Hollow

by Lee Doty

  ***

  “Make a hole!” Dr. Leo Hawkins shouted as he reached the top of the short staircase and reentered the crowded observation level above and around the round biomechanics lab. The nerds scurried quickly and he shouldered his way through the slower ones until he’d reached the first research station. “Move!” he shouted to the pudgy scientist leaning forward into the large display.

  The scientist, who had been lost in his research despite the rumbling explosions above and the flashing red lights and wailing alarms, startled badly, shoulders almost covering his ears before he managed to get enough control to get out of Hawkins’ way. “Yes, Dr. Hawkins.” He mumbled as he retrieved his access badge from the link plate on the top of the desk and vacated the seat. The monitor, which had been displaying various scans of the subject’s body along with graphs of toxicity telemetry went dark as he removed the card.

  Hawkins slapped his badge onto the link plate and his default desktop bloomed to life on the monitors. He placed his hand on the link plate next to his badge and spoke, “Authorize. Emergency control. Alpha black.”

  “Challenge: Sierra” The voice of the computer said tonelessly.

  Hawkins typed in his response. There were several chirps, followed by an accept tone. “Access granted.” The computer pronounced.

  With the speed of long practice, Hawkins accessed the links for the security schematics of the installation, then opened a comm window to the installation’s command post.

  After a moment, an efficient looking woman wearing a minimal headset appeared in the open window. She nodded him a greeting, “Dr. Hawkins.”

  “How bad is it, Dietrich?” Hawkins asked.

  “Bad, sir.” The woman said, eyes scanning the displays around her. “The initial barrage took out all but a few of our external defenses. We’ve now lost seventeen of our nineteen point defense systems, we’ve got a few remaining antipersonnel systems and almost no direct external sensors left.

  “We get the alarm out?”

  “No, sir. They began jamming us seconds before the first explosion.”

  Hawkins rubbed his face and was surprised that his jaw was tender. He’d forgotten that he’d been knocked unconscious less than five minutes ago. This was not his best day ever. “How long before the help arrives?”

  “Well, the alarm would have gone up as soon as their jamming broke the heartbeat in the carrier signal we hold open to both Hill and DC, so if everyone sticks to protocol, we’ve already been targeted by the tactical nukes from Hill and Lee. Satellite imagery should already be informing them that this is an external attack, so we’re less likely to get nuked in a containment protocol. I’d bet they skip the recon teams, so we should have the first response teams here in under an hour.”

  “Any chance they spliced into the carrier and are keeping the heartbeat going?”

  The woman opened her mouth, then closed it again and busied herself at her console for another thirty seconds before answering. “Unlikely.” She said finally. “The jamming they’re using isn’t subtle and it came on pretty noisily. I almost said ‘impossible’, but since I saw that footage from ’74, I’ve tried to remove that word from my vocabulary.”

  Hawkins nodded, “Okay, help is on the way, but we proceed like it’s not and hope for the best. What’s hitting us?”

  “Unclear.” She said, eyes and fingers searching, “The first attack was artillery, they fire corrected quickly in response to our radar, which was expected… but they responded almost as quickly to passive defenses… we are being lased… from more than one position… they’ve got spotters outside the fence.”

  “Are any of the mid-range antipersonnel systems still online…”

  “Snipers!” the woman cut him off, “We’ve lost everyone at the main gate… the snipers have been working since the artillery came in!” She turned to her right, “Get the message out… everyone under cover! Lockdown in two minutes!”

  The sound of the alarms changed in the lab around Hawkins and the flashing red strobes changed to a solid red. The system’s computer began to speak through every speaker in the complex, “Lock down in two minutes. All personnel, report to emergency shelters. Lock down in two minutes.”

  Hawkins turned from the screen and shouted above the alarms and the low roar of voices in the crowded labs. “Listen up, people!”

  All conversation stopped, and Hawkins continued, “I want everyone working on that signal coming from our patient to stay at their posts, I want everyone working on her biotelemetry and the medical leads and primary techs to stay put. I want everyone else to clear this lab. Get to the nearest shelters before the lockdown. Move!”

  “Signal!” Hawkins heard someone shout through the feed from the command post.

  “Is this another decoy?” Dietrich said to the unseen tech. There was a pause, then the unseen tech spoke again, “This one’s not a squawk, like the last one… this one’s digitally encrypted and the profile indicates that it’s likely voice, though of course we can’t hear it. I think if they were trying to provoke a response they’d have spoken on an open or at least garbled channel.”

  “Hit it!” Dietrich shouted back immediately, “We’ve got only one remaining AP rocket launcher, so make it count.”

  “Dietrich!” Hawkins shouted into the link, “This all started with a signal from our guest. If we’ve got a ground presence out there we need to prepare for a breach.”

  From the screen, Dietrich gave him a patient look often used with idiots wrapped around an indulgent nod.

  “Dragons, Dietrich, it’s going to be dragons.”

  The only expression of fear that made it past Dietrich’s calm façade was a slight widening of the eyes. Hawkins continued, “Lock down everything above the blast shield now. Inform the guards what they’ll likely be dealing with. I want the guards to retreat and hunker down with the scientists… I want them playing defense only… we’re going to let the walls and doors do primary defense.”

  Dietrich nodded, fingers flying across her keyboard, “Topside’s locked down, sir. The blast shield is secure. We’re going to keep the video feeds up, but we’ve severed all control links above the shield, all consoles have been disabled and locked out.”

  “Good.” Hawkins steepled his fingers, “I want one team at each of the complex’s entrances, volunteer only. We need to put up some token resistance, and we need to know when they first breach the facility.”

  Dietrich gave him a steely look, each knew it would likely be the last time they’d talk.

  “Get all of the security personnel into white lab coats, get them mingled in with everyone that didn’t make it below the shield and tell everyone to go to ground as best as they can.”

  Dietrich nodded.

  “They are not to engage, they are to cower. They are only to respond if they are discovered and if our invaders are interested in murdering scientists, and then they must understand that surprise is their only chance.”

  “Yes sir.” Dietrich said, “We just lost our last external defenses. Control has been transferred to the secondary command post on sublevel twenty.

  “Headshots.” Hawkins said, “Remember that only headshots will end this fight.”

  Dietrich nodded gravely. “Headshots.”

  Dietrich broke the connection and the screen went dark.

  Hawkins established the connection to the secondary command post on the bottom level of the installation. He had not yet verified himself when he was interrupted by the intercom from the lab below.

  “She’s crashing!” Nelson shouted from the speakers in the observation level, “I need a full trauma team in here, stat! I want everyone in the lab on telemetry… I need tox telemetry right now… right now!”

  “Move!” the pudgy tech shouted from behind Hawkins. Hawkins turned to give him a harsh look, but then remembered that Dr. Lansing was their head toxicologist. “…please?” Dr. Lansing added, half fear, half embarrassment.

  Hawkins spared a look dow
n into the lab, where he saw the woman who had recently beaten him unconscious rigid against her restraints and convulsing with a seizure. Her muscles were as taut as if she were being electrocuted and maybe it was a trick of the light, but it seemed to Hawkins that the bulging veins on arms and neck were darker than they should have been. Dr. Nelson and three techs were standing inside the red circle that surrounded the patient’s table, violating security protocols as they tried to save her life.

  Hawkins stood and retrieved his access card from the link plate. “Sorry, Lansing.” He said, clearing out of the way.

  Hawkins strode across the nearly empty observation level to the security guard keeping watch at the top of the stairs leading down to the lab. “I need you to move to reinforce the guards at the lab door. We’re on full lockdown, and we’ve likely got dragons inbound. We’ve got the blast shield on sublevel three sealed, and I don’t see how they make it past that…” Hawkins blew out a breath, “but then I don’t see how they do a lot of the things they do.”

  The guard nodded and started to move, but Hawkins stopped him with a hand on his arm, “One challenge, then it’s time to shoot. I want you to err on the side of safety here. Nobody gets down that hallway, do you hear me?” The guard’s lips tightened and he hesitated, but then he nodded grimly and headed down the stairs.

  Meanwhile: Xian

  Chicago, October 15, 2020 10:24pm

  “…It’s not every day you get to meet a legend.” Xian said, releasing the button on his comm as the cab pulled around the corner.

  Xian checked his watch as if he cared what time it was, then looked around casually, as if he were waiting for a bus that was a little late. He was cautious not to pay any overt attention to their target as she approached in the unassuming yellow cab. He was hoping to avoid being noticed, but he was also hoping to catch a glimpse of their lost Falcon. The Forbidden City had lost her nearly a year ago, but until a little over an hour ago, everyone in that ultra-secret organization had been certain that she was dead.

  Xian smiled slightly, there had been more than a few who had likely bet their lives on it, knowingly or not.

  Even after seeing the image they’d intercepted from the police, Xian still didn’t believe that she had survived the assault on the OSI’s Virginia compound. Sure, the OSI had neutralized her kill switch when they’d taken the bait, but the Forbidden City’s scientists had spiked her blood with exotic particles that had allowed them to track her when the OSI had taken her, like the Trojan horse, back to their most secret facility. Then, when Ash finally made her move to try to decapitate the OSI, those same particles had been triggered by her adrenaline response to emit a long and unhealthy burst of high energy particles that had signaled the Falcons to attack. Nobody thought that the high energy particles would kill her, but the waste products of the reaction that had generated those particles should have killed her many times over. To express how sure the techs were at the time, Xian remembered one of the scientists confidently referring to what they’d done to Ash as “…as fatal as if we’d dropped a nuclear bomb into her bloodstream.”

  After the mission had failed, they had repeated the same experiment, putting those same particles into a wounded Falcon, then into three more healthy, yet less effective Falcons. The result had been an ugly death within half an hour in all cases. Even with male Falcons of nearly twice her mass with even half of the amount of particles in their blood, the result had been a messy, horrible death as the waste products killed first mind, then body. Falcons had been built to heal, but even they were defenseless against the toxicity that those billions of signal-generating particles dumped into the bloodstream as they operated.

  Until a little over an hour ago, everyone had believed that almost the only thing that had gone as planned that horrible night was Ash’s death.

  Xian was still more than half convinced that the lucky break of catching Ash’s image in a random police report was a trap, a setup to lure the Forbidden City’s agents into the open.

  None of it made any sense: that she had been a victim of an assault, that she’d been left unconscious, that she was outside of a heavily guarded laboratory… walking the streets like a normal person. Of course, as improbable as all that was, the least likely part of it all was that she was still alive.

  But Xian’s masters couldn’t risk inaction. If she was alive, the organization could not tolerate her walking around, uncontrolled, uncontained, with so many secrets, or clues to secrets, lurking in her head, so much functional tech in her body. If she was alive then they had to get her back, find out all they could about what had happened to her and debrief her about what the OSI was trying to do. The Forbidden City’s interrogators would learn all they could, they’d be thorough, and then they would put her down.

  …If this was really her, if this wasn’t a trap.

  It had to be a trap.

  And then he saw her. His eyes never settled on her, but as the cab rounded the corner, he saw her clearly and it was her. Ash, their lost Falcon. He supposed in some corner of his combat-amped mind that this could be some clever simulation… this could be someone surgically altered to have her face, her scars… but when he saw her, he knew. He knew, because she was staring directly at him. She was staring at him with a knowing gaze that seemed to penetrate his disguise, his manufactured disinterest, all of his careful lies. And she was smiling. For that instant, they were the only people in the world, for that instant, each was laid bare before the other… in the communion of slowed breathing and expanded thinking, in the time dilation of the combat biology they shared, each stood out, serene and burning bright in a dull grey world.

  She winked at him, though the gesture seemed more playful than knowing, more innocent than calculated. In that instant he knew they were right about her being muzzled somehow. It was Ash, but she wasn’t the Falcon any more, or maybe not only the Falcon any more.

  And then the moment ended, and the cab accelerated away, toward the traffic signal they had rigged to stay red until they could spring their trap.

  Xian depressed the key on his comm again, “Control, I have visual confirmation. It’s Ash.”

  “How sure are you?” the shocked Cleric said from the comm.

  “I’m sure.” He replied. “It’s her. This is a go. We are live, people!”

  Xian turned right and exited the minimal shelter of the bus stop, striding casually across the street toward the cab as it was slowing before the red traffic signal a block away. Before he’d reached the other side of the street, Jayda rounded the corner and passed him in her old, massive Cadillac, bearing down on the cab from behind as it now waited at the red light.

  Xian kept his pace methodically casual as Jayda crashed the Cadillac into the cab from behind at less than five miles an hour. He didn’t want to arrive on the scene until the drivers were out of their cars, until the focus was on Jayda. Then he could make his move to subdue Ash while Jayda killed the driver. If Ash were protected more than they thought, they had a team of Falcons unhooded and ready half a block ahead, and another team of Falcons about three blocks away to prevent their escape. It was enough to take apart any protection Ash might have. If all else failed, they had a pair of whispercraft above… Ash would not elude them tonight. Even if this was a trap, Xian was convinced that his trap was bigger and better than anything the OSI could have waiting for them.

  “They’re rabbiting!” Jayda said from the comm as Xian heard the rev of the cab’s engine and the squeal of tires from the intersection ahead.

  ***

  Jayda’s barely dented Cadillac lumbered to the curb two blocks from the entrance of the blue line station where the team of Falcons had deployed to pursue Ash. The deployment vehicle was parked on-site, across the street from the entrance.

  “Why don’t we go all the way in?” Jayda asked as she put the Cadillac in park.

  “Sometimes you can see better from a distance.” Xian said enigmatically.

  “Yeah, but…” Jayda start
ed.

  Xian cut her off impatiently, “There are now two teams of Falcons down there. What are you thinking that we are going to add to that situation?” He gave her a hard look, “If she manages to elude them, we’ll need to stay mobile. If the enemy brings other assets to bear, do you really want to be sitting in a tight group with their primary targets?”

  “Yeah,” Jayda protested, “but we already took care of their air patrol, and our air patrol hasn’t reported any assets inbound.”

  “This still might be a trap.” Xian said with an air of finality. “And it’s time for you to be silent now.”

  Jayda heard the menace not too carefully concealed in his tone and closed her mouth. She put her hands on the wheel, eyes forward.

  Xian’s tablet vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and opened the encrypted channel. “Yes?”

  “We’ve got multiple military jets inbound.” The Cleric pronounced. “It’s time to shut this down.”

  Xian blinked, “They’ve taken this full military? In a city this large, with this low level of provocation?”

  “We did down their CAP.” The Cleric said drily, “Technically, we escalated first.”

  “But full military? How many?” Xian asked, still stunned.

  “Sixteen jets so far.” The Cleric droned, “I’ve recalled our whispercraft.”

  “How long do I have before they arrive?”

  “Fifteen minutes.” The Cleric said, “I’m going to extract the dragons before we have to make them fight their way out.”

  “Wait,” Xian said, “They’re in the tunnels…”

  “Sir!” Jayda interrupted. Xian gave her a sharp sidelong look, but then noticed that she was pointing toward the station.

  He looked toward the station in time to see a rusty old blue Nissan Sentra screech to a halt in a fire zone before the far entrance to the underground station. As soon as the car settled, a man in black priest’s suit stepped out of the car. He crossed the sidewalk and jogged down the stairs and into the station as if he were worried about missing a train and unconcerned with getting his car towed.