by Chris Fox
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a man’s British voice called from the back of the room, “please find your seats. Each of you will find a tablet on the table before you. All relevant research and statistics have been loaded in the Mohn Crisis Management app. Feel free to follow along with the presentation. Be aware that a vote will be taken afterwards.”
“A vote on what?” Jordan whispered, leaning toward the Director.
“I don’t know. They called us last night and said to get everyone here. People came from as far away as London. I’ve never seen this sort of urgency before. Whatever it is, I think we’re about to find out,” he replied, crossing his arms and slouching in his chair. Bad posture was probably the most overt show of defiance he was willing to make. The Director didn’t reach for the iPad, so Jordan followed his lead. He could study whatever it contained later. He wanted to stay focused on whatever theatrics the board had come up with.
The lights dimmed, and a multicolored world map sprung up on a massive screen in front of the U, perhaps forty feet across. Jordan hadn’t even realized they made screens that large. Then the presentation began to play. A pin appeared in Peru, labeled first incident. As a calendar advanced on the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, more pins began to appear. The whole thing took maybe forty-five seconds, beginning with January 7 and ending on March 4. Two months and a sea of tags covered South and Central America. A crosshatch also covered the southwestern United States with outbreaks appearing sporadically throughout the rest of the country.
Europe, India, and Asia had their share as well. Africa was curiously empty, with only two outbreaks. Both were labeled contained, leaving the continent completely free of the werewolf menace. That didn’t make any sense. The military forces in Africa weren’t equipped to deal with werewolves, which should have torn through large population centers. Yet they hadn’t. What was Africa doing that the rest of the world wasn’t?
“As you can see, now is not a good time to be a citizen of the Americas, and soon the same will be true of the rest of the world,” the polished British voice explained. “This is what the world will look like in another sixty days.”
More pins began to fall, much more quickly now. South America became a sea of them. Then Mexico. The United States made it thirty days before it too was completely covered. Canada began to fall. At the same time, Europe was overrun. Asia and India fared better but were still over eighty percent covered. Africa had sporadic pockets of red as well. Jordan wondered who’d come up with these numbers.
The lights came up. A man in an electric wheelchair zoomed smoothly to the center of the U, commanding everyone’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, the world is coming to an end. We simply cannot contain the outbreak. Conventional warfare is useless. Our enemy can hide among us, completely undetectable until they strike. Even our top-tier teams have lost engagement after engagement.”
Eyes shifted to Jordan. He glared back defiantly, daring someone to say something. No one did.
“All of this is dire, but it doesn’t mean the world has to end for us. Our illustrious CEO has created an oasis of technology, a place where we can gather in comfort and strength,” the Brit explained. Then he rose from the wheelchair, a few people gasping in surprise. More than one looked angry at the subterfuge. “That chair was my prison for nearly a decade. Now I can not only walk but also run far more quickly than I could in my younger years, all because of the technology we control. The new world is coming regardless of what we want. The only question is, will we be consumed by it…or will we rule it?”
A short, hairy man with dark skin and smoldering eyes stood. He had a faint French accent. “Your presentation is quite impressive, but what exactly are you proposing? You mentioned a vote but have yet to elaborate.”
“A valid question, Mister Rutger,” the Brit retorted smoothly. He walked to the hairy man’s seat. “I am proposing that the board move all assets and all relevant personnel to Syracuse. Most of our research and development is done there, and it is remote, making it the ideal location to start over.”
Jordan had heard enough. These people had unleashed a plague on the world, and now they were tucking tail and running, abandoning everyone. Nearly seven billion people. He wasn’t going to stand for this. He found himself on his feet, hands balling into fists. “So you’re just giving up, then? You’re letting it all go to shit. The people on your special list get saved, and everyone else dies. That’s what I’m hearing, right?”
“Yes, Mister Jordan. That is precisely what you’re hearing,” the Brit gave back with a smug smile. “The world is ending. That is a tragedy without equal, but this company is in no position to change that fact. We did try, as you know better than anyone. Had you succeeded, things might have been different, but now we need to face reality. A reality you had a direct hand in crafting, I might add.”
“And what do you plan to do about the pyramid?” Jordan said, voice carrying even though he hadn’t shouted. “What happens if these werewolves get in there and wake up the woman we found? We can’t even begin to imagine what she might be able to do. Will you be safe in your little oasis then?”
That gave the man pause. He cocked his head, gaze sweeping the room. “The commander raises an excellent point. Leaving that place to the enemy could have catastrophic consequences. It must be dealt with—permanently. The board should authorize one of our nuclear assets to be detonated at the site. In the meantime we will increase our contingent of troops there to ensure we hold it until it can be destroyed.”
“You’re going to irradiate Peru?” Jordan asked, even though he knew he was ending his career by speaking further. They might have forgiven his temerity because he pointed out a threat, but that granted only so much leniency, leniency he’d just exceeded.
“Yes, Mister Jordan. We will irradiate the single largest threat to the world, which happens to be located in Peru. Far away from any population centers. The damage will be minimal. And you, yourself, suggested the threat needed to be dealt with. Do you have a better suggestion? A permanent garrison, perhaps?” he asked, scorn ripping into Jordan. The whole room shared the hostility, all save for the Director. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the goal of war is to destroy the enemy’s ability to wage it, isn’t it? Didn’t you just tell us this pyramid could be their greatest weapon?”
“I don’t have a better plan, sir,” Jordan said, deflating. The man was right. What else could they do? They had to prevent that pyramid from falling into enemy hands.
“Then you’ll have whatever you need to hold the site until our full tactical response is ready to be delivered,” the man said. Then he turned back to the whole council. “That is, assuming the board is willing to vote on such an action. Is anyone willing to make a motion?”
“Not just yet,” the Director’s clear voice rang out as he rose to his feet. He gazed around the room, defiant and regal. “I believe we need all the facts before making any decisions. What we do here could shape the future of our entire species.”
“A reasonable request,” the Brit said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Ask your questions, Director Phillips.”
“This company had a response team waiting when the pyramid appeared. How did we know it was going to?” the Director asked, leaning on the desk with both hands as his gaze all but burned into the Brit.
“I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to discuss that, even with the board…” the Brit began. He trailed off as Leif Mohn rose from the table.
The old man circled the table, coming to stand next to the Brit. He stared calmly at the Director. “I sealed those records personally, but Mark’s question is valid. As of right now, I’m unsealing them. It’s time you all had the truth.”
Jordan didn’t know what shocked him more, Mohn’s candor or the fact that Director Phillips had a first name.
Chapter 65- Object One
Jordan wasn’t any sort of orator, but even he recognized when he was in the presence of a master. Mohn’s words had
stunned the audience, shocked some of the most powerful people in the world. He’d dangled information that many had probably spent years trying to acquire, and he seemed to be asking nothing in return. It was without a doubt an ambush of some sort. Jordan had walked into enough to recognize the signs.
“This,” Mohn said, tapping a button on his tablet and turning to face the gigantic screen, “is Gobekli Tepe, in what is now Turkey. The ruins were constructed in the tenth millennium BC. This is nearly five millennia before ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, long before archeologists claim we discovered agriculture, which would have been required to create such a vast complex.”
He paused to allow them to study the screen, which showed a number of simple stone monuments. Many had to weigh multiple tons, and construction must have taken decades.
“The entire complex was buried roughly two thousand years after it was created,” Mohn continued, drawing most of the room’s eyes back to him. “We don’t know why, but that act is part of what preserved the ruins long enough for us to discover them.”
Mohn tapped the screen of his tablet again, and the giant screen showed a new image, this one far more recognizable. “All of us have seen this one, many in person. The Sphinx. College textbooks will tell you it was built during the fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt, by Pharaoh Khafre, the man who built the second of the three Great Pyramids. There are two problems with this theory. First, Khafre never claimed credit. Pharaohs loved to claim credit, and a structure like this would have been recorded all over the annals he created. It wasn’t.”
The old man paused dramatically, delivering a wolfish smile. “That’s not the only problem with the theory. Any modern geologist will tell you that the Sphinx and its entire enclosure appear to have suffered thousands of years of water erosion. Egypt hasn’t seen enough rain to cause that since at least ten thousand BC.”
“Is this history lesson going anywhere?” a woman’s voice rang out, clear and melodic. The room’s attention fixed on a statuesque woman in a simple black dress.
“Yes, Marlene, it is,” Mohn said, eyes narrowing slightly. He stalked over to the table and set his tablet down in front of the woman. “The point of both stories is simple. Mankind’s understanding of our past is incomplete. There are entire cultures we know nothing about, cultures that have disappeared entirely. The pyramid that appeared in Peru belongs to a culture that predates even those.”
He turned from her and returned to the spot near the Brit. Then he turned again to face the room. “My grandfather knew this. He devoted his life to finding evidence of this culture. In the 1920s he found it. Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you believe in magic?”
Polite chuckles sounded through the room. Jordan was awed. Mohn held the emotions of the people here in the palms of his hands, sculpting them like an expert craftsman might a block of stone.
“A few of you have heard rumors of Object Three and the recent tests we’ve run on it,” Mohn said, unbuttoning the top button of his white dress shirt. He withdrew a simple golden pendant with a scarlet gem in the center. Even at this distance, Jordan recognized the stylized Eye of Ra. “This is Object One, the evidence my grandfather found. It looks innocuous enough, doesn’t it? At the time my grandfather found it, the object was anything but. The ruby glowed with its own inner light, and the pendant was reputed to bestow a number of abilities. Abilities my grandfather verified.”
Whispers rustled through the room, but Mohn held up a hand to forestall them. “I know what you’re thinking. If such objects exist, why has the existence of magic been disproved in every test, every magician proved to be a charlatan of some form or another? Let’s suppose you are an ancient culture with technology not unlike what we have today.
“Your technology is based on solar power. Not just any solar power, but a specific wavelength of light emitted by the sun. This wavelength comes and goes in millennia-long cycles,” Mohn explained, allowing the chain to swing back and forth. All eyes were on the pendant. “Your astronomers warn that the energy your entire culture is based on will soon fade. It will be gone for thirteen thousand years, during which none of your fabulous technology will operate.”
Jordan’s jaw dropped as he began to understand. The pyramid suddenly made sense.
“If you were the rulers of this hypothetical culture, might you consider building Arks to preserve your way of life? Much like biblical Noah? Places where your culture could survive until the energy you depended upon returned,” Mohn said, a predatory smile slipping into place. He knew he had them. “When I first came into possession of this pendant, it still possessed power. I watched that power drain away as I used it until it was nothing but a dormant hunk of metal. Then, one day in 1987, I woke up to find the ruby glowing faintly again.
“The next day, I took the wealth my grandfather had bequeathed me, and I founded this company,” Mohn continued, striding toward the wide bay windows. The setting sun bathed the carpet on that side of the room. “I did it because I realized that the power this ancient culture had depended on for so long was returning, that our sun was changing. I set up HELIOS to monitor it. I built a global empire to gather archeological data.”
He held up the amulet, and it shone in the sunlight, gleaming richly in a way normal gold could never match. After several seconds the ruby began to glow. “Each of you helped me in this process. Aided Mohn Corp. in finding pieces of the puzzle. No single one of you understood our true purpose or what it was we faced, but all of you were participating in a war you didn’t even know existed.”
He lowered the amulet, tucking it into his pocket and crossing back to the space next to the slack-jawed Brit. “Before we call this vote, I will lay out the facts very simply. I learned that a catastrophe was coming, and that Arks like the pyramid in Peru will begin to return. I don’t know how many there are, only where the first would be. I also know that our sun is about to emit the largest coronal mass ejection in known history. This wave will devastate the world’s power grid. Only those very close to the equator will be unaffected, a green zone, if you will.
“Every satellite orbiting our world will be destroyed, except for the twelve that Mohn has launched in the last three years,” Mohn explained, expression now grave. “We will be blind and confused, naked before the onslaught of an enemy we cannot understand. I didn’t understand the nature of this enemy until the first werewolf attack, but we all understand it now. Mankind has only us to shield it, something we can only do if we husband our resources and strike from a position of strength. That can only occur if we retreat temporarily, hiding our existence in our Syracuse facility. There we will watch and plan, saving who and what we can of our world.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I call for a vote. Will we be the saviors of mankind, or will we squander our strength in a vain attempt to stave off the inevitable?” he roared, looking every inch the conquering king. The applause was thunderous.
Chapter 66- Fight for Alpha
The whine of the propellers softened to a lower pitch as the plane dropped from cloud cover, weaving a tight arc toward the Tarmac below. The windows were instantly spattered with rain as the storm buffeted them about. Liz hated small planes to begin with, but they were even worse during a storm.
She leaned forward in the seat to get a better look at the city below. She’d spent two weeks in Cajamarca, taking an advanced Spanish class, and she still remembered how hard adjusting to the altitude had been. Cajamarca was at almost nine thousand feet, as high as Half Dome, back home in Yosemite.
A sea of tightly packed buildings surrounded the airport, mostly obscured by the rain. Here and there, the steeple of a church jutted over the rest of the buildings. The locals took their religion seriously and had for centuries. It took Liz several moments to realize what was wrong. The streets were largely empty. No people. Very few cars, and none of them moving. This place was deserted. A city of over two hundred thousand people.
“Ahh shit,” Garland muttered, tapping at the fuel gauge.
The red needle had been hovering a bit above the E, but his tapping knocked it down below. “Sometimes it sticks. Henrietta likes to play games with me.”
“We’ve got enough to land, right?” Liz asked, bracing herself against the console with one hand, and the chair with the other. She knew this thing was a death trap.
“Oh, sure. We’ll be fine. I could probably coast in with no fuel at this point,” he said, taking a swig from the dregs of the forty he’d been working on for the last hour. He offered her a swig and then shrugged when she shook her head. “We’ll come around in one more turn to put us on a straight shot down that runway. Probably a little slick from the rain, but it’s designed for much larger aircraft. We’ve got all the time in the world to slow down.”
The plane tilted sharply, moving Liz’s window so it was almost parallel with the ground. She fought off vertigo as her knuckles went white. She felt metal bend under her hand as her fingers sank into it. Oops. The plane righted itself, and then it began to drop sharply in elevation.
“Make sure you’re buckled up back there,” Garland yelled over his shoulder. He gave Liz a friendly smile and waggled his eyebrows. “Gonna be a bumpy landing, but I promise we’ll be just fine. Still, if you want to give me a kiss for luck, I won’t turn it down.”
Liz just gave him a deadpan stare. Adjusting to the smell had taken hours, though at some point she’d stopped noticing it. The bad jokes and mostly incoherent stories had been much harder to deal with. To his credit, Garland hadn’t tried anything more than light flirting, but she had newfound respect for her brother. Working with this guy must have been excruciating.
“Here we go,” he said, eyes finally focused on the rapidly approaching runway. He brought the nose up at the last moment, allowing the rear wheels to touch down first. The plane fishtailed wildly, but somehow Garland fought the motion and kept it in a mostly straight line.