Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  “I’m sorry…” Alan tried to get it out but failed. “He…I’m just sorry I didn’t get there sooner. Maybe…you know.”

  “Maybe you could have saved McTee, too? Don’t think that way, never second guess yourself. We are soldiers. Dying is an occupational risk. We were there to keep you safe while you did the important work. We told you to stay back. Thank God you didn’t listen.”

  Alan nodded. “He was a good man. I really liked him. I just hate it. I hate all of this.” His eyes fell on the reclining form of the girl. She looked far less intimidating now. Truthfully, she looked like an innocent college student just resting up for a finals cram session. Maybe in another life, that’s what she would have been. In another life, McTee would be back in the rear seats sipping a cold beer and cracking jokes with Alex and Joe.

  Alan was staring at the girl with an unreadable expression on his face. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Why didn’t I what?” Cade asked, but he thought he already knew what the kid wanted to know.

  “You know, why is she still alive?”

  Cade looked at her lying there. Truthfully, that was one question he couldn’t answer. Perhaps it was him trusting his instincts. Maybe Gus and Ace had ideas about her that he was unaware of. “I really don’t know, man.”

  Finally back at The Cove, Cade spent the next thirty-two hours in one of Doctor Han’s therapy systems that was designed to treat his various injuries and get him more or less like his old self. Cade referred to it as being in a human-sized air-fryer. He didn’t understand what was happening to him beneath the hard shell covering his body, but had to admit that the knee, shoulder, various cuts, and concussion were all feeling much better. Han seemed more concerned with analyzing what kind of poison Steiger had used on him.

  The Shadow had also been brought to The Cove for reasons Cade himself was unsure about. His intentions were to turn her over to federal authorities for questioning and investigation. After all, she had killed a federal agent. Steiger had either not known or not cared to give up any details on the compound she’d used, but they had the vial from her pack. Riley’s lab had broken it down for analysis and come up with some puzzling findings. It was a mixture of organic toxins, most resembling known animal proteins and several synthetic compounds designed to increase the lethality. Supposedly, Cade was no longer at risk, but the toxins in his body were still trying to attack his internal organs. Only the extraordinary capabilities of the MedPatches he’d been using were keeping it at bay. During much of the previous day and a half, Cade had been sedated. Now he simply waited for the doctor to clear him for duty.

  He’d already talked to Maratelli in the next room, who seemed mostly recovered but was still also being kept in medical for ongoing treatment. She had sustained some major damage to internal organs, and if not for Alex and the trauma technology they had with them, she’d almost certainly also be counted as a fatality by now. Feeling antsy just lying in the hospital bed, Cade tapped his cheek. “Doris, can you give me an update? What’s going on with the other teams, and anything out of the girl yet?” Cade asked.

  “Probably best to wait for a proper briefing, but we may have found…something,” she responded. “We think Nance’s team may have encountered a creature very similar to the one depicted in that ancient image, the one Steiger referred to as a Saraph.

  Cade sat up in the bed. “Nance, in the Caribbean? “ He knew Charlie had split his team and sent Nance and a small squad to pick up Kissa but couldn’t recall much after that.

  “I wasn't going to mention it. You've had so much on you. But yes, her team has encountered something very similar. Multiple contacts between Cayman Islands and Cuban waters.”

  The attacks in the area, Kissa’s missing fiancée. Other thoughts raced through his head. Ace was piecing something together, something Cade was clueless about. Then, a memory played across his conscious mind again. Samuel telling him the best way to tell a lie. Why do I keep coming back to that? Dee had told him the man was most definitely lying. What had Samuel been saying? Something about a freshwater lake two miles below the ice in Antarctica. Then his thoughts crystallized with near-perfect recollection. “The creature from Lake Vostok,” he said aloud. The bastard had been honest all along. He just even managed to fool Dee and his own bullshit detector.

  “Doris, could they have recovered a living example of the creature at some point?”

  “Yes, we think it does exist, maybe not the same one from Antarctica, but the same type. Your friend, Kissa, described something similar when his fiancée was taken. We also have video from Nance that looks an awful lot like the ‘Saraph.’ Micah even managed to get a small sample of tissue from the creature.”

  “What the fuck is going on, Doris? How can we have something swimming in the Caribbean today, looking anything like an image from billions of years ago? None of this is making any sense. Not even with your super intellect. None of my many brains can wrap their collective heads around any of this shit. Hell, even the analyst seems to be stumped. What the fuck are we dealing with here?”

  Doris answered, “Like you, I have way more questions than answers. Every time we get a little more information, it just seems to unlock a deeper mystery. And it is one that Jaz, Riley, Jimmy, and the rest of the team are all trying to figure out. The one thing that is clear to me is, we are not dealing with just an ancient creature or just a collection of ancient alien artifacts. Your assassins make it clear that people know what is going on and may be behind it all. At one point, the U.S. Government knew, but if there are records of that knowledge, they were not stored in the Granite Mountain facility.”

  Cade knew that Doris had destroyed the so-called Bumblehive, the massive data center in Utah that held America’s book of secrets. “So, this was so sensitive it wasn’t even kept in the most secure facility on the planet? Didn’t you say that all the data from Area-51 was in there—how could this not be?”

  “I can think of several reasons. One, the material was never officially recorded, which meant a very small circle of people in the know. That meant even the president would likely have no knowledge, or all of the information may have predated computer records. Someone was okay with it staying that way. Or, someone deliberately deleted the information.”

  Cade thought he understood. “Like Byrd’s mission back in the forties.”

  “Much easier to keep a lid on it back then,” said Doris. “Today it would be more challenging, which might explain the case of the missing scientists from the late eighties. The only way to keep it all quiet is to make them disappear.”

  “That still means someone knows, someone is controlling the access, and keeping that no-fly zone in place. Who would have that level of continuing international influence? Antarctica is not ruled by any single government,” Cade said.

  Doris answered, “Cade, I think we must admit that we need to know what your prisoner knows. That is why you didn’t want her turned over to federal custody. They could interrogate her, but they wouldn’t have a clue what the real questions are to ask. We are dealing with a coverup that has lasted eighty years or more. You saved her for a reason, you brought her here for a reason, even if you don’t know what that reason was.”

  Cade nodded in agreement.

  “She's got answers. Somebody sent her. Somebody gave her these orders. And somewhere out there, she's seen something like that Saraph, maybe that exact creature. We need to know exactly what she knows,” Doris continued.

  “Well, I'm open to suggestions,” he said in a tone that was quickly increasing in intensity. Memories of the cold. The bleak, white continent. The death of his friend, getting his own ass kicked and apparently briefly dying, all of the abuse, and now all of this new fucking weird alien shit was just too much for him. “Godamnit, Doris, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just need answers. I'm fine being your eyes and ears…your boots on the ground, whatever. But you gotta’ help me out here. She's not going to talk, not willingly.” His mixed emotions over the girl r
ose again inexplicably to the surface. The utter contempt and rage mixed almost equally with an unfathomable pity. Why do I increasingly feel the need to protect this killer…this assassin? She murdered my friend.

  Lying back, trying to calm his racing heart, he added, “You and I both know anything we get out of her forcefully…well…that's probably going to be useless.”

  “I don’t want to torture her, Captain. Maybe there is a way,” Doris offered. She seemed almost unwilling to say the rest.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay, something, something I haven't really wanted to explore…something that, well… let’s just say should stay between you and me. Something I’d prefer Margaret never, ever to know about,” Doris said.

  He wasn’t expecting anything like that. Doris seemed to trust Margaret implicitly. She’d all but turned over the major operations of TCP to her this last year. “What's that, Doris? What possible reason would you have for that?” He had no idea where Doris was going with this. Margaret…the director, made all the critical calls on matters like this. Interrogating the prisoner would certainly be up to her.

  “Well, let’s just say the potential for abuse and misuse would be huge.”

  “Okay,” Cade said calmly. “You have my attention.”

  Doris went on, “There's a lot more to the ReLoad technology than most of you are aware. You understand how the instant learning can be added to a person’s brain. A portion of that system can also allow me to essentially withdraw selected information from a subject. It is nearly as easily done as the instant learning process can give a person…knowledge. To some degree, this is what I've been using with you on trying to minimize the trauma of your childhood. To help reintegrate your different personalities back together.”

  The revelation was not as unexpected as he might have thought. “Well, yeah, but that just blanks out the spots in my…my head, right? You don't actually have the ability to see what I see or remember whatever I remember, right? Also, I've got to willingly give that episode of my memory up, don’t I?”

  “In the way that we use it with you, you're exactly right,” Doris explained. “But the Dhakerri gave me much more information on how intellect and consciousness work. It is not theoretical either, but instead, very specific. While our physiology from species to species may be very different, there is apparently a sameness to consciousness throughout all intelligent life. Even with synthetic life such as myself. There are things that I have had in my possession…knowledge that I have, that I just have not offered to The Cove yet.”

  “So, if we put Steiger in a ReLoad room, you think we can get that information out of her?”

  “I do, Cade, and we need to plan to do it now.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because we’ve lost all contact with Nance’s team.”

  53

  “Captain Rearden, get back in here.”

  The doctor's voice drifted off behind him, much like the various tubes and monitoring leads.

  “What do you mean they are missing?”

  A chirp sounded in his ear. He activated his CommDot.

  “Go for Nomad.”

  “Hey, man,” Deuce’s voice came through, although there was a lot of noise in the background. “How you doing man? I, um, I heard about…”

  “No time, Charlie, what do you know about Nance? Doris just let me know they’re missing.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know much, Cade. Seems like our friend Kissa was onto something serious. I believe he’s landed her team in the shit.”

  “Like what exactly?” Cade asked, as he tried in vain to remove the rest of the attachments from his arm and find some goddamn clothes.

  “I’m sure Doris told you. I sent Nance, Coffee, Micah, and Trondo up the coast to pick the dude up like we agreed. Anyway, that was a couple of days ago, but, well shit, man, we’ve had our hands full down here. We have something attacking ships and oil rigs and crap, it’s really fucked up. Nance is good though, so I knew Kissa would be in good hands, but, well honestly, I hadn’t thought much about ‘em, you know? Anyway, I tried to reach them earlier and couldn’t get anyone. I talked to the director—they were in communication up until a couple of hours ago. They were pursuing some craft or something. Now the entire team’s gone dark.”

  Cade heard Charlie shouting some orders to someone nearby before he continued.

  “Riley says they have a fix on the location. But they're getting no response. I think Kissa may have stumbled onto something serious up there, dude.”

  Cade thought about it for a second. “What was the last transmission from them? Surely the damn AI on board the boat knows what’s going on.”

  “That's just it, man. They're getting no response from the onboard submind either. They only had a small localized AI device there, so it's not a full-blown setup like we usually carry. After all, I mean, this was just a simple civilian pickup. I don't think either of us expected any trouble. But the fact is, we've got an entire grab team that's missing, and that includes Micah, so you know, the director just bumped this op to the top of the list.”

  “How is that kid always at the center of everything?” Cade asked, pulling a jumpsuit from a bin in the base’s laundry room. “Okay, well, we obviously need to get out there and get our people back. I am not losing anyone else this week.”

  Cade thought about the Saraph, the assassins, and the alien worlds depicted in that cave. The recent attacks now had him seeing shadows everywhere. “Deuce, something else is at play here, not sure what, but keep your radar up. Someone sent trained killers to the ass-end of the planet. These fucks are for real.”

  “I know, Cade. Pretty sure someone has been watching us as well. Someone is operating at a high level. Lots of senior officials who have been paid off and are scared shitless to discuss it. ”

  “Watch your back, brother, get an upload on the assassins we fought. It might help from a tactical standpoint. The Schatten are a dangerous bunch, damn near invisible. I was pretty much a goner along with McTee.”

  “Shit,” Charlie said in disgust, and even from thousands of miles away, Cade could feel his friend’s frustration. “Yeah, well, still hate that, man. He was a damn solid warrior. What in the fuck are we fighting, Cade?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie, but I have a feeling that something Nance and Kissa were checking out might just be tied to what we just discovered down south.” He didn’t want to get into the ongoing discussions about monsters and ancient aliens. Not yet, anyway. Charlie already thought he was nuts. “Let me just say I think we're up against some weird shit, man. I mean, crazy weird, even by our admittedly loose standards.”

  “So, what’s the play, Boss?”

  Cade thought for a second, but his mind seemed to be struggling to line up all the mental dominos. What the hell came next? “What’s your suggestion, Deuce? My mind’s a bit of a mess right now.”

  “Oh, why’s that, is it Tuesday?”

  “Bite me.”

  “Yeah. Well, Cap, I don't get paid enough to answer the big questions. I don't even think I know the answers to the small ones anymore.”

  Cade nodded mainly to himself. He knew the feeling. “Doris, what's the location? The last location of CommDots. You still can track those, can’t you?”

  Doris reentered the conversation she’d been silently monitoring. “Well, that's where it gets even more fun. Yes, we still have tracks on our people. Micah even apparently tagged something with a tracker. They are pretty far out near the middle of the Caribbean. It's hundreds of miles from any landmass. It's closer to southern Cuba or the Cayman Islands than it is to anywhere else. Based on some triangulation, they are just above the deepest part of the Cayman trench.”

  “But you still have life signs, are they okay? Why aren’t they responding?” Cade asked in rapid fire.

  “Life signs are erratic on most. I think we have to assume injuries. Possibly, they are unconscious.”

  “Can you simply listen in? What about getti
ng someone from the Navy? Guantanamo Bay isn’t that far.”

  Doris quickly answered, “Slow down, Captain. These are mostly Margaret’s calls, and she has been working it since she found out. I have activated each of the CommDots in passive monitoring mode, but you know we design them for very close proximity. So far, we have heard nothing other than a possible seabird on one of the units.”

  “We need to get some assets moving in that direction. Let’s get the rest of the teams spun up and ready for SAR,” Charlie suggested.

  “First,” Doris began speaking privately to Cade. “I believe we need to get that information from the prisoner, and I think we must also assume our people are in real danger. I think speed is critical in saving them. “

  “What are you not telling us, Doris?” Cade asked, now nearly running to the control hub.

  “I said we have positions on all the CommDots except Kissa, he didn’t have one. All of the locations are together except one, which is on the surface.”

  “They got separated. How far? Where are they?” Cade asked.

  “Well, that’s where it takes a rather bizarre turn. The three that are together are near the last reported location of the boat but moving north at a steady pace.”

  “So, they were rescued, or someone has them.”

  “The signals are currently registering at being 4000 feet below sea-level,” Doris said, a little more slowly.

  “What?”

  Cade's adrenaline spiked again as his system escalated into overdrive. “What the hell are you saying, are they at the bottom of the sea?”

  “No. Captain, that's not what I'm saying. The water level there drops off to at least 12,000 meters. They seem to be hovering around 3000 to 5000 feet, and life signs still seem to be holding steady. But nobody's responding by voice.”