The Deception

by Janet Shore

  Omar walked over to the child. Examining the little girl, he shook his head,

  “She is dead.”

  The mother cried,

  “I know.”

  Sofia put her arm around her,

  “Tell us about your daughter.”

  The mother sobbed,

  “At night, I would always look under her bed for her. She was afraid that there was something under there. The house would normally creak in the wind. That would rattle one of the loose floor boards in her bedroom. When that happened, she would run into my room. I would rock her and calm her down. Then, hand in hand, we would go back to her bedroom and carefully look under the bed. One day recently, the floor board rattled much louder than usual. I could not calm her down at all. That night she slept in my room. In the morning, my daughter, Ati, did not look well. There is so much decaying flesh around. I tried to keep her from playing in it. She contracted a fever. The next night, the same noise occurred, but Ati did not come out of her room. I could hear the poor sick child calling for me. When I entered her room, her bed began to shake violently. I looked under the bed. The floor board cracked away flipping the bed over. Ati was screaming for help. Out of the floor came a monster. It was a giant stinging locust that had somehow gotten under the house. I ran out of the room and grabbed a broom. I ran back in and pounded it with the broom. As I swung the broom it snapped in two against its side like a dry twig. Then, the creature stung me in the side. I screamed in pain. Falling to the floor, I crawled over to Ati’s bed. I lifted it, dragged her out, and covered her with my body. The locust broke through the side of the bedroom wall and took flight. Ati was crying. Later, I took her temperature. It was much higher than earlier that day.”

  Sofia comforted the woman,

  “That is a horrible thing, a true horror, for anyone to have to go through!”

  Omar asked,

  “The locust sting is not fatal. What killed her?”

  The mother cried,

  “She was not stung. I was stung. Ati fell down in the decaying filth around our house. She cut herself in several places. Those cuts must have gotten infected. I spread honey on the cuts several times every day. Some of them scabbed, but some were more red and swollen. I spread the honey on my locust sting, but it did not do any good at all. Earlier today, Ati died. It was too much for the little one.”

  Sofia comforted the crying woman. After about an hour, she convinced her that they needed to dispose of the child because of possible contagion. The best way would be a funeral pyre. The locusts avoided fire. Omar prepared torches and slowly built a pathway stretching fifty yards from the trailer. He respectfully laid the child on a pile of sticks. The flame burned, and prayerful words were said. Smoke rose straight up as far as the eye could see.

  Chapter VIII

  At the U.S. embassy in Rome, Marco and the U.S. agents interrogated Derek Taylor. He cooperated fully by disclosing the location of all of the devices in his possession. Nonetheless, he was not allowed to leave the embassy until the devices were recovered to avoid the possibility that he had misled them. Derek slept in a room at the embassy. A guard was posted outside his door. Four hours after midnight, he noticed that the guard had fallen asleep on duty. With great caution, he quietly slipped past the guard and made his way to the end of the long hallway. One step at a time, he slowly descended the staircase so that his footsteps would not echo and alert someone to his movements. As he reached the ground floor, he realized that the guard must still be asleep upstairs. Otherwise, the place would be crawling with security personnel looking for him. He carefully exited the building through a side door on the south side. Directly in front of him across the driveway was a small wall connected to a taller semi-circular white wall that terminated at the street in front of the embassy, a little higher than the top of the surrounding fence. Derek easily mounted the small wall, and pulled himself to the top of the taller wall where the two joined together. He crawled on his belly atop the narrow stone semi-circle toward the street hoping that he would not be noticed on any security camera. The round white stone ornament at the top of the pillar at the end seemed as if it were a mile away. The fence joined the pillar on either side. Once he reached the pillar, he carefully held onto the stone ball with all his might and swung his body so that it was hanging on the street side of the pillar, outside the embassy. Then, he let go and dropped two feet to the flat platform of an adjoining pillar. He placed his hands firmly on either side of the flat top and lowered his body again to a ledge on a short wall facing the street. From there, he easily jumped down to a small strip of grass. Then, he stepped over a small ornamental fence to reach the sidewalk. He walked to the curb and leaned against a citrus tree, looking back up toward the stone ball that he had been hanging from moments before.

  Derek started to make his way southward along the sidewalk. His hands were in his pockets. His head was down, as he slowly made his way toward a large intersection with a huge fountain adorned by immense statues on the left hand side of the street, and a circle intersection on the right. He turned right and continued the better part of a mile past two huge gardens, and an obelisk, until he came to a third garden on the right. Derek climbed the stairs to enter and cut across the garden. He crossed the upper tier, headed down the ramp, and making his way across the rest of the garden crossed the street using the second of four stone bridges. He exited the building at street level turned to his right, then right again onto the main street. He continued several blocks. The left side of the street was oddly absent of buildings. Turning to his left, Derek beheld a huge white monumental structure in the distance. He thought it out of place, and much too opulent in contrast to the rest of Rome.

  He turned back to his original course, continuing on a couple of blocks, crossing in front of the steps of a Jesuit church. He continued across the street, leaving the asphalt for a stone-paved alley. At the end of the alley joining the next street there was a small clear area on his right filled with ancient ruins. There were small stubs of three Roman pillars. Two remnants of additional pillars stood behind them about ten feet tall broken off at the top. Derek hopped the low fence surrounding the corner dropping down to ground level which was about five feet below street level. He wandered to the base of the two pillars and sat down. Looking up he noticed that dawn was breaking. Looking above the three story building across the street, he noticed an odd glinting white light flying over the building. The light swooped down into the area where Derek was sitting. As it approached, he identified it as a dove with something brilliant in its mouth. The dove lighted on the stub of an old pillar directly in front of Derek.

  Slowly, Derek stood up, reaching out to the dove.

  “Hello there, little fellow. What have you got in your beak?”

  Suddenly, the dove jumped onto Derek’s outstretched arm. Carefully, he removed the object from the dove’s beak. Then, the dove flew away. The device glowed with a strange white light. Derek turned the object over and over again in his hands trying to determine what it might be. He sat back down between the two pillars. The pillars began to glow blue in a slow pulsating rhythm. Derek’s vision began to blur. He gripped the device tightly. He saw the building across the street, but saw another place as well. Through the solid building, he could see a great body of water. His surroundings began to fade. What he thought was a vision became more real, and the building across the street seemed more like a strange dream. He reached for the pillar next to him. His hand passed through, as Rome disappeared completely. He found himself standing amidst the ruins of an ancient fortress surrounded by a great lake. A land bridge connected the ruins to the shore of the lake. There were some people about fifty yards away. As he approached them, they were startled by his sudden materialization, and ran away. Behind them was a sign that indicated Derek was standing amidst the ruins of the castle of Qal'at Ja'bar on Lake Assad in Syria.

  Derek looked back toward the area he had just walked from. On the ground were three bright glinting obj
ects. He walked over and picked up one of them. It looked as if it were made from the same metal as the device he was holding. The object grew hot in a matter of seconds. Derek quickly dropped it back on the ground as it was burning his hand. He thought perhaps it was too close to the device. Acting like markers, these objects created the target destination stop for transport. Derek set the device down, took out his handkerchief, and carefully gathered up all of the shiny markers. He tied the ends of the cloth together to form a makeshift bag. He walked to the edge of the ruins that overlooked the lake. Like a slingshot, he swung the bag as hard as he could to release it into the air, watching it hit the water with a resounding splash. The bag sunk below the surface. Water soaked inside the makeshift bag. The three objects began to heat up and fuse together. Even as it descended to the bottom of the lake, the fused markers were red hot and burned through the cloth. The remains of the cloth drifted off in another direction moving sideways, buffeted by the waves of passing fish, floating around aimlessly. The heavier fused markers dropped straight down. When they hit the bottom, they were so hot they burned through the floor of the lake. Water rushed in behind the small hole. Steam pressure widened the hole slightly behind the fused metal. Deep underground, the object bore through a metal roof. It was in free fall for a moment, and then bore through the floor which was the roof of a lower floor. This repeated until it emerged again from the lower most floor of the subterranean structure under Lake Assad. It bore through rock to a great depth, cooling as it moved. Finally it popped out of the ceiling of a cave, fell freely through the air, hitting with a cold resounding thud on the cave floor. The three objects that made up the fused bullet rolled apart to the exact separated distance they had been before Derek scooped them up together.

  In the subterranean structure, the Jazene were hard at work. The breeding program that Major Baranov had discovered extended to a vast complex underneath the lake. The hole that bore through the floor and ceiling of the complex presented a cross contamination problem for those rooms affected. Thick metal doors slid into place so that the clean room environment of the entire lab was not adversely affected. Then, the affected rooms were purged. Several robotic devices materialized scurrying on the floor and ceiling of each level to effect repairs. Within hours, the holes were sealed, and the metal doors opened. A small group entered each level to restart the processes interrupted by the intrusion.

  The mutations being developed by the Jazene took advantage of the fact that if you insert stem cells from the embryo of one species into specific locations in the embryo of another species, then the limits of localization allow hybrid creatures to form. The Jazene agenda was to build an army of overwhelming numbers. This strategy had a tactical dimension. The more soldiers you grow, the less you have to land in an invasion force. The horse-like bodies of the nightmare cavalry were not the stinging locusts that had already been released. Through stem cell insertion, these mounts sported unique heads and tails. Each had the head of a lion and many tails. Each tail also had a head that could inflict injury at close range. The power of the creature was similar to that of L and N. Fire-breathing as a genetic trait was a bio-weapon. Red, blue, and yellow colored robotic devices acted as smart controllers for the creature. Metal control conduits were directly jacked into the nervous system of the mutant for total networked central control of the fire breathing of the entire military force. There were a half of a million laboratories in the complex. The rate of production of these horrors was such that since the completion of the most recent phase of its construction, the goal of two hundred million units was within reach.

  Derek Taylor walked back from the water’s edge to where he had laid the device on the ground. He believed that he had destroyed the destination markers of the transporter by throwing them into the lake. He intended to do the same to the device he took from the beak of the dove in Rome. He raised his leg over the device. With all of the force he could muster, he smashed the device with his foot. Immediately, the smashed device emitted an energy field that enveloped Derek. He dematerialized from the ruins and found himself at the destination markers in the cave far below the ruins, the lake, and the Jazene complex. Other than the light from the glowing blue destination markers, the cave was totally dark. He could hear sounds of dripping or running water to his left. To his right, an eerie sound of something alive could be heard in the distance. To venture out of the area of the destination markers would be dangerous. He could suddenly fall off of a cliff edge or trip on an unseen obstacle. Derek’s eyes began to adjust. A faint light seemed to be ahead of him. Was it real or just an after image from being plunged into the dark? He carefully flattened himself on the ground in a crawl position. The cave floor was damp, dirty, and had a moldy smell. Ever so slowly he crawled ahead, inching and feeling his way through the blackness to try to detect hidden pitfalls. After about fifteen minutes, he looked behind him at the destination stones. If he continued much further, their light would be so dim that he could lose his way back. However, there was no point in going back there. He needed to reach the possible light source ahead of him. The dripping water to his left reassured him that he would not die of thirst. His cave blindness was his worst impediment. He heard an unearthly sound to his right far off.

  Hours later, Derek was closer to the light. There was enough illumination that he felt safe standing up. There were no chasms between him and the light. Each footstep carefully tested the ground before he put his full weight down. Each time, his foot met solid rock. He approached an opening in the cave wall, the source of the light. He picked up the pace and reached the entrance. Once inside, he could see free standing machines which gave off some light from their array of indicators. The whole area had been carved out of solid rock into an octagonal room, lit brightly from the ceiling. The machines hummed with activity. On one side of the wall was a rectangular shaped display. The red symbols were unfamiliar but the last symbol on the right was changing. After a period of time the symbol next to it changed. Derek realized that the display in front of him was some kind of countdown clock. The symbols to the left of the rightmost three were all the same. That could only mean that time was running out. Derek noticed a small tray jutting from the wall. The tray contained two stones, not unlike the destination marker stones. Derek plucked them out of the tray. He held one in his left hand and the other in his right comparing them. Suddenly, the one on the right started blinking slowly. As he turned back toward the entrance to the room, he noticed that the stone blinked more rapidly and then more slowly again. By trial and error, he determined that the blink rate changes indicated that the stone acted as a kind of homing device or compass. The faster blink seemed to indicate a particular direction. He turned one way then the other staring at the stones. The one on the left was bright and did not change at all. Derek decided to leave the control room guided by the illumination of the left stone and walked in the direction of the rapid blinking of the right stone.

  As he moved further into the cave and farther from the control room, the strange sounds that he noticed earlier grew louder and louder in the direction he was headed toward. The cave floor rose steadily in front of him. He saw a halo of lights in the distance. Eventually, he reached the top of the next ridge. Derek looked down astonished. A metal ramp descended away from the cave ground across a chasm to an extremely large perfectly flat rectangular area carved out of the rock. Along the edges of the ramp and the rectangle were the lights he had seen. In the flat area were four giant chambers filled with a white mist. The strange sounds were coming from those chambers. Derek descended the ramp to the area the size of an airfield. He lost sight of the white mist as he approached the first hundred foot long chamber. The control sections on the lower side of the chamber towered over his head. The countdown clock that he had seen in the other control room was also on this chamber’s control panel. The third digit from the right had changed to match its partner on the left. Time was short.

  The deafening groaning sounds coming from all fou
r chambers were not in sync with each other, indicating that the chambers contained four separate living things. His examination of the other three chambers was consistent with the first. Beyond the last chamber at the end of the field was a six foot high glass enclosure glowing purple. Inside was a column with strange symbols on it, and a metal protrusion. The field at one side met a jagged cave wall. Derek was able to climb the wall safely to a ledge that gave him a better vantage point. From there, he could see inside the chamber closest to him. Something was thrashing inside the swirling white mist. The groaning sounds seem to correlate with the movement. A broader ledge was barely within reach. After a careful climb to that ledge, he found a small entrance in the wall to another cavernous room. Just inside the mouth of that room, running water flowed in a small but steady stream from the ceiling. Thirsty from his ordeal, Derek cupped his hands under the water and drank heartily until satisfied. He then returned to the ledge, sat down, and watched the surreal scene before him. Eventually, he became very tired, laid down on the bare rock, and fell asleep.

  Hours later, Derek was awakened by the sounds of someone walking around on the field. He climbed down from the ledge and walked towards those sounds. Passing by the second chamber, he was startled to see a glowing white humanoid with smooth features, not unlike the one that Maria encountered on the Danali ship. The Danali soldier was examining the controls, making adjustments to the chambers as needed. The countdown timer was on its last digit. The soldier did not show any indication that he was aware of being watched. Derek looked back at the countdown display. Finally, the last digit matched the rest. A loud trumpeting sound came from the tall glass enclosure at the end of the field. Derek turned and ran holding his ears from the deafening sound until he had a line of sight on the purple tower. The glass opened and retracted, disappearing into the field. The Danali soldier walked up to the exposed column and placed his hand on the protrusion. The four chambers opened slowly with an incredibly loud sound not unlike the opening of immense hangar doors. The creatures held in the white mist were released. They immediately roared with unearthly voices. They launched themselves vertically crashing through the roof of the cave ceiling. The debris rained down on Derek. He was hit in the head and fell to the ground dazed.