“Mia?” Jansson said gently, touching the geneticist’s elbow.
Mia blinked and turned to her. Her colleague was wearing a backpack and sneakers, clearly ready to flee at the first sign of imminent danger. “I’ve gone over the data three times,” Mia said. “If you see a flaw I’m happy to revisit and check again.”
Jansson shook her head. “I see no flaws. I’m quite shocked, to be honest with you. Genes aren’t supposed to act like carpenters, cobbling together cabins out of driftwood. HISR is acting more like a nanobot dressed up to look like a gene.”
“You might very well be on to something,” Mia admitted. “Although given the circumstances, I don’t see us getting to the bottom of that particular question here and now.”
“No,” Jansson said reflectively. “Which of course leads us to the other major mystery.”
“Why GMOs?” Mia replied, seeing where her Dutch friend was heading.
“Exactly,” Jansson said, placing her hands on the back of the chair before her. “Why not steam power, nuclear fusion or any other manmade invention?”
“It’s a benchmark,” Mia said, thinking out loud. “The ability to create genetically modified organisms. To assemble life. To play God.”
Jansson held up the data Mia had collected. “If this is true—if the HISR gene was planted inside organisms on earth and set on sentry duty while it sat waiting for the age of genetic engineering—well, I’m sorry to say, I find that incredibly creepy.”
“You think that means they’re actively monitoring us?” Mia asked, her eyes narrowing.
“My guess is they’ve been watching the planet for millions of years, waiting for those Plesiadapiformes specimens you found on the ship to grow up and become us. And now, seeing that creation is consumed by war and strife, they’ve decided to wipe us out.”
“The other possibility,” Mia offered, “is that they don’t even know we exist.”
“I would find that hard to believe,” Jansson said. “Why go to all the trouble of seeding the planet with life only to destroy it? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Who says any of it has to make sense? Just look what they did to the dinosaurs. Besides, I shouldn’t be mentioning this, but there’s been talk of using nuclear missiles to blow the ship up before it reaches us.”
Jansson crossed her arms. “Do you think that could work?”
“Maybe in the movies, it might. Given the object’s speed, I think it’s liable to do more harm than good.”
“That doesn’t leave us with many options, besides living underground or moving to Mars.”
Mia shook her head. “Jack’s gonna try to have the people at NASA beam messages at the ship informing them that there are people down here.”
“Assuming, that is, they give one whit about the indigenous life on earth.”
“We can only hope they do.”
“But how will you send a message they’ll understand?” Jansson asked. “And what radio frequency do they communicate on?”
“That’s the problem,” Mia admitted. “We have a basic sketch of their language. Maybe that’s where SETI comes in. They’ve spent billions of dollars on those telescopes. Maybe it’s time we put them to good use.”
Both women smiled, forgetting for a moment about the world outside.
“Or maybe that’s where Salzburg comes in,” Mia proposed halfheartedly.
Jansson looked genuinely intrigued. “Really? How so?”
“Well, I have a hunch that frequency you mentioned might be listed somewhere inside Salzburg’s genome. All we need to do is find a patient with all eight Salzburg genes and feed the genomic information into a supercomputer I happen to be friends with.”
“Wow, aren’t you lucky.” The sound of Jansson’s laughter was cut short by an explosion that rocked the building. This time, the lights did go out and for good. Mia charged out of the projection room and into the sound of screams from the corridor. Hearing it chilled the blood in her veins. In an instant, Mia understood exactly what was happening. The mob had broken in and they were trapped.
Chapter 20
Greenland
The feed from the drone showed it slowly approaching the twenty-foot hole bored through the ice. The winds, which had been fierce when they landed, had died down to around ten miles per hour, making flying the four-rotor device a far more manageable affair.
Quickly they came upon the lift, which straddled the opening with a triangular formation of metallic struts. A series of thick cables led from an engine room nearby to a series of wheels and pulleys at the top of the metallic support structure. What they had hoped to find at the end of those cables was a large circular cage that would have allowed them to descend the nearly two-mile distance through the ice. But the cage wasn’t there. Whoever had taken out the advanced team must have already used it to make their own descent.
The team sat huddled around the computer screen, watching the drone draw closer.
“Signal strength at one hundred percent,” Anna told them, referring to the link she had with the drone. “Dr. Greer, do you wish for me to proceed?”
He glanced at Gabby, who had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She caught his eye and nodded. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Proceed,” Jack said.
Dag leaned in, his beard next to Jack’s shoulder. They were all wearing their biosuits, fully geared up to head down as soon as they got a handle on what, if anything, was down there.
Without any noticeable movement, Anna expertly maneuvered the drone over the opening, careful to avoid the cable running down the center. In one swift motion, she rotated it into a ninety-degree angle and swung toward the cable until the two touched. An electronically controlled, metallic latch Anna had fitted to the base of the drone then secured the flying device to the cable. Another order from Anna tilted the top two rotors so that they were now horizontal.
“The hell is she doing?” Dag asked, baffled by the display.
A wide grin spread across Grant’s ruddy face. “Something quite ingenious, actually.”
Anna cut power to the rotors and the drone plummeted through the hole, clinging to the cable like a special forces soldier fast-roping from a helicopter. A wall of emerald greens and azure blues whizzed by as the drone descended.
“Five hundred meters,” Anna told them. None of this information was appearing on the screen, but was being relayed directly to her.
The colors changed slightly as the drone fell further away from the sun’s rays. Before long the colors dulled.
“One thousand meters,” Anna said.
It was darker now and she switched on the drone’s lights.
When it reached two thousand meters, it exited the bottom of the hole and entered a truly enormous ice cavity. Jack snatched the inconclusive seismic survey they had found in the science lab and studied the vague outline of the chamber. He held the printout up to the light of the window next to him and tilted the image on its side. “Seems to go on for miles in every direction,” he said, impressed.
“Could it be that whatever’s down there has been melting the ice around it?” Gabby speculated.
“If the bottom of this cavern is flooded,” Grant said, twitching one of his bushy eyebrows, “then your hypothesis may be correct. But if it’s still frozen, then perhaps whatever’s down there didn’t melt the ice, but prevented it from forming in the first place.”
The image on the computer screen began to stutter. “Signal strength is at forty-two percent,” Anna warned them.
“Detach from the cable,” Jack told her.
Anna turned to him. “Are you certain, Dr. Greer? The connection is already down to thirty-nine percent. I may lose Aphrodite.”
“Aphrodite?” Dag repeated in surprise.
Jack grit his teeth. “You may have fixed that drone up with a few fancy modifications, Anna, but unlike you, it’s only a machine. Now do as I say and disconnect.”
The rear rotors began to spin, slowing the drone’s descent as the metal latch came undone. A second later the rotors transitioned and it flew away from the cable at high speed, righting itself in the process. Captain Mullins stared at the laptop feed, mesmerized. Even from this height, the drone’s lights cast deep shadows against the strange shapes undulating below.
They could see scattered mounds of ice and what looked like rock. Still, there was something unnatural about what they were seeing.
“Bring her lower,” Jack said, crossing his arms and bending slightly at the waist.
“Signal strength at twenty-five percent,” Anna informed him. Although her tone was neutral, Jack could feel the subtle barbs all the same.
They were about a hundred feet from the surface when Gabby let out a gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Dag asked, clutching his chest.
“Those shapes…” she stammered, struggling to get the words out, clearly struggling to process what she was seeing. “I think they’re structures.”
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 hand
ed 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 strikingly 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.”
Extinction Series (The Complete Collection) Page 36