by Layton Green
To his surprise, the steel handle on the door eased down when he applied pressure, and the door edged open.
“Do you think the lock-down disabled it?” Naomi whispered.
Grey raised his gun and toed the door open a few more inches. “I think someone wants us to come in.”
The door opened onto a concrete floor stained mahogany and polished to a high sheen. Van Draker’s prize laboratory sprawled before them, just as Viktor had described. A rectangular chamber as big as a high school gym, thirty-foot ceiling, a jumble of catwalks on the upper level, cables and glass piping, enormous bronze vats standing on iron tripods throughout the room.
The odor from a powerful antiseptic filled the air. Grey stepped inside, gun raised, signaling for Viktor and Naomi to wait. Straight ahead, in the center of the room, a pyramidal generator pulsed with green light. Sophisticated computers and lab equipment filled the rest of the floor.
Along the wall to his right, an elevator and a spiral staircase both led to a ledge that opened into the tunnels beneath the wine cellar.
One of the vats hiccupped, a prolonged gurgle that set Grey’s teeth on edge. Even more disturbing was the body that shot through a portion of the glass piping.
He edged forward. The generator was clearly working and cameras watched their progress from all angles, which unnerved him. The lab must have a separate control room. Van Draker would want to observe his creations in private.
Was he watching them now?
Grey glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to go. If they didn’t find the kids and get out of there, the door to the manor would open, and they would be overrun by guards.
What if, he wondered, the lab had never locked down from this side? Or van Draker had override controls and had led them into a trap?
Didn’t matter. Grey wasn’t leaving those kids.
He backed towards the door and spoke in a whisper. “Viktor, stay here. There’s no reason to risk you. Naomi, can you cover me from the floor?”
She nodded. “Where are you going?”
He pointed at the catwalk. “Up there.”
Viktor set down the cooler and raised his rifle. “I’ll help her.”
“Fine,” Grey said, “but do it from here, so you can duck back into the hallway.”
Naomi put the shotgun on her shoulder and moved into the room. Grey walked to the staircase and started climbing, pausing on every step. Fifteen feet up, the staircase drew to within four feet of one of the catwalks. Signaling to Naomi to be on her guard, Grey scanned the room again and then leaped onto the catwalk, landing in a silent crouch.
He eased to a standing position. Now he had a higher vantage point and a much better view of the room.
Still no signs of life.
Maybe they were alone after all, he thought. It made sense that van Draker would have retreated into the manor during the earlier disturbance. He was probably locked out.
Nor, after he thought about it, was Grey disturbed by the lack of guards. It was the middle of the night, and they had encountered quite a few people already. He doubted van Draker gave that many people access to his secret lab.
He passed beside one of the vats and couldn’t stop his eyes from roving downward, darkly curious as to what monstrosity lay within. When he saw the naked form inside the bronze container, suspended in a pink-hued, gel-like substance, stripped of his long hair and flowing red beard, Grey took an involuntary step backwards, unnerved by the sight of someone he had known, even an enemy he hated.
They must have rushed Dag in overnight. The W.A.R. leader’s eyes were open and staring up at Grey. He had no idea if the man was conscious, dead, or somewhere in between. Tearing his eyes away from the sickle-shaped wound on Dag’s neck, made by Grey’s own hand, he shuddered and kept moving.
Near the halfway point, he stopped again. He could see all the way to the far wall. Naomi followed beneath him. Directly across the room, he saw the steel door that led to the cells holding the children. Unable to bear the thought of those young souls trapped in that nightmare for another moment, Grey started to sprint to the door, then forced himself to proceed with caution.
An intersection of five catwalks marked the halfway point. As soon as he reached it, half a dozen armed men jumped out from behind the vats standing between Grey and the far side of the room.
He thought he had been clever, but they had read him perfectly. Guessed that he would go for the kids and for higher ground, then laid the trap and waited.
Gunfire erupted. A bullet hit him in the left shoulder and spun him around. Gasping with pain, his adrenaline spiking, Grey managed to drop to the catwalk floor and return fire, pinning two of the men against the vats, riddling them with bullets.
A muzzle flashed from below. Naomi joining the fight. More gunfire erupted from the attackers. Grey countered. Another man dropped. Grey belly-crawled out of the intersection, knowing it was a death trap. He took a risk and jumped to the next catwalk over, five feet away, pain lancing through his broken left wrist when he landed. He almost slid off the catwalk, but righted himself at the last moment.
A woman jumped in front of him, twenty feet away, and fired. Grey dropped and felt the bullet whiz just overhead. He fired back from his knees and caught her in the stomach.
Chaos and bullets all around. Grey couldn’t risk looking. He knew he was cut off from the others and that his only hope was taking cover.
He took off at a dead sprint for the far side of the catwalk, shooting to the sides and the front as he ran. A woman screamed from behind him. He didn’t think it was Naomi. Another burst of gunfire, then a lull in the firing. Grey was almost there. He surged forward. Viktor yelled his name just as Robey stepped out from behind a vat, the final container before Grey’s stretch of catwalk ended.
The former soldier shot Grey in the chest, right in the center of his heart, before he could react. The impact sent him spinning off the catwalk, and Grey’s gun slipped from nerveless fingers as he plummeted towards the floor, his body in shock and convulsing.
-50-
Frozen with disbelief, Viktor watched Grey fall off the catwalk and crash atop a bank of computers. He slid to the ground, twitching but not getting up. Viktor didn’t understand. He remembered seeing Grey retrieve the second Kevlar vest after his underwater swim.
That didn’t change the fact that Grey wasn’t moving.
A shotgun roared. Robey pitched off the catwalk. His raspy scream, like his plastic skin and vacant eyes, sent a chill through Viktor.
Naomi ran up and emptied two more shells, point-blank, into Robey’s head.
No more screams.
Viktor didn’t see anyone left standing. Naomi ran to Grey and bent over him. “He’s not breathing!” she cried. “There’s no pulse!”
The professor had harbored a desperate hope that Grey was feigning his death, but the alarm in Naomi’s voice sounded real. Another gunshot echoed through the room, hitting the police officer in the navel and knocking her backwards. Naomi screamed and fell behind one of the vats.
Reeling, Viktor scrambled behind the closest computer bank as Jans van Draker, holding a wooden hunting rifle, stepped onto the ledge that led to the tunnels beneath the wine cellar.
From Viktor’s location, he could see the lower half of Naomi’s body. She wasn’t moving.
Grief and despair threatened to overwhelm him. “Van Draker!” the professor roared, firing the assault rifle wildly at the ledge. “What have you done?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t have done to save those you love,” Jans said, stepping back into the safety of the doorway.
“Who do you love?” Viktor said. “You’re a monster, trying to play God.”
“Trying? I seem to be quite good at it. I wonder, have you ever considered the prospect of dissection? A brain of your age and intelligence would be useful to our studies.”
“I’ll destroy the vats. Everything in this room.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, and the vats are
quite bulletproof. Perhaps you could destroy a few computers before I shot you, but the master files are . . . elsewhere. I’m curious, though. Did you think I harbored affection for my creations? Beyond a scientific curiosity? If you’re grasping for leverage, you should know that I care about my family and my people, the survival of my race, above even my science.”
“As I said. A monster.”
“By my estimation, you have eight minutes before the lock-down expires and my remaining guards escort you away. I’ll ask again: dissection, or a swift death?”
The professor knew Jans was right. Viktor was pinned behind the vat, his friends dead. Thinking about the situation, he was sure there was another control panel inside the room, probably near the ledge where van Draker was hiding. A way to turn on the cell and Internet from inside. Van Draker had chosen not to use it so he could tie up loose ends himself.
Viktor glanced at Grey and Naomi, and a pang shot through the professor that went deeper than he had realized it would. So deep he struggled to focus his thoughts. With a huge of effort of will, he clenched his fists and forced himself to think.
He knew that brain death—true death— occurs six minutes after the heart stops beating. There was no way anyone from the outside would reach them in time.
A movement to the left drew his attention. He whisked around, gun raised, thinking it was a guard. Instead he saw Naomi squatting behind the vat, silently reloading her shotgun, her shirt opened to expose a bulletproof vest.
Viktor sagged with relief. His elation turned to another stab of grief when he looked at Grey with hopeful eyes and saw his friend still unmoving on the floor, eyes open in the stare of death.
Grey was not in the line of fire from van Draker’s ledge. If Grey was faking, he would have gotten up by now.
Let it not be, Viktor whispered.
Naomi made a series of hand gestures. Viktor forced himself to pay attention. I’m going to walk, Naomi mimed. Do some talking.
Just behind her, Viktor saw a tall, clear-walled cryogenic unit filled with detached brain stems and spinal cords in elongated jars, suspended in some type of gel. A fog of liquid nitrogen swirled inside the case.
Viktor shuddered and pushed away the horrors of the lab. “Jans!” he shouted. He had to keep him talking.
“You’ve decided?”
“Can you help my friends? Revive them?”
“If I so wanted? But of course,” van Draker said, amused. “I can resuscitate a corpse that has been deceased for up to ninety-six hours. The longer we wait, the less brain function is recovered. But we’re working on that. Making neurogenic strides every day. Brain death is not the open-and-shut case the scientific community thinks it is.”
A cable pulsed beside Viktor, and Dag’s body shot through the glass piping, into another vat. To his left, Naomi darted forward, hiding behind a desk.
Drawing closer to van Draker.
“Four days?” Viktor asked. “So reviving my friends would be child’s play.”
“In the first few hours after brain death, the Resurrector alone would suffice to revive the brain stem. Damage would be minimal, perhaps a few memories lost.”
“The Resurrector?”
“The machine in the center of the room is no simple generator. It is technology of my design, built on the backs of many who came before me. The Resurrector is the beginning of eternity. Of the future of the human race.”
Naomi moved again. Viktor tensed as she darted behind another vat. If van Draker was looking her way, he would have seen her.
“I won’t deny your genius,” Viktor said, “but what’s the key to the power source? Electrolysis?”
“Suffice to say I have mastered the ion channels and the blood-brain barrier. You understand,” he mused, “the war among the races is no different from any stage of evolution. It is simply survival of the fittest. The battle was predestined. Natural. I just want, as humankind has always done and as every government on earth does to this day, to ensure the survival of my people, first and foremost.”
“Surely, as a scientist, you understand what a red herring the concept of race is.”
“It is not a matter of biology, dear Viktor. It is a matter of culture. Values. Family. If steps are not taken, the entire human race will soon be commingled. Do you not see the barbarism in the Middle East? The destitution in the non-white world? Our organization stands for tradition, science, progress!”
Is that why you named it W.A.R.? Yet Viktor knew he could never win such a twisted argument. As a cable pulsed overhead, Naomi slid behind a third vat. Halfway to the ledge.
“What are they?” Viktor asked, grasping for another topic as the clock ran out. “Was Robey human after his revival? Klaus?”
“An excellent question. Though you present two very different examples. Klaus was a prototype of cryogenic restoration, the first of a long line of warriors for the future.”
“And Robey?” Viktor asked. “Akhona? Kristof?”
Van Draker chuckled. “As you’ve noted, I am not God. Who’s to say where life begins or ends? What does it mean to lose one’s personality to Alzheimer’s? Acquire new intelligence? Share intelligence with a machine or another life form? Is consciousness merely a brain function? As far as we have come, professor, I’ll be the first to admit we have light-years to go.”
Naomi was signaling frantically to the professor. She seemed to want him to move somewhere. Viktor analyzed their positions and understood. If van Draker stepped out, she now had a shot, but the professor would have to risk his life to draw him out.
“One minute to go,” van Draker said. “A final question?”
“The gargoyle virus,” Viktor said, as the seconds ticked off and Naomi continued to wave at him. Viktor had to know.
“What of it?” van Draker said.
“Did you manufacture it?”
“Of course. An intersection of my work with bioweapons, cryogenic revival, and genetic enhancement. Advances in gene splicing and immuno-suppressants were key as well. Unfortunately, I consider my work a failure. Others have redressed the issue.”
Viktor didn’t understand the last comment, but he was out of time. Live or die, he had to act.
“Jans?” Viktor said.
“Yes?”
“Here I come.”
Viktor fired the assault rifle at the ledge as he strode across the room. Halfway to van Draker, the bullets stopped and the professor’s gun clicked.
An empty magazine.
Van Draker stepped out and took aim. Before he could take the shot, Naomi rose and fired, hitting him in the chest. Jans stumbled, and Viktor feared he would slip into the doorway and lock them inside.
Naomi fired again, and again, and again. Racing towards the bottom of the platform. Screaming her fury.
Riddled with shotgun pellets, Van Draker dropped the rifle and tumbled off the ledge. Naomi bounded up the spiral staircase and finished the job with a point-blank shot to the chest.
“There must be a lock down switch!” Viktor roared. “Find it!”
Naomi whipped around as Viktor raced for the staircase. When he reached the top, he saw her fumbling with an electrical box set flush into the wall. She flipped a switch next to a timer with three seconds left on the electronic face.
Viktor heard a series of loud clicks, as if locks were engaging. The timer reset to one hour. He squeezed her shoulder and found a switch to restore the Internet connection without disabling the security. Eyeing Grey’s prone form, the professor forced himself to think logically, then sent the video he had made earlier, as well as pictures of van Draker’s body and the lab, to Jacques.
The reply from Jacques was swift.
Viktor put the phone away. Jacques knew about the secret passage and would either come through in time or he wouldn’t. Right now, Viktor had a more important agenda.
He took the stairs three at a time. When he reached Grey, he jerked his shirt open and saw a bullet embedded in the Kevlar vest. Some freak accident must have occurred. Forcing his emotions away, Viktor kneeled over his friend and tried to revive him with CPR. After the first few rounds, Naomi took over, but neither of them could get Grey to respond. He was as lifeless as a piece of driftwood.
Left with no choice, Viktor picked up Grey’s body and, as gently as he could, carried him to the metallic blue gurney suspended with cables above the pyramidal generator.
“At the bottom!” Viktor said. “Look for a switch!”
As Naomi scrambled to help, the professor placed his friend on the gurney, strapping him in with the leg, neck, and arm clasps. Viktor’s hands were shaking and it took him a few tries to get it right. “I have it!” Naomi cried.
Viktor had a thousand questions, a thousands doubts and fears. He pushed them away and balled his fists. “Do it.”
Naomi pulled a lever.
The generator hummed.
A nest of gossamer filaments popped out of the top of the pyramid, flew upwards, and attached to Grey’s skull. Viktor gasped but didn’t interfere. After a few moments, the green light stopped pulsing and assumed a steady glow. The hum increased in volume, the octave keening higher and higher, until the cables connecting the generator to the gurney crackled with the same green light.
Come, Viktor urged the machine. He thought he had never wished for anything so much in his entire life. Come.
“What’s happening?” Naomi cried.
“I don’t know.”
Grey’s hand twitched, causing Viktor’s heart to lurch. He leaned down and searched for a pulse, the breath of life.
Nothing. An involuntary reaction to electrical stimuli.
Viktor could barely watch. The humming of the machine flat-lined, the green light brightened, and Grey’s body stiffened as wave after wave of energy coursed through the cables and into his prone form.
The gossamer filaments quivered as if alive, pressing into his skull. Grey bucked and convulsed on the gurney, his muscles galvanized by the electricity.