by Greig Beck
Flipper would not be coming home. Above it, the hole it had created would immediately refreeze after it had passed by, sealing it in. This was a requirement of the approval process – Flipper was fully sealed and sterile, as no contaminants must be allowed to enter the pristine environment they expected to find below the rock and ice. The gigantic body of water had lain undisturbed and unseen by mankind for countless millions of years – humans were now as alien to it, as it was to us.
Flipper’s high-speed drill went from a grinding to a furious whir as it broke through the crust of granite and then fell through space. It took several seconds before it hit water that was blacker than hell itself.
It sank twenty feet before slowing, to then hang listlessly. The water was warm and deep, and at the point where Flipper entered, it went nearly 2,000 feet. The enormous body of water was 160 miles long and 50 miles wide – it was more an underground sea than a lake.
The sterile drill tip was automatically jettisoned, exposing a bulb end that was a single curved sheet of toughened Plexiglas. This bulb was lit by a ring of halogen lights surrounding a lens that was motion sensitive. Flipper was a six-foot Cyclopean fish that watched, tasted, and listened as hundreds of instruments came to life immediately recording, organizing and assessing the details of its environment. It also began a series of pings designed to echo-map the exact size and shape of the world that had become Flipper’s new home.
The sonar pings emanating from the probe were captured and read when they were bounced back from a solid object – in some directions it took many minutes for the reflected waves to return. They were invisible, and inaudible, to most creatures … but not to all.
“Reading Flipper loud and clear; good signals, hale and hearty.” Doctor Arkson Bentley’s face creased in confusion, also making his long, thin nose wrinkle. “Hey.” He suddenly leaned forward, placing his fingertips over one cup of his earphones as he glanced at Cate. “You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve got another signal – electronic pulse.”
“Sonar echo?” Cate asked, not looking up from her own screen. “Gotta be.”
Bentley’s frown deepened. “No, I don’t think so. It’s weird, like a beacon, keeps repeating over and over.”
“Cancel it out – must just be echo distortion,” Cate said distractedly to her senior scientist.
“You got it, boss.” Bentley removed the signal from their scanners. The scientist then ran the data through his computer, organizing the information and deriving a geological profile of the huge sea deep below them. He watched as the contours started to be painted onto his screen; cliffs, valleys, mountain peaks, and then, the geology moved. Bentley froze, and then jerked upright in his seat.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I got something else – big, distant, but it’s there.”
“What now, Ark?” Cate skidded over to the scientist’s sonar screen. “What do you mean, contact? Is Flipper going to run aground?”
“No,” Bentley said. “We’re not going to run into something, but it looks like something might bloody well run into us.”
“A jelly-sheet maybe?” She frowned and peered over his shoulder at the screen. A jelly sheet was a huge clump of free-floating algae that hung like a curtain in deep subterranean water. Some of them could be a dozen feet across and solid as pudding.
“Only if the clump has learned to swim at thirty knots,” Bentley said quietly.
“Thirty knots? Oh my god, is it proof?” Cate slowly rose to her feet as some of the other staff around them turned to look at Bentley’s computer. “No, must be a sheet of ice that’s calved; still sliding through the water.” She was playing her own devil’s advocate, but in her gut she hoped against hope.
“Not a chance,” Bentley said, his eyes glued to the screen and one hand up to the headphone cup over his ear. “The water temperature is subtropical to say the least.” He concentrated on the pulses bouncing back from Flipper’s sonar. “Closing, closing … there.” He pointed. A blip finally showed on his screen. “Still a thousand feet out, but coming in at fifty knots now.”
“Fifty knots? That’s impossible; nothing can travel that fast underwater.” Cate looked back at the camera feed. There was nothing but the halogen’s glow on a crystal clear empty blackness – the lights not even showing the snowy particle debris usually seen in warm waters.
Bentley leaned forward. “Holy shit, closing in, coming right at us.” He shook his head. “Whatever it is, it just accelerated to eighty knots.”
The other scientists jostled behind Cate, pushing and shoving like teenagers at a rock concert.
Carl Timms, lead engineer, and the only game fisherman in the group, had wide eyes behind thick glasses. “That’s an attack run.” He nodded at the screen. “And we’re sitting ducks.”
“500 feet, 400, 300, 200 …” Bentley’s voice was becoming shrill. “In range of the cameras … now.” He pointed.
The crowd surged back to the screen showing the black void miles beneath their feet just as Flipper swirled as something shot past it, creating a liquid tornado around the probe. The motion sensors ignited secondary flashes as the still camera captured image after image.
“Can we stabilize?” Cate felt the knot in her stomach start to tighten again.
“No, we just have to ride it out and hope to god we don’t rupture a buoyancy tank and sink. All we can do is pray Flipper slows enough for us to … oh …” Bentley’s mouth hung open.
A huge eye momentarily filled the screen. It was lidless, round, and white-rimmed, and its pupil was a goat-like slit. Cate sat back, not being able to help feeling that there was a cold intelligence behind the momentary gaze.
The image changed to a furious, boiling movement, and then there came a sound like an electronic scream, as if the probe was shrieking in fear of its life. The screen went dark, then there was nothing.
“It’s gone,” Bentley said into the silent room. “Everything’s gone. It’s all over.”
Cate sat down slowly, feeling dispirited, but also elated. All over? she wondered. Hardly, she knew, feeling a swelling in her chest.
Bentley rewound and then froze the last of the images. He whistled. “Oh my god.” He sat back.
“Alpha predator,” Cate said softly. Framed and frozen on the small screen was the eye. There was no real way to judge scale, but she knew she was seeing something of titanic proportions.
“Now that, is an eye.” Bentley clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “That’s a big blimmin’, beautiful eye.”
“Oh, it’s much more than that, Ark. It’s proof.” Cate stared off into the distance, as she slumped back into her chair, a dreamy smile on her lips. “My proof of life.”
CHAPTER 3
Chinese Antarctic Research Outpost – Xuě Lóng Base – Yesterday
Chief mining engineer, Zhang Li, knelt among the debris. The vibrations from the huge rock cutter ran through him, even making the old fillings in his back teeth ache. But he felt or heard none of it as he broke apart and examined the heavy rock he held in his hands.
Gold, he grunted and broke away the shard of stone with the gleaming metal streak. A good rich vein, he thought, letting the gold nugget piece drop to the tunnel floor, keeping the other. Gold wasn’t the type of riches he sought, but instead, substances worth a thousand times more – REEs, or rare earth elements, the small but vital components used in computers, lasers, and also sophisticated military hardware. It was this scarce treasure they sought from the ancient Antarctic mineral beds.
He grinned and rubbed at the rock piece he still held, knowing what he had was a speck of dust compared to the magnitude of what he had found. He looked around at the tunnel walls, ceiling, and floor – the deposits were old, rich, and very high quality – probably the largest undiscovered deposits left on Earth.
“Hiyaa.” The yell and its echo was lost among the monstrous drilling. Zhang Li’s heart swelled – he’d done it – potentially, billions upon billions of Yuan worth of raw materi
al for the People’s Republic of China. He would be famous, and feted, maybe even by the president himself.
He pushed the rock into his pocket, already planning his country’s and his own future. China was rising to adulthood, and growing with it was a hunger for raw materials, prestige and power, and also, for risk taking. Five years ago, in breach of the global Madrid Protocol’s Antarctic Treaty, he and a team of engineers, geologists, and miners, along with a military support contingent, had been dispatched to the Antarctic.
Week by week, over the years, they had built their machines, and then commenced their digging below the snow and ice. It had been difficult, and lives were lost – but below the ice, that’s where the value lay – in the ancient bedrock. Much of Antarctica was composed of rocks almost four billion years old. It contained nearly all of the Earth’s history locked away, and hidden below a thick blanket of white snow and dark ice.
Secret mining here would be an engineering feat beyond comparison. Zhang Li’s grin widened. But engineering was what Zhang Li lived and breathed. He had graduated with honors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then he, and another student, had been hand-picked straight off campus, to work for a small research company called GBR. That company specialized in fossil fuel research, and he still wondered what happened to the tall girl with the ice blue eyes and night-black hair – Aimee, he remembered, Aimee Weir – brilliant, and better at her job than he could ever be. Everyone expected it would be her to become famous. But now he was here, and it would be him that would be remembered.
Mile after mile below the Antarctic ice Zhang Li and his team had tunneled, first following the signatures from the satellite spectrometry and ground penetrating satellites, and then once locating the mineral traces, following them down to their lodes. Along the way there had been accidents, and there had been mysteries.
He remembered one particular core sample: the drill-pipe had been withdrawn from two miles below the snow, ice, and rock, and its contents laid out on the plastic sheeting for examination. There had been silence for several minutes, as the scientists, geologists, and engineers had stared in confusion, their steaming breath rising around them.
The previous core samples were laid out on tables like long rods of sparkling diamond – some green, some blue, some brilliant white, all displaying the varied and magnificent mineral colors that had accumulated miles below the Antarctic’s surface. But the new sample was different – the stone gave way to something else at the tip … something that bled.
The flesh, if that’s what it was, was mottled green, and the liquid, the blood, that leaked from it, had a bluish tinge. But it was the eye-watering smell – ammonia, and near overpowering, that had chilled the men far more than the freezing temperature.
“We hit something,” Zhang Li had said, wishing he could wipe at his streaming eyes, but the huge gloves made it impossible.
Sho Zhen, their head geologist, and his only friend on the mission, frowned down at the congealed mass. He ran two fingers over the sticky sample. “Something alive.”
Zhang Li saw the sudden alarm in his friend’s face. “Pah.” He stared at Sho. “More likely some sort of fossilized animal preserved in the ice.”
“But, we were below the ice.” Sho Zhen looked up into his face.
Zhang Li shook his head. “The Russians have been bringing up lumps of mammoth flesh from their frozen tundra for centuries.” He glared for several moments, until the man nodded. “We need to move the drill location, and then recommence.” He headed for the door. “See to it.”
Zhang Li snorted as he remembered. They’d closed that drill location, stored the strange flesh, and then within a day, had forgotten about mysterious sample. It was of no consequence or interest to the mission.
Zhang Li ground his teeth again as the mind-tearing sound of the huge circular rock cutter dragged him back to the moment. He pushed his hard hat back, wiped his brow and then squatted next to some dinner plate sized shards of stone, one in particular catching his eye. He turned it around, and frowned down at it. He then grabbed at the others, turning some over, sliding them closer and then rearranging them like a jigsaw.
His eyebrows knitted. Millions of years ago, the area he was in was probably an ocean floor, and the soft mud had taken an impression. In the matrix he could make out a fossil imprint – a circle, nearly two feet wide, serrated at its edges, and in the center a hole. He placed one of his fingers into it, and it sunk in to the second knuckle.
The thing reminded him of something he had glimpsed at the Beijing Maritime Museum – fighting scars on an ancient sperm whale hide. He couldn’t quite place it in his memory, and gave up. Zhang Li got to his feet. Like a window on a world long past, the ancient continent gave up its secrets to those it determined were worthy, but today, he was not to be one of them.
The rock cutter made a high, screaming noise that made him wince. He had been part of the deep dig for years, and knew every pitch, clank, grind, or whisper that came from the huge boring tool, and this was the sound of the giant circular blades spinning in space.
Voices yelled for a halt, and Zhang Li jogged down the tunnel. The air was still thick with floating dust that stuck to the skin, and combined with perspiration to run like oil from the men’s faces. His dig foreman, Li Peng, waved him over.
Zhang Li nodded to him. “What is it?”
Peng shook his head. “Not sure. We’ve opened a cavity – a big one.” He looked briefly over his shoulder before turning back to Zhang Li. “There’s also a signal emanating from inside. It was trapped behind the rock face.”
“A signal – man made?” Zhang Li stepped past him. “Looks like the earth has done our tunneling for us. And now, we better make sure we really are alone.”
*
Zhang Li ran for his life. His breathing was ragged and hot, and he blinked at stinging perspiration that ran greasily into his eyes.
They were all gone now – the engineers, the workers, and even the military guards. He cast his mind back; the first few had vanished in the night – simply wandered off in the darkness they had thought – cold madness or got themselves lost somewhere in the newly discovered labyrinths. But then more disappeared during the daytime dig, sitting down for a break, or moving into a side tunnel to take a piss, always by themselves. One minute they were there, and the next they had vanished as if they had been nothing more than smoke.
As their numbers dwindled, some of the men had said they saw their missing comrades and had rushed headlong into the dark after them. Their screams and scuffmarks on the cave floor were all that remained.
Zhang Li had followed once, and then seen them – the guilao – ghost people. One of his missing security men had stood there in the darkness, unmoving, unnatural. The guard seemed glisteningly wet, and though his mouth was open, no words came. Sho Zhen, the geologist, had approached – he took only two steps before the guard had attacked … or rather sprang at his colleague so fast that he seemed to fly. From there, reality had become a confused nightmare.
He changed; it wasn’t a guard at all, but something stinking and fleshy that stuck to his friend, sucking on to him, and agonizingly impaling him to then drag him away screaming into the darkness. Zhang Li had remained standing rod-straight for several minutes, mouth gaping, feeling nothing but a warm wetness spread at his groin. He slowly wiped a hand over his face, feeling the slick perspiration.
His remaining team had gathered behind him, demanding he return them to the surface. But instead, his jaws clenched with determination – he was the leader of the team, and a respected scientist, not some superstitious villager. His guards had guns; he needed to take control. He decided then; he would do it, bring them all back safely.
Against their wishes, Zhang Li had taken their remaining crew and ventured down into those dreadful, stygian depths. Drag marks against the stone marked their path, and deeper and deeper they had descended, until they eventually found their answers … the horrifying answers to
his missing team members.
… and now those answers pursued him, the last man left, all the way to the surface.
CHAPTER 4
Buchanan Road, Boston, Massachusetts – Midnight
The floorboards felt cool and smooth under Aimee Weir’s bare feet. She knew just where to place her toes so the boards wouldn’t creak.
This was a habit now, waking at midnight, usually jolted alert by fleeing nightmares about her past, or chasing the specter of a love long gone. Perhaps it was her young son, Joshua, who kept the ghost of Alex Hunter alive. Joshua’s features and his unique abilities reminded her every minute of every day of the Special Forces soldier who changed her world. His presence lingered in the dark corners of her mind, refusing to dissipate. I’m right here, Alex seemed to say, every time Joshua smiled up at her.
She stopped in front of her bedroom, deciding. Her partner, Peter, slept soundly, and only a small part of her wanted to return to share the bed with him. She had wanted a father for Joshua, and Peter had played that role. But as much as he loved her, and maybe she even loved him, there would always be a ghost between them that refused to be exorcised.
She passed by the room, and placed her hand on Joshua’s door handle. She smiled and shook her head; she checked on him too much – every night when she woke – worried that if people knew about Joshua, knew he was Alex Hunter’s son, they may try and take him from her. Or perhaps even worse, she would wake up one time and find that he had been nothing but a mirage. He was the only good thing she had from those strange times.