but the majority of the squad had disappeared.
“Where’d they go?” he asked.
“Look,” she replied. “Up and to the left.”
Ben followed her gaze and saw two Chinese soldiers standing farther away on the ledge, holding one of the ice axes. It was still tied to the rope, which was hanging taught straight down into the chasm. The soldiers were obviously working hard to hold the axe in place, as if the axe and rope were supporting significant weight.
The weight, in this case, was Hendricks’ last remaining man, Ryan Kyle. He was no longer swaying, and had begun looking for any sort of handholds that might be present in the ice cliff. Ben watched him work for a moment, noticing also that the bullets had finally stopped and all eyes were on Kyle.
“Kyle, see if you can swing a bit this way,” Hendricks said, his voice soft, reassuring. “We’ll catch you.”
Kyle didn’t respond to Hendricks’ order, still looking for anything he might be able to hang from once —
The Chinese soldiers dropped the ice axe, the sharpened end of it springing forward and down into the chasm. Kyle dropped out of sight, and Ben swallowed. Julie screamed, a short, surprised high-pitched burst.
Hendricks cursed, yelling up at the Chinese soldiers. “What do you want from us?” He shouted. “We’ll talk. You want to know who we’re working for?”
One silhouette stepped closer to the edge and leaned out over the cliff. Ben couldn’t see his features, but he seemed to be a bit shorter than many of the men around him.
In broken English, the man started to speak. “We have no use for you,” the man said. “We do not care who you are working for. We will find out eventually, but it is of no concern to us.”
Ben saw him nod as the leader finished his three-sentence speech, and six other men disappeared back from the cliff.
Within seconds he felt the terrifying thrust of weightlessness, then falling. He stopped short a split second later, and heard Julie scream again. He looked up and saw four soldiers directly above him. Two were holding his ice axe, and two were holding Julie’s.
“Ben…” she whispered. He could hear the shaking in her voice, and he gulped air again, afraid to speak. It was an instinctual response, like a rabbit’s, as if not moving or making a sound would make the hunter go away. He dared a glance upward again, and saw that the hunters had not gone anywhere.
None of them spoke, but no one needed to. Their leader had explained the full extent of the mission: remove the American team from the equation, and they were about to do just that. Ben thought through the events leading to this moment; he thought of the months back at the cabin with Julie, nothing but foraging grizzlies or snap snowstorms to worry about. He suddenly longed for the safety and warmth of the small cabin they’d shared together, the crackling fireplace and the smell of the wood heating and bursting into flames.
The cold here was a different sort of cold, it numbed him and sucked him dry. He felt like Death himself had his fingers grasped around his heart and was slowly pulling the life out of him. The air was thin, yet hung around him at the same time like a vapor or fog. Is this it? He thought. Is this how it ends for us?
“You ba
st —“ Hendricks’ voice was cut off as he fell into the chasm, his ice axe bouncing and catching a few times on the cliff on the way down.
Ben closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. Somehow Julie had found him, her arm now curled around his. She had swung over and latched herself to him, their weight now combined, their fates and arms interlocked.
His stomach lurched, and he knew it was happening.
He fell with Julie, neither of the pair making a sound. The initial shock of the sudden movement wore off, and he felt like he was now floating in space. There was no air current to push against his momentum and alert his body to the inevitable effects of gravity; the fall was like nothing else he’d ever experienced. He had spent a lifetime dodging any opportunities to ‘fall,’ including skydiving, ropes courses, and trust falls at park training events. Ben had been content to go to his grave without ever experiencing this effect, and now he was feeling the irony of going to his grave because of this effect.
Time stopped for him, and the thoughts of his life and parents and brother and Julie all hit him at once. He felt the reassuring squeeze of his father’s bearhugs, and later in life, vice-grip handshake. His mind flashed images of his kid brother trying to learn to fish, Ben’s growing impatience with the process, and his parents’ scolding for it. He thought of Julie, and how she had slammed into his life with the subtlety of a hand grenade, and how he had never had the chance to really tell her how he felt.
He knew she loved him, and he knew that she knew he loved her. But for Ben, words were always a struggle. He used them only when he had to, and even then only the few that he needed to get the point across. In the case of Julie and his feelings for her, a few words weren’t enough.
Ben thought of all of this as he fell, the miraculous phenomenon of time slowing sufficient enough to give him the space to recognize the inevitable. This is the end.
He fought his eyelids and pushed them open. His eyes spent a half-second focusing, and he saw — much farther above him now — the tiny shadows of the soldiers, watching to ensure their work was completed. They were fading, the blackness consuming everything around him, the top of the cliff and the other side of the chasm closing in and making the thin slit of light smaller and smaller as he fell.