The walls of the room were filled with floor-to-ceiling cabinets and a couple sinks. Anna tumbled onto the floor behind him. Jack moved ahead slowly and found row after row of what looked like smooth, rectangular black-topped lab tables. Lighted cabinets were in the center of the room, and Jack headed that way.
Anna sidled up next to him, her rifle drawn as well. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” Jack hadn’t heard Alecto come through the opening. He looked behind and was startled when Alecto moved past him. She walked so quickly and quietly, an invisible force seemed to pull her forward.
Jack and Anna followed her to the illuminated cabinets. His eyes had grown accustomed to dim light during the journey through the dark tunnel. Looking at the glass cabinets lit by bright, white halogen bulbs hurt his eyes.
Alecto stood by the first case and stared. Her back was straight and rigid. She blinked rapidly but continued to stare into the case..
Inside was a glass cylinder filled with dingy yellow liquid, and floating in the liquid was a small being no more than six inches long, its dead eyes eternally open and black as night. It was a fetus, and if it had been a bit more mature when it died, it would have been nearly identical to Tex. A placard sitting on the glass shelf read, “H.A.L.F. 6.”
On the shelf next to the H.A.L.F. 6 was another glass canister, larger than the first. It contained another dead creature with its eyes closed. It was larger than the first, but its limbs were too short to be normal, its hands curled into two stumps without fingers. Both its head and chest were cleaved in the center. The placard next to that one read, “H.A.L.F. 7.”
Alecto moved slowly from cabinet to cabinet. She silently took in the eerie spectacle of the failed attempts to create a hybrid, which came before her.
Anna put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “This is so—”
“Creepy,” Jack said.
“I was going to say disturbing. But creepy works, too. Why would they keep these?”
Jack had no answer. He couldn’t comprehend anyone working to create what was intended to be essentially a slave race to be used as the creators saw fit. He wondered if those tiny beings had suffered before they died. And did they die naturally, or did Sturgis order them killed?
Alecto stopped at the last cabinet and stared into it at a container larger than any of the others. What appeared to be a full-term baby rather than a fetus floated in the yellow liquid. It was fully formed and looked normal—at least, as normal as any human-alien hybrid looked. It had no obvious deformities and was of a size to be viable. As Jack inspected it more closely, he saw something wrong with its head.
“What is that? On its head.”
Alecto moved even closer to the case and looked where Jack was pointing. She blinked her huge black eyes a few times as she cocked her head to the side and examined the dead hybrid. Her voice was its usual monotone. “That is a gunshot wound.”
The placard beside the specimen read, “H.A.L.F. 11.”
Anna stood on the other side of Alecto. “Aren’t you number ten?”
Alecto nodded. “It is—was—my sister.” Her eyes were riveted to the dead, black eyes of the baby sister she would never know.
Anna touched her arm. “Come. Let’s leave here.”
Alecto allowed Anna to lead her away from the gruesome scene. Jack followed closely behind. They passed more rows of lab tables. A red light to his left caught Jack’s eyes. He recognized it from his previous time at A.H.D.N.A.
“There’s a keycard scanner over there,” he said. “That means there’s a door.”
“Be ready. We don’t know what we’ll find on the other side,” Anna said.
Suddenly, Jack was hearing only his own footsteps, not the footfalls of Anna and Alecto. He looked back, and Alecto was standing as still as a stone, her eyes distant.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
Anna shrugged.
“Commander Sturgis,” Alecto said. Her voice was low and sounded far off. “She is here.”
“We know she’s at A.H.D.N.A.,” Anna said. “That’s one of the reasons we came down here.”
Alecto darted away from them.
“We walked through this whole room,” Jack said. “If she’s in here, she’s hiding herself well.”
Alecto ignored him. She arrived at the far right wall and stopped. Her hands moved frantically up, down and across the wall, feeling and searching for something.
Jack ran to her. “What are you doing?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but before she got any words out, her hands flew to her head. Her eyes pinched shut, and a high-pitched cry escaped her lips.
Anna was at her side. “What is it?” When Alecto did not answer, Anna looked at Jack. “What happened to her?”
“I have no idea. One minute she was feeling along the wall with her fingers, the next she was like this.”
The way she grimaced and held her head reminded Jack of how Tex had looked when he’d been contacted by the Conexus on their trip to Sedona. Ian had told them the Conexus were effectively stranded in their future now, unable to travel back in time since Erika, Ian, and the rest stole their time-travel machine.
“It can’t be…” he said.
“Can’t be what?” Anna asked, panicked.
“Alecto, are the Conexus trying to talk to you?” Jack asked.
Her eyes squinted open slightly, and she looked at him. Her words were clipped and low. “Not… Conexus.” She groaned. “They call to me.” She rubbed her bald temples. “Not all at once!” she screamed. Alecto flung her hands into Jack’s chest and stared up into his eyes. “Make it stop. Please.”
Jack was taken aback by the pain on Alecto’s face. His throat was dry and tight. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “You were searching for something?”
Alecto nodded, and her voice rasped. “Behind the wall.” Her hands flew to her head again as though she was attempting to squeeze the pain out. “I feel them.”
Jack and Anna searched the wall as Alecto had. They opened cabinets and felt inside, searching for another hole in the wall or false panel.
Anna shouted, “I found something.” She was on her hands and knees halfway inside a cabinet. She knocked and beat at the wooden paneling. It finally splintered. “Jack, come give this a kick. You should be able to break it open.”
Anna moved aside, and Jack kicked at the brittle wood at the back of the cabinet. He aimed for the spot where Anna had broken through. On the third kick, the wood shattered into pieces. A reddish-orange light spilled into the room through the cracked wood. Jack pulled at it until he widened the opening enough to fit through.
“Definitely something on the other side,” he said. Jack again got onto his stomach and squeezed through the narrow hole he had made.
The room he’d just come from was brightly lit in comparison to the narrow stone corridor he crept into. It was much like the hall, cut into stone that had led from the tunnel entrance to the lab, but this hall was barely one person wide, and the lights embedded in the low rock ceiling were an orange-red rather than yellow.
Jack peered into the darkness but saw nothing. He stood as still as he could, straining to hear footfalls or other evidence of movement. He heard only his own breathing.
He knelt and called back through the opening. “Come on through.”
He had his rifle at the ready as he cautiously stepped forward. The passageway was so narrow that his shoulders scraped the rock as he walked.
Alecto and Anna made it through. Alecto still gripped at her head and grimaced, but she kept moving forward.
“They are near,” she said.
“Who are the ‘they’ you’re talking about?” Jack asked. His muscles tensed at the thought that he was going to soon meet a band of Croft’s mercenary forces. Or worse yet, what if Sturgis has more hybrids that we didn’t know about?
Alecto only groaned with pain in response to his question.
After about twenty yards, the narrow hall wide
ned slightly and then dead-ended into what looked like a solid rock wall.
“Looks like we’ve run out of path,” Jack said.
Anna squeezed in beside him. “Why would there be a hallway to here if it’s a dead end?”
Alecto took her hands from her head and forced herself between them. Able to see far better than they could in the dim light, she homed in on an indentation in the wall and pressed. A small door opened in the wall, and a mechanism jutted out with a place to swipe a keycard and a small keypad.
“We don’t have a keycard,” Jack said.
Alecto ignored him. She put one thin hand on the keypad, her eyes closed tightly. Her lips were set in a thin line, and her head was covered in a thin film of sweat. After about a minute, a slit appeared in the wall and opened inward.
Alecto didn’t wait for Jack or Anna to make sure the room was clear of enemies. She surged forward with preternatural speed into another room cut into the bedrock.
That room was much smaller than the outer room where they’d seen the preserved H.A.L.F.s. It was dark and smelled of stone and iron. Row after row of starkly white cylinders about four feet high with blue lids filled the room. Each lid had a flexible stainless-steel tube coming out of it and going to the next cylinder.
“What are these?” Jack whispered.
“They look like cryogenic containment systems,” Anna said.
Jack quietly moved close to one and inspected it more fully. It had no writing or label and looked a lot like the propane gas cylinders he used on his barbeque grill, only larger.
“They know me,” Alecto said. She stood next to one of the cryo cylinders, her hand resting on it. Her eyes were wide, and she looked far off again.
Anna moved silently and stood between them. “Is your pain gone?”
“Mostly,” Alecto said.
“You said ‘they’ know you. What’s inside of these?” Jack asked.
Her stare had been far off, but she focused on Jack and Anna, her voice matter-of-fact. “They are my sisters.” She reached out and touched her other hand to the cryo container on her left. “Thousands of sisters.”
28
TEX
Tex was certain he had failed to leave the VLA. He lay in the dust and waited for Dr. Lewis and her crew to arrive and take him back to the dorm. The seconds turned to minutes, but he heard no footsteps. In fact, when he reached out with his senses, he heard nothing but the sound of whistling wind.
He took a deep breath, mustered his courage, and groaned loudly as he pushed himself up to sitting. He wiped his helmet the best he could with his dirty gloves, which helped only marginally. His gloves were as dusty as the helmet, and wiping only seemed to spread the dust around, not remove it, but at least he could see the mini computer screen embedded in the left sleeve of his spacesuit. He tapped it as Dr. Lewis had shown him, but the screen remained blank.
Tex was not one for cursing, but he let one fly as he tried to push down the feelings of panic. “Breathe,” he said aloud.
He tapped the screen again, and the display flashed on then off quickly.
He let out another, more emphatic curse.
No one had come to help him which meant he was not at the VLA. He had indeed gone somewhere. But where?
He had not given much stock to the idea that the comm link would work, but at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to hear Erika’s voice. Tex was not one to lose his head. He generally remained calm in the face of danger, even when others were losing their minds. That was what he had been trained for, what he had been made for.
He lay there like a helpless newborn, though, with two broken legs and less than twelve hours of oxygen. His chest tightened, and his throat was dry.
Commander Sturgis’s voice came to his mind. “You are a wonder, 9. Don’t ever forget that. You can do what others cannot. You are unique in all the world. Heal yourself, and get up out of that dirt.”
Commander Sturgis—or his imaginary version of her—was right. Healing would take precious energy needed for the return trip, but he had no choice. With two broken legs, he was going nowhere.
Tex mended his broken bones, but the task took valuable time—and oxygen—he couldn’t afford. The panic had caused his heart to race and his breathing to become ragged. So much for slowing down my metabolism. He figured he had probably burned up an hour or two of oxygen simply by mending his wounds.
Once his bones were repaired, he stood at last. Tex surveyed the horizon from his new vantage point, but the scenery had changed little. In every direction was the same expanse of endless, dusky-coral colored sand and orange sky. Seeing where land ended and sky began was difficult. The wind was strong and whipped the sand into dunes and drifts.
It was possible that he was still on Earth. There were sand dunes on his home planet. He had never, though, seen photographs showing a sky as orangey-red as the one he now saw. He sensed no lifeforms in any direction. Even in the most remote places he had been on Earth, he always sensed at least the heartbeat of insects. I do not think I am on Earth any longer.
Tired of standing like a fly caught in a spider’s web, Tex walked. His legs were wobbly, and they felt heavy as he trudged through the sand.
He had no map or GPS. He didn’t have a landmark to march toward. Because the Conexus archives described great cities on the home planet of the Architects, made of glass with boulevards of creamy marble, Tex had assumed he would land in such a city. He presumed that when he appeared out of thin air in a populated area, he would be surrounded by people and taken to leaders who knew about the galactic highway, but his plans were like the sands blowing aimlessly in the wind. He saw no great city of gleaming glass and no denizens of the harsh sandy planet greeted him.
The sun was high overhead, so he presumed the time was midday, but he had no way of knowing how long a day lasted on that unknown planet.
His legs ached, and his feet felt like they were burdened with lead weights. Perhaps the gravity is stronger on this planet than on Earth. He certainly felt heavier. Walking through sand and up and down dunes was slow going. He kept his head down so the lip of his visor shaded his sensitive eyes.
He occasionally looked up and around. Every time, he saw the exact same thing he had seen countless times before—sand. He saw no evidence of life.
He stopped at the top of a dune and sucked on the tube that supplied water from his life-support backpack. One of the nuisances of his self-induced therapy that made him less vulnerable to humidity and water was the new requirement that his body had for hydration. He now experienced thirst, a sensation previously entirely unknown to him.
As Tex sucked down the lukewarm water, a glint in the sand caught his eye. He rubbed his face shield, trying to wipe away the smudges of dirt. He blinked and looked again, sure he had seen a mirage.
It was there again, though. Something was on the horizon, just beyond a vast sea of dunes indistinguishable from the sea of dunes he had already crossed. Judging by how much ground he had covered and his current pace, he figured reaching the strange glint in the sand would likely take at least another Earth-time hour.
He set off toward the glimmer. He had no idea what it was, but at least it was something different from the endless dunes he had already trudged over. His steps were faster though not as swift as he would have liked. Despite the biosuit’s climate control, he was getting hot. A thin film of sweat covered his forehead and neck.
He trudged toward the shining object for what seemed like hours, each drift the same as the last. The only thing keeping him from lying down on a dune and waiting for the sands to claim him was the hope that shone from that solitary blinking beacon, somewhere ahead of him.
The sun overhead remained high, as though the planet had stopped spinning and he was in perpetual high noon. Stepping forward was like moving a sack of bricks with only a wet noodle for leverage. The oxygen tanks on his back had felt like nothing when he first began but were now like hauling a car strapped to his back.
He walked in a large valley between two high dunes. The sand was harder there and less slippery to walk on. When he began the ascent up the next dune, he made the mistake of looking up and seeing just how far the dune stretched toward the hazy, dusty-red sky. That made him want to stop, but he reminded himself why he was there and kept going.
He panted hard as he reached the top of the dune and nearly collapsed into the hot sand, but he didn’t dare sit. He was afraid the sands would swallow him, and he doubted he had the strength to dig himself out. He settled for resting his palms on his knees as he tried to calm his breath to a normal respiration. He rose and sucked more water, hoping that neither his oxygen nor his water would run out just yet. He tapped the screen of the computer embedded into the left arm of his suit. It flickered. He tapped again, harder. The second time, it didn’t even flicker. He wanted to rip the little screen out and throw it as far as he could into the dunes, but that would only cause a massive failure in the integrity of the suit and put him in danger, so he settled for cursing at it instead.
He looked up. The mere glimmer he’d seen several miles back was revealed to be a spire of faceted, emerald-green glass. It jutted out of the sand and rose high into the air. It was the first sign of civilization he had seen, and the color and shape matched the visions imparted to him by the Conexus.
The vision was true. I am here.
Tex’s heart raced with both anticipation and fatigue. He wanted to run toward the glimmering spire like a child chasing after a wayward balloon. He tried, but his legs were too tired, his boots too heavy, the sand too thick. He settled for walking, but his spirits soared.
After nearly another hour of slogging through the sand, he reached the spire. All the way, he hoped it was only the first sign of the outer edges of what would be a whole city.
As he approached, though, he saw no additional buildings—only one large, triangular spire cut in flawless facets out of solid glass the color of a light emerald. The effect of the facets shining in the sun made the spire look as though it was lit from within. He saw no signs of life either around or inside the spire. But it had to be built by someone. The thought energized him to keep searching for the Architects.
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