Halon-Seven

by Xander Weaver

  She could see the anger in the man’s eyes. None of this had gone the way he had expected. But there did seem to be some positives. First of all, Cyrus wasn’t the least bit concerned with the threats. And if he wasn’t concerned, maybe she shouldn’t be either. Secondly, Clayton didn’t appear to know anything about Meridian or Halon-Seven. His interest in the events of the last week seemed to be limited to Cyrus and any way he might leverage those events to bring Cyrus back into the fold.

  It was a relief. From what she’d been able to intuit, Clayton had resources and influence. If he’d found out about Meridian, he might very well be a greater danger to the safety of the team than Bola Alvares or Nil Bayer.

  As Reese pulled back from her thoughts, she saw Hondo toss Cyrus a roll of duct tape. Cyrus stood and tore off a strip. “You were rude enough to stow away, but I’m going to give you a choice. You can go with this,” he held up the flap of tape. “Or we can close you in the lavatory for the remainder of the flight.”

  For his part, Clayton looked genuinely amused. His eyes tightened on Cyrus with realization, and then he grew tense. “You’d better be joking!” he protested.

  This brought no response from Cyrus. He stood his ground, figuratively and literally. The strip of duct tape was held high for all to see. “It’s a basic rule of covert operations. You never walk into a place you can’t walk out of.”

  A rattle moved through the aircraft, and the pilot’s voice was broadcast from the overhead speakers. He announced they were beginning their descent toward Santa Barbara airport. While this was a relief to Reese, she was troubled by the curious look in Cyrus’s eyes.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  Cyrus’s response was loud enough for both her and Hondo to hear. “He might be a bloated bureaucrat, but Clayton isn’t foolish enough to board a plane where he’s going to get himself stuck. He knew I would push back.”

  Cyrus glanced out the window, nodding with understanding. “He’s got men waiting for us on the ground.”

  Clayton’s troubled expression morphed into a look of triumph. The vindictive gleam in his eye couldn’t be suppressed any longer. “That’s right,” he said smugly. “You know me, kid. I get my way, one way or the other! I have two-dozen men waiting on the ground. Either you take me up on my offer and come back to the Coalition, or your friends here get listed as enemy combatants and I throw them in a hole so deep and dark they’ll never again see the light of day again.”

  Reese felt the sudden churn of acid in her stomach. This man wouldn’t take no for an answer! No wonder Cyrus left the Coalition and never looked back. She glanced at Hondo. This time, even he looked concerned. She felt a new, more powerful wave of nausea. Could this man really make good on his threat?

  There was one ray of hope as far as she could see. While Clayton looked supremely self-assured, Cyrus appeared completely unconcerned by the man’s threat. Either he had one hell of a poker face, or he had a card left to play. All the same, she couldn’t help herself. Her grip on Cyrus’s arm tightened.

  “He’s just not going to be happy until I toss his ass out of this plane,” Cyrus muttered to Reese.

  He looked her full in the eyes. “I’ll be right back,” he said with a confident smile. Without a moment’s hesitation, he kissed her. Not a peck on the lips but a slow, confident, nothing-else-in-the-world-matters kind of kiss.

  Cyrus gave her a wink. Then he turned, grabbed Clayton by the strap that bound his hands and effortlessly forced him to his feet. Throwing an arm over the man’s shoulder, he casually guided him toward the end of the cabin.

  Reese couldn’t help herself. “What’s he going to do?” she whispered to Hondo—the whisper more out of concern than an effort to keep quiet.

  Hondo shrugged. “You got me,” he admitted. He knelt on his seat and looked though the window.

  When Reese joined him, she could see what had drawn his attention. A dozen black SUVs sat at the end of the runway, their hideaway blue and red emergency response lights strobing in the distance. All the while, the plane was dropping closer and closer to the ground as the pilot prepared to land.

  At the far end of the cabin, Cyrus was speaking calmly in hushed tones with Clayton. It didn’t appear to be much of a conversation. Cyrus was doing all of the talking. Clayton wasn’t reacting. He just listened without interrupting. After about two minutes of this, Cyrus must’ve finished what he had to say, because he became silent. He just looked at the short older man. For seemingly endless moments, Clayton stared back at Cyrus.

  Finally, with great consternation, Clayton held out his hand. Cyrus handed Clayton his confiscated phone. The man tapped a speed dial key and waited only a moment. There was brief exchange with the individual on the other end of the line before Clayton disconnected and handed the phone back to Cyrus, who pocketed it. Clayton took a long look at Cyrus and exhaled deeply. Dejected and beaten, he slowly plodded back to his designated seat.

  Cyrus walked back to Reese’s end of the cabin and took his seat on the sofa. Hondo chuckled, and returned to his seat. Reese still didn’t understand what had happened. Everyone suddenly seemed content with the situation. Well, except for Clayton. He looked like a child who had just been put in a timeout. But why? She knelt on the seat and looked back out the window in time to see the last of the black SUVs driving off the runway with its lights extinguished. Clayton’s men were falling back.

  She looked back at Cyrus. What had he done?

  Cyrus smiled and shrugged. Reese couldn’t imagine what he’d said to cause Clayton’s about-face, but she looked forward to the story. For the time being, it seemed, things were back to normal. Funny, she thought. When did all this become normal?

  Epilogue

  Undisclosed Location

  Monday, 12:05 pm Colorado Time

  There was a flash and a pronounced popping in his ears, and then the trip was complete. Cyrus held Reese in his arms. Once again, they had gotten used to teleporting together. He actually looked forward to it. Any chance to hold her close. It was the popping in his ears he could do without. However, this time it hurt more than ever. The others would have experienced it too, but only he would know the cause. They were standing in a fifteen-by-fifteen-square-foot concrete room, located four hundred feet below the Superstition Mountains in the southwestern United States.

  The irony of their destination wasn’t lost on Cyrus. Following the bloody confrontation at the warehouse, they’d flown out of Phoenix only to land in western California. From there, they’d teleported essentially back to where they had started in Arizona. Only this time, hundreds of feet below ground. The installation they had just entered carried a double-black security clearance that put it well above top secret. Even the venerable Coalition wasn’t aware of its existence. Cyrus wasn’t able to share the specifics of their location with Reese or Hondo. The juxtaposition was reserved for his personal amusement.

  Access to the facility had been arranged for him by Walter Meade, prior to the man’s death. Meade truly had planned ahead and thought of everything. And Cyrus finally understood why. A thumb drive stashed in a hidden burn safe within the basement vault had finally fully put things in perspective. The data drive was in an envelope that also contained a hand-written letter, addressed to Cyrus. That letter had explained that only Cyrus could unlock the biometric encryption of the thumb drive, and Cyrus alone should be privy to the information it held. What he decided to do with the information after he considered it was entirely up to him. Meade had asked only that Cooper first review the data in private.

  So Cyrus had, prior to the operation at the warehouse in Phoenix. The information on that drive had changed his perspective on everything: Meridian, Meade’s work, even the way he looked at the world around him.

  Moments later there came another flash of light, and Hondo appeared on the teleportation platform. His hands instantly went to his ears. “Bloody hell!” he grimaced.

  Cyrus nodded. “It seems to be a shortcoming of the
technology.” He looked at Reese. “Is there any way to lessen the shocking effects on the inner ear?”

  She considered the question. “We’ll look into it. It’s tricky but worth the effort. Where are we? There must be a serious shift in barometric pressure to make our ears pop like that.”

  He shook his head. “As much as I’d like to share, I’m afraid that’s classified. But it’s for your protection. And I need to be clear. What we’re going to discuss must stay between the three of us, at least for the moment. Meade was very specific in requesting that this information not be disseminated—his words, not mine.”

  Hondo still had a finger in his ear, wiggling it to relieve pressure. “That sounds ominous, mate.”

  “You’re telling me,” Reese agreed.

  Cyrus didn’t respond. It was important to him that he be given their word, formally. He just waited for their response.

  “You know me, I can keep a secret. I won’t tell a soul. You have my word,” Hondo confirmed.

  Cyrus could tell by the look in Hondo’s eyes that the man was somewhat unnerved by his need for a formal agreement on that matter. Hondo was realizing that the matter had gravity.

  “I promise,” Reese said simply.

  Satisfied, Cyrus turned to the heavy steel door that was the only way out of the concrete chamber. He entered a twelve-digit code into the touchscreen panel beside the door handle and waited. A moment later, the light at the top of the LCD touch screen went green and there was a hissing sound, as the airtight seal around the door released.

  When he pulled the door open, Cyrus could see the surprise register on both Hondo’s and Reese’s faces. They were both shocked to find that the door was nearly six inches thick and contained a powerful retractable pressure seal which had pulled back into the door when the lock had disengaged. Hondo was grimacing again and had his finger in his ear once more. The release of the door’s seal had changed the pressure in the room. Cyrus felt his own ears pop again in response.

  They stepped into a wide concrete hallway that was brightly lit with overhead fixtures. A man sat on a battery operated golf cart a few yards away. “Good day, Mister Cooper,” the man said with a smile. “Room 16D has been reserved for you and is ready when you are.”

  “Thank you,” Cyrus replied. He motioned for Reese and Hondo to step onto the golf cart. Hondo took a spot on the seat beside the driver, and Reese took one end of the front-facing rear seat.

  The driver’s mention of room 16D raised a question in Cyrus’s mind. He had no idea how large the underground installation might be. He’d only been here once before, shortly after reviewing the life altering set of files that Walter Meade had left. Along with the files, Meade had included the access code for an undocumented platform as well as the communication protocols he needed to use prior to teleporting to the underground facility. Other than a few additional scraps of information, Cyrus knew precious little about the secret installation.

  Cyrus stepped on board the cart and slid into the seat beside Reese. A moment later, the cart pulled away. It gained speed and went cruising down the seemingly endless concrete corridor.

  Reese leaned in close to Cyrus. “I’ve been dying to ask. What did you say to Clayton that caused such an about face? One minute he thinks he has you over a barrel, and the next he’s pulling his men back and walking away with his tail between his legs,” she whispered.

  Stifling a grin, Cyrus looked back at her and shrugged. “I simply reminded him that a man in his position would do well to think twice before blackmailing a field-proficient operative with an eidetic memory. In very nonspecific terms, I suggested that such an individual was likely to run across sensitive information, in the course of an operation, that might reflect poorly on the chain of command. I explained that such exposures are commonplace and often unavoidable. The problem is that an operative with a photographic memory can’t help but file away every disparate bit of information. And sooner or later, he’ll start to connect the dots. It’s a hazard of the profession.”

  Reese’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “You blackmailed him? You must have something nasty on him!”

  Cyrus considered the still unexplained disappearance of Clayton’s prior boss, Monica Fichtner. Though complicated, the bad blood Cyrus had with the Coalition could be traced back to her. To date, no one had discovered the location of Fichtner’s body. It was believed by some that many of the improvements Clayton had since made to the organization were thanks to a healthy fear of a similar fate.

  “Sometimes people just need a little motivation to do the right thing,” Cyrus offered in cryptic reply.

  The cart took another corner and stopped before an innocuous steel door with a nameplate marked simply 16D.

  “Here you go, sir,” the driver said, and waited for his passengers to step from the vehicle. “When you’re through, just dial the operator and another cart will be dispatched to return you to room 144X.”

  Now Cyrus really wanted to know how large the facility might be. It had a switchboard operator, apparently multiple golf-cart taxies, and at least 144 rooms. That didn’t allow for the odd letter suffix to each room number, which could add nearly endless combinations and who knew how many additional rooms. What might other rooms hold?

  Shaking his head, Cyrus pushed those concerns aside. Entering a code into the touch screen beside the door, he led Reese and Hondo into room 16D. He was about to reshape their understanding of the world. The mysteries of this facility would wait for another time.

  Room 16D wasn’t much larger than the room in which they’d first arrived. This room was about twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. There was a long rectangular conference table in the center, surrounded by comfortable office chairs. The far wall was dominated by a massive LCD flat-panel display. The remaining walls were bare concrete. The overhead light was modified. The lights projected brightly into every corner of the room. But there was a remote control at the near end of the table that allowed the lights to be dimmed for use in conjunction with the screen on the opposite wall. Beside the remote were a series of cables extending from the surface of the conference table. Cyrus immediately set about connecting his laptop to the cables.

  Reese took a seat to his right and Hondo at his left. More than half a dozen empty chairs surrounded the rest of the table.

  “Are we expecting guests?” Hondo asks after regarding the empty seats.

  “No,” Cyrus confirmed. “It’s just us. But we need to discuss this here. The data on this USB drive can be accessed only while connected to the network at this facility. It’s a proprietary failsafe.”

  A moment later Cyrus had his laptop booted up. He dimmed the lights and powered up the wall-mounted flat-panel display. Taking the USB thumb drive from the pocket of his jeans, he pressed a button on the device that caused the USB port to extend from the end. He put his thumb on a small sensor on the surface of the tiny drive. There was a chirp and a small LED strobed green. Then he plugged the drive into the side of his laptop.

  “I don’t know how to preface this, so I’m just going to jump in. Reese knows some of these details, and I covered some of this back at the warehouse with Bayer. While some of this is a refresher, some of what I’m about to explain will correct points we didn’t fully understand earlier. Other parts are entirely new. Meade’s flash drive has changed my perspective on everything,” Cyrus explained.

  With a tap of his keyboard, the first image arrived on the screen at the end of the room. The photo was a very old, poor quality, and black and white. “This is Rumsfeld Pellagrin and his team of three assistants, shortly after Pellagrin recovered a particularly interesting meteorite along the east coast of the United States in 1903. The meteorite came to be known as sample J-189D. Pellagrin was just 23 years old at the time.”

  A new slide appeared showing Pellagrin and a number of others at work in what now looked like an antiquated lab. Pellagrin was studying the recovered meteorite. “The specifics of the discovery are too much to
get into right now, but the properties and characteristics observed from the study of this meteorite led to our current understanding of physics.”

  He changed to the next slide. It showed Pellagrin again in the lab, this time with a man whose head was ruled by a wild shock of unkempt hair. Both men appeared to be in deep examination of a pair of meteorite fragments. “Pellagrin and his friend here, Albert Einstein, worked closely for a number of years. It’s not common knowledge, for reasons that are about to be made clear, but Einstein did not develop his famous theories of physics in a vacuum. His theoretical work wasn’t entirely theoretical after all. Many of his theories were the result of real-world observations, and the study of the meteorite Pellagrin discovered in 1903.

  “Of particular importance to us, the study of this meteorite led to our understanding of quantum physics and quantum teleportation. Both sciences necessary to make Meridian function.”

  Noting the slack jawed expression from Hondo, he knew this was all news to his friend. The surprise in Reese’s eyes was likely due to the enlightening bit regarding Einstein. While she knew of Einstein’s involvement in the early days of Pellagrin’s work, J-189D’s effect on science was only beginning to fully sink in. Just wait, he thought. They were just starting down the rabbit hole.