Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers

by Nick Thacker

  Jen turned and left for the kitchen, while Reese watched Nelson work. He grabbed his knife and cut the remainder of Mark’s shirtsleeve, exposing the wound.

  “Looks like it went clear through,” Nelson said. “That’s good news, but it’ll still hurt like high heaven.”

  Mark frowned up at the soldier.

  “Shut up. My mum used to say it all the time.”

  Mark chuckled, but then turned to more serious banter. “What’s it like out there?”

  “Well, quiet, thanks to you. Seems like they all wanted your a—” he hesitated, looking at Reese, then changed course. “Wanted, uh, you. Five of them ran behind you, and I took out two on the way. The others were pretty close behind, but I guess you held them off well enough.”

  He looked down at the man and woman lying dead on the floor.

  Mark shrugged with one shoulder. “Well enough, I guess.”

  “I didn’t get a count of the others that we eliminated, but I’d guess there are at least five unaccounted for. Let’s get you taken care of,” Nelson said, reaching for the dish rags Jen had brought from the kitchen. “If Jen won’t mind cleaning you up—”

  “No.” Mark’s voice was strong, prepared. He looked up at the British soldier. “No, Nelson. We need to finish this, and I’m not letting you do my work for me.” He reached his good arm up, silently asking for a hand. Nelson hesitated, but grabbed Mark’s arm. He pulled him to a kneeling position, then up to his feet.

  Mark looked toward Jen. “Jen, I’m sorry. This wasn’t supposed to…” his words trailed off as he realized Jen was smiling.

  “You know what? I think I wished for something like this after everything happened.”

  Nelson butted in. “You wished we’d get stuck under the ocean shooting our way out?”

  “No, I mean I wished you were right; that it was some elaborate setup from your company, and that you weren’t who you said you were. I never thought you could do something like that, Mark.” Her eyes fell, then she looked up at him again. “It wasn’t you. You were angry, of course, but I couldn’t believe you’d take it out on me like that.”

  Mark stood silent.

  “After I caught you, and you argued with me about it—you’d always been a great arguer—I thought it was weird how little sense it made. Where she came from, who she was, and why.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Whatever happened, it clearly wasn’t you. You were tricked, like you said. And I can’t say I’m not grateful that you’re not just a computer nerd.”

  It was Mark’s turn to smile. “Well, you know, I still am a nerd.” He reached out to hug Jen, and she fell into his arms. After a moment, he pulled away and turned toward Nelson.

  “Saunders is still out there,” Mark said, “and so is Austin. Not to mention—” Mark stopped. “Wait. What about the president?”

  “Oh, that guy,” Nelson said. “He’s fine. Taking a little nap a few houses down.” Nelson said.

  “Is he hurt?”

  “Well, you saw him. He’s been pretty much turned to mush since he arrived, no? I mean, I’ve never been a fan, but…”

  “Got it,” Mark said. “Like the other scientists we’ve come into contact with. But we need to bring him back up, right? We can’t just leave him—”

  Mark stopped as a loud buzzer sounded outside the window.

  “What’s that?” Jen asked.

  No one offered an answer, but the sound continued.

  “Let’s get out to the center and see if we can see where it’s coming from,” Mark said. “Think we’ve taken care of all of our Russian friends?”

  Nelson nodded and walked out the front door.

  CHAPTER 53

  THE FIELD WASN’T COMPLETELY EMPTY.

  As Jen followed Mark, Nelson, and Reese to the open area, she saw a woman struggling toward them, supporting another man’s weight. She was hurt, but not badly injured. The man, however, was nearly unconscious, barely moving his feet as they neared the central space.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, doll?” Nelson called out as they approached. It was Saunders, holding an incapacitated Jeremiah Austin. Saunders was bleeding from at least two large wounds to her head and arm, and she was bruised around the neck. But Austin had clearly suffered far worse.

  “He’s alive, barely,” Saunders said. “Found this on him; otherwise unarmed.” She tossed a small cellphone-shaped device to Mark and dumped Austin’s body casually on the dirt in front of Nelson. Nelson poked him with his foot, looked him over, and shrugged.

  “Scrawny little twerp,” he said. “What took so long?”

  Saunders ignored him.

  “Any idea what that noise is?” she asked. “And where’s Statnik?”

  “We thought you could help us with the noise,” Nelson answered. “And, uh, he didn’t make it.”

  This was the first time Jen had even thought about anyone else besides her son and Mark. Her initial fear was replaced by a cold callousness. She gritted her teeth as the rest of the group stood in silence for a moment while Mark examined the small electronic device.

  He turned it over in his hands, trying to figure out how it worked. It was the same device Austin had waved behind the scientists ear, back in the lower levels when Mark had been contained. As simple as it was, Mark still couldn’t see any indication that it was working. The only feature on the object besides the box and antenna was a small, unassuming black button on the side. He pressed it a few times, but nothing happened.

  “That woman ran away from us as I was chasing Austin,” Saunders said, “but I have no idea where she ended up. Could be that she made it down to the lower levels and started that machine again.”

  As if on cue, the floor beneath them began shaking. It wasn’t as powerful as when they’d experienced it firsthand on the lower levels, but it was still noticeable and, this time, more unnerving.

  Jen looked at Mark. “We need to stop it.”

  The floor jolted, mildly at first, then more intensely. Reese almost lost his balance, as did Nelson.

  “How much longer do we have?” Saunders asked.

  “I’m not sure. Last time it started and lasted a solid twenty minutes before it stopped again. My guess is that this last rotation won’t need to be as long. It just needs to be deep enough to crack the surrounding plates, remember? But if we can turn it off…”

  “There’s no way you’re going down there, Jen,” Mark said. “We have to get off this rock and back to the surface.”

  Saunders shook her head. “Power’s down. That elevator is still out, and the only lights on the levels below us are emergency lights. Obviously another treat from that woman, since you would have to manually turn the lights off in a place like this.”

  “Give me a flashlight.”

  “Jen,” Mark argued, “stop. It’s over. We have to get out.”

  She whirled around, her eyes on fire, and looked at her husband. “How? How do you suggest we get out?” She turned to the remainder of the group, eyeing them one at a time. Her mind was racing, both ecstatic that her family was alive and terrified at their predicament. “There’s nowhere to go. We’re under five miles of water! Plus, you heard Austin from before. When the president got here, that submarine left. Remember? The gunshots, too?”

  “She’s right,” Saunders realized. “There was at least one explosion up there that I heard; probably a grenade. Whatever’s left of the second docking station after the sub left is permanently sealed behind pressurized doors. Even if we had a sub, we couldn’t get to it.”

  Nelson nodded slowly in disbelief. “So, we’re, uh, trapped here?”

  “We’ve been trapped here, Nelson,” Jen said. “This was Austin’s plan all along. He needed Mark to get through the communications barricade, but he couldn’t take the chance of letting any of us back out. Hell, even he wasn’t going to make it back out.”

  Mark hadn’t spoken yet, but finally he offered a suggestion. “We’re in it, then
, Jen. This is the endgame. Are we going to sit back and let things happen, or are we going to use our last minutes trying to stop this thing, even if it’s in vain?”

  She nodded.

  “Wait.” The voice was hushed, almost a whisper, but it was firm. They searched for its owner, and found the man lying on the ground.

  “Take me with you. Or kill me. Don’t leave me here.” It was Jeremiah Austin, speaking in a steady, low voice. Blood pooled next to his face, a small amount dripping from his chin.

  Saunders walked over to him, but Jen stopped her. “Hold on,” she said. She looked down at Austin. “Why? What are you afraid of?”

  Austin’s face and body language conveyed nothing out of the ordinary. But Jen saw it in his eyes.

  He was terrified.

  Of what?

  “We’re all going down together, thanks to you,” she said to him. “Unless I can get the machine turned off.”

  He laughed, a mixture of gurgling noises and coughing. “No. No, you can’t. It’s been locked in, set. Sylvia started it, because I didn’t make it down to finish the job. But don’t leave me here to die like this. They—” he cut himself off before they could hear the rest of the sentence.

  His eyes met Jen’s, defiant. “Kill me.”

  Jen stared, thinking. “They. Who’s they, Austin?”

  Austin didn’t speak.

  “You mean the scientists, don’t you? The ones you created here. Your lab rats.”

  “They’re not—”

  “They are! You created monsters. They attacked Lindsay, and they attacked Dr. Pavan. And when you turned Carter into one, he attacked us too.”

  Austin frowned, surprised. “So Carter found the others? Interesting.”

  “Nope,” Nelson said, “Just him. But believe me, he was more than enough to handle.”

  Austin was visibly perplexed. He mumbled to himself. “How can that—never mind.” He looked back up at the group. “They only attack as a group, usually. Their motor skills are completely controlled by involuntary reactions to their environment. They’re essentially a physical host for a much lesser, much simpler species. When they find a foreigner, they don’t know how to respond.”

  “So they scratch people to death?” Nelson asked. “Come on, Jen, we need to get that machine shut down.” He turned to leave, but Jen stayed.

  “Should we take him with us?” she asked. “Without keeping an eye on him?”

  Saunders spoke up. “Where’s he going to go? Besides, you heard him. They’ll hopefully get to him first.”

  Jen saw the pleading in his eyes, hiding in plain sight behind the battered, torn face of a dying man. She remembered everything he had done. Everything he had put her through.

  “Let’s get that machine turned off.”

  CHAPTER 54

  GEOTHERMAL CONVERSION.

  PRESSURIZED WATER-CONTROL systems.

  Ventilation.

  That was it, Jen thought, as her feet pulled her body along down the rows of descending stairs. As she plummeted into the depths of the research station, she wracked her brain for Dr. Storm’s lessons and her own research on geothermal power plants.

  How can you turn one off, she wondered, in a way that is impossible to turn back on?

  There was obviously more to it than just flipping a switch, she knew. And they didn’t have any firepower—at least enough to do any significant damage.

  And whatever she did to the machine, Sylvia, wherever she was, could undo it.

  Unless she sabotaged the ventilation system.

  The ventilation system, linked into the cooling apparatus of the machine, would be the core piece of the puzzle that would cause the machine’s operation to backfire on itself. If she could find the control shaft for it, she could create a temporary blockage that would overheat the drill’s engine.

  If she timed it well enough, Sylvia wouldn’t be able to get down to move the blockage.

  If she timed it really well, Sylvia would arrive on the level just in time to see her project’s magnum opus go up in smoke—and hopefully a Hollywood-worthy explosion.

  Two birds with one stone.

  But she would need a stone.

  She passed the sign marking Level Ten and thought again of how they’d had the wool pulled over their eyes this whole time.

  Nouvelle Terre. Level Ten: Rue Or.

  It was the perfect ruse. Hidden in plain sight, with enough of a quirk that it was decipherable.

  But Jen chided herself. She hadn’t been able to decipher it. Austin had worked on this massive project for decades, and no one had been able to uncover the scale or impact of what he was trying to accomplish.

  And now we’re within twenty minutes of seeing what it will do, Jen thought.

  She shuddered as she reached the threshold to Level Eleven: Rue Marron. Brown.

  Entering the level’s cramped quarters, she saw the behemoth in front of her. The shuddering had reduced to a low roar, but she clearly saw the machine slowly rotating at the center of the level. The pipes, tubes, and computerized levers moved in arbitrary directions, and the telltale steam rising from certain areas told Jen all she needed to know.

  Their project was working perfectly.

  She raced toward it, finding it harder and harder to run in a straight line. As she approached the outer buildings, her eyes scanned the names.

  Water Conservation and Control.

  E.435 M.

  Electrical.

  Damn, she thought. Nothing. And I can’t even guess as to what’s in half of them.

  She kept running, encircling the machine’s rotating body. She followed a pipeline that stretched from the ceiling to the wall, and then ran down into—

  There.

  She saw it at the edge of the level, just before the wall. A small unmarked building that was expelling an unnatural amount of steam into the air.

  The rest of the group was behind her, moving quickly to keep up. Mark was holding his damaged arm, careful to not upset the bullet wound any more than it already had been. Between Saunders and Nelson, he ran next to Reese. The boy was wide-eyed and scared, but otherwise an easy companion to the team.

  Through the steam, she could see a huge vented opening in the wall above and behind the building, shimmering and blurry. It was like a mirage in the desert. The pipe’s length stretch across the concrete ceiling, emptying into a larger round silo behind the building, where its contents were corralled and sent upward to someplace behind the vent. Jen guessed that this vent opening was just one of many, one that aided in dispersing the heat and steam created by the machine to the different levels of the complex.

  As Jen neared the vent at the level’s outskirts, she wracked her brain for the next steps. I need to block the vent access. But there’s no way I’m reaching that grate on the wall.

  Jen knew there had to be a more elegant solution.

  “What’s the plan?” Mark asked, sidling up next to her at the wall. He gazed up to the vent, instantly understanding the dilemma.

  “We need to reach the vent,” she said, “and somehow take off that grate. It’s riveted to the wall.”

  “And even if we get the grate off, how are we going to block the exhaust?”

  Jen didn’t have an answer for that. She hadn’t seen anything that wasn’t bolted down to the floor or built into the ground. There were no trash cans lying around, or street benches, and none of the usual trash and detritus found on a generic city block. They were in a research station—an elegantly-designed space intended to serve a specific purpose.

  “Let’s assume we find something to throw in there,” Mark said, continuing his line of questioning. “We still can’t get something that big up that high.”

  Still, she didn’t respond. There has to be something I’m missing, she thought.

  Crimping the pipeline wouldn’t work, since the only external pipe she could see leading to the vents was fifty feet above their heads, bolted to the ceiling.

  Suddenly,
the machine rocked wildly. Jen stumbled, caught her balance, and reached out to grab Reese. He found his feet just as another jolt shook the room.

  “It’s getting close,” Saunders said. “Jen, what’s the holdup?”

  Jen followed the pipeline with her eyes one last time. “We can’t reach the vent, and we can’t reach the pipeline on the ceiling. Those are our best options, but we can’t afford to wait around and figure out how to get up there.” The floor shook beneath her. “So we need another plan. Hog, give me a boost.”

  Nelson looked surprised, but shrugged and followed as Jen ran toward the center of the level. The machine, now visibly shaking, was pouring thick layers of steam into the already humid air. Jen approached the side, near where the pipeline encircled the giant rotating device.

  “If I can disconnect the pipe from its source, the heat and exhaust will fill the room. It’ll take longer than we want, but it’ll do the trick. The level’s not large enough for the heat to dissipate in time. We’ll need to seal the door behind us, and then get to the main level.”

  Nelson didn’t argue. He placed his hands out, interlocking his fingers. Mark stepped up next to Jen. “Jen, you sure this will work?”

  “Have a better idea?”

  Jen stepped onto Nelson’s lift, and he shot her straight up as if she was no heavier than a child. “That’s good,” she said. Jen was now at eye-level with the circle of metal piping, and she reached to test the temperature of the steel.

  “This is it,” she said under her breath. She couldn’t get her hands close, as they were immediately repelled by the intense heat of the pipeline. Then, calling down to Nelson and the others, “the pipe is most likely a ceramic shell with copper and steel insulation,” she said. “It’s burning hot, so this will definitely work. Mark, can you find something to hit this with?”

  “I have a better idea,” Nelson said. Jen felt herself falling, then was caught abruptly as he gently lowered her to the ground. “Go ahead and step back, sweetie.”