by A D Davies
The dryers cut out and the men all tensed. Dan bent over slightly, taking a position behind her.
She said, “Oh, dear. Am I a human shield?”
As the door slid open and the other boys pinned themselves to the walls, Dan said, “Something like that.”
“Ironic, considering it was shields that brought us all together.”
With the door open, Dan pushed her out. The guard station was empty. Actually, calling it a station was a bit of an exaggeration. It was a desk where people were searched leaving more often than when entering. Ah Dae-Sung had told her they were confident no one could breach the camp undetected, so the bigger risk was losing secrets should anyone try to reveal what the laboratories here were doing. He surely meant her when he said anyone.
Now, it wasn’t manned.
“Tea break?” Sally suggested.
“Show us,” Jules said.
“Show you what?”
“You know what,” Tane said. “Take us. Now.”
“Okay, but do keep an open mind, won’t you?”
An open mind.
How many times had people used that phrase to justify beliefs that appeared unusual or extreme? Jules had seen all walks of life express that phrase in one form or another. He’d seen progressive politicians ask for open minds with regards to healthcare, gun regulation, the concept of a universal basic income. Fundamental Christians often attempted to prove the King James Bible was the actual word of God, irrespective of the thousands of translations, lost books, and a host of other aspects that cast doubt on that, and they’d be able to do that… if sinners and atheists kept an open mind. He’d even heard both sides of civil rights protests—cops and conservatives, black allies, and liberals—ask audiences to keep an open mind before espousing one opinion or another.
I know it might sound odd at first, but keep an open mind here…
…These riots prove “some people” don’t deserve to be treated like “decent” folk…
…Change never happens without civil disobedience; uprisings are necessary to achieve equality…
…Free money to everyone means a bottom-up economy, so even the rich win!
…Free money to everyone means a bottom-feeding nation descending into anarchy…
All provable by all sides if you just… keep an open mind.
It was a mystery to Jules why the world had tilted that way, where pre-existing opinions were more important to some than facts that might disrupt their opinion. Why go mining for disingenuous reasoning when a fact was staring at you and begging to be absorbed and assimilated into your critical thinking?
But there were some very rare occasions, situations where he didn’t think an open mind was necessary: Neo-Nazis seeking to unleash a plague, nations arming themselves to annihilate another, billionaires murdering innocents in order to seek a cure for his own terminal illness. They all fell under the same heading as dead fetuses floating in jars.
Sally had escorted them to a laboratory. It was smaller than it appeared from the outside, meaning there must be more out back, but it was state-of-the art. Pristine. All glass dividers and metal surfaces. They entered the half that was decked out with an array of equipment from test tube centrifuges to electrolyte analyzers, and passed a whole bench dedicated to DNA analysis. Jules had only read about much of this stuff, but he recognized a CRISPR/Cas9 setup; part of it looked like a microscope, other bits had automated pipetting tools, a system for calibrating electric scissors… all to splice and rewrite genetic code.
Jules said, “You were growing your own homo colossus.”
“Not quite,” Sally replied as they got up close with the glass containers. “They attempted to grow their own but failed.”
“So they took ours,” Tane said.
Jules approached a barrel-sized glass vessel holding a humanoid specimen curled up as if asleep. It had a large forehead, and its ribs and spine were visible under its gray, translucent skin.
He said, “They’re not yours, Tane. They’re their own people.” He looked up at Tane. “You just give them somewhere to live.”
“I meant…” Tane appeared to be searching for something to say, but there were no words.
Sally continued in her chipper tone. “I have to say, this isn’t my work. I’m not a biologist. Or a geneticist. Or whatever this is.”
“And what is it?” Tane said.
“You can see. They use genetic splicing to recreate the giants from bone marrow they found.”
“Found? They just found it lying around?”
“No, no, no. They found it because my research led them to certain migratory routes, and they dug the DNA out of frost that had covered it during the last ice age. They got all excited, but it was too degraded. They tried to fill the gaps with human DNA, primates, lots of things. But none of it worked. They don’t know why.”
“Because they evolved along a unique route,” Jules said. “Modern homo sapiens, chimpanzees, hominids, Neanderthals… all had a common ancestor. But the giants must have had a different one, going back even further in time. Probably the same genetic branch as the Witnesses, or whatever came before them. We’re too different.”
Dan said, “How do you know that?”
“I kept an open mind. I listen. I can… sorta remember stuff from when I plugged into the machine. It’s not a memory like I remember what I had for breakfast, but I know when I guess right.” Jules eyed Sally Garcia. “Your Executive friend is an animal. He’s worse. Animals don’t do this. And you’re culpable for helping him.”
“People need to know,” Sally insisted. “They need to know we share our heritage with more than hairy little hobbits.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because.”
Jules pressed his eyes, stemming the rage inside him. He’d never been so ready to harm another human being, but if Ah Dae-Sung or Ryom Jung-Hwan were in front of him at that moment, he’d have broken his no-killing code in an instant.
Is it really more obscene than the plague you stopped?
Using these prisoners, the giants, the plan to kill so many… yes, it’s worse.
“No one has to know anything,” Jules said. “That’s nonsensical academic entitlement. This ain’t about truth or helpin’ people understand. It’s about you. Provin’ you were right. So you decided to shortcut it and side with some of the worst people on the planet.”
Jules noticed Tane and Dan tense up, more concerned at him than with Sally.
“I got an important question,” he said. “Why were you coming here?”
“Here?” Sally said. “It’s where I work.”
“No, specifically. Why were you leaving that place and coming here at this precise moment?”
“Mainly for the blood work.” Sally headed for a separate bench beside the CRISPR section, where a closed unit that resembled a microwave oven stood. The clear frontage showed a petri dish rotating. “It’s checking all the chemicals have been flushed. We don’t want to leave anything to chance.”
“Flushed.” Jules couldn’t summon enough bile in his voice to express what he was feeling. It came out flat and empty. He crouched by another glass barrel, the occupant smaller but even more malformed. “This isn’t your work, Professor. This is next-level mad scientist evil—”
“Are you okay?” Bridget asked in his ear.
They’d reestablished comms once they got out of the underground bunker, tailing Sally at a distance before taking the chance on following her in here.
Jules said, “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Bridget said.
“Yeah.” Jules stood and pulled his Glock and marched toward the exit, the way they’d come.
Dan said, “Hey, wait up, where are you going?”
Jules dipped his chin, every limb jazzed with electricity, with the impending fight. “To destroy everything.”
He rarely cut loose, couldn’t afford to. He was aware of his abilities and his limitations and knew that h
e could kill if he had to. And if these people—these wealthy, entitled men willing to slaughter tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of innocents—needed to die to prevent more suffering, he’d have to suck it up and do it.
Bridget said, “Jules… Just think a second.”
He was at the edge of the lab, ready to turn into the exit and retrace his steps into the chamber when he halted dead.
A faint but definite sound.
He turned to Sally, her and the guys waiting for him across the lab. “You said you came here mainly for the blood work. What was the other reason?”
Sally smiled. “To see if anyone would follow me, of course.” She smirked, chuckling as Dan and Tane reestablished their shooting grips. “Did you think you could sneak in here unnoticed? That’s so silly.”
People were coming. Jules had only seconds to decide: hide or fight?
Project Ahua, New Zealand
The boys in North Korea went silent. Not always a terrible sign. Often, they just needed to be quiet for a spell, and Bridget held onto that hope as it became clear no one was going to reply to repeated requests regarding what was happening. As Charlie pointed out, all they could do here was keep working, get ready to act if the deadline approached, and do whatever they needed to prevent the US launching a preemptive strike against a power they didn’t fully understand. If that wasn’t enough, there were the explosives on the dam to worry about.
Toby was the last of the group in the Ahua lab to cease asking them to respond, his lined face betraying how stressed he was. Bridget felt sorry for him, not least because his usual role in their task was redundant. There was no better researcher, in her mind, no one who could dig out a historical ambiguity, compare it to known, provable fact, and draw a new hypothesis. It had been his mining of myths, legends, and the writings of people present for such events that led them first to Mexico, then to Alabama.
Now, he was a bystander. And Bridget could do nothing to help beyond stare at her own handwriting and compare the glyphs and symbols she’d penned during a freak-out of a barely remembered dream, and hope to glean something that could help, when the action dudes came back online. Or even if they didn’t.
She said, “It’s no use. I’ll have to go back in the pod.”
“Not a chance,” Charlie answered.
She was also at a loose end. The difference was, she didn’t let it show as obviously as Toby. She tinkered. She checked the setups, the factors they had translated to date, and theorized by jotting notes. She’d already commented on the prospect of killing the entire network and outlined the risks.
Better than the alternative, though.
“Four shields,” Toby said, pacing. “Four functions. Bridget, do you have anything at all there yet?”
Bridget exchanged a glance with Prihya, who had made even less progress. What they had established was Bridget’s doing, syncing what she’d written with the bare bones of a translation they had available.
She said, “I have references to the energy, along with either a holy person or a special one. The shield, of course. That matches Prihya’s on the wall.” Bridget wafted her paper toward the image of the glyphs lifted from the activation suite. “And there’s the usual phrases and tones we found on previous artefacts. The warning.”
“Of misuse?” Toby said.
“Of the ignorant using it. Look…” She was about to demonstrate using the scribblings she’d made, but that was pointless. No visuals needed. “I’ve dug in the language we already know about, and that accounts for about a third of the writing relating to the shield. Like you just said, Toby. One function—although they call it a ‘reward’—is protection and shelter using one device. Another ‘reward’ is protection using four or six in a ring around a larger mass, say a city or small country. Then there’s the planet-circling cocoon to protect from meteors and, to keep from hurting Dan’s feelings, unfriendly alien invaders.”
Bridget paused to allow a mild but inappropriate laugh. The others smiled, containing their mirth, like a ripple of giggles at a funeral.
“Or its fourth function… a weapon. It can be used offensively.”
“To attack?” Toby said. “I have seen no evidence of such a function. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Charlie said.
Toby put a finger in the air. “What if it was used offensively? In the story where all this started for me. They way Mr. Dae-Sung used it to approach this place?”
“The Trojan Horse,” Prihya said, pivoting away from her screen. She appeared inordinately happy. Understandable, since that was what had brought her to Valerio’s attention, and subsequently into the LORI fold: her ability to do what Toby did, but on a more out-of-the-box level. “It might not have been a literal statue full of men…”
“But a unit of excellent fighters,” Toby finished. “Sent in without being seen, then attacking them from within.”
Bridget snagged on something then. “Trojan Horse…”
Charlie said, “What is it?”
Bridget chewed it over in her mind. “That phrase, Trojan Horse, it’s made its way into modern vernacular. Whether it’s sleeper terror cells or computer viruses… it’s a modern phrase. What if…”
Her thoughts raced, turbo boosted by something inches out of reach. She put her foot to the floor and pumped the accelerator.
What is it…?
“We use a phase, an idiom, to say what we mean. That’s in English. Other dialects have other phrases, other words. Fox in the henhouse. Wolf in sheep’s clothing. A poison apple…”
“Yes,” Toby said. “They all mean the same thing. Harm hiding in an innocent form.”
“So, what if that weapon…?” Still, Bridget racked her brain, but it wasn’t there. She placed the paper flat and beckoned Prihya over. “Here, it talks about a ‘mist warrior’, like on your door to the activation suite.”
Prihya checked what Bridget was asking her. “Yes, a fighter who cannot be touched. We assume, because of the shield’s protection. But the context… next to the warning…”
“I don’t get it,” Charlie said.
“Think about it,” Bridget said. “The Trojan Horse, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. What if you had a warrior, or thought you did, but it turned to mist? What might the consequences be?”
“You’d lose,” Toby answered.
“Right.”
Bridget calmed her breathing, closed her eyes, and focused on this alternative approach. Not an exaggeration, not a myth or nickname, but a metaphor. A warning.
She opened her eyes and pulled the paper up in front of her, taking it in all at once, including the mist warrior passage. It all fell into place.
“If used correctly,” she said, “the shield starts small, and expands outward, giving the bearer protection. But it if doesn’t, it digs in, expanding like an explosive, wiping out everything from a few meters into the earth and above.”
“A tsunami,” Toby said. “From one single device, or four.”
Bridget nodded. “Expanding out to the next active ring.”
“But there isn’t another active ring,” Prihya said.
Bridget swallowed, her lips dry. “It’s a failsafe. If it falls into the wrong hands and isn’t controlled by a ‘worthy’ candidate—the giant—it’ll grind out over the south-Asian landmass. It’ll wipe out Pyongyang, South Korea, all over China, possibly all the way across to Eastern Europe.”
“That’s madness,” Toby said. “Why build something like that?”
“They didn’t, remember? They just figured out how to use it.” Bridget ran over the later glyphs, guessing at them from the earlier context. “If the earth is worthy… others will step in to prevent disaster.”
“You translated that?” Charlie asked.
“No, but… it’s kinda here.” Bridget pointed to the back of her head. “I don’t know why, but I know it. They made this like… The way we built nuclear stockpiles.”
Toby frowned, even more lined than he was when the gu
ys fell silent. “Mutually assured destruction.”
“It forced people to work together. In peace. With only a select few able to regulate the power.”
“Billions could die,” Charlie said.
“It should only have been those who misused it,” Bridget said. “At least that was the plan way back when. The others—us if we were there—were supposed to stop it.”
“But didn’t.” Prihya stared at the activation suite. “And we’re too far out of the loop to be the ones to stop it.”
“We can only destroy it. Using that feedback loop theory.”
“We should do it now,” Charlie said.
“Agreed,” Toby said.
Bridget was about to ask for more time, for a chance to let the guys shut it down from their end, when a gunshot cut her off. It took her a second to realize it wasn’t nearby but had occurred over comms.
The boys in Korea…
“Dan? Jules?” Bridget said. “Are you okay?”
But yet again, there was no answer.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dragon’s Pit Gulag, North Korea
Dan Vincent wasn’t dumb. At least, not in the way that most people were. Think about how stupid the average person you meet is, his first Rangers CO had told him, and consider that half the population is dumber than that.
You didn’t make the grade in the US Army Rangers, or any military Special Forces unit, by being stupid. Physical fitness, fighting arts, firearms, blades, explosives, tactical awareness… all that and far, far more went into crafting a Spec Ops soldier, and every step was as intensive and mind-sucking as any PHD.
A doctorate in combat.
He might not have had the academic pedigree of Toby or Bridget, but he had sense. He’d learned, and he’d experienced far too many dangerous situations to not listen to his gut. So, when Jules darted out of sight, dropping low rather than moving in a straight line, he knew something was wrong even before he said the words.
“Company. Take cover.”
They were caught within the lab section, with no back door. Clearly, health and safety inside this giant energy-field-generator-slash-Island-of-Dr.-Moreau-knock-off wasn’t a huge concern.