Bored with the conversation – primarily because it’s not revolving around her – Allison stands and walks towards Cole. She gently pushes Richard aside as she makes her way across the room. “Yummy – who ordered the snack?” Her eyes widen and she flashes a broad grin, gazing at Cole’s midsection. “Now that is a six-pack. I’ve seen a lot of Photoshopped abs in sports magazines, but these babies are the real deal.” She trails her finger down Cole’s stomach and he leaps back as if he’d been electrocuted.
“Excuse me,” shouts Dia, stepping in between Cole and Allison. “Take your toddler-aged hands off of him.”
“Excuse yourself,” Allison scoffs. “Who are you, his mother?”
“What?”
Allison places her hands on her hips, looking Dia up and down with a judgmental scowl. She’s at least half a foot shorter than the towering blond standing before her, but she doesn’t reveal any signs of intimidation. “Look at you; you’re obviously too old to be his girlfriend.”
“I’m twenty-seven!” Dia replies with a sneer. “How old are you, kid – twelve?”
“Sixteen next month. And there is no way you’re less than forty. I’ve seen some bad Botox in my time but yours is the worst, lady. Word of advice: don’t get the same guy who does your nose job to do your injections. Always better to hire a specialist.”
“Okay, just because you’re the size of a Barbie Doll doesn’t mean I won’t bitch slap you back to Sesame Street. Now go drink a juice box and find some crayons to play with. Adults are having a conversation.”
“Alright, Allison,” says Richard, protectively placing his hands on her shoulders. “I think you’d better step back and do what she says.”
“Athena,” she snaps back.
“Richard stares at her, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
“That’s what I’m changing my name to,” says Allison. “It’s time for me to get some decent endorsements so I want to be called Athena from now on. As soon as we get this whole murder thing cleared up I want you to call my lawyers and make it legal.”
“Alli...Athena, I don’t think this is the time or the place to be making these life-altering decisions. Why don’t we just see what Mister Goto can do to help, and we’ll talk about this later, alright?”
“Fine. But it’s almost 11:00 in the morning so I need my wheatgrass and orange juice. I’ll wait here while you go find a juice bar.” Allison turns to Goto. “Do they even have wheatgrass in Spain?”
Police sirens begin to wail in the distance.
Goto walks to the window and brushes the thick red drapes aside, peering down the street. The squad cars are approaching but are being slowed by the heavy traffic. “They are always so obliging when they call ahead.” He removes the transportation device from his pocket and begins the activation process. “I’m sorry to interrupt your brunch plans Miss Smith, but we really do need to leave.” He turns his attention to Paige, Dia and Cole. “And will you be joining us?”
“No way,” says Paige. “We’re not letting you take them to The Basement.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to arrive because I require your assistance – this could be our last encounter before it’s too late.”
Paige takes a step towards Goto and her eyes pop with electricity, reflecting her distrust. “Before what is too late? We need answers.”
“Then come with us,” Goto offers, “I promise I’ll tell you everything I know about The General, and explain our involvement. But we really don’t have much time. Law enforcement will be here momentarily and believe me, they will open fire. This suit was recently tailored – I’m not thrilled at the prospect of having it riddled with bullet holes.”
The sirens are growing louder.
Tires screech across pavement as the squad cars pull up in front of the hotel.
“This is it,” says Goto, turning his wrist to glance at the face of his oversized watch. “I would estimate we have less than two minutes until we’re in the midst of a fire fight, and in a confined space like this, it really would be quite a spectacular bloodbath.”
“What do you think?” asks Dia, turning to Cole for advice.
“I don’t know if I trust Goto,” he replies. “But as long as you’re with us you can jump us out of there, right; tear open a portal back and get us home?”
“Sure, but...” Dia freezes, unable to make a decision.
“Just over a minute left; time to go, boys and girls.” Goto pulls the long, flexible metal hoop from its container and kicks over a table, dropping it in the center of the room. It rattles to life before emitting a powerful beam of light that stretches to the ceiling.
A guard races in from the hall. “I can hear them coming up the stairs. We have thirty seconds, maybe less.”
Goto motions towards the doorway. “Get the injured in here now and get them into the transporter. Everyone else, jump.”
The guards begin to dive into the shaft of light, disappearing into the blinding tunnel.
Goto pulls open his jacket and draws a silver Desert Eagle handgun from its holster. He turns towards Paige and spins it in his palm until he’s holding the barrel, offering her the handle. “I know you don’t trust me, and at the moment I’m not sure if I can trust you. So let’s earn it together, shall we?”
Paige closes her fingers around the grip and raises the weapon, stabbing the barrel into Goto’s chest. “How do you know I won’t pull the trigger?”
“I don’t,” says Goto with a smile. “But now you know that I won’t.”
A canister of tear gas rolls into the room, clinking along the tile before bursting open with a billowing plume of suffocating grey smoke.
Paige turns to her sister, briefly scanning her eyes. She nods. They jump into the fading portal and disappear, followed by Cole. Richard reluctantly steps into the light with Allison in tow. Before Goto enters he twists the dial on his watch, adjusting their entry point.
As the Spanish police burst into the room wearing gas masks the light disappears, and the transporter hoop self-destructs. The only traces left behind are a few fragments of blackened metal scattered over a charred circle that has been burned into the carpet.
Several minutes later on the street in front of the hotel, Barcelona’s Chief of Police pulls a ringing cell phone from his pocket. “Hola.”
“Hello,” says The General. “Give me some good news.”
“My apologies, sir,” the Chief replies. “By the time my men arrived they had already disappeared. Should we stay on high alert in case they return?”
“They won’t be back in Spain. Issue a release to the press that a piece of a satellite broke off and fell from space, killing the tennis player in the park.”
The Chief reluctantly agrees, and The General assures him that the New World Council will back up any claims he makes with doctored photographic evidence. “What about the reporter,” asks the Chief. “The man who took the pictures?”
“Arrest him,” The General orders. “Charge him with cocaine possession and have him sentenced to rehab. Make sure he’s fired from his job for falsifying the story, and tell them to print a retraction; direct orders from the Council.”
The Chief hesitates, momentarily confused. “But the Council can’t make orders like that to the free press...can they?”
“Starting now they can. We need to temporarily expand our power to ensure the capture of these terrorists. Brute force isn’t working, so it’s time to activate our back up plan.”
“Is there anything we can do to offer support, General?”
“No,” he replies. “I can take care of this myself. I just need to make a phone call.”
Chapter Twenty-Three – Subterranean
The Basement
Arriving in The Basement is disorienting to say the least.
The passengers transition from the blinding glow of the transportation hoop to the pitch black receiving area, with the cold metal floor doing little to cushion their fall. Flood lights illuminate the chamber,
revealing their surroundings to be a wide, circular room that stretches nearly thirty feet to the ceiling. Standing in this massive steel cylinder with smooth reflective walls gives the sensation of being trapped in a giant soda can.
“Place your weapons on the floor,” a cheerful voice instructs, emitting from invisible speakers somewhere overhead. “You have thirty seconds to comply.”
The guards quickly relinquish their machine guns and drop them at their feet. The voice never indicates what the penalty is for non-compliance, but by the speed they drop their weapons it can’t be pleasant.
Paige, still clutching Goto’s handgun, turns to him and raises it.
“Standard protocol,” he says with a shrug. “No one enters The Basement armed. Unless, of course, you’re in charge...which I am.”
She saunters towards him, expressionless. “Well I suppose I should return this then.”
“Thank you for taking care of it,” he replies. “Did you know that it was recently customized? It’s a limited edition model that...”
Before he can finish his sentence Paige’s eyes flare with purple energy and the gun melts in her palm, spilling to the floor in a puddle of silver liquid before it can reach his outstretched hand. “Oops.”
Goto tilts his head and smirks, but doesn’t respond. Paige was hoping to enrage him, but he seems amused – almost impressed that she would openly defy him.
A thin, red beam of light scans everyone in the chamber, moving up and down with a soft buzz. After the scan is complete a magnet yanks the machine guns from the floor, sticking them to the ceiling with a heavy clank that reverberates down the walls.
“You are free to proceed,” chimes the voice, and a doorway silently appears from the seamless walls.
Goto leads his guests into the long corridor to the main entrance of The Basement. The hallway appears more like a cave – an endless tunnel that stretches out in front of them, carved into the rough exposed granite. The soaring ceiling is so far out of view that it’s obscured by darkness. They make their way down a metal walkway, guided by long fluorescent strips that border either side of the path.
“Where are we?” asks Cole as he peers up into the darkness. “It feels like we’re in the middle of a hollowed out mountain.”
“After a fashion,” Goto replies, pulling a cigarette and lighter from his inside pocket. “We’re currently eight hundred and thirty feet below the border of France and Switzerland. We’ll be at the entrance point in just a few minutes.”
Goto shoots Paige a sidelong glance as they make their way down the hall. He holds his gaze for a few moments before she finally responds.
“Why are you gawking at me like you’re gonna propose?” she asks, refusing to make eye contact.
“I was thinking about our connection,” he replies with an infuriating smirk.
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“Don’t be coy; you know it’s there. You can feel it. Like part of my consciousness imprinted onto yours, and yours onto mine.” Goto recalls the moment when he reached into Paige’s mind using his unique form of telekinesis in an attempt to induce a cerebral hemorrhage. His ability can often cause a victim to experience seizures, nausea, blindness, and in some cases an aneurysm – but in Paige’s case her own powers were able to prevent any extensive injury; but an attachment remains, and it grows stronger the closer they are to each other. “Why do you think I handed you my gun back in Barcelona?” he continues. “I knew you wouldn’t pull the trigger before I offered it to you.”
Paige remains expressionless. “You should have rolled the dice and handed it to Dia. She’s not nearly as sweet as I am.”
“Not only that, but you knew that I knew... remarkable, wasn’t it? All that, the result of just a momentary psychic connection. Can you imagine the bond we might share if we actually made physical contact? The results could be extraordinary.”
“If you lay a finger on me I’ll melt your fucking brain.”
Goto shakes his head. “I don’t believe you possess that level of telekinetic ability, Miss Davenport.”
“Probably not,” she replies bluntly, “but I own a pair of handcuffs and a welding torch.”
“This is bullshit,” Allison fumes, elbowing Richard in the arm as they trail behind Goto. “When that little Japanese guy said we were going ‘underground’, I thought he was talking about witness protection. Like on some tropical island until we could sort this out? I didn’t know he actually meant underground.”
“I’m sorry,” Richard replies nervously, “I didn’t know that’s what he meant either.”
“And you never thought to ask? And what are you going to do about my dietary requirements? I haven’t had protein in at least two hours, and I’m feeling dehydrated. Do they have Evian water down here? What about fresh mangoes and avocados? Let me guess, you never asked about that, either.”
Richard feels several drops of sweat form on his brow. “I’m so, so sorry, Athena – I’ll pull him aside and ask about all that as soon as we get settled.”
“You’d better,” says Allison, “because this is already turning out worse than that tournament in Osaka. Remember the hotel? The one with the five hundred thread count sheets you booked me at? I’m not living through another nightmare like that again, Richard. I’d rather take my chances with the police.”
The group approaches the entrance to The Basement at the end of the hall.
Goto presses his hand onto a touch screen that unlocks an imposing metal door embedded into the granite. It swings open slowly, like an oversized bank vault.
The doorway leads to a stark white room the size of a hotel lobby. There are several elevators to their right, and numbered corridors that lead in different directions to the left. The guards continue down hallway seven, assisting the two battered men that Cole rendered unconscious. Goto presses his thumb to another small touch screen that summons an elevator. “Welcome, everyone. Should we start with a light snack and refreshments?”
“I could go for that,” Allison replies before anyone can respond.
“Later,” says Dia with authority, her eyes rolling down towards Allison, and then back to Goto. “You promised us answers, and we want them – right now. What does our father want with Akashic and why do you want to stop him?”
The elevator opens and Goto steps aside, waving his guests in as he flashes a smile. “I could explain everything to you, but I’ll do you one better – come with me to the observation level, and I’ll show you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four – Stochastic
Langley, Virginia | August 30, 2011 | 9:12 am, Eastern Daylight Time
The General’s office resides in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath CIA headquarters, buried below layers of steel, lead and bedrock; enough to withstand a direct hit from an atomic bomb.
The space is relatively small and sparsely decorated, without a single framed picture lining the grey concrete walls. The only notable difference between this office and any other in the corridor are the scores of blueprints sprawled throughout the room, covering furniture and taped to the walls. Detailed designs of spectacular weapons, conceived by the brightest scientists and engineers that the US government could find; lasers that can stop an incoming missile from a thousand miles away, bombs that drill their way into the ground and cause catastrophic earthquakes, and jets that are so efficient they can circle the globe without refueling.
These projects were conceived prior to the inception of the New World Council, years ago when a third world war seemed inevitable. Funding was quickly pulled when alliances were formed and peace treaties were signed, but The General holds on to them as a reminder of what could have been – and what might be again.
Poring over a schematic of a much less ambitious project – an existing riot control tank – The General uses a pencil to sketch crudely drawn modifications, and scribbles notes around the border. After folding the sheet into a square he slaps his palm down on his intercom. “Roderick, I have the blueprint ready. I n
eed you to come down to my office and get it, and then have it sent to Jean Lefèvre over at the DGSE immediately.”
“Yes sir,” he replies. “I’m on my way now, sir.”
Closing his eyes to savor a rare moment of quiet solitude, the silence is broken by the rattle of his phone vibrating on his desk, buried beneath a pile of documents. He retrieves the device and flips it over, scanning the call display. He exhales silently before pressing ‘Accept’ and reluctantly answers.
"Doug!” The affected southern drawl that pours from James Kerrigan's lips is almost enough to make him cringe. “I’m on my way to Scotland right now in my private jet. Wish you were coming along, partner – I’m gonna play a couple rounds of golf at my new course. Have you ever been to Scotland? Damn if that ain’t a beautiful country. If it wasn’t for all the Scottish people it would be almost perfect. If we can just get them speaking American over there everything would be even...”
“Mister Mayor,” The General interrupts, his deep voice coarser than usual. “If you could please get to your point; I have a lot to deal with right now.”
“I know, I heard about your upcoming mission. You never told me you were a football fan.”
“I’m not,” The General replies. Thirty seconds into the conversation and it already feels like it’s dragging out.
“Well you must be, because this move you’re about to pull off in France is a Hail Mary pass if I’ve ever seen one. You might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you’ve got guts. I’ll give you that.”
“I’m doing what needs to be done.” The General knows that Kerrigan is well-connected, but he’s growing more agitated at his level of inside knowledge when it comes to national security. The Mayor has to be paying off more than one person in the CIA; there is no other way he can be obtaining this level of classified information so quickly.
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