SecondWorld

by Jeremy Robinson

  The man cringed and tilted his head away from Miller. “Ch-Charlie!”

  “Charlie,” Miller said, his voice calm. “Would you mind opening this door for me?”

  “Coming here wasn’t my idea,” Charlie said. “It’s my wife. She was going to take my daughter without me. I had to come. Had to play along.”

  “Charlie,” Miller said, putting a little vitriol in his voice. “If you open the door, I promise I won’t shoot you.”

  “Or k-kill me?”

  Charlie was quick.

  “Or kill you.”

  Charlie nodded his head and shuffled his way around the pool of blood, stopping once he reached the security controls.

  “What’s the number sequence?” Miller asked.

  “Three, seven, seven, six, two, zero, pound,” Charlie replied, and then punched in the numbers. When he was done, the hand scanner lit up.

  “Is that number code just for you?” Miller asked.

  “For everyone in maintenance,” Charlie said. “The handprint checks against maintenance IDs. We can go anywhere but Security.”

  “If the handprint isn’t in the maintenance database?” Pale Horse asked.

  “I—I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Oh my God, you’re not going to cut off my hand, are you?”

  The handprint screen turned from blue to green. The door unlocked and swung open.

  “No, Charlie,” Miller said. “We’re not.” Then he clubbed the man in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. He quickly bound the man’s hands and feet with plastic zip-tie cuffs and left him on the floor. He wouldn’t be sounding any alarms.

  Careful not to step in the blood, the three men entered the space beyond. Using the two dead men like logs in a river, they leapt over the vast pool of blood left by the top half of the severed man’s body.

  The door closed behind them. They were in a small, sealed-off, stark white room. A glass door on the far side was labeled AIR LOCK in reverse. A momentary increase in pressure popped Miller’s ears. The glass door slid open.

  A stark white hallway led straight ahead, lit from above by rows of bright white LED lights. More framed propaganda lined the walls. Miller could imagine that just a short while ago this hallway was filled with Aryan refuges seeking shelter from the oxygen purge that would bring about their utopian SecondWorld. But the hallway was spotless. No trace of human presence remained. Somebody runs a tight ship, he thought.

  At the end of the one-hundred-foot-long hallway, it opened into a fifty-foot-wide waiting area. The trio stopped, facing a line of ten elevator doors. Benches and small tables lined the walls. Stacks of pamphlets sat on the tables. The posters on the walls were informational, rather than propaganda, featuring pictures of the facility’s insides, which looked more like a five-star hotel than a secret underground Nazi base.

  A large brass sign over the elevator doors read ARCHE 001.

  “Arche?” Miller said.

  “German for ‘ark,’” Vesely explained.

  “As in Noah’s Ark?” Pale Horse asked.

  “I think so,” Vesely said, then pointed to the right-side wall. “Look.”

  A wall-sized diagram revealed the facility’s basic layout. A spiraling atrium made up the structure’s core; thirty stories down, each level tapering down toward the bottom. Doors lined the spiraling ramp, which was labeled “General Population Quarters.” A large room at the bottom was vaguely labeled “Security and Control.” The message was clear: you don’t need to be here.

  Pale Horse pointed to a yellow arrow with text inside that read “You Are Here.” It showed the long hallway and the railcar terminal behind them. “I think they had a mall designer put this thing together.”

  Above the terminal were several other large chambers that branched out and away from the central core, but some were colored yellow, some green, and some red. It’s all color-coded, Miller thought, like the crews on an aircraft carrier. Miller found a color guide at the bottom that revealed each section’s purpose.

  Brown—Military

  Green—Garden & Seed

  Yellow—Menagerie

  Red—Maintenance

  Blue—Security

  White—General Population

  Using the color code as a guide, Miller found two different hangar bays, one near the surface, which looked like it could service planes like the F-16s they encountered. But the other descended straight down into the ground and opened up into a large cylindrical chamber.

  Vesely noted Miller’s attention on the oddly-shaped hangar. “For foo fighters,” he said. “For Bell.”

  Miller understood. They had flying craft that could take off vertically without a runway. He shook his head. The sci-fi bullshit was a little too much to swallow sometimes. He didn’t doubt its existence anymore. He just wished the UFOs actually belonged to a benevolent alien species.

  It was all very interesting, but Miller already knew where they needed to go, Security and Control. If there was some way to stop the ongoing worldwide attack from this location, it would be there. He was about to lay out his simple plan when he heard the clacking of fingers on a computer keyboard.

  Vesely stood at one of three keyboards mounted to the wall beneath the large diagram.

  “What are you doing?” Miller asked.

  “Is like bookstore interface. Type in name. Find room.”

  Miller looked over his shoulder and saw the name “Elizabeth Adler” typed in. He reached out to stop Vesely, just in case the system was monitored, but the man hit the Enter key too fast.

  Nothing happened. And no alarms sounded.

  Vesely deleted the name and typed in “Roger Brodeur.”

  Same result.

  “What was Brodeur’s real name?” Vesely asked.

  “Eichmann. Lance Eichmann.”

  Vesely typed in the name and hit Enter. A door near the bottom of the spiral glowed brown and revealed the text: Level 4. Room 37.

  Miller wanted nothing more than to swoop in and rescue Adler, but the mission had to come first. “There isn’t time,” he said.

  Vesely looked at him with a single raised eyebrow. “I am not being sentimental, Survivor. She has been here longer. She would have come in through hangar. And as granddaughter of a man and woman without whom none of this would have been possible, it is likely she may have been presented to those who might remember them fondly.” He pointed at the brown Security and Control area. “Perhaps Kammler himself.”

  The idea of not finding Adler never sat well with him so he quickly agreed with Vesely’s assessment and said, “Level four, room thirty-seven it is. If she’s not there we’ll kick down the Security and Control doors. Sound like a plan?”

  “Works for me,” Pale Horse said.

  “Is good,” Vesely added.

  Miller pushed the elevator call button. A pair of doors to his right opened immediately. All three jumped back. The elevator was not empty.

  A single red eye stared at them, glowing eight inches above the floor. Miller recognized the design as being similar to those in Antarctica—a robo-Betty. The engine whirred as the thing turned toward Vesely. The red light pulsed for a moment and then turned green.

  “What’s it doing?” Pale Horse asked.

  “Can’t be facial recognition,” Miller said.

  It turned toward Pale Horse and began flashing red again.

  “Is testing DNA,” Vesely said with urgency. “Genetics. For purity!”

  The light turned green and the device rotated toward Miller. “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “U.S. Homeland Security has them,” Vesely urged. “Were going to be in airports!”

  Miller couldn’t risk him being wrong. He didn’t know if this thing functioned like the ones outside, but he had to take the risk. He drew his pistol and shot the thing’s red eye out. For a moment, nothing happened. But then the disk at the center began to spin. Ding, the doors began to close. The disk launched into the air and fired its projectiles, but the three
men were unharmed. They heard the spray of metal balls ricocheting off the metal insides of the elevator, but not one made it out.

  Miller hit the elevator’s call button and the doors opened again. A hundred metal balls the size of small marbles covered the floor. “Okay. They scan DNA and don’t respond well to being shot. Good to know.” He didn’t see a second payload and began sweeping the metal balls out of the elevator with his foot.

  “I think it had scanned you already,” Vesely said. “The delay is probably from analyzing. Homeland units take one hour to analyze.”

  “How could these be so much faster?” Pale Horse asked, helping Miller with the cleanup.

  “Because they’re only looking for one thing,” Miller said. “Racial purity. Looks like half-Jews don’t pass the test.”

  After cleaning out the metal balls and the remains of the robo-Betty, they entered the elevator. Miller hit the button for level four. The doors closed and the elevator dropped. Thirty seconds and five floors later, the doors opened to another long, white hallway.

  Vesely and Pale Horse led the way this time to give the impression that they were escorting Miller. The general’s uniform was a good disguise, but if too many people looked at his face, someone was bound to recognize him. He lowered his cap, putting his eyes in shadow, and walked with a rigid step, doing his best to ooze malevolence. If people were afraid to look him in the eyes, this might just work.

  When they reached the end of the hallway, Vesely and Pale Horse stopped so fast that Miller bumped into them. All three stumbled out of the hallway. Miller quickly looked for witnesses—he might have to smack the two men around if anyone witnessed their bungling—but saw no one. Then he looked beyond the pair and saw what had stopped them in their tracks. He stepped forward slowly, placed his hands on the railing, and looked up with widening eyes.

  55

  No one said a word. They just stood there looking up, gripping the white metal railing that followed the spiraling ramp down three levels and up thirty-one levels. It was the up that held their attention.

  The diagram hadn’t done the structure justice. It was like standing in the middle of a skyscraper and looking up through its core, all the way to the ceiling. Almost everything was white, like one big sterile laboratory. And the place glowed with radiance—like the noonday sun on newly fallen snow. The light came from what had to be millions of bright, and energy-saving, LED lights.

  But it was the ceiling, or rather what hung from it, that held their attention the longest. Two red flags, each five stories tall, hung from the ceiling. Both were crimson with large white circles in the center. One held a black swastika in the center of the circle, the other a large black SecondWorld symbol.

  As Miller’s shock wore off, his other senses filtered in. The air felt cool and dry, and smelled of ozone—the atmosphere was being conditioned. No oxygenless air down here. His ears perked up. He heard voices. Hundreds of them. Thousands. He searched the levels above and below level four and saw people everywhere, talking, laughing, swapping stories. Their voices echoed throughout the chamber. Miller looked down and saw a large open atrium complete with what looked like a marble floor and fountain. People walked and talked, sat by the fountain with snacking kids. But the people weren’t alone.

  “The place is like a giant fucking fun-town mall,” Pale Horse said.

  Miller saw several robo-Bettys navigating through the sea of humanity. He couldn’t count how many as the throng moved and shifted, but there were a lot. And as the Bettys passed people, their lights flashed between red and green.

  “They’re constantly scanning the people for racial purity,” Miller said, pointing out the Bettys.

  “Perhaps increasing standards,” Vesely offered. “Or looking for stowaways.” He looked at Miller. “Like you.”

  Miller agreed with a nod. He would have to avoid the DNA-detecting robo-Bettys.

  He turned toward a group of laughing people. While this was an underground bunker, it was also luxurious. These people were on vacation while the rest of the world suffered. He gripped the railing hard, fighting to control his rising anger, and then remembered why they were on level four.

  Adler.

  Room thirty-seven.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and started down the curving ramp. The first door he passed was forty-two. He counted out ahead and figured the door to Brodeur’s room was halfway around the circle. Three men, one dressed in blue and two in brown, stood in front of an open door between them and their destination.

  As he neared the men, Miller realized he was now in front of Vesely and Pale Horse. His face would be hard to hide. He looked to the right, out over the spiraling core, and ignored the men. They, however, did not ignore him.

  “Afternoon, sir,” the man in blue said.

  Miller ignored him, but glanced at the three men. They weren’t looking at his face. They were looking at his weapons—a sound-suppressed Sig Sauer and an UMP submachine gun. Both were modern weapons used by American Special Forces. Miller remembered that all of the Germans he had fought thus far carried vintage World War II weapons. It must be a source of pride. A badge of honor that set them apart from their modern counterparts. Miller looked at the brownshirts’ weapons. Mauser C96s. Old-school German handguns. The man in blue carried a newer Heckler & Koch HK4 pistol.

  “You see something purty out there?” the man in the blue shirt said.

  When Miller passed the man without acknowledging his existence, he lost his patience. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

  “Wer sind Sie?” one of the German brownshirts said, then more angrily, “Wie ist Ihr Name?”

  Miller spun, drew his silenced handgun, and fired four times, hitting both brownshirts in the chest. Both men spilled back into the room without making a sound. Vesely took out the blueshirt just as quickly, but caught him as he fell forward into the walkway. Vesely quickly pulled the man’s body into the room while Miller and Pale Horse moved the brownshirts farther inside.

  The room looked like a small studio apartment. The walls were a warm brown, not white like everything else, and were lit by a series of sconces. Framed posters of outdoor scenes hung from the walls. A bed sat in the corner, across from a small kitchenette with an eat-in bar. There was a couch. A wall-mounted flat-screen TV. Even a fish tank.

  The only door in the place opened up. A woman dressed in a white silk nightgown stepped out of a small bathroom. “Okay, boys, I—” She looked up and saw them, then fell over dead with a hole in her forehead.

  Miller lowered the weapon. “Let’s move.”

  They closed the door behind them, made sure it locked, and continued down the ramp. A man in blue exited from room forty, gave them a nod, and turned to the left, heading in the same direction. As he rounded the bend, a robo-Betty paused as he walked past. The blinking red light turned green. Then it headed for Miller.

  Vesely got in front of Miller as they reached room thirty-seven. The robo-Betty approached quickly.

  “Keep watch,” Miller said.

  “Won’t that be kind of conspicuous?” Pale Horse said.

  Miller motioned to all the people standing around on the ramps, just having conversations. “You’re two white men, dressed as guards, having a conversation. No one will notice you. And you’ve already passed—” He pointed at the Betty, just ten feet away. “—that thing’s DNA purity test.”

  Miller tried the door handle and found it unlocked. He opened the door, slid inside, and closed it behind him just as the Betty arrived and began scanning Vesely. The room was nearly identical to the one now holding four dead bodies, with one exception—a blond woman with a bob haircut, petite body, and curvy hips lay on the bed, facing the far wall. Was she asleep?

  Miller approached slowly, weapon at the ready. He rounded the bed, gave the open bathroom a glance to make sure they were alone, and then looked at the woman’s face.

  Adler! They had dyed her hair blond again.

  He lowered the weapon, walked
to the side of the bed, and put his hand on her shoulder. He opened his mouth to say her name, but never got the chance.

  Her hand reached up, snatched his wrist, and pulled him down. A flash of metal caught Miller’s eye as she brought her free hand up and thrust a knife toward his eye.

  Miller felt the serrated blade tug at the skin next to his eye and slice through a few layers, but his reflexes saved him as he ducked to the side. The attack didn’t stop there, though. Adler spun on her back and kicked him hard in the gut. Miller fell back, the wind knocked out of him, and struggled for air.

  “Adler,” he said, but his voice was raspy and unrecognizable.

  The woman lunged, knife raised.

  Miller had no choice but to defend himself. He caught Adler’s arm and gave it a twist. She shouted in pain, dropping the knife, but began pummeling at him with her free hand.

  He kicked out her legs, sprawling her onto the floor. She fell on top of one of his legs, so he wrapped the other around her, locked them together, and squeezed. While she punched his legs, he managed to push himself up and say, “Can you please stop trying to kill me for a second.”

  Adler’s head whipped toward him, eyes wide with shock.

  He let her go and she dove on him again, this time crushing him with a hug. She held on to him for several seconds, squeezing him hard, until he asked, “Have they hurt you?”

  She let go of him and sat back. “Aside from plotting genocide, they’ve been perfect gentlemen.” She looked him in the eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

  He stood, straightened his uniform, and picked up his cap. “Came close.”

  “Vesely?”

  “He’s on the other side of the door, keeping watch.”

  She looked relieved. “How did you get in?”

  “Not important right now.” He took her by the shoulders. “What is important is that you tell me absolutely everything you know about this facility, its security, how to get into the Security and Control center and shut down the Bells.”