Extinction Countdown

by James D. Prescott

  The screen broke up with a burst of static.

  “What do you mean, structures?” Jack shot back. They’d come here to find an alien ship, not a long-lost archeological site. Thinking quickly, Jack spoke to Anna. “Take a few snapshots, would you?”

  “Understood,” she replied. The screen began to populate with a series of grainy stills, many of them distorted by waves of static. Then all at once, the link went dead.

  “Oh, crap!” Gabby shouted. “Did we lose it?”

  “You can get it back, can’t you?” Eugene asked.

  For a moment, all of them stared at the now darkened laptop screen, silently wishing the drone back to life. None perhaps more than Anna.

  “Signal strength is at zero percent,” she lamented. “Aphrodite is not responding.”

  “I’m sure you can make another,” Dag said, patting her back with a noticeable clank.

  Anna’s eyes remained downcast. “Certainly I can, but I worry none will be as magnificent.”

  Gabby caught Jack’s gaze and threw him an inquisitive look. What’s up with her? that look said.

  Jack shrugged in response.

  “Anna, can you get those images cleaned up?” Jack asked her.

  She remained silent.

  “Anna, Dr. Greer is talking to you,” Rajesh scolded her.

  “Give her a minute,” Gabby told him. “Losing something you love isn’t easy, even if it is only a drone. Maybe we just need to give her some time.”

  Precisely what they didn’t have, Jack thought but didn’t say.

  A crackle of static sounded from the desk behind them. “Looks like the radios are back up and running,” the pilot told them. “We’re in the process of apprising CENTCOM of the situation.”

  Mullins marched over and scooped up the walkie. “Roger that.” He spun on his heels and speared Eugene with an intense stare. “What are you doing right now?”

  Eugene pointed at himself. “Me?” His eyes were three times their normal size. He looked like a kid caught chewing gum in math class.

  “You’re gonna come with me to recall the elevator.”

  Eugene looked outside, seeming to contemplate the cold, blowing snow that had kicked back up in the last few minutes. The theoretical physicist’s lack of enthusiasm was hard to miss. “Isn’t Dag better suited to…”

  “But first,” Captain Mullins said, cutting off Eugene’s weak rebuttal, “we pass by the armory and get some firepower.”

  The smile that flashed across Eugene’s face lit up the room. Any previous objections to helping Mullins quickly dissolved. Suddenly, Eugene didn’t seem to mind the bone-chilling cold outside.

  As much as Jack didn’t want a guy like Eugene packing heat, he knew what awaited them below would be far more dangerous than a bunch of mysterious structures. There was a team of trained killers who would stop at nothing to get what they had come for.

  •••

  About thirty minutes later, Jack found Rajesh in the computer lab. He glanced out the large round window and saw two figures—the taller one in front—struggling against the heavy winds and driving snow.

  “We’ll need to get down there soon,” Jack said, noticing Rajesh wasn’t wearing his biosuit. It lay sprawled over the seat next to him. The engineer seemed completely preoccupied.

  “No problem.”

  “I was actually coming to see if you knew where Anna was.”

  Rajesh peeled away from the monitor he’d been staring at. “Still locked away in the electronics lab, I imagine.”

  Jack was struck by a flash of deep concern. “What do you mean locked?”

  “I mean I tried getting in and she would not open the door. Her emotional protocols are spiking.” He pointed to a graph he had onscreen to prove his point.

  For Jack, there was only one thing he needed to know. “Is she fit to join us or not?”

  Rajesh met his hard gaze. “At this point, I cannot say.”

  Jack left at once, heading for the electronics lab. He passed Gabby along the way and she joined him once she found out where he was going.

  As soon as they arrived, Jack went for the door and found it locked. He tapped gently. “Anna, are you in there?”

  A handful of seconds passed without a response.

  “Anna…”

  “I am, Dr. Greer.”

  “I’d like you to open the door, Anna.”

  He could hear noise coming from inside the room.

  “Anna, I’m not going to ask you again.” Even Jack couldn’t help marveling at the absurdity. Here he was on a mission of perhaps the highest importance and one of the most vital members of the team was sulking. He had little to no experience with teenagers, but Jack could only imagine there were so many more people better suited to dealing with a situation like this. What he wouldn’t give to have a school counselor on hand.

  Just then the latch clicked and the door swung open. Anna was on the other side of the room, digital face glowing back at him. Her expression looked dour. Or was she preoccupied?

  “How’d you open that door?” he asked. “I didn’t hear you cross the room.”

  “Remotely, Dr. Greer,” she explained, as though the feat had been no big deal. “This entire facility operates off of an encrypted wireless network. It was merely a case of bypassing the network authentication. I am now able to monitor all functionality associated with Northern Star’s operation.”

  “Which includes locking and unlocking doors,” Gabby said, more than a touch of concern in her voice.

  “That is correct,” Anna replied, going back to the worktable. “As well as opening and closing doors, hatches, life support and surveillance systems.”

  “Surveillance?” Jack said. He was suddenly struck by an idea. Perhaps there was footage of the attack. If so, it might give them a better idea of what happened and how many attackers they might be up against. By Tamura’s own account, she believed the hit squad had been composed of at least a half-dozen operatives.

  “Yes, there are several cameras, Dr. Greer. They cover each entrance to the facility, the corridors, communal areas and science and technology labs. I’ve reviewed the footage available, but unfortunately, it appears to have been interrupted before the attack.”

  For the first time since entering the room, Jack became conscious that the lab was in a state of total disarray. Every table was filled with tools, wires and a mishmash of parts. “What exactly is going on here?” he asked sternly. “I thought you were cleaning up the fuzzy images from the drone.”

  Anna motioned to the table next to the door. “The images you asked for are there,” she said, pointing a robotic digit. “Unfortunately, I was not able to improve the clarity due to the low resolution of Aphrodite’s cameras.”

  Gabby went over and picked them up, leafing through them one at a time. “Jack, I think you better see these.” She handed them over as he approached.

  He held the first at arm’s reach, another miraculous benefit of being in his forties. Seemed your eyes were always the first things to go, followed closely by your hips and knees. Maybe if he was lucky, DARPA might whip him up some new ones like they had for Anna.

  As his sight adjusted to the blotches of light and darkness, he began to see why Gabby had called him over. In the distance he spotted a structure that dwarfed nearly everything around it. Even with distortions still present, there was no doubt whatever it was, this thing had a triangular shape.

  “It’s got to be five hundred feet high,” Gabby said, amazed.

  “The extraterrestrial ship we found off the coast of Mexico was twenty-five hundred feet high,” Jack said. “And from what I can see, this isn’t metallic at all, but possibly made of stone.”

  “Based on the distance from the object,” Anna added, “I suspect Dr. Bishop’s assessment of the object’s height is very close. In fact, it is just shy of five hundred feet in height and seven hundred and fifty feet along each side of the base. As a point of interest, I should note those are str
ikingly similar dimensions to the Great Pyramid in Egypt.”

  “Six days ago, satellites detected a blast wave from this area,” Jack said, struggling to reconcile what all of this meant. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger until he saw Gabby frown at his funny little habit.

  Anna made the finishing touches on whatever she’d been working on and put it aside with several other very similar-looking hunks of plastic.

  “Care to fill us in on what you’re doing?” he asked her, snapping out of his reverie.

  “I would be happier to show you, Dr. Greer. You and Dr. Bishop will need to back up.” With her palms out, she pushed against empty air. “Just a little bit more. That should be sufficient.

  “When I lost connection with Aphrodite,” Anna began to explain, “I was overcome with an incredibly dense stream of data. Much of it had no grounding in logic. It is difficult to explain, I am afraid, even for me. Although I am capable of processing nearly an infinite number of information packets at once, I could not help but feel overwhelmed.” She blinked, looking up at both of them. “I do not expect what I am telling you to make much sense.”

  “It’s called sadness,” Jack told her. “And it can overwhelm us no matter how smart we think we are.”

  “Dr. Viswanathan outfitted me with neural transmitters, designed to draw attention to areas of my mechanical structure at risk of failure. The data stream was very similar to when one of my joints fails to articulate.”

  Gabby’s face glowed with the warm smile of a mother. “Yes, that’s what we call pain.”

  Anna’s eyes flitted to the ceiling in contemplation. “Is it habitual for these two sensations to be connected?”

  “Feelings of loss and pain?” Jack said, rubbing the scruff on his chin. “More than you know.” His glance shifted over to the table. “So how about that display?”

  “Oh, yes.” Anna moved to the corner of the room opposite them. “I call them my flying circus.” Without warning, the room filled with the sharp whine of over a dozen motors buzzing to life. Then the table itself seemed to come alive as those hunks of plastic Anna had been working on, each no bigger than a paperback novel, began to rise and then hover five feet in the air. The aerial acrobatics began a second later as the tiny drones danced around one another, navigating the narrow space of the lab in a ballet that left both Jack and Gabby speechless. First they swept around doing figure eights, followed by a handful of other geometric shapes before she had them mimic the motion of the planets in the solar system. Jack watched Anna’s eyes as she directed their movement remotely. When they were done, the drones each settled back on the table.

  “That’s one hell of a flying circus,” Jack said, clapping. Gabby was just as impressed.

  “There is still more work to be done,” Anna admitted, beaming. “But for now they look most promising indeed.” The expression of sheer joy on Anna’s face said it all. She wasn’t a liability. In a way, she was no different from them, thrown into a dangerous and frightening situation and forced to deal with an onslaught of emotions powerful enough to floor the average person.

  The radio on Jack’s belt garbled to life. “Jack, are you there?” It was Captain Mullins.

  “I am. Go ahead.”

  “The elevator’s topside. Gather your team and your gear. We head down in ten.”

  Chapter 21

  Kolkata

  “We need to leave right now,” Jansson called out from the lab, her voice ringing with panic. A handful of researchers and lab assistants hid under desks or behind large pieces of equipment. Nobody knew what to do or where to go.

  Mia was in the projection room next door, downloading the work they’d done on HISR and Salzburg’s link to GMOs onto a USB key. Her heart was booming in her chest as she watched the progress bar taking forever. Faint shouts and screams rose up from somewhere down the hall. The transfer was at seventy-five percent complete when Mia heard a series of ragged footsteps enter the lab.

  “Are you Dr. Mia Ward?” the male voice asked. He sounded Indian.

  “No,” Jansson replied. The slap that followed echoed through the lab. Then came the sound of Jansson squealing and falling to the floor.

  The muscles in Mia’s body tensed with fear. Next door, those huddled in the lab cried out in terror. They were about to be slaughtered like chicks trapped in a coop. She glanced down at the progress bar and swore. Eighty-six percent. She removed the pistol from her side pocket and held it loosely in her hand. She stepped into the lab.

  “Someone looking for Dr. Ward?” she asked. There was a dangerous edge to her voice. Like a woman who had nothing to lose. Part of her was hoping the FBI agents assigned to protect her would come charging through that door guns blazing, but there was no telling what had happened to them.

  The two men searching through those hiding in the room stopped what they were doing. The brawny one, his hair tied back in a ponytail, stood by the door. The other headed toward her. He was thinner than his friend, but he had the eyes of a killer. As he moved in, a scuffle broke out near the door. Both of them turned to see what was going on. Two men were fighting—the brawny Indian thug and…was that Ramirez? Mia jerked the pistol into the air and followed the tall guy as he ran back to help his friend.

  If there had been a back door, Mia might have grabbed Jansson and as many others as she could and fled. But the only way out lay through the doorway where three men were currently fighting. The tall one pulled a pistol of his own and the man attacking them kicked it out of his hands. All three were exchanging a series of furious blows.

  Then she heard the white guy shout, “Get stuffed, you wankers.” And for a second, Mia stood, blinking with confusion, the gun poised in her hand. “Ollie?”

  Just then the brawny one sent a fist into Ollie’s gut, doubling him over. He then threw him to the floor. But with a half spin, Ollie managed to land on his back. It hardly seemed to matter as the two assailants were right on top of him.

  In five quick strides, Mia crossed the lab. The two on top were starting to rain blows down on Ollie. Mia pressed the muzzle to the first man’s head and fired. His body immediately went limp and collapsed. She then swiveled to the other, who looked up just in time to see a flash before he too fell back dead.

  Mia lowered the gun slightly, aiming it now at Ollie’s battered face. His left eye was swollen and a trail of blood ran from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Her index finger hovered over the trigger.

  “Go ahead, lass,” he said, staring back at her intently. “I deserve it for what I did to you. I will say before you kill me, you sure did learn your way around a gun since I’ve been gone.”

  A few feet away, Jansson sat up, rubbing the side of her head. A handful of lab assistants hurried over to help her. A bloodcurdling scream raced up the hallway, a quick reminder that the danger was far from over.

  Ollie grabbed the pistols the men were carrying and wiped the blood from his lip with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “What about Ramirez and Chalk?” Mia asked, no one in particular.

  “If you’re talking about those two FBI blokes,” Ollie said, “I don’t think they made it.”

  A pang of sadness settled over Mia’s heart. Soon enough, the guilt would come. But there wasn’t time for any of that now. They needed to get far away from here.

  She slid the pistol into the pocket of her cargo pants, held out her hand and recited a line from Ollie’s favorite movie. “Come with me if you want to live.”

  Chapter 22

  Washington

  Kay came awake with a start. In her dream, she’d been salsa-dancing at a sweltering club in Miami with her fiancé Derek. Even now, awake and rubbing at her tired eyes, she could still hear that same Latin beat repeating ad nauseam. But this wasn’t a case of dreams bleeding into reality, she realized, listening to her phone belt out its Latin ringtone. No, this had been reality intruding into her dreams.

  The ring died out a second before she could answer it. As she plugged in her pass
word and unlocked the device, two things struck Kay at once.

  The first was the time. It was nearly 10 A.M. That part made sense since she’d stayed up most of the night banging out the article on the conspiracy she’d been given by her confidential White House informant, Laydeezman. High on caffeine, she had typed the article’s final sentence right as the sun had come up, firing it off to Ron Lewis, along with copies of the close-ups and video stills they would use on the website’s front page. Surely, as the wildfire spread, papers around the world would run with news of the diabolical plot. Kay would be famous and the president would live to see another day. It was a win-win.

  Still, given what Laydeezman had leaked to the rest of the world, climbing through the cut-throat ranks of a major national newspaper was no longer Kay’s abiding ambition. Especially since it was starting to look as though in less than two weeks there might not be a paper anymore, let alone a soul left in the world to read it.

  Looking down, she saw her phone had close to forty voicemails and at least twice as many text messages. Many of them were asking where she was, whether she knew. With a growing sense of unease, Kay dialed Ron Lewis at the paper’s news division.

  “Dammit, I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

  “Ron, I was up the whole night writing the article.”

  “Well, we couldn’t run it.”

  Kay shot up in bed. “What?”

  “Not as is.” Ron sighed. Kay could hear people shouting around him.

  “Why not?”

  “Haven’t you listened to a single message I sent? There’s been an attack on the president. This morning, Marine One was shot down on its way to Joint Base Andrews.”

  Cold fingers danced up the back of Kay’s neck. “I-I don’t understand,” she stammered. “But the article was supposed to protect him.”

  “We posted it at 8 A.M. about thirty minutes before the attack,” Ron told her, out of breath. “Right away we had to pull it and retool the piece, but don’t worry, your name will still be on it and large swaths of what you wrote are still there.”