by Tom Abrahams
The soft, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor was nearby. Clayton scanned the sterile room. To one side of the bed was a surgical tray littered with instruments, bandage packages, and bloodied gauze. On the other was an array of monitors and scopes. There was a sink and a fire-engine-red sharps disposal container mounted to the wall above it.
It looked like any number of ordinary doctor’s offices or hospital rooms he’d seen. But it clearly wasn’t ordinary. The cinder-block walls were barren except for a spray-painted stencil that read C4L4 STALL 8 and a camera perched high in one corner. A red light above the lens was blinking. It was aimed at the bed. Clayton tugged again against the binds and the heartrate monitor kept pace with his elevated pulse. All that was missing was the proverbial alien probe, but the usual placement for that instrument was the only place on his body that didn’t ache.
“Hey!” he tried calling for help. His voice was little more than a scratchy rasp. Nobody would hear him. He looked directly into the camera and tried speaking again.
“Help,” he squeaked.
From behind him and out of his field of vision came a pneumatic hiss followed by the shuffling of feet. He tried craning his neck to look over his shoulder, but it wasn’t until a trio of people arrived at his bedside he could see who’d entered his room.
Clayton knew one of them as the ghillie-suited sergeant from the field. Although his face was clean of war paint, Clayton recognized the man’s eyes and the way his mouth curled downward into a frown at both ends. The others were also in uniform.
“My name is Van Cleaf,” said one of them. She was a tall woman who carried herself with her shoulders pulled back. “This is Sergeant Vega. I believe you’ve met.”
Clayton eyed the sergeant and offered a subtle nod of recognition before returning his attention to Van Cleaf. She motioned to a burly, bearded man standing at her other shoulder. “This is Perkins. He will be handling the debrief.”
Clayton’s brow furrowed. “What debrief?”
Van Cleaf stepped back from the bed. She nodded at Perkins and disappeared from Clayton’s field of view.
“What debrief?” he asked again, his voice little more than a sandpaper whisper. “Why am I restrained?”
Perkins edged to the bed, his thighs pressing against its edge. His voice resembled the low rumble of a motorcycle exhaust pipe.
“We’ve stitched you up,” he said. “We’ve pumped you full of meds. You were pretty banged up from the crash, but you’ll be good. You’ll recover.”
Clayton studied Perkins’s leathery face. The beard covered barely visible scars along his cheek and neck. There wasn’t much benevolence there and he sensed there was a “but” coming.
Perkins sniffed, contorting his offset nose. “But,” he said as if on cue, “our kindness comes with a price.”
“I have insurance,” Clayton muttered.
Perkins chuckled, patted Clayton on the leg, and nudged Sergeant Vega. “Funny guy here, right?”
Vega’s blank expression was unmoved. He didn’t even blink. His eyes stayed focused on Clayton like a dog seeking dominance.
The smile evaporated from Perkins’s face. He scratched his beard. “Look, this is a give and take. You give; we don’t take. We ask questions; you answer. I’d prefer not to escalate this to a typical interrogation. That’s up to you though.”
Clayton exhaled and pushed his voice. “I’ll answer questions when you tell me who you are and where I am.”
Vega leaned in, his lip curling in a snarl. “You entered restricted space with an unauthorized aircraft. You were armed. You were carrying gear supplied by the Russian government. We are the ones charged with finding out what exactly your intentions are.”
Perkins shrugged. “You now know where you are and who we are.”
Clayton tensed against the binds and tried to sit up. He clenched his jaw, gnashing his teeth against the ache in his side.
“You have two fractured ribs,” Perkins said.
Clayton relaxed and sank into the bed. He looked into the bright light directly above his head before closing his eyes.
Perkins jabbed at his hip with a knotty finger. “Who are you?”
“My name is Clayton Shepard,” he replied, answering as clearly as he could. “I’m an American astronaut.”
Perkins sighed. “Vega told me you said that. Said you claimed to fall from orbit. Said you babbled about a dead cosmonaut and somebody named Ben.”
Clayton snapped open his eyes. He didn’t remember having divulged that. His expression must have betrayed his surprise.
“You were out of it when you talked,” said Perkins. “You didn’t say how you got off the space station or how you managed to get a plane with a Canadian tail number.”
“Complicated,” said Clayton. “Basically used Soyuz. Other two crewmates died from CME. I brought them back.”
“Where are they?”
“Canada,” said Clayton. “I landed in Canada.”
“That’s where you got the plane?”
Clayton nodded. His throat was on fire. “Where am I?” he whispered.
Perkins’s chest expanded as he took a deep, contemplative breath. He flexed his hands, cracking his distended knuckles before patting Clayton on his leg.
“Tell me more about the Russian gear,” he said.
Clayton shook his head. “Nothing to tell. It’s from the Soyuz.”
“Why were you coming here?”
Clayton tugged at the wrist restraints. “Can you let me out of these?”
“Why did you come here?”
“Could you please—”
Perkins voice deepened. “Answer the question.”
“But—”
Perkins growled. “Answer the—”
“Stop.” It was a new voice, one Clayton hadn’t heard before. It was coming from the door behind him and moving closer. “Perkins, is it?”
“Who are you?” Perkins said, looking toward the new visitor.
The man appeared at Clayton’s side and offered the wounded astronaut a sympathetic, if not pitying, smile. He edged himself next to Perkins and gripped the nylon cuff.
Perkins’s eyes widened and his face reddened. “What are you doing?” he snarled. “Who are you?”
The man wasn’t in uniform. His hair was cropped short and graying at the temples. His lips were squeezed into a permanent smirk, as if he knew something nobody else did. He unbuckled the strap and freed Clayton’s wrist and motioned to the other one with his chin. “You can do the other one yourself.”
“Thank you.” Clayton carefully reached across his body and started manipulating the strap’s buckle. It was difficult. His stiff fingers were thick and swollen, but he managed and freed his other hand.
At the same time, Perkins was jawing with the stranger who’d yet to identify himself. He was yelling at him, calling him names, poking his finger in the man’s chest. The sergeant had stepped closer and had the man bracketed. Apparently his job was to keep the intruder in his spot. When Perkins took a breath, the man folded his arms across his chest. The smirk on his face hadn’t changed. Clayton noticed all three of them were wearing identical watches.
“You finished yet?” he asked. “You done with your little tirade? If so, I’ll be happy to answer your myriad of questions.”
Perkins eyed the sergeant and grunted.
“My name is Chip Treadgold,” he said. “I presume by your facial hair and overly developed musculature that you and I work for the same people but in far different capacities.”
Perkins looked the stranger up and down and chuckled. “I doubt that. You’re wearing the same thing as the rest of the herd.”
Treadgold looked down at his shirt and pants. He tugged at the shirttail, straightening out the wrinkles. “I’m blending in,” he said. “I came on the buses with the ‘herd’ so I could observe.”
Clayton rubbed the soreness from his wrists and listened intently to a conversation he didn’t understand. Herd? Blending in
?
“You don’t have any authority here,” stressed Perkins. “This is my interrogation. He is a perceived threat. I handle all—”
Treadgold held up a finger and then pulled a device from his back pocket. It looked to Clayton like an iPhone, but different. He pressed the screen and used his thumbs to type. The device clicked with each tap.
“Let’s get Van Cleaf in here,” Treadgold said. “You ask her what authority I have.” He looked over at Clayton with the same omniscient smirk he’d carried since walking into the room. He walked to the end of the bed and, one at a time, unbuckled the ankle straps. A smile spread across his face, momentarily replacing the smirk. He played with a ring on his finger, spinning it in circles.
“That should feel better,” said Treadgold. “No need to have you restrained. It’s not as though you’re in good enough shape to run anywhere.”
The door hissed and someone entered the room. “What’s the issue here?” It was Van Cleaf, the woman to whom Treadgold had referred. She joined the others at the side of Clayton’s bed.
“Why is he unrestrained?” she asked. “We don’t know—”
Treadgold stepped toward Van Cleaf with a raised hand. “We know he’s not a threat in his current condition. Why complicate matters by making him feel like more of a prisoner than he already is? That makes no sense.”
Perkins scowled. “I was in the middle of asking questions when he shows up. He says he has authority to be here.”
Van Cleaf frowned. “He does,” she said. “He’s got the highest-level clearance, but he’s embedded with the others so we have eyes on the herd. He’s not the only one. There are a couple in every building.”
“Excuse me,” Clayton squeaked. “Where am I? What is this place?”
Van Cleaf, Treadgold, and Perkins exchanged glances. The sergeant stood in the corner of the room. His arms were folded at his chest and his upper lip was curled as if he’d smelled something rotten.
“This is a secure facility,” said Van Cleaf. “We’re preserving civilization here.”
Perkins sneered. “You got lucky, ‘astronaut’. You found one of the few safe places left on Earth.”
Clayton pushed himself onto his elbows. “What does that mean?”
Treadgold played with his ring. “It means the world is dark. Two coronal mass ejections have seen to that. Soon enough, we believe the world will devolve into chaos. The herd up there will thin. The herd down here will multiply. Eventually, we’ll resurface and begin anew.”
Clayton studied their faces. They were serious. “We’re underground?”
“Yes,” said Van Cleaf.
Clayton’s pulse quickened. His palms were suddenly damp with perspiration. His mind raced with this newfound problem to solve. He had to get out. He had to find his family. He had to protect them.
“I can’t stay here,” he said. “I need to get home to my wife and kids in Texas. I can’t stay.”
Van Cleaf’s eyes narrowed with confusion. She tilted her head to one side. “You don’t understand, do you?” she asked Clayton. “You can’t leave.”
CHAPTER 2
TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2020 8:34 PM MST
DENVER, COLORADO
Vihaan Chandra had his hands stuffed in his pockets and was walking the corridor back to his room when he passed a group of men talking amongst themselves. He heard the words captured and intruder and slowed his pace.
“They’ve got him in building four is what I heard,” said one of them.
“He’s a Russian spy,” said another. He kept talking but had moved too far from Chandra for the scientist to hear the rest of the conversation.
Russian spy?
He picked up his pace, found his way to his room, and immediately reached into his pocket for the DiaTab and keyed on the Telenet screen on the wall in front of his bed. The screen came to life; Chandra pressed the glass screen on his DiaTab and spoke into it.
“How many buildings are there in this complex?”
The icon at the bottom of the screen spun and flipped as the machine’s algorithms worked to find an answer. Van Cleaf’s image, the one he’d seen from the welcome message, appeared on the display.
“There are five buildings here. Buildings one, two, and three are virtually identical. They contain three levels of housing units like yours, a dining level, and a transfer level.”
He pushed the DiaTab’s glass. “What is in building four?”
Van Cleaf’s image froze as the computer found the answer. Then she jerked to life, “Building four has a command level and a transfer level.”
“That’s only two levels,” said Chandra. “There should be five. What else is in building four?”
“Building four,” said the avatar, “has a command level and a transfer level.”
Chandra paced the tiny room. The rabbit hole, it seemed, was bottomless. The deeper he dug, the deeper it went. These people, his boss Treadgold included, were hiding things.
“What is in building five?” he asked. The response was almost immediate.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand your question. Could you rephrase it, please?”
Chandra stepped closer to the Telenet. He spoke into the DiaTab. “How many buildings are there in this complex?”
“There are five buildings here,” the system reiterated. “Buildings one, two, and three are virtually identical. They contain three levels of housing units like yours, a dining level, and a transfer level.”
Chandra curled his free hand into a fist and clenched his jaw. He thumbed the glass DiaTab screen with force and said through his teeth, “If there are five buildings, why can’t you tell me what’s in buildings four and five?”
The icon swirled in the corner and the Van Cleaf avatar reset before the machine spit out its preprogrammed algorithmic response.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand your question. Could you rephrase it, please?”
Chandra tossed the DiaTab onto the bed and ran his hands through his hair before plopping onto the bed himself. He leaned against the wall, pulled his knees up to his chest, and leaned his head back, resting it on the cement wall. He’d just closed his eyes to focus on the myriad of thoughts running through his head when the Telenet beeped an alert with a series of tones that resembled an incoming call on a smartphone.
Chandra turned to look at the monitor. It was black with a message displayed in green lettering.
YOU HAVE A NEW INCOMING MESSAGE
PRESS ACCEPT ON DIATAB TO VIEW
He reached onto the bed and found the DiaTab. Holding it with one hand, he thumbed the ACCEPT button. The screen dissolved to black and transitioned to an image of a man he’d not seen before. His eyes were hidden behind large black-framed glasses. His mustache was wiry and complemented by what Chandra imagined was several days of scruff on his face and jawline. His head was bald save the few strands of hair he carried from one side to the other of his tanned scalp. He was alternately looking at the camera and a DiaTab in his hand.
“Hello, Dr. Chandra. My name is Henry Rector,” he said. “I’m the lead for our meteorological division in building four and you are assigned to work with me. We have a lot of work to do in the next few days. I’ll need you to come over here and get acquainted with our setup.”
Chandra turned his body from the wall and dropped his feet to the floor. He slid the volume scale on the DiaTab and turned up the volume. Then he keyed the microphone. “Is this message live?” he asked. “Are you talking to me right now, Mr. Rector?”
There was a momentary pause before Rector pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am speaking with you in real time through our video-conferencing network. Do you have any questions?”
Chandra chuckled. “Too many to count,” he said. “You’re able to see me?”
“Yes,” said Rector. “There’s a small camera embedded in the bezel of your Telenet display. I can see you’re sitting on your bed. Your eyes have shifted from lo
oking at me on your display to the camera in the bezel. Now you’re getting up and walking toward the camera.”
Chandra stepped to the monitor and squinted at the small circular lens in the center of the top edge bezel. “I hadn’t noticed it before,” he said. “That’s creepy.”
Rector pushed his glasses again. “Why? It’s no different from a webcam atop a standard computer.”
“Yeah,” said Chandra, “but I know that’s there.”
“Now you know it’s there,” Rector said flatly. “Any other questions, or can you come to building four?”
Chandra shrugged, still eyeing the almost imperceptible camera lens. “Sure,” he said. “Do I need to bring anything?”
“Just your DiaTab, please,” said Rector. “Take the elevator to the transfer level. You’ll be guided to the tram for building four. I’ll be waiting for you there. You’ll see me when you step off the tram.”
Chandra acknowledged the instructions and turned off the Telenet. He crossed his small room, letting his fingers trail on the edge of his desk and he passed it, and walked into the bathroom. He flipped the faucet and let the water run, pulling a white cotton towel from the rack next to the mirror.
While the water heated, he studied his reflection and almost didn’t recognize himself. His eyes carried heavy bags underneath them. His cheekbones appeared more pronounced. His brown skin was dry and his hair was a mess. He tugged at his eyelids, leaning into the mirror to get a closer look at the red web of capillaries that shot across his eyes. The last time he remembered looking this fatigued was in graduate school. Then he’d had access to unlimited amounts of cheap, syrupy coffee. That had made the forced insomnia palatable. He hadn’t had any coffee, or caffeine for that matter, since he’d left the Space Weather Prediction Center.
Steam formed at the bottom of the mirror and Chandra dipped his hands into the hot water. It stung at first, but his skin adapted and he bent over to splash handfuls of the water on his face. With his eyes closed, he fumbled for the soap dispenser and pumped out a handful. He massaged the dollop onto his skin, feeling his pores tighten. He washed off the residue and flipped the faucet to cold. He splashed his face again, almost losing his breath from the icy water. He lifted his head and turned off the faucet. He looked at the water dripping down his face. He licked his lips with a renewed energy and dried his face with the plush towel.