The Essence of Darkness

by Thomas Clearlake

  “We have to figure out who’s behind this operation. Which authority decided to cover this kind of deployment?”

  “It has to have something to do with those creatures down there in the crypt,” she suggested.

  “That’s for sure. A private organization sent those scientists.”

  “Apparently a very powerful one.” she added.

  “We’ve walked into something big, Lauren.

  24

  Gustav Meyer’s house, Germany

  When he came to, Agent Patrick Fournier felt intense pain in his neck. Then he remembered his last moments of consciousness—the ductwork, the two Dobermans. When he tried to rub his neck, he realized his wrists were bound. So were his legs. He was in one of the chambers he had seen from the air duct, one of those arranged in a circle around a colossal central chamber. Now that he could observe it up close, he saw that this dark material was not normal. Its surface was smooth and cold, its appearance dark and indistinguishable. In fact, this thing seemed to shun light. The result was a blurry shape, which wavered to the eye.

  He suddenly heard a pressurized door open into the room. It must have been an airlock, the type seen in top research laboratories. He tried to turn his head to the side, but his restraints forced him to stay in this lying-down position. However, the chamber was inclined, almost vertically.

  Two men walked around either side of it and appeared in his field of vision. He recognized one of them: Gustav Meyer. The other was younger, conventional, in his forties, with brown hair, an average build, and no distinctive features. Both wore white lab coats.

  “You’re probably wondering what you’re doing in this strange chamber, aren’t you?” said the old man with a pronounced German accent, giving him a stern look.

  Fournier realized that from that moment on, he would be living a nightmare—maybe the last one of his life. “That‘s exactly the question I was asking myself,” he replied, not showing the fear that engulfed him.

  “And I, my dear sir, have the right to ask you the following question: What were you doing in the ventilation ducts in my basement?”

  Fournier didn’t know how to answer. He remained silent and waited for whatever was coming next. This old crackpot was playing on his nerves. He had to avoid being drawn into his game.

  Seeing that he didn’t answer, Gustav Meyer repeated his question, screaming, “What were you doing in the ventilation ducts in my basement?”

  Fournier realized he was dealing with a psychopath. He decided to play the intimidation card, without really believing it would work.

  “I’m a police officer on a mission. I’m sure backup is on the way. I would advise you to cut me loose immediately!”

  “There will be no backup coming to rescue you, Special Agent Fournier.”

  Now the fear in Fournier’s face was evident. It seemed to satisfy Meyer a little.

  “No one is going to rescue you,” explained the old man, “for the simple reason that you are not here, in this basement, lying in this strange chamber. No, you are in your car, a BMW 2 Series registered in France . . . It is currently lying at the bottom of a ravine below a winding mountain road near the Austrian border, on fire . . . with you in it.”

  At that moment, Fournier knew it was all over for him. His life was nothing more than a fucked-up mess anyway. He realized they had taken off his tactical bracelet. All they’d had to do was put it on one of those Romanian refugees about the same size as him. Then they’d put the Romanian behind the wheel of the BMW, set it on fire, and push it into a ravine, faking an off-the-road accident. These guys were professionals.

  “Who the hell are you people? And what are you going to do to me?” shouted the French agent.

  He struggled in vain to get out of his restraints.

  The old man and his assistant watched him for a few seconds, like he was some amusing oddity.

  “I am Professor Meyer. And this gentleman is my assistant. We have been conducting experiments here for several years. You wouldn’t understand the nature of our experiments if I were to try to explain them to you from an expert scientific point of view. So I’m going to summarize the situation for you, especially your situation, since I think that’s essentially what you’re interested in. Note that the other subjects you may have seen during your trip through the ventilation ducts will undergo the same treatment as you.”

  Fournier listened to the professor, dismayed by his cynicism and cruelty. He was expecting the worst.

  “First of all, what sets us apart, Mr. Fournier, is precisely this lack of empathy you seem to accuse me of—this obvious lack of interest for humanity as a whole. Because you see, the experiments we are conducting here have only one purpose: to serve the human race. But in this race toward perfection that has inspired man since the dawn of time, you will agree it is sometimes necessary to make . . . sacrifices.”

  The professor stopped to speak into the microphone attached to the collar of his lab coat. “Sonja, please transfer nine subjects to the extractor.”

  “Right away, Professor,” replied a female voice.

  The old man addressed the French agent again. “Thus, we are nothing more than the humble servants of man, Mr. Fournier—man in his oldest form.”

  He stopped again to speak into his lapel microphone.

  “Rudolph, please prepare one of the masters for regeneration and bring him to the extraction room.”

  “I’ll take care of it immediately, Professor.”

  Fournier resigned himself to hearing the most inconceivable things. But he was still far from knowing what he was going to experience.

  The professor resumed his explanation, his eyes shining with a sudden fervor. “Imagine a civilization equipped with such powerful and advanced technology that it was able to breathe life into our Earth and colonize it. Yet it was still only in its first geological era, a time that goes back more than three billion years—before its cataclysmic phase. Can you comprehend that in your narrow, little mind, Mr. Fournier?”

  The agent remained silent, torn between terror and curiosity.

  A voice came from the room’s audio system.

  “Professor Meyer, the subject is ready for the extraction room.”

  “Send him in,” Gustav Meyer ordered.

  The airlock depressurization sighed, releasing the heavy mechanical door. Pushed by two security men, a cryogenic chamber mounted on a mobile cart slowly slid toward the platform in the center of the room. Through the chamber’s window, Fournier saw a dark mass inside that looked like a man’s head. However, the creature’s proportions were not those of a common man. The thing was at least three meters tall. With the help of the two men, the professor’s assistant unlocked the mobile chamber where the creature was lying. Frozen clouds of cryogenic gas poured out as the door opened. When the white vapors cleared, there appeared the most horrible vision Agent Fournier had ever seen. The thing did indeed have a human aspect. But its blackened, emaciated form was so ugly, it generated a powerful repulsion in him that made him nauseous.

  “Mr. Fournier, let me introduce you to Hominum primus . . . father of all men and great architect of life on Earth.”

  The professor bowed to the creature with devotion as the guards passed in front of him pushing the cart. They placed the rigid body in the central chamber and closed the door. Then they left the room as the assistant began manipulating the controls on the console that controlled the device.

  Once again, Fournier struggled violently to free himself.

  The nightmare was becoming reality.

  Gustav Meyer watched as the agent struggled to escape the fate in store for him.

  “Bring in the other subjects.”

  Two other armed guards burst in, accompanying nine terrorized Romanian refugees. There were men, women, and even two children, one of whom was no more than ten years old. They put them one by one into the chambers around the circumference of the device. The poor bastards didn’t even resist. Fournier saw on their faces th
at, just like him, they didn’t know what they were here for. Once the guards had placed all the victims into their individual receptacles, the assistant activated controls on the console. The chambers all closed automatically—except for Fournier’s, whose window remained open.

  The professor wanted him to know what was going to happen, Fournier thought.

  “Now I’m going to answer your second question, Mr. Fournier. The device you see in this particular room is a design that took me over fifteen long years to develop. I imported the ore used for its manufacture from a mountainous region of Mesopotamia. This device is in fact a reproduction that I made from plans—or rather instructions—unearthed with other items at a secret excavation site. I call this device an ‘extractor’ or extraction chamber.”

  Fournier hardly listened to what the professor was saying anymore. He had accepted his fate.

  “Alas, you and the nine other people placed in the chambers around the central chamber will die. And unfortunately, your death will, for technical reasons, be extremely painful because it will be very slow. Well, it will take less than an hour if all goes well.”

  Fournier screamed with all his rage.

  “‘Extractor’—perhaps this word requires an explanation to clarify more precisely the nature of the treatment you will undergo. I’ll keep it short and simple because I find your screams hard to tolerate.”

  The professor, carried away by his cruelty, whispered in Fournier’s ear.

  “The device will extract the vital substance from your body to inject it into the body of the creature that lies in the central chamber. This being is one of the members of the most perfect species in existence. Life on Earth formed from its genes . . . making man what he is. The new reign of the Elders is near, Mr. Fournier. Their regeneration requires vital fluid. Unfortunately, the body of a single man contains only a tiny amount. That’s why we are currently designing high-capacity extractors. Humanity will soon enter a new era, Mr. Fournier. You should be honored to participate in its coming through your own flesh.”

  The professor slammed the window shut, isolating Agent Fournier and his screams inside the muted silence of the chamber. The professor’s assistant set the process in motion. Inside each chamber, the transfer tubes penetrated the subjects’ flesh, one in the abdomen to liquefy the internal organs and the other behind the skull to maintain neurological activity. Atrocious, muffled screams erupted in the room. The pain would be engulfing Fournier—a pain so intense that it should paralyze him. Slowly, the black substance brought through the ventral tube from the body of the Hominum primus saturated his blood. The foreign particles liquefied Fournier’s internal organs and those of the other subjects. Afterward, they left the empty envelopes of their bodies to return charged with the precious fluid to the body of the creature.

  Behind the chamber window, Gustav Meyer studied Agent Fournier’s extinguished eyes. His skull was devoid of its cerebral material, reduced and withered like a child’s deflated balloon. The professor smirked with satisfaction. The extraction had gone well. The adjustments he’d made to the device had further increased the amount of vital fluid the black particles produced.

  25

  “What do we do now?” Lauren whispered.

  “We have to know exactly what they’re doing here.”

  He pointed to the top of a hill. “Let’s station ourselves on that high ground. We can camp up there and keep monitoring them.”

  They crawled out of the area where the scientific teams were working and climbed to the top of the steep, rocky slope. Below, even more men were arriving. There were now about thirty of them in coveralls, and no less than twenty soldiers were patrolling the complex.

  Eliott led the way with Lauren following. He felt so agile, climbing like a spider on a wall. He thought he had had his last injection of sedatives more than six hours ago. He felt different but didn’t seem adversely affected. From time to time, he turned around and flashed Lauren an adolescent smile, amused by his physical abilities that continued to improve. They noiselessly arrived in a recess and hid there. From where they were now, they could see the ballet of the scientific teams, a nocturnal choreography of hard-working white ants.

  “How do you feel?” Lauren asked him when she joined him.

  “Fine. I feel like it’s stabilized.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I understand one thing, Lauren: this force is capable of comprehending. If it was compliant with you when we were in the crypt, it was because it deduced that you were helping it survive, since you are helping me survive.”

  “You mean it knows I’m helping you escape, and it understands that your arrest would mean the end of it too?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  They stopped talking.

  In the distance, beyond the valleys plunged into silence, a powerful rumble was quickly approaching.

  “Choppers.” Eliott observed.

  The thump-thump of the blades grew more distinct.

  “Yes,” she confirmed, “a bunch of helicopters, heavy ones.”

  He pulled out the binoculars. “Right,” he said. “CH-47 Chinooks with tandem rotors.”

  Suddenly, the huge aircraft swung into view above the valley with deafening noise, four in total, following one another in close formation. They began their descent and landed on the mound, well away from the lab bubbles.

  “They’re transporters, but they’re empty,” Lauren noted.

  “So they’re coming here to pick up cargo.”

  “They found the door in the megalith.”

  Several groups of armed men rushed into the crypt. An hour had passed when they came back out of the megalith. They were carrying a massive object.

  “Look what they’re loading into the choppers!” Eliott exclaimed.

  The group was hauling one of the black stone tombs. They climbed the ramp of one of the aircraft to deposit it inside. Less than five minutes later, a second group of soldiers came out of the megalith laden with another sarcophagus. The loading lasted for hours, with groups of men working nonstop in shifts. They counted about thirty tombs on board.

  By dawn, Eliott and Lauren had both fallen asleep. The rumbling of blades splitting the air suddenly woke them up. The four helicopters took off and headed toward the horizon, crimson with the first rays of the sun.

  Eliott grabbed his binoculars and peered at the air convoy. “They’re jam-packed. Look at that: they can barely fly.”

  Lauren tore the binoculars out of his hands. “They must have been loading all night.”

  The convoy disappeared in the distance, and the valleys plunged into their usual silence. She dropped into the sleeping bag she had shared with him. They had slept nestled against each other. He ran his hand through her hair. She lifted her head and smiled at him. The sun lit up her emerald eyes. A wave of heat rose between them, flooding them. He put his arms around her and stroked her bare back. She kissed his neck and chest, breathing him in. The desire was there, but Eliott needed to show her that he only wanted to protect her. He wanted to reassure her with his caresses; he needed to tell her with his hands, with his kisses, that he loved her with all his heart. Love had conquered the realms of passion. He felt good; the dark force was no longer surging inside him. The voices had stopped, and most importantly, he was no longer thirsty for blood. But something deep inside him also warned him it wouldn’t last.

  They both took advantage of this auspicious moment, suspended in chaos, to unite their bodies, like two children lost in the twists and turns of a nightmare. All of this seemed so unbelievable. They had to find a tangible reality by loving each other to counter the horror they had experienced. They united in the silence of the pale forests, far above the men fascinated by the creatures they were excavating from the crypt. They were far above all of that—one single being, one flesh. They rose so high that the nightmare became tiny, ridiculous.

  When they had consumed their flame and returned to the present, they decided to dev
elop a plan of action.

  “The situation has changed,” said Eliott. “We have a little more information about what is happening in these forests. We have a lot of questions to answer, in particular, where are they taking those creatures?”

  “And what are they doing with them?” Lauren added.

  “To start, we need to find out who is responsible for this operation. The scale of the resources shows that we’re not dealing with a small organization.”

  “To say the least!”

  “Do you remember Matt, my friend who works in central files?”

  She nodded.

  “I contacted him shortly before the night of the witches’ ritual. And he informed me that someone had classified several documents in the St. Marys in a 5d file. Do you know what that is?”

  “Yes,” she replied, “it’s almost the highest level of confidentiality. I think only supervisors have access to that type of file.”

  “Anyway, Matt was supposed to call me back, and he never did. I thought it was odd because he’s always kept his word. When I tried to reach him, his voicemail said he was on vacation.”

  “That‘s a strange coincidence,” Lauren thought out loud.

  “Even if he’d gone on vacation, he would have called me before he left to give me the information I needed. Plus, if he hadn’t been able to retrieve that information, he would have contacted me to let me know.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “With all the details we have, I’m now convinced Bureau officials are involved in this shitstorm,” said Eliott. “If Matt tried to get his hands on files classified 5d, and some of our leaders appeared in them, it could have been extremely embarrassing for them.”

  “Eliott, an agent can’t just disappear like that.”

  He had trouble accepting this reality too, convinced that Matt would eventually surface again unexpectedly. But he had to face it. “I agree, Lauren, but the fact is he hasn’t given any further sign of life, and he isn’t reachable anywhere. What would you call it?”