THE CUBE
Page 18
“Okay, March, what does it mean according to you? And why, the hell, Ivanov was not ill, when your double bit his throat?”
“I really don’t know, Norman, I’m not quite sure, I need more time for tests. He might have had some biochemical peculiarity or has been vaccinated in a different way in Russia. I have no idea. But your wounds too were not only infected instantly, they healed instantly. Their saliva resembles that of the Varan de Komodo, which, beside having exocrine venomous glands, collects huge remains of its meat food between the teeth. The meat gets spoilt and the mouth of the huge lizard is full of lethal microorganisms. The victim dies of sepsis only hours after having been bitten. I just remembered that while I was analyzing the results. Obviously, those cells here have some kind of mechanism for enhancing metabolism as a whole, some special enzyme or other… I really don’t know yet.”
“Calm down, March, you’ve done a great job till now. When we get home, these data of yours will serve as a basis for future research, I am sure.”
“If we go back home, Norman… I’m scared.”
“Don’t worry, clever girl” he said composedly and put his hand on her slender shoulder. “I want you to collect yourself and tell me if there is anything to which their bodies are vulnerable.”
“Yes, I think I have something in mind. I thought of it, while I was watching the dishes.”
“How, March?”
“Well, I thought that in nature the velocities are not by chance and all processes are in balance. Something that develops and kills so fast, can correspondingly be destroyed as quickly and easily.”
She leaned over the table and lifted before his eyes a glass retort. filled with translucent liquid.
The Submarine, last day, 11:04 a. m. The noise had become unbearable.
What was just a vexing buzzing and squeezing in the temples, was now hitting them on the heads like a sledgehammer, while their ears stopped being able to absorb any kind of sounds at all.
Meanwhile the lights from the walls and ceiling were almost dimmed by the bluish heavy haze, smoldering over the metal floor. Only their eyes had not deserted them yet, glued to the lit screens of the control board.
Hans felt his body as if it were leaden. He could not turn his head to Ivanov and look at him, although just inches separated them. His brain felt soft as dough, he felt as if thousands of heated hooks were stuck in his head.
The Cube stood in its previous place over the corals and shone with the active bright blue light that they saw around it, when it was first discovered.
The diaphragm had contracted to a small dot, surrounded by a flaming circle of twinkling light.
The portal in time was opening.
Ivanov could barely separate his hand from his body and pulled the big handle of the control board. The figures on the blue screen started a countdown:
10, 9, 8, 7, 6…
The Cube started vibrating vigorously, and the loop was losing its outlines. Then it lifted from the floor, seeming lighter than air.
…5, 4, 3…
A beam of white light went from the Eye towards the Cube. Its sparkling edges as if melted in the space around it.
…2.
Blast!
The whole ship shook, the helpless bodies of both men flied upwards in the air and hit like straws the massive screen. The board below them crashed in thousands of metal pieces that flew in different directions, bombarding the place. The cannonade of molten metal threw them on the ground where they fell on a thick layer of glass splinters.
“Ivanov, what’s going on? Is this coming from the Core?” “No, it’s coming from outside!”
At this moment two of the doubles dashed against them. They had not noticed when and where they had entered from.
The huge mass of Simpson’s double, one of the sergeants, pressed the Professor to the floor. His arms, strong as a vise, clutched his neck. He was throttling him with ease, as if the Professor’s throat was made of rubber. Hans felt his plump body squashed over the sharp and cutting glass and metal shards by the terrible weight of the creature, sprawled on his chest. His back was all covered in blood, mixed with sweat. The pain from the torn muscles pierced him as a drill. His head was about to burst. His eyes were blind in a dim and salty blackness, water was retreating and darkness was enveloping him.
Hans was losing consciousness and blue haze rose before his vision. He started drifting and his body stopped fighting, his arms ceased their helpless waiving and dropped lifeless on the ground.
The creature understood he had won and raised his head to check if the other one had finished too.
Suddenly a small lithe body with energetic movements threw against it. The short arms blocked the creature and did not allow any movement for defense. Babyface stuck an insulin jet in its neck and the double instantly loosened its hold of Hans’s throat. It fell on him like a breathless stone statue.
Hans was also lying stiff.
In the opposite end of the place the struggle was far more equal. Ivanov and his strong arms were a good match for Hans’s double. In the creature’s agile movements there was not a trace of the real professor’s phlegmatic and dull manner.
Both bodies had grasped in mortal combat. The fat double managed to stick his teeth in the flesh of the Russian’s neck. Ivanov did not utter a sound but a fountain of bright red blood gushed from his old wound and almost reached the ceiling.
The corpse of the Colonel smashed into the control board, activating the blinking buttons.
The beast let him go and slowly turned his head to Babyface. His nostrils were sniffing hungrily. His predatory scarlet eyes were glued to the Lieutenant’s body.
The double approached from one side, ducked a little back and then dashed forward like a spring towards the Lieutenant.
The small man remained cool and tried to evade the attack to the left, but the creature was there already, grabbing his leg. The Lieutenant knew he had only one last chance left, put his hand in his pocket and took out the second syringe. He stuck it in Hans’s double’s thick thigh and the thing instantly fell on the floor in a heap.
Ivanov’s dead body slipped down from the control board and the buttons went off for a second.
Then the screen lit again and the electromotors of the aperture switched on. This time the Eye was wide open and white concentrated light started pouring from it, engulfing the entire interior of the submarine.
It was so strong that it seemed to penetrate the thick steel corps.
Hans opened his eyes.
I’m still alive.
He took a deep breath and the light began returning to his
pupils. For a second the shadows around him froze immovable. He thought he could stay like that for a few minutes. It was like in the morning, when you awfully want to sleep and after the alarm sounds, you turn to the other side to steal a few sweet moments from the time of creation.
He felt the whole submarine shaking, while the ceiling lost its contours in the bluish shining. In the sweaty blinking fog before his eyes the thought flashed that they are going back in time.
“Outside!” Hans’s face was all bloody. “Go outside now!” Babyface had kneeled by the lifeless body of the Colonel. He jumped. He just needed an instant to get in touch with what was happening. He grabbed the plump man and dragged him towards the opening.
They barely managed to jump in the sand outside. The metal monster next to them started rising over the earth as a gin in an Arab fairy tale. The whole submarine was enveloped in a bluish-green cloud of trembling aerial lava that was going upward.
Their brains were heated to a boiling point. Hans looked at his hands: his fingers were at least twenty, his palms were burning in strong vibrations. His head was pulsating like it was hit by a lightning. His feet were stoned, buried in the sand.
He looked at the Lieutenant, whose silhouette looked quadrupled to him. His dozen eyes were flickering left and right and his white rabbit front teeth were clattering vertically.
The whole ship for an instant was reduced to a black dot and disappeared with fiery flame from the horizon. White glow in colorless thin mist.
Nothing.
It was finished.
The submarine and the Cube were no longer there.
Bio analysis room, last day, 2:31 p. m. Alan was sitting on the covers and his only leg was dangling down helplessly. Marcela was leaning on the bed beside him. Dark shadows beneath her eyes and tiredness had marked her beautiful face.
Norman had gone to inspect the trucks and had been away for more than an hour.
“The serum worked, March.” Babyface handed her the empty retort.
“What was that, Lieutenant? It really killed him instantly.” Hans asked.
“Well, nothing much…”
“Don’t play modest, March, this miracle saved my life!” Hans’s disheveled head was bandaged and he wore another bloodied bandage on his arm.
“Each cell contains in itself the key to self-destruction. Nature has encoded our own death in us in this way.”
Babyface was all the time looking outside through the small window, seemingly uninterested in the conversation. He was worried about the Major and the spooky sensation that they were being watched never left him. The traces near the submarine did not give him peace.
“Apoptosis. A programmed cell death”, he said curtly. “Yes, almost.” Marcela did not hide her surprise. “I separated the lysosomes of Golgi Apparatus and managed to isolate a protease, an enzyme responsible for leasing, i.e. ‘melting’ of the cell and its destruction. In short, with the doubles that enzyme was built only of proteins and did not contain any non-organic ions. I added iron and the enzyme became hyperactive, in other words, it was destroying all the proteins coming its way.”
“Where did you manage to add iron from, March?” Michael asked.
“From our blood.”
At this moment Norman came in the bio lab, all dusty, with the dirty cloth around his head and the goggles, covered by sand. He was walking a bit funny, slowly, as if he had hurt his knee. He held a machine gun, hanging down his legs, went to Alan and put his hand on the sheet in the place of his missing leg, then stood as if made of stone, facing the patient.
Marcela and the Lieutenant exchanged glances.
“Hey, Norman, how’s the truck? When will it be ready, so we can clear out of this place?” Marcela approached him.
Norman did not turn back but put his other hand on Alan’s good leg.
“Norman, why are you wearing goggles?” Hans retreated a step back.
A shot blasted and Norman fell abruptly on the floor. “What the hell are you doing, have you gone mad?! What are you doing, for god’s sake?!” Marcela was shouting hysterically at Babyface, who bent over the dead body and took the goggles off.
The bloodred pupils shone even after death as hot embers.
Babyface leaned and took out the M11 from the double’s belt, handing it to Michael with its handle forward. The young man hesitated, looked at Marcela and Hans, then took it awkwardly and started examining it.
“Whoa, be careful, this is not a toy! Have you ever practiced shooting?”
“Yeah, once, last year. Me and Mary Ann went to an amusement park in Miami, there was an enormous shooting gallery and I won for her a stuffed dinosaur.” The memory of that day made him smile.
“Okay, when it gets heated, try to stay behind me and not to shoot, if possible. Except in extreme situation. Understood?”
Outside, 4:13 p. m.
Michael and the Lieutenant were moving slowly, almost glued to the ground. Luckily the weather was bright and sunny, so they could see all the way to the horizon. However, this also meant that they were easily noticeable too. They were not talking, the Lieutenant giving directions to the young man only with brief gestures. Now he waved to him to follow track. Both men went around the burned ruins of the two domes and reached the remains of the watchtower.
Then they saw the first explosives. They were half-buried in the base of the watchtower. Babyface stopped abruptly and Michael almost fell over him from behind.
The bomb was as big as a stack of cigarettes and perfectly placed under the thick metal column. Exactly on the place where it would cause maximum of material and human damages.
Complete annihilation. The plastic explosive under the base of the tower would fry everything alive at a distance of a mile just a moment after the detonation.
The Lieutenant and Michael exchanged glances.
The digital clock was changing the figures inexorably.
00:54:48
00:54:47
00:54:46
00:54:45 The red lamp was blinking at an interval of one second. There were no wires or buttons. Professional work with remote control for activation.
The Lieutenant gestured with his hand for Michael to wait for him there and started crawling forward.
The young man was not particularly happy to remain in the company of that hellish blinking contraption, but just nodded affirmatively.
He looked at his watch every twenty seconds. Almost ten minutes passed and there was no trace of Babyface. Michael started really worrying, he tried to scan the entire place but was rather turning like a steering wheel without being able to focus.
He felt far more confident with the little man next to him and now those ten minutes seemed to him an eternity. He took a relieved breath when he saw the small blond head approaching quickly.
He gave him a sign. They were going back to the bio lab.
There was no trace of Norman.
They approached tentatively and were so near, that they heard Marcela’s and Hans’s voices, talking inside. They huddled behind the remains of one of the Rovers, who had burned to the iron base. But the storm had brought in sand and it was the the perfect cover.
They noticed a low shadow that walked quietly along the main dome, stopped by the small window of the bio lab, and watched the shadows inside.
Suddenly a shot fired that hit the double in his left thigh. His body did not react, no cry of pain or surprise was heard, it just turned to them.
Mike was aiming at the shadow. The double ducked and managed to avoid the shot. The student was pouring a raging rain of bullets at the small silhouette. He was absolutely sure that he hit him at least three times in the back, the chest and the legs, but the creature seemed to feel no pain and continued running fast towards the fence. Babyface shouted:
“What are you doing, for god’s sake, we have no more bullets, stop shooting!” The Lieutenant ran after his own double with surprising speed.
The creature made a sharp stop and started in the other direction, while the Lieutenant lost his balance and could hardly twist his body.
“Fuck you, nasty freak!” he cried loudly, feeling that he was outrun.
The double turned his head to see where the shouts were coming from and did not notice the body in front of him. He stumbled and fell to the ground. This momentarily devoid him of his advance and turned the tables in favor of Babyface who with a lion jump threw himself against his back.
He managed to pin him to the ground, then, quick as a lightening, took out the huge knife from his belt and dug it in the double’s neck.
He was trying to cut his head but the double’s tissues were resisting under the knife, unnaturally wiry and stubborn. He cut the front part of the neck, the wind pipe and the gullet, while the metal blade touched the hardness of the cervical vertebrae.
He raised his whole body, sweat was pouring from his brow, all the muscular fibers of his short arms were exerted to the limit. He pressed all the weight of his body over the neck bones and in just a second the head separated from the shoulders.
The creature continued fighting as if nothing had happened, while its pale face was tumbling on the side. Its red pupils had occupied all of its eyes and its twisted blu
e lips were torturing the air like a fish, squirming on the hot sand.
Babyface took a breath, released his hold, then pushed the decapitated body away and left it move chaotically its limbs in the air. It resembled a cut chicken with a carcass, twisting in death convulsions.
He went to the head, pressed the nozzle of the gun to the forehead of his own self, and fired.
The limbs of the headless body dropped dead on the sand.
There was no blood.
The Lieutenant got up, shook off his clothes and asked unperturbedly:
“Mike, how many are left with you? The bullets are precious, there is one more of these fuckers. Alan’s double.” The Lieutenant got up, shook off the sand from his trousers and leaned over the object in which the double had stumbled.
It was Norman’s body.
Babyface put his finger on the carotid artery. He did not feel anything.
“I know, but I believed I could shoot him in the head. I’m sorry, I was carried away”, Michael could not stop excusing himself.
“Okay, Mikey”. The Lieutenant knelt by the body and brushed the face with his palm, closing the eyes. “That’s the Major’s dead body.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant”. Michael also knelt by Norman’s body.
“How many more have you left, Mike?”
“Just one.”
“What about the carabines?”
“The carabines are missing.” Mike pointed to the hole in the dome. It was torn and near the ground a big opening gaped.
Bio lab, last day, 6:18 p.m. “How much fuel have we got left, Hans?” Marcela was sitting in front of the computer but her glance was lingering somewhere away from it.
“For not more than an hour and we have a little for the Rover’s tank. If we manage to fix it at all. Now our life depends on it.”
“Hans, I don’t want us to spend another night here, we are not going to survive.”
“That’s right, but if we go walking through the desert, we are doomed. Better to wait for the night to pass and start early in the morning.”