by Ben Mezrich
20
Mulder’s shoulders ached as he strained against the heavy steel equipment shelf, rocking it carefully back into place against the cinder-block wall. The tiny storage room was cramped and claustrophobic, a cluttered swamp of Red Cross surplus, outdated radiology machines, linens, and folded military cots. The walls were lined with off-white plaster, the ceiling covered in similarly colored tiles. A small fluorescent tube lodged in one corner of the ceiling gave the room a sickly yellow, hepatic glow.
The storage room was the fifth and last interior space Mulder had found within the clinic, and he had no idea where to go next. He had kicked every wall, stamped on every inch of floor—and he had not found anything resembling an entrance to an underground level.
He stepped back from the steel shelf, breathing hard. He was becoming more frustrated by the second. The investigation was at a critical point; the double murder had significantly raised the stakes. The Thai police had arrived from Rayong shortly after Mulder and Scully had shifted the Buddha back into place, and had confiscated both bodies for their own investigative efforts. Mulder had a sinking feeling that he and Scully did not have much time before the Thai authorities co-opted their case. As Scully had inferred, an FBI investigation of a vicious double murder did not make good copy for Thai tourism brochures.
Mulder hastily reached into his pocket and retrieved the folded map. He studied it for the hundredth time, trying to find some sort of physical logic. Since there were no notations of scale or direction, it was impossible to match the tunnels to the geography of the clinic. The MASH unit had consisted of more than a dozen freestanding structures. The triage room and the recovery ward were by far the largest of the buildings, followed by the command office and the barracks. The tunnels seemed to originate beneath the command office, with a second entrance just beyond the edge of the camp.
Mulder leaned back against the door to the small storage room, his eyes shifting to the sheer cement floor. He knew that the tunnels were down there—but he also knew it would take excavation equipment to get through that floor. If an entrance still existed, it wasn’t inside the clinic.
He shoved the map back into his pocket and headed out of the storage room. There were three monks clustered around Fielding at the far end of the main room, speaking in hushed tones. The monks looked up as he moved past, and Fielding offered a weak smile. The entire town was shocked by the murder—and rumors about the reawakening of the Skin Eater were rapidly spreading from household to household. Mulder could feel the tension in the air, the sense that something ancient and terrifying had returned.
Shivering, Mulder cast a final look at the interior of the building, then stepped out through the front door. The rain had finally slowed to a light drizzle, and he could see breaks in the clouds above the high wooden steeple of the dilapidated church across the street. Mulder paused as the clinic door swung shut behind him, his eyes resting on the miniature spirit house just a few feet away. Someone had placed fresh flowers along the base, and there were more than a dozen sticks of incense jutting from the little windows. Even the post had been decorated, twists of garlands mingling with colorful silk tassels and strings of beads.
Mulder felt his muscles sagging as he thought about Trowbridge and his wife. Fielding had informed him when the police had carted the bodies off, and he had considered going after them—offering his support to the Thai investigation. But he knew it was pointless. It would be near impossible to explain the connection to Perry Stanton. And any reference to the Skin Eater or Paladin’s miraculous research would be considered an offense. The Skin Eater was a village myth, a matter of belief—not of forensic science. As for Paladin’s research—Mulder had nothing but a series of photographs as proof.
Still, he had to live with the guilt of the Trowbridges’ deaths. They had been murdered because of their connection to the FBI investigation. In a way, Mulder and Scully had awakened the Skin Eater.
Mulder started forward, intending to head back to the hotel, where Scully was using her laptop computer to research the list of burned soldiers. But as he stepped past the spirit house he paused, bothered by something across the street.
There was a young man standing in the doorway to the Church. He was tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and caramel skin, wearing a long dark smock with baggy sleeves. He was leaning nonchalantly against the half-open church door, a serene smile on his thin face. As Mulder watched, the young man turned and slipped inside the church. The door clicked shut behind him.
Mulder felt his stomach tighten. There was something about the young man that bothered him. He wasn’t sure—but he thought he recognized that caramel face. He had seen a similar man on line at customs in the airport in Bangkok. He couldn’t be sure—but the young man might have been on the same flight from New York.
Mulder realized immediately what that might mean. Then another thought hit him, and he quickly retrieved the folded map from his pocket. He ran his eyes over the map, focusing on the distance between the major structures. He looked at the church, the way it was perched close to the road that separated it from the clinic, the way it seemed to have been built on a slight angle to accommodate the small plot of land beneath. He came to a sudden realization.
The area where the church was built could have also been part of the MASH unit.
He jammed the map back into his pocket and rushed into the street. His heart was racing, and his hand automatically went to his gun. He unbuttoned his holster and let his fingers rest on the grooved handle of his Smith & Wesson. If he was right about the young man’s arrival in Thailand coinciding with his own—then there was a good chance he was heading toward a trap. But he couldn’t risk losing a potential suspect in the Trowbridges’ double murder. And a possible link to Emile Paladin’s research.
He reached the door to the church, pressing his body against the nearby wall. There was a pile of transparent plastic a few feet away, and he remembered seeing the door covered when he and Scully had first arrived. He had assumed the church was closed down, out of use. It was a good cover for a research laboratory, especially in a place like Alkut. The Buddhist villagers had no use for a Catholic church, with their spirit houses and their Buddhist shrines.
Mulder took a deep breath, letting his heart rate slow. He wished there was some way he could contact Scully—but he knew his cell phone was useless, since Alkut was out of his cell’s satellite window.
He placed his free hand against the door and gave it a quick shove. The door swung inward, clanging against the inside wall. The sound reverberated through the air, indicating a wide, open space. Mulder drew his automatic, clicking back the safety.
He crouched low and maneuvered around the doorframe. The air was thick and musty, tinged with the distinct scent of rotting wood. Mulder was standing at the back of a long rectangular hall with a twenty-foot arched ceiling and wood-paneled walls. The walls were partially covered by a green-hued mural of the Last Supper, but many of the panels were missing, gaping holes in the place of holy guests.
Mulder quietly slid along the back of the hall, his eyes adjusting to the strange lighting. Huge stained-glass windows on either side cast rainbows across the wooden pews, revealing dark gashes where the benches had been randomly torn out from the floor. Near the front of the room, Mulder saw a tangle of wood that used to be the support beams of a stage. Rising up from somewhere near the center of the tangle was a row of rusted organ pipes, dented and twisted by age and the warm, moist air.
The hall seemed deserted; Mulder moved forward carefully, trying to keep track of the floor in front of his feet. As with the clinic, the floor was made of cement, though it looked as though there had once been carpeting; tufts of moldy green padding speckled the aisle between the pews.
Mulder had nearly reached the destroyed stage when his gaze settled on a pair of thick, forest green curtains hanging down along the back wall. Between the curtains was a door, attached at a disturbed angle by a single warped hinge. There wa
s easily enough room between the door and the frame for someone to slip through.
Mulder hurried his pace, his gun trained on the dark opening. He could hear the blood rushing through his ears, and his knees burned from the controlled crouch. He reached the curtains and kneeled next to the broken door. The room on the other side looked small, dimly lit by a single, painted window. It seemed deserted as well, and Mulder slid inside, shoulder first.
It was some sort of priest’s chambers. There was a low table in the center, and an overturned chair by the wall. A pair of crucifixes hung at eye level above the chair. Beneath the crucifixes stood a small shelf of sacramental items: a few cheap-looking goblets, a pair of candles, an empty wine bottle. Next to the shelf hung an enormous, faded tapestry, taking up almost half of the back wall. Mulder could make out the outline of three separate miracles imprinted on the tapestry, but the details had long since eroded.
Mulder slid toward the tapestry, his feet making as little sound as possible. The bottom of the tapestry was swinging, as if brushed by a gentle wind. Mulder grabbed a handful of the thick material and lifted.
He found himself peering into a dark, descending stairwell. The steps looked worn and scuffed, and Mulder could see they had once been covered in the same green carpeting as the front hall. He smiled, then narrowed his eyes. Caution demanded that he head back to the inn and get Scully—perhaps even contact Van Epps for some armed military backup. He had no idea what he was going to find in those tunnels.
But the longer he waited, the less chance he would find answers. The young man could easily slip away. Mulder shook away his reservations, bent low, and carefully slid beneath the tapestry. He slowly worked his way down the stairs, one hand gliding along the cold stone wall.
The stairs ended about twenty-five feet below the church, at the mouth of a long tunnel. The tunnel had porcelain-tiled walls, with steel support beams rising out of the cement floor at regular intervals. It looked roughly as Mulder had imagined; more modern and clean than the subway tunnels where he and Scully had found Perry Stanton, but certainly not the sort of thing you’d find in any urban mall in the U.S.
To Mulder’s surprise, the tunnel was well lit by fluorescent light strips set every few yards into the curved ceiling. The lights meant two things; there was some sort of power source beneath the church. And the underground tunnels had not been abandoned twenty years ago with the rest of the MASH unit.
Mulder headed forward, calling on his training to keep his progress near silent. The air had a brisk, cavernous feel, and Mulder wondered if there was a ventilation system in place. He thought he could detect the soft hum of a fan in the distance, but he couldn’t be sure.
Ten yards beyond the stairwell, the tunnel branched out in two directions. Mulder paused at the fork, his back hard against one of the steel struts rising up along the wall. To the left, the tunnel seemed to go on forever, winding like a snake beneath Alkut. To the right, the curved walls opened up into some sort of chamber.
Mulder shifted his gun to his other hand and retrieved his map one more time. He tried to place himself near one of the major chambers—but he couldn’t be sure where he had entered the underground compound. His best guess was that he was a few feet from a large, oval room labeled C23. Judging from the distance he had just traveled, C23 appeared to be about fifty feet across.
Mulder decided it was worth investigating, and exchanged the map for the automatic. He held the gun with both hands, index finger beneath the trigger. Then he swung around the corner and through the entrance to the chamber.
He had accurately judged the dimensions of the room. The ceiling was higher than in the tunnels, curved like the inside of a tennis ball. As in the tunnels, the walls were covered in porcelain tiles, but the tiles had gone from light green to a much deeper, oceanic blue. The floor was still cement, and there were two steel posts in the center of the chamber supporting the high ceiling. At the back of the chamber was the opening to what looked to be another tunnel.
Mulder’s eyes widened as he saw row after row of hospital stretchers taking up most of the sheer cement floor. Each stretcher was partially concealed by a light blue, circular plastic curtain. Next to the stretchers stood chrome IV racks trailing long yellow rubber IV wires.
The walls on either side of the chamber were lined with high-tech medical equipment—much fancier and certainly more expensive than anything he had seen in Fielding’s clinic. He saw what looked to be an ultrasound station, a pair of EEG machines, and at least a dozen crash carts trailing defibrillator wires. Next to the crash carts stood an electron microscope, next to that a computer cabinet supporting a row of state-of-the-art monitors. The monitors’ screens all emitted a blank blue light.
Across from the monitors stood a high glass shelf full of chemical vials and test-tube racks. Next to the shelf was a freestanding machine Mulder recognized as an autoclave, a steam sterilizing unit with a clear glass front and a digital control panel. The autoclave was about the size of a small closet, and the control panel was lit; the machine seemed to be in use. Between the sterilizer, the computers, and the various machines, this chamber was drawing a lot of power.
Mulder moved forward, counting the partially curtained stretchers. His eyebrows rose as he reached 130, closely packed together in groups of ten and twenty. Altogether, the same number of stretchers as patients on the Trowbridges’ list. Mulder reached the center of the chamber, his thoughts swirling. Was it possible that a group of horribly burned soldiers had been kept here, alive, for more than twenty-five years? Was it possible that Emile Paladin had truly discovered a miracle—
Mulder froze, as sudden footsteps echoed through the chamber. He spun toward the sound—and saw the thin young man standing at the entrance to the chamber. Now that there was less distance between them, he noticed that the man was of mixed origin. His eyes were narrow and dark, his face sharply angled. He was a good two inches taller than Mulder, and his lithe muscles looked like twisted ropes beneath his skin.
The young man’s hands were hidden beneath the wide sleeves of his smock. Mulder made sure his gun was clearly visible. “I’m Agent Mulder of the American FBI. I’m going to approach, slowly. Don’t make any sudden motions.”
The young man smiled. There was a loud shuffling from somewhere behind Mulder’s right shoulder. Mulder jerked his body to the side—and saw three men enter the chamber from the opposite entrance. All three were tall, and looked to be in their early twenties. They had matching crew cuts and seemed to be in excellent physical shape. They moved easily into the room, spreading out as they closed toward Mulder. The largest of the three strolled directly toward him, and Mulder noticed that he had something in his right hand: a syringe filled with clear liquid.
Mulder aimed his gun at the man’s chest. “Stay where you are.”
The man continued forward. Mulder realized there was something off about his face. The man’s eyes seemed strangely overdilated. He was looking right at Mulder—but he seemed somewhere else entirely, locked in some sort of daze.
“Not another step,” Mulder warned, flipping the safety off his automatic. “I said stop!”
The two wingmen were within fifteen feet, now closing toward him. The man with the syringe was barely ten feet away. Mulder aimed directly at his chest. The man paused—but not because of the gun. He was looking at the syringe. He tapped it against his arm, knocking away an air bubble. This was going to get ugly.
Suddenly, all three men dived forward. Mulder fired twice, the gun kicking into the air. The lead man jerked back on his feet, then regained his momentum and continued toward Mulder. Before Mulder could fire again, incredibly strong arms grabbed his wrists, twisting his hands behind his back. The Smith & Wesson clattered to the floor.
He kicked out, trying desperately to twist free. The man with the syringe leaned over him, and he caught a glimpse of something that sent his terrified mind spinning. The man had a circular red rash on the back of his neck.
Muld
er felt a sharp prick just above his collarbone. The three men suddenly released him, stepping back. Mulder’s knees buckled, and he fell, trying limply to catch himself on the curtain around a nearby stretcher. The curtain snapped free, and he hit the ground. He heard laughter behind him, and he used all his strength to turn his head. The Amerasian was watching him, smiling. The smile seemed to extend at the corners, twisting and turning like a rope made of blood. Mulder tried to crawl away, but he couldn’t get the commands to his muscles. His body had changed to liquid. Green clouds swept across his vision, and he felt the cold floor against his cheek. A second later, everything turned black.
Quo Tien shouted a blunt command, and the three drones started back toward the other side of the room. Tien watched their fluid progress, intrigued by their perfect muscle control, the lack of stagger in their walk. He remembered how it was in the beginning. The plodding, slow movements, the limited limb control. The progress was indeed impressive. But it was only partially complete. The drones represented only the first stage of the experiment. In a few hours, the final stage would begin. Twenty-five years of research funneled into a single operation—an operation that was going to make Tien immensely rich. And now there was nothing to stand in the way.
Tien turned his attention back to the FBI agent lying on the floor. A shiver moved through him as he flicked the straight razor out from beneath his sleeve. He could imagine the man’s blood flowing just beneath his skin. He wanted to taste that blood, to feel it spread over his hands and lips.
He slid forward. The FBI agent was lying on his side, legs curled in a fetal position. His dark hair was spiked with sweat, and his face was drawn, his eyes moving rapidly beneath his eyelids. Tien dropped to his knees inches away. He ran a finger down the man’s bare arm, feeling the slick sweat and the tense muscles beneath. He carefully lifted the razor—
“Tien. Put it down.”