“Way to go, guys! Evangeline and I will make our way to their base and get the flag. Then we’ll meet you back at home base for the victory dance.”
“And ice cream?” Carson said with unabashed hopefulness.
Evangeline could not help but smile. “Yes… and ice cream.” They could visualize Carson doing a fist pump in the air as he exclaimed, “YES!” over the channel.
“Okay, soldier,” Jack said, mimicking the stereotypical military voice he had heard on their voicemail multiple times. “Looks like we just have to mop up one more player and then we can go home.” Evangeline adored Jack’s playfulness.
They slowed their pace as they stalked closer to the enemy base. Their sense of urgency had waned, knowing there was only one last player defending the flag. Together they would overpower the lone defender with ease and grab the flag in victory.
They began to creep along with even more caution. Jack had only made the boys’ armor invulnerable. Their opponent was out-numbered two to one, but he still did not want to be taken by surprise.
Evangeline paused with a subtle jolt, thinking she had seen movement in the shadows out of the corner of her eye. She turned, expecting to see the illuminated figure of the final enemy player, but there was nothing. She continued moving forward with Jack following close behind. She caught another glimpse in the shadows. This time she turned and fired. Jack spun and began firing as well. “Did you see someone?” he asked as his eyes failed to find her target.
Evangeline began to turn in circles, scanning the paths on all sides. “I saw something, but I don’t think it’s the last player,” she said, a wave of goose bumps cascading from the base of her spine to the tips of her fingers and toes. “There’s someone else in the arena, and I get the feeling they’re messing with us. Did you add another cheat feature?”
Jack’s posture relaxed and he gave out a low chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Evangeline asked. She did not appreciate feeling foolish during a juvenile game.
Jack put his arms on her shoulders. “It’s a new obstacle in the game,” he explained. “I completely forgot to tell you about it. We call them Ghosts. They’re additional players that get to run around and distract the teams. They’re completely harmless. They don’t even use weapons. They just create obstacles, change the images that display on the walls, and things like that.”
Evangeline was not amused. Jack stifled his giggling at her stern expression. Her experiences in the military made her prone to be more serious and cautious than most people in unfamiliar situations.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “I should have warned you about the Ghosts.” Her prior playfulness had all but diminished.
“Let’s just finish the game so we can go home,” she chided, taking a breath to wash away the tension between them. She resumed her lead through the maze and, in a few moments, they arrived at the other end of the arena. They turned the corner into the enemy base and found no one defending the flag. Evangeline turned back around thinking that the last player may have abandoned the base in hopes of ambushing them.
“Jack, keep your guard up.”
Jack had lowered his weapon and walked toward the unguarded flag. “What for?” he asked. “The kid probably got lost in the maze either looking for us or trying to be the hero himself. Hmm, what’s this?” Evangeline turned around to face Jack. He bent down and picked something up from off the ground. It was a small ball, about the size of his fist.
“I guess this was missed during outfitting before the simulation,” he said to himself, tossing the ball into the air. The ball flashed a rainbow of colors as Jack tossed it into the air again. He could not hide the innocent joy from the response.
“Check it out. It changes color based on how high up it goes.” Jack tossed it up again and the ball began to blink like a strobe light.
“Jack, get down!” Evangeline screamed, lunging at her husband.
A blinding flash filled the room when she was tackled from behind. With her nose pressed against the gritty arena floor, she felt a pinprick on the back of her neck. She struggled against her attacker but a numbness coursed through her limbs, making her body go limp. Her strong, trained body would not respond to her commands. She was trapped, like sitting in a broken TRTV. It was all command, but no response.
A voice cleared away the senseless void filling her head.
“What did you retrieve from the lab, and where is it now?” the voice demanded. It was a woman’s voice, almost familiar, but Evangeline’s mind and body were too foggy and weak to wonder where she could know it.
“Jack!” Evangeline called out. “Jack, are you okay?” She felt a jolt of electricity against the skin of her neck. Her jaw clenched and her teeth mashed together as the currents coursed through her muscles. She had never been electrocuted before. She was told it could be excruciating torture, but it was not as debilitating nor as painful as she thought it would be.
The voice pulled her into the moment again. “What did you retrieve from the lab and where is it now?”
“What are you talking about? What lab? There’s no lab in the arena!” Evangeline replied. A stronger jolt surged through her neck. It took longer than before to unclench her jaw enough to speak.
“Where’s my husband?” Evangeline demanded. “Where’s Jack?”
There was a pause, and she heard a new voice in the distance, almost from overhead. Evangeline could not make out the words. After another burst of sound, she realized it had been coming from a headset on her attacker. It was a man’s voice, but the words were an indistinct mumble.
The woman’s voice broke her concentration. “Your husband is unharmed. He’s unconscious and laying one yard away from you. Give us the item you retrieved from the lab, and we’ll let you both live.” The voice was cold, devoid of all emotion.
Evangeline’s mind sharpened with sudden clarity, and the realization of what the woman was talking about sent ice shooting through Evangeline’s veins. The woman knew about her father’s note that she had found while searching the lab off world. “How could she possibly know about the letter?” Evangeline wondered to herself.
The woman rolled Evangeline onto her back, retrieving a knife from an invisible pocket on her lower leg. She straddled herself on Evangeline’s chest. Evangeline struggled for breath under the weight of the woman’s body crushing her sternum.
The woman placed the blade of her knife against Evangeline’s throat, drawing it slowly as it cut into the flesh. The woman leaned down, her nose not an inch from Evangline’s as she put even more pressure behind the blade. Evangeline could now hear the second voice within the headset.
“Ask her once more. Ask about the tile in the bunkroom.”
Evangeline’s memory flashed back to the moment she entered her father’s code into the security console on the abandoned mining facility off world.
TWENTY
The door opened with a hiss, into a room as dark and still as the void between worlds. The only illumination shattering the darkness beamed from the lights mounted on her team’s helmets. Six spotlights scanned across dusty surfaces, revealing a small laboratory, which contained a workbench and a desk. Deeper within the lab they discovered a long, tubular mass draped with a sheet resting atop a tall examination table.
Evangeline took the first hesitant step into the lab, the interior lights activating as her feet crossed the threshold. She closed her eyes against the sudden burst of light and turned her head to the floor. With spots dancing in her vision, her trained reflexes made her retrieve her weapon from her leg holster. She deactivated her helmet light and scanned the room with her sidearm raised.
Protocol demanded a safety search for potential booby traps before any other investigation could begin. Her anticipation to unearth clues to unlock the mystery of her parents’ disappearance conflicted with her training. She knew in her heart that there would be no snares set for them, yet she scanned the room in a methodical pattern anyway, doing everything by t
he book. Weston was doing the same behind her. She kept her inclination that the room was whole and safe to herself.
Pages of notes were stacked in tipsy piles on the desk, and a collection of pens was organized just so on the left hand side of the desktop. These were all telltale signs; she knew without a doubt that at some point this had been her father’s space. It bore all the trademarks of his very particular way of organizing. It would appear as haphazard clutter to anyone else, but to Evangeline it was a symphony. The music of that symphony threatened to drown her in the painful memories of her happy childhood stolen away from her, still yearning to understand why he and her mother had left her behind.
Evangeline stepped up to the desk and started rifling through the papers. Notes and charts covered each page. Matthew Chapel had his own coded shorthand that no one else could read, not even his wife. No other set of eyes could interpret the scrawls that resembled a young child’s scribbles. How often during family dinner had he paused with his fork half-way to his mouth and exclaim, “Ah hah!” Then pulling a pen from his pocket, he would start drawing on his napkin. His unintelligible symbols were priceless to him, as essential to his life as the air he breathed.
As expected, the cryptic pages before Evangeline revealed nothing to her, so she proceeded to examine the workbench. Across the bench were scattered pieces of equipment that looked like they were sophisticated and advanced years before she was born. She discovered an electron microscope, centrifuge, and an array of surgical tools - nothing that looked out of the ordinary in a lab. A built-in cabinet was on the wall above the desk. She opened its creaky door and spotted several books on mining, geology, basic anatomy, and first aid, along with other titles she recognized from her childhood, books her father had encouraged her to read. The covers were faded and peeling, the pages long since turned yellow. This appeared to be the library for the abandoned facility.
She turned and walked over to the tall table with the sheet and was there joined by Dunbar. Weston had encouraged her to follow Evangeline and scan for biohazards around the room. Evangeline walked to one side of the table, while Dunbar approached from the opposite side. She grabbed a corner of the sheet draped over the tall, metal table and looked at Dunbar, who followed her lead. With a nod, they pulled back the covering, revealing a biohazard stasis tube. The tube was aglow, surging with power like the rest of the facility.
“Whoever’s inside may still be alive,” Dunbar offered. The unexpected statement startled Evangeline. Her mind raced with the possibility that one of her parents could be inside. Such a possibility exhilarated her, yet filled her with anguish.
If one of her parents were alive within that tube, it meant that as soon as they reached the ship they would be arrested and taken back to Earth for trial and swift execution. If the occupant was not one of her parents, it could be someone who knew or worked with them. The conundrum was a double-edged sword; no matter the outcome, there would be good news as well as bad for Evangeline and her parents’ fate. Regardless of who was in the stasis tube, she had orders to investigate.
She cleared her throat to utter her first words since entering the room. “Dunbar,” she said keeping her eyes fixed on the tube. “Can you tell me anything about the occupant?”
Dunbar had been attempting to access the tube’s console while Evangeline had been lost in her thoughts.
“All I can tell for certain is that the occupant is male, and…” she paused. Frustration crept into her voice from her struggle to operate the archaic control panel. “I’m not picking up any vital signs. The occupant is dead.” She raised her head to meet Evangeline’s eyes her face showing a hint of sadness.
Evangeline snapped her head up and stared at her teammate. If the occupant was her father, this news meant he was never coming home. It would mean he broke his promise.
Evangeline was frustrated that there was no way to question whoever was inside. The discovery of the body was going to add to her investigation instead of provide some much-needed answers.
“Is it safe to open the tube?” Evangeline asked. Dunbar pulled up more records from the tube’s database and performed a second scan of the chamber.
“According to these logs, the occupant died during a surgical procedure and was placed inside pending further analysis,” Dunbar replied. “That’s all I can find. I see no immediate danger, but I recommend we wait until we have it quarantined on the Chiron before we open it, Captain.”
Evangeline nodded, chewing on her lip for several moments as she considered Dunbar’s recommendation. With a sharp intake of breath, she answered.
“No. We open it now. If there is some kind of biohazard inside it’s better to risk only six lives than potentially risking every life on the ship.” Dunbar stared motionless at her commanding officer. Evangeline slammed her hands on top of the tube to rouse her from her stupor. “Open it up, Dunbar! We need to find out who is inside.”
Dunbar turned her attention to the control panel with caution, as if she was about to set off a biological weapon. “Yes, ma’am,” she responded.
Dunbar entered a few codes into the console to access the sealed shut-off control and pressed a large, green button. The lights in the facility dimmed as the stasis tube began to draw more power. The seal on the lid broke with a long, slow sucking sound. Evangeline was surprised to realize that the sound indicated that the tube interior had been a vacuum. The hissing stopped and the lid slid away from the console where Dunbar stood.
Within the tube, under a layer of plastic sheeting, lay the figure of a humanoid male. The translucent sheet shimmered like interlaced spider webs, obscuring the face of the man underneath. Evangeline and Dunbar again took opposite corners of the sheet, pulling it down and away from his face. They both gasped at what they discovered beneath the gauzy drape.
It was an Angel, his lovely face covered in scars. Some appeared to be old and nearly healed, yet others seemed to have been inflicted only hours before the tube had been sealed. Evangeline and Dunbar continued turning down the sheet to find further evidence of abuse and damage all over his body. Burn scars were scattered across his chest. His arms had extensive bruising. His legs were dotted with stab wounds. The sight was horrific. Dunbar tried to cover her mouth, but could only manage to cover the faceplate of her helmet with her gloved hand.
“Who would do such a thing?” she whispered to the universe. Evangeline could not believe that her parents were capable of this kind of barbarism. She could not imagine her father causing intentional and brutal pain and suffering to an Angel. She knew this poor specimen would not have fought back. Angels were too gentle to defend themselves, even at the risk of losing their own lives.
Dunbar turned away to suppress a gag. The horrific treatment the Angel had endured sickened them both. Evangeline replaced the sheet over the body. As she pulled the sheet over his torso, she noticed the glint of a small, silver rod clenched in his right hand. She had missed it during their first macabre view of the body. While Dunbar still had her back turned, and the rest of the team stood guard at the door, Evangeline pried the cylinder from his fingers and placed it on the control console at the head of the tube.
Once she restored the tube’s vacuum seal, Evangeline turned to face the rest of her team.
“Weston, contact Graham and tell him what we’ve found. Ask for a back-up team and a drop ship to help us recover everything down here. I’m sure he’ll be willing to provide the additional manpower now that we’ve secured the area.” Weston turned around and moved back down the corridor toward the hanger and his TRTV.
“The rest of you,” Evangeline ordered, “start taking everything you can carry down to the airlock.” Her team moved away from the lab door and started picking up the pieces of equipment sitting on tables. Dunbar was still hunched over with her back to the stasis tube. She was hugging herself, trying to control the silent trembling in her shoulders.
Evangeline walked around the table and stood in front of her. “Are you okay, Tishia?”
she asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I need you to start helping the others,” Evangeline said, trying to redirect her attention. Dunbar, still shaking, raised her tear-streaked face.
“I thought it was Noah,” she said in a horrified whisper, staring straight through Evangeline. Their eyes connected and Dunbar could see that Evangeline did not understand.
“Noah was an Angel that worked on a nearby farm where I grew up. We had become good friends, but one day he disappeared and no one knew why,” she said, taking a deep breath and clearing her throat. She straightened her back and squared her shoulders. “I’ll be okay. Sorry, Captain. I’ll start helping the others.” With no further explanation, she turned from Evangeline and walked out of the room.
Evangeline shook the confusion out of her head, returning her attention to the silver cylinder lying beside the stasis tube. She peeked around the doorway and down the corridor to make sure her team were all busy moving the lab equipment and documents. She had a few moments alone; lifted the cylinder and examined it. It was a single solid piece of metal with a small pinhole at one end.
She could not repress her smile at the memory. Her parents had used these devices to project written messages to each other across the rooms of their house. Nothing secretive or clandestine, just little love notes to one another. Their game was the most entertaining when a message distracted someone else with an unexpected and playful declaration of affection. Her mother had shown Evangeline how they worked and how to make her own. Finding the cylinder in the hands of a dead Angel in a sealed stasis tube made Evangeline’s stomach reel with a longing for her parents. A longing she had not allowed herself to feel in years.
Pressing her finger to the rod on the opposite end of the pinhole, the message projected onto the wall she was facing. She expected to see the words from a poem or love song, or a heartfelt and tender declaration from her mother to her father or vice versa. She did not expect to see what was on the wall before her.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 12