Mutation

by Michael McBride

  The notion of the apocalypse seemed absurd to her; however, no less so than the idea that the giant cloaked figure wearing the feathered serpent mask was somehow the mummified corpse they’d found at the center of the maze beneath Teotihuacan. She was a trained medical professional, an academic steeped in logic, and yet she could no more deny the physical similarities than she could the fact that the organisms that had caused Richards to mutate into Subject A had survived inside his lifeless brain to infect the MRI technologist who’d committed hara-kiri on the jagged shards of the vessel that had once contained it. She understood on a primal level, at the insistence of millions of years of evolutionary instincts, that if she was going to survive the coming cataclysm, she was going to have to embrace the irrationality of the situation. Or perhaps simply find a way to rationalize events that seemed to have no basis in the world as she understood it.

  She knew nothing about celestial phenomena. While there was evidence to support the full moon having a labor-inducing effect on pregnant women, she still considered it largely pseudoscientific. Obviously, its proximity affected the tides, but that was a consequence of gravitational forces that could be charted with complete accuracy, not some magical alignment that heralded the end of humanity, and yet here she was hiding inside a plane filled with people who’d already tried to kill her on more than one occasion, heading on what she believed to be a southwesterly bearing, toward an unknown destination she figured had to be somewhere in Northern Africa. Considering the last time she was in Nigeria she’d come face-to-face with the drone that had begged her to release Subject Z before wading to its death in a river filled with crocodiles, she was hoping to land just about anywhere else.

  “We’re starting to descend,” Evans whispered directly into her ear.

  Jade was simultaneously grateful for his arms around her and angry at herself for feeling that way. And while there had been plenty of men in her life, she’d never allowed herself to be in a position of being dependent upon one, especially one like Evans, who stimulated all sorts of feelings inside her, from exasperation to . . . whatever the hell this was.

  She leaned her head back into the nook of his neck and raised her lips to his ear.

  “If we’re right about which direction we’re traveling, we ought to be somewhere over the Mediterranean.”

  His cheek grazed hers as he turned to align his mouth with her ear. She felt the warmth of his breath when he spoke.

  “We’ll need to be on the ground soon if they intend to reach their destination before the lunar eclipse. For my money, that puts us landing somewhere in Egypt, likely either within range of Memphis or Giza, both of which are near El-Amarna, where I first discovered the remains of a creature like Zeta.”

  “You think the two are related?”

  “God, I hope not, but I’m struggling to figure out their endgame. I mean, what’s down there that could possibly bring about the end of the world, even theoretically, within what little time is left?”

  “We have to assume they have the virus and intend to release it, presumably at some symbolic location.”

  “There are definitely more strategic locations to serve as the epicenter of a pandemic, though.”

  He was right. If Enigma wanted to do serious damage with the virus, this plane would be headed in just about any other direction. Into the heart of Europe to the northwest or China to the east, population centers through which the virus would spread like wildfire. It would have been a quick jaunt from Turkey to Dubai International Airport, the third-busiest transportation hub in the world, from which the virus could have reached every point around the globe within a matter of hours. No, these people had gone to great lengths to acquire the virus and confirm its efficacy. They had to have a different plan for it, although she simply couldn’t see it.

  “It must have something to do with the pyramids,” Anya said. “From the one we found in Antarctica to the others in Teotihuacan, everything seems to revolve around them. It makes sense we’d be heading toward the most famous pyramids in the world, don’t you think?”

  Jade had to admit that her theory made perfect sense.

  “But what could they possibly hope to accomplish?” she asked.

  “The pyramid in Antarctica was responsible for the physical transformation of Zeta,” Evans said.

  “You think one of the others could serve the same function?”

  “I don’t know, but the thought of turning that giant with the feathered serpent mask into one of those creatures scares the hell out of me.”

  “Even if that was their goal, what does it have to do with the virus?” Jade asked.

  The entire plane shuddered. Turbulence. They were definitely descending.

  She heard voices. Indistinct at first, but coming closer.

  They scooted as far back as they could into the corner, where they’d managed to shove aside the boxes to create just enough room to fully conceal one of them, and partially hide the other two, but if anyone opened the back flaps and took more than a passing glance . . .

  The door of one of the trucks ahead of theirs opened with a squeal. Jade closed her eyes and pressed herself deeper into Evans’s embrace.

  “. . . drei Kilometer nordwestlich von Khufu,” a man said. His voice was distant, barely audible over the cacophony of noise inside the plane. “Du wirst die Führung übernehmen—”

  The words were silenced by the thunk of the closing door.

  She’d learned just enough German to muddle her way through a few rudimentary conversations, but only recognized a few of the words.

  “We’re going three kilometers northwest of something,” she whispered.

  “Khufu,” Evans said. “It’s the largest of the Great Pyramids.”

  “So what’s out there?”

  “Nothing but desert, as far as I know. It’s been at least five years since I was in Giza, though.”

  “Are you certain that’s our destination?”

  “Assuming they’re referring to the pyramid,” Evans said. “It was built to serve as Khufu’s tomb, but archeologists have yet to find his body. The only thing they found in the burial chamber was a broken stone sarcophagus.”

  “Like the one in Mexico?” Jade asked.

  “And the one in Antarctica. Only on a much grander scale.”

  “You don’t think another of these beings—?” Jade started to ask, but she fell silent when she heard another voice. Female. Presumably the blond woman in the golden mask, but she was too far away to decipher her words.

  A third voice. Baritone. So deep she could feel its vibrations in her chest, like the rumble of thunder.

  “Ana Harrani Sa Alaktasa La Tarat.” Jade froze. Goosebumps rippled up the backs of her arms. There was something about the voice, about the words . . . During her tenure at the United Nations’ International Criminal Court, she’d been exposed to just about every language spoken throughout the civilized world, and yet she’d never heard anything like this one.

  She knew exactly who—or rather what—was speaking. She caught Evans’s stare, clutched his arm even tighter, and prayed it didn’t come any closer.

  The truck in front of theirs started with a grumble and a blast of exhaust. They must have been running way behind schedule, if readying the vehicles to roll while they were still in the air was any indication. It made a series of knocking sounds and threatened to stall, but the driver revved the engine several times and let it idle. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful she couldn’t hear the voices anymore or terrified that she no longer knew where their enemies were.

  She tried not to think about the Great Pyramid or the being that had been entombed inside, one for whom nothing shy of the greatest architectural marvel ever built would suffice, a structure vastly superior to the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, where they’d found the body of the man bearing its likeness, and the Antarctic Pyramid, from which Subject Z had liberated the remains of UNSUB X. Giza was the precise center of the Earth’s landmass, th
e point where all geomagnetic ley lines converged, and ground zero for a potential global pandemic.

  It was from these sands that humanity first arose, and to them that it would return.

  Whether or not these masked people were delusional was irrelevant. They genuinely believed they’d found the final resting place of another of these giants, possibly even their supreme god, a deity whose body had been stolen from its stone coffin and hidden elsewhere, a being whose resurrection heralded the end of the world.

  They needed to find the body first, and they needed to destroy it.

  She just hoped Enigma didn’t release the virus first.

  40

  ROCHE

  The Hangar

  “Stay on mission!” the team leader shouted.

  Roche didn’t even break stride. He knew exactly what had happened before he emerged from the Hangar and saw the wreckage of the Black Hawk. Smoke billowed from the shattered windows of the cockpit, through which he could see what was left of the bodies of the pilots slumped forward in their seats, their carcasses actively burning. A ragged hole where the side door had been issued gouts of black smoke and flames that reached up over the roof and engulfed the warped rotors.

  “Kelly!” he shouted.

  “We lost Roche,” a voice said through his headset. “We’re going to need a way around that retinal scanner.”

  Roche shielded his face and fought through the intense heat toward the chopper. He could barely get close enough to see the tangled metal that had once been seats through the smoke.

  There was no way she could have survived.

  “Kelly!”

  He fell to his knees and bellowed up into the sky. Tears blurred his vision and dampened his cheeks. It was his fault she’d been on the chopper. She’d wanted to come with him, but he’d insisted she remain onboard.

  And now she was gone.

  He struggled back to his feet and turned toward the Hangar.

  Maddox.

  He was responsible for all of this. He’d lied to him, betrayed him, and taken from him the only thing in the world that mattered. He had to pay for what he’d done. Had to suffer. And even if it cost Roche his life, he intended to make sure that Maddox never left this base.

  “We’re going to kill the power,” Command said. “If we knock out the internal power supply at the same time we take down the grid, you’ll have three seconds to get through that door and into the shaft. The car is on the second sublevel, so you’ll be able to slide down the cables and access the first sublevel.”

  Roche struggled to piece together what had happened. He hadn’t heard the scream of a missile or gunfire of any kind. The Air Force would have intercepted any rocket fire or incoming fighter jets long before they were within range of the base, which meant the explosive device had to have been inside the helicopter itself. Had it been on board when they left for USAMRIID, then surely whoever set it would have taken down the chopper with the entire special ops team inside, unless . . .

  “Charges placed,” one of the men said. “We’re all set to demo the false wall on your go ahead.”

  “. . . one of them is in on it,” Roche said, finishing his thought aloud.

  “They know we’re here,” Team Leader said. “It’s now or never!”

  “Our team’s been compromised!” Roche shouted as he ran back into the building. “Don’t give the order!”

  “We’re detecting a localized anomaly,” Command said. “Someone’s attempting to override the controls to the elevator.”

  “Kill the power!” Team Leader shouted.

  “Blow the door! Now!”

  An explosion ripped through the interior, filling the building with smoke.

  The power died with a thud Roche felt through the ground beneath his feet.

  He was too late.

  “No!” he shouted, a heartbeat before he heard the crackle of gunfire.

  TESS

  The overhead lights snapped off and the emergency lights flooded the corridor with a crimson glare.

  “And now the backup systems,” Maddox said.

  The hallway suddenly darkened, abandoning them to the faint glow from the laptop.

  “Disabling the safety brakes,” the man in the camouflage mask said. “Three seconds,” Maddox said. He gripped the railing with both hands and turned to Tess. “You might want to hang on to something.”

  The floor dropped out from underneath them and the elevator plummeted down the shaft.

  Tess screamed and caught Maddox’s sleeve with one hand and the railing with the other. Her feet left the floor and she rose into midair.

  “Two,” Maddox said.

  The screen of the laptop displayed their depth in feet as they passed the second sublevel and accelerated even deeper. She regained her balance and managed to at least get her feet back underneath her. Maddox stared at the monitor, transfixed.

  “One.”

  Every muscle in Tess’s body tensed in anticipation of impact. She tried not to think about how fast they were going, or what would happen when they slammed into the bottom of the shaft.

  “Electromagnetic lock disabled,” Camo Mask said.

  “Now,” Maddox said.

  Camo Mask hit a button and the red bars changed to green. The elevator’s brakes clamped down in the rails with a deafening shriek.

  The ground lurched underneath her before she was fully ready. Her legs crumpled and she barely turned her head in time to absorb the collision with her shoulder.

  Thoom!

  The entire elevator shook. The side walls buckled inward.

  Hydraulics whined in time with the repeated thumping against the walls, as though something was attempting to crush the car from the outside.

  The light snapped back on. The cables jerked in an effort to take up the slack.

  Maddox stepped up onto the cart and punched open the hatch in the ceiling, which swung open and clattered against the metal directly overhead. He climbed out and vanished from sight.

  “Out you go,” one of the remaining men said and boosted her up onto the cart, beside the laptop.

  Tess caught a glimpse of the shaft extending upward beyond the range of sight before Maddox leaned down through the hole and offered his hands. She stared at him for several seconds before reaching up. He clasped her wrists and dragged her through the hole, onto the top of the elevator, where two enormous black duffel bags were strapped to the framework.

  The entire car shook again and she heard the crunch of buckling metal. She cried out and grabbed for the nearest cable.

  “Relax,” Maddox said. He guided her to the edge of the roof and pointed down toward where a massive steel contraption was embedded in the side of the car. The hydraulic pistons shook with each attempted compression. “What you see here is half of what essentially amounts to a cross between the door of a bank vault and a car crusher. The two halves are designed to clamp together with a hundred tons of force, completing an electromagnetic seal strong enough to literally withstand a nuclear detonation. Of course, we just needed three seconds without power to jam the elevator right in its mouth.”

  The pneumatic ratchet whined as the other men bolted a trio of winches to the frame. They were already wearing harnesses identical to the one Maddox removed from his bag. He stepped through the leg holes and looped the straps up over his shoulders.

  “It would have been a million times easier with Barnett’s retinal scan and voice imprint, but considering he’s still chasing his white whale down in Mexico, we had to improvise,” he said. “Fortunately, whoever designed this elevator had the foresight to install a Faraday cage around it to block electromagnetic signals so no one could remotely override its controls and disarm its defenses. Had they not turned it into an armored vehicle, it might not have been able to withstand the force of the hydraulics.”

  He fastened the harness across his hips and chest, unraveled a few feet of metal cord from the winch, and latched himself to it.

  Tess leaned out
over the rear of the elevator and stared down into the fathomless darkness. She’d never suspected the shaft had a false bottom, let alone that there was something hidden beneath what she assumed to be the lowest sublevel. Of course, knowing how Barnett worked, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

  “What’s down there?” she asked.

  Maddox offered his hand.

  “What do you say we find out?”

  ROCHE

  Roche sprinted back into the building. He could barely see a thing through all of the smoke. The flicker of flames beckoned from somewhere beyond the maze of junk. He slowed as he neared the terminus and approached more cautiously. The gunfire had stopped as suddenly as it started, which, unfortunately, only confirmed his suspicions.

  He found the first man near the final turn, facedown on the ground with entry wounds to his shoulder, neck, and the base of his skull, below the rim of his helmet. Despite all of the blood and the exit wound that had destroyed his lower jaw, Roche recognized the team leader. The traitor had shot him in the back while he was attempting to escape.

  The barrel of a rifle protruded from underneath the dead man. Roche knelt and tried to slide it out, but the strap caught on something. A gentle tug produced a clattering sound. He peered around the corner to make sure he hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention. The body of another soldier lay maybe five feet away, his rifle resting on the ground near his feet. He’d never seen the point-blank shot to the temple coming.