The Xactilias Project

by RJ Lawrence

  "We have our reasons and they are sound, I can assure you."

  She sampled the coffee, its flavor quite ordinary in relation to everything else at the facility.

  "What is it you want from me?"

  He sat up in his chair and placed his forearms on the desk.

  "I want you to do what you do. I want you to continue your research. Or, I guess I should say I want you to pick things up where others have left off."

  "You mean continue existing research?"

  "That's correct," he said. "We've already made significant strides in your particular field of research. You're in store for some surprises when you get down to the third level of this facility. Suffice it to say, we've far exceeded what you've accomplished so far at your university. I say this with respect of course."

  She drank her coffee.

  "Whose work am I taking over?"

  "I'm afraid we don't divulge this information. Just as we won't divulge your identity to your successor."

  "I don't understand," she said.

  "Well, I'm afraid our operation won't bestow you with any fame or glory. We work in a piecemeal fashion, with numerous researchers all contributing anonymously to one project for a certain amount of time and then surrendering their work to a successor. You will not receive any credit for your contributions. Not a page in the newspaper. Not even a letter of recommendation. You'll be required to sign a confidentiality agreement, and we will enforce it through any means necessary."

  He sipped his coffee and waited for a response, but she gave none.

  "What you will get," he continued, "is substantial monetary compensation, depending on how far you extend the research, of course."

  She looked into her coffee cup for moment.

  "What do you mean by substantial?"

  "Between one and ten millions dollars based on how far you push the research ahead."

  She looked up suddenly, and he gave a slight smile.

  "We only want the best you have to offer. If you don't add a single thing, if you aren't able to advance the research one iota, you'll still receive a minimum of one million U.S. dollars. This will come at the end of a maximum 12-month commitment. That said, we may choose to relieve you from your responsibilities after only a few months or even a few weeks. But never more than twelve months. That will be the maximum duration of your involvement with our enterprise."

  He shrugged.

  "That doesn't sound so bad, does it?"

  She sipped her coffee and thought for a moment.

  "I can't say that it does."

  "Good," he said. "Now I hate to cut things short, but I have others to see."

  He stood and put a hand out.

  "It was a pleasure to meet you, finally."

  She stood and placed her coffee on the desk.

  "Likewise," she said, as she offered her hand.

  They shook and he followed her to the door.

  "Carol will escort you to the elevator. You'll be moving to the third level of the facility in the coming days. You'll receive plenty of guidance when the time comes. Anything you need, you'll receive."

  He opened the door to reveal the old woman, who stood straight and attentive, a kind smile decorating her weathered face.

  "Come, dear," she said, as Dominic Betancur closed the door behind her.

  They walked the length of the waiting room, and Carol opened the elevator doors with a few taps of the bright green keypad on the wall.

  Claire entered and turned, her body finally relaxing, mind nearly exhausted from the stress of the engagement.

  "Best of luck to you," the old woman said, as the elevator doors slid shut.

  When they did, Claire leaned her back against the elevator wall and exhaled. She held her hands out before her eyes and watched the shaking cease. She breathed deeply and waited for the doors to open once more to reveal Romero, who would lead her through the maze of metallic grid scaffolding that led back to the facility's top level.

  But when the doors opened, she did not see Romero. Instead, another man stood before her, his face like a hammer, eyes black as sucking holes.

  She tried to look into them, but it was like looking into the sun.

  "Hello," he said. "My named is Demetri Mendoza."

  Chapter 11

  They sat across each other in an empty room, a bare steel table between them, a long two-way mirror spanning the length of one painted brick wall. The smell of his musk cologne flowed over the table and stabbed her eyes.

  "What is it you do here?" She asked.

  "I'm head of security."

  She placed her palms flat on the table.

  "I thought Romero was the head of security."

  He shook his head slowly, eyes small behind his glasses, but oppressive just the same.

  "His role is limited to the surface. He has no influence in the subterranean levels of this facility."

  She lifted her hands from the table, two wet prints reflecting brightly under the white florescent light.

  He looked down and watched as they evaporated into the air. He did not smile.

  "What exactly do you want?" She asked, her voice breaking in all the wrong places.

  "I have questions. You will answer them. When I am satisfied, you will return to the top level. Understood?"

  She looked down and nodded slowly, like a child before a figure of authority.

  "Did you tell anyone about your interactions with Mr. Harris?"

  "I met with some attorneys."

  "What are their names?"

  She swallowed.

  "Will you hurt them?"

  "No."

  She gave the names, while he listened intently without writing a single one down.

  He watched as she turned to face her reflection in the mirrored glass.

  "Who's back there?"

  He didn't answer.

  "What about your mother? What does she know of your involvement with us?"

  She looked at him.

  "Nothing. Why?"

  He adjusted his glasses.

  "We must know."

  "Listen to me," she said, as she placed her hands on the table exactly where they'd been before. "If anything happens to my mother, I won't help you. I won't do anything you ask."

  He smiled briefly as if to intentionally soften his expression, but this only made his face gargoyalian for a terrifying second.

  "Your mother is exactly as you left her."

  He folded his hands.

  "And that is the way things should stay."

  She did not speak.

  "Now, I want to speak frankly so you will understand what's expected of you here. There is much you will never know about the work we do, and that is for your benefit as much as ours. I can tell you that we perform a critical function for those who would defend its secrecy forcefully and at any cost."

  He pushed his chair back and stood.

  "Now," he said, as he removed his sport coat and folded it over the empty chair. "Mr. Betancur has his way of doing things and I have mine."

  He unbuttoned his shirt sleeves without unlocking his eyes from hers.

  "I know everything there is to know about every single person in this facility and that includes you."

  He carefully rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.

  "This knowledge makes me an especially good forecaster of behavior, and your personality profile tells me you will be a problem here."

  She raised her palms as if to shunt his words.

  "Absolutely not. That's ridiculous. I can assure you I've never caused a problem anywhere in my life."

  He removed his glasses and folded them shut. He set them down and walked around the table, his footsteps light only to the ear.

  "Now, when faced with an undesirable proposition, I take steps to prevent its occurrence."

  She slid her chair back and moved away from his approach.

  "Listen, you have nothing to worry about," she said, the words tripping over one another, as if ea
ch one competed to flee her quivering mouth.

  He seized her arm and gave it a cruel twist. She shrieked as he leveraged her face down against the cold, steel table until she came cheek to cheek with her reflection.

  "Stop," she cried, her shoulder threatening to pop under the torque of his technique. She cried as his lips approached her ear.

  "You will do your job and you will do it quietly," he whispered. "Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  He gave another twist and she repeated the answer.

  "Don't talk to any of the others about this or anything else. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Nothing to anyone. Only work."

  "Yes."

  He released her and straightened his tie. He returned to his side of the table while she cradled her arm like a dying child.

  "Now," he said, as he slipped his sport coat back on," I expect our future meetings to be uneventful, but that is entirely up to you."

  He slid his glasses back onto his pointy face without diminishing its gravity one bit.

  "If you'll step outside, one of our security professionals will escort you back to the top level."

  With that, he crossed the floor and exited, the scent of his cologne inhabiting the room for some time after, like some unseen phantom with life enough to stifle even the slightest thoughts against him.

  When she arrived at the top level, she escaped the elevator with haste, rushing past several others who regarded her with curious eyes. She took the hall toward her room without looking at anyone, but a voice ensnared her before she could escape.

  "Claire," Alfred called.

  She turned to see him hurrying toward her.

  "What's wrong? What happened?" He asked, as he settled before her, lungs sucking air over even such a slow and gimpy rush.

  "Nothing," she said. "It was fine."

  His eyes studied the way she held her arm.

  "Please," he said. "You can tell me."

  She removed her keycard and tried to use it, but it missed its mark under the trembling of her hand.

  "No, Alfred. I can't."

  The old man placed his hand over hers.

  "Please, dear. Let's go inside."

  She looked at him, eyes perspiring, hair in disarray. She appeared wild to his eyes, like some creature escaped from a box, eyelids flittering against the unfamiliar light.

  "No, Alfred. Please. Just leave me alone."

  He removed his hand and backed away as she fled within her chambers and shut the door.

  When she had gone, he turned and made his way down the hall and into the lobby, where a sober-looking Gretchen stood in his way.

  "Can I help you with anything, Alfred?" She asked, her mouth artfully composed to a dutiful smile.

  He looked up at her big, broad face, the anger of youth bubbling up from places that were supposed to be gone.

  "No," he said dryly. "Nothing."

  She nodded once and turned sideways, her long muscular arm extending to award passage.

  "Well then," she said. "Be well."

  He moved past her swiftly and made his way to the courtyard, where he found Nathan under a crazed-looking willow tree, two women with him, their faces aglow over whatever bullshit he fed them.

  "We need to talk," Alfred said without looking at either of the women.

  Nathan looked at him over his shoulder.

  "Can it wait?"

  The old man turned and walked away. He sat at a bench and waited, while Nathan withdrew from his audience.

  "What is it?" He asked, as he took a seat next to Alfred.

  "Something's happened with Claire. She won't talk about it, but she's clearly upset."

  Nathan scratched his neck.

  "You saw her?"

  The old man nodded.

  "I waited by the elevator all morning. I caught her on the way to her room. She was visibly upset and she held her arm as if it were broken."

  Nathan looked around the courtyard.

  "What did she say?"

  Alfred shrugged.

  "Nothing. That's the problem. I couldn't get a word from her. She told me to leave her alone, and so I did."

  They sat quietly for a moment, while a bizarre looking bird circled the sky above the retractable opening.

  "I think we should respect her wishes."

  Alfred looked at him.

  "Aren't you hearing me?"

  Nathan leaned forward and propped his forearms against his thighs.

  "What can we do, Alfred? She's been mysterious from the moment we met her. If she wants to talk, she will. I don't think we're going to get very far pressuring her."

  The old man removed his pipe and fed it with fresh tobacco. He lit it afire and drew from it hungrily.

  "This place," he said, as he exhaled a big, white fog of smoke. "I came here because I had no other options. It was my only chance to have a worthwhile impact after all these years. Now, I'm not sure what I've done."

  He smoked and looked off thoughtfully. Nathan put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it.

  "Don't worry," Nathan said. "I'll talk to her."

  He took his hand away.

  "But, honestly, Alfred, if we're in a place of danger, there's probably not much we can do but keep our heads low and do our work. I mean, look around you. We don't have a lot of cards to play."

  The old man smoked while Nathan watched Romero cross the courtyard, the man's dark eyes studying the two of them, his expression cold, as if he were privy not just to their words, but the very thoughts inside their heads.

  "I'll talk to her," Nathan repeated. "Let me talk to her."

  And in the days that followed, he tried several times. But she would not confide, and soon a distance took root between all three, until they were finally separated entirely and moved into the sub levels of the facility.

  Chapter 12

  In the third level of the Xactilias's domed monstrosity, nothing went to waste. Lighting was kept to a minimum, food and words the same. People worked. People ate and slept. And in between, they moved about in orderly lines with same-paced footsteps and somber, bowing heads.

  Within nearly every room, guards roamed, their faces dark and purposeful, semi-automatic weapons in hand. All illusions of freedom went quickly, the bathroom breaks timed, the meals without menus, the conversations killed in their infancies, and all without even the slightest rustle of complaint.

  In that place, recreation came infrequently or not at all, the people moving from their quarters to their labs to the cafeteria and back to their quarters, all without muttering much of anything to anyone, unless the words related to the work at hand.

  At first, there were whispers among the unprepared, but these were corrected in private little meetings that brought pale faces and trembling hands.

  At last, it was all complete: a colony of geniuses, dutifully focused on their tasks, like a hive of worker bees, without will or way to corrupt the plan.

  For Claire, the transition came with surprising ease, especially now that she had duties to occupy her mind. Despite its repressiveness, the third level offered a wealth of mental nourishment, the labs fully stocked with equipment and technology, the work a respite from the state of her being.

  To move from one generation of researchers to the next, the Xactilias used transitional assistants, which worked with one lead researcher and then the next for only a short time. Claire transitional assistant was named Karen, and she had previously worked under a man named Krystoph, who had advanced the organization's human aging research so far, he'd actually stopped the process entirely.

  Claire had reviewed the man's work during her first two weeks in the third level, and the findings were so stunning, they brought her envy and shame.

  "When I first began working under Mr. Krystoph, the project had met a bit of a roadblock," Karen said one day, as she worked alongside Claire in the lab. "But he eventually solved it quite ingeniously. Such a remarkable man."

 
"What was the roadblock?" Claire asked.

  Karen looked over her shoulder at the guard who stood outside the containment glass.

  "I can't really talk about it," she said. She turned and looked at Claire, her old eyes bright and blue behind her safety goggles. "You have to understand, I don't even know Krystoph's last name."

  Whatever roadblock this Krystoph had conquered only brought on a new set of problems that now toyed with Claire's mind at all hours of the night. While halting the aging process, Krystoph had thrown the body into a constant state of disease, with cancerous growths and immune deficiencies plaguing those who had volunteered for treatments.

  "Who were the volunteers?" Claire asked.

  "Testing occurs in Level Four," Karen said. "We only get the results."

  During the first month, Claire familiarized herself with Krystoph's research, her mind like a great sucking vacuum, consuming the information and putting it to use shortly after. The man's progress had been extraordinary, his instincts leading to clever discoveries she might never have entertained. But once she'd analyzed the data and digested his ways, she quickly found wrong turns and oversights that led to bigger, bolder advancements.

  "I don't understand how this is possible." Karen muttered, as Claire seemed to equal and then surpass Krystoph’s accomplishments overnight.

  "My mind has always played quite well with existing research," Claire said. "Independent, original theories are a different story."

  Except they weren't, or at least not that Karen could tell. Soon, Claire had taken the research forward enough to draw attention from the Xactilias's masters, and this brought an invitation from Dominic Betancur, himself.

  Romero issued the summons during their lunch break.

  "You'll both be forgoing the remainder of your daily schedule," he said.

  Claire and Karen stopped chewing and exchanged looks.

  "I can't do that," Claire said. "Today is important."

  Romero’s eyes narrowed.

  "It is but for other reasons. Mr. Betancur would like to meet with you both to discuss the state of your research."

  The two exchanged looks once more.

  "Both of us?" Karen asked.

  "That is correct."

  Romero glanced at a pair of men seated at another table, and they immediately turned their heads to their plates.