Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  Hugh clenched his teeth as he massaged the pins and needles out of his hands. The cuffs had been fastened much too tightly and had dug deep into the skin. My fault, I suppose, for breaking free and attacking Doctor Indika in the first place, Hugh shrugged philosophically. He smiled wryly as Hana came over and stifled a wince as she gently inspected the abrasions on his wrists.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” Hana made a small gesture to indicate the walls of the cell around them.

  “Hey you weren’t asking me to do anything you weren’t doing yourself. We both chose to get into this together. We needed the money, remember?”

  “No, it’s not like that. I didn’t have a choice. I… you…” Hana lowered her voice so that nobody else in the room could hear what she was going to say next. “You don’t understand. I’m not the person you think I am. There’s something you don’t know about me.” Her breath caught in her throat and suddenly she felt sick to her stomach. Now is the time to tell him. Stop being such a coward. He deserves to know the truth! “And once I tell you, you won’t feel the same way about me anymore.”

  Her white-faced, almost palpable panic stopped the half-formed quip on his lips, and he touched her gently on the shoulder, his face creased with concern.

  “Hana, it’s ok. Whatever you have to say to me, I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

  Oh, it’s bad. Really bad. He’s going to hate me. I can’t believe I am going to tell him the truth. Hana felt light headed. I need to do this before I lose my nerve.

  She drew in a deep breath and, pulse fluttering, in a few short, whispered sentences she quickly laid out how Takumi had imprisoned her in their bunker for months with his lies, how she had buried him alive down there after she discovered the truth, and how Behnke had blackmailed her into helping with his expedition after somehow learning her secret.

  His reaction to her horrifying confession was not what she expected. Hugh merely chuckled and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “I know you buried Takumi under there. Actually, when you first disappeared, he told me that you had left him and moved out. But when you reappeared after all those months, I thought about it and straightaway guessed that he had probably kept you down in the bunker the whole time.”

  Hana’s eyes nearly popped out. “You knew?” She realized that she had shouted, as the others in the cell all turned around, and lowered her voice again. “I mean you knew about the bunker?”

  “Sure, I mean I’m your neighbor after all,” Hugh shrugged his shoulders. “I was looking out my kitchen window at breakfast every morning for weeks, watching your husband building his ‘secret’ bunker. You both disappeared the day after that zombie attack in our street, then Takumi reappeared by himself a few weeks later, with this story that you had moved out. Months later, when he disappeared and you came back on the same day, and then you covered the old bunker with concrete, I kind of worked out what must have happened.”

  “He lied to me,” Hana hissed angrily. “For months. Told me that everyone on the surface was dead, and he played the hero, going up to the surface, risking being caught by zombies, to forage for supplies. If he hadn’t injured himself accidentally, and I hadn’t decided to come out to look for supplies myself, I would still be down there. He would have kept me there for years as his personal sex slave.” Her face was dark with anger as she spat the words out from between clenched teeth. “So yes, when I discovered the truth, I buried him alive down there in his precious little bunker.”

  “Oh, wow. You mean he’s actually still alive down there?” Hugh was astonished. “To be honest, I thought you just killed him.”

  “Yup, he’s still alive down there,” Hana sighed inwardly, looking at the disturbed expression on Hugh’s face. “So… I guess you probably think I’m a monster now?”

  “No,” there was a long moment of silence as Hugh thought before replying. “The fucker deserves it.” He smiled at her sympathetically and, after a moment, she gave him a tentative, but grateful smile back.

  Three floors above them, in the IDRC operations room, the two soldiers on duty braced to attention as Shepard swept in with anger burning in his eyes and a fierce scowl that indicated he was in no mood for pleasantries.

  “Give me a sweep of all security cameras on the office level,” he ordered. “As fast as you can. I need to find Doctor Indika. If he’s not there, start looking at the cameras in the labs.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier at the security console answered, bringing up the camera menu on to his screen. He worked quickly and without any of his usual banter, conscious of his commanding officer’s dark mood.

  Shepard had had no luck in finding Indika in his accommodation nor in his office. After leaving the briefing room, the elusive scientist had somehow immediately vanished somewhere into the bowels of the huge IDRC building. The tall, lean officer gritted his teeth and deliberately relaxed hands that had been clenched into white fists. He could scarcely believe what he had just learned in the room down below. That General White himself, right from the start, had been the instigating agent responsible for bringing the Lyssavirus outbreak to the United States. I need to call him as soon as possible, but I need to calm down first, and think very carefully about what I am going to say.

  The door to the operations room opened again and Vockler walked in, wiping his hands.

  “Did you know about General White’s involvement?” Shepard hissed at him. The other man had shown no surprise at all at seeing the general’s name at the top of those emails. Now he understood why Vockler, with his close personal connection to the general, had been selected to act as the Project Lazarus second-in-command. He already knew. This whole time, General White was the one found the damn chest and brought the Lyssavirus to the United States. And Vockler knew about it right from the beginning!

  “Any luck finding Indika?” Vockler ignored the question completely, meeting Shepard’s thunderous scowl with a bland look.

  “No, we are checking the cameras now,” Shepard cast a frustrated glare at the two soldiers who were very carefully studying their screens, and not looking at the two officers behind them. For now, I still need to keep General White’s involvement with the chest a secret from them. He leaned forward until his face was almost touching the other man’s. “Did. You. Know.” He enunciated each word slowly and clearly.

  “We have another more pressing problem.” Vockler stared back into Shepard’s eyes calmly. “Those civilians we have detained, they know that we have been transferring convicts from the federal prison to this facility to use in Indika’s experiments.”

  “What?” Shepard stepped back, momentarily shocked out of his anger. “How?”

  “That genius Taylor took one of the prison transferees to parade in front of them. Specimen 118, Nasser Hassan. The escaped convicts amongst the detainees recognized him.”

  “Oh shit,” Shepard sighed heavily, understanding immediately what must have happened. “Taylor is an idiot. But it’s not as if we never considered this eventuality. Implement the public relations protocol immediately. Get on to it straight away. I want it in place and well established long before those civilians are released.” In the event that the secret use of live prisoners ever became public knowledge, arrangements had been made to leak a few well scripted documents to a local social media influencer well-known for her controversial articles and her wild conspiracy theories. The authenticity of the pre-prepared documents had been designed to be easy to discredit, and whatever genuine facts managed to leak out, ideally, they would be lost amongst the confusion of all of the sensationalist ‘fake news’.

  “Sirs?” One of the soldiers on duty said without turning from his screen. “Regarding that scientist Taylor, sirs, we are closely monitoring the cell where the civilians have been quarantined. You should be aware that we just recorded him a few minutes ago, offering to free the civilians from detention in return for sexual favors from one of the females. The detainees are currently discussing the poss
ibility of getting the women to lure Taylor in, overpowering him, and then using his access card to escape.”

  Shepard swore under his breath and Vockler glared hard at the back of the soldier’s head, before turning back to his commanding officer.

  “I suggest that we should consider not releasing them. Ever.” Vockler locked eyes with Shepard. “After all, now that the prison has been destroyed, our supply of research subjects for the foreseeable future has been cut off. And using these civilians for Indika’s research would also solve the problem of our secret leaking out into the public domain.”

  “Are you insane?” said Shepard, aghast. He looked at Vockler perplexed, as if truly seeing him for the first time. I always knew he was a cold-blooded bastard. But is this really how far we have fallen? “These detainees are ordinary civilians, not convicted serial killers. I don’t want to hear another suggestion like that again. Go dig out that emergency public relations protocol and report back to me as soon as it is ready to distribute.”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll get on to it immediately.” Vockler saluted, a small smirk at the corner of his mouth, turned swiftly on his heel and disappeared out through the door before Shepard remembered about General White’s prior knowledge of the chest, and had the chance to call him back.

  Vockler walked quickly back to his office near the operations room, closed the door behind him and locked it. But he did not log into his computer and look for the emergency public relations protocol. Instead he picked up his secure phone and called General White. The chief director of Project Lazarus picked up the phone on the third ring.

  “Yes, what is it, Vockler?”

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Vockler smiled to himself, relaxing. It was time to move things along. “I’m afraid to inform you that we have a problem.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Employee Of The Month

  With a last order to the two men watching the security cameras to call him on the radio if they located Indika, Shepard left the operations room and walked down the corridor to make his phone call to General White. But when he tried to call the general his screen told him that the other party was on another call. This is a high priority, direct line. Who else is he talking to? Puzzled, he slowed to a stop, before thoughtfully ending the call and dialing Vockler’s number instead. His eyes hardened as a message flashed up on the screen telling him that Vockler was also engaged on another call.

  So, you are going over my head, direct to the general, are you Vockler? Well you’re not the only one with high level contacts. With a calculating look at his deputy’s closed office door, Shepard entered his own office and closed the door behind him. From a locked cabinet under his desk he pulled out an unauthorized burner phone, and from memory dialed the personal cell phone of his former commanding officer from 1st Special Forces Group. Holt was now a three-star general and, more importantly at this particular moment, he was also the military director of all DARPA projects, including Project Lazarus.

  His old CO picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello, who is this and how did you get this number?” Holt’s familiar deep bass timbre rasped out of the earpiece, making Shepard smile.

  “General Holt, sir, it’s me, Major John Shepard.”

  “John!” Shepard could hear the warm smile in the older man’s voice. But Holt’s next words filled his stomach with dread. “Great to hear from you, John. How is sunny Yemen?”

  “Yemen, Sir?” Shepard’s confusion was clear, and Holt’s jovial tone immediately vanished to be replaced by his usual, serious, business-like voice.

  “Yes. I was informed that you had been deployed to Yemen to field test and develop some data on the new .338 sniping rifle, hence the whole Hollow Man Protocol.”

  Shepard gritted his teeth at Holt’s reference to a complete communication blackout during the duration of an operation. Of course we were banned from all outside contact. It is standard procedure for all classified operations. Nobody would have questioned it, not DARPA, not SOCOM, and not us.

  “Sir, based on what you just said, am I correct in assuming that you believe General White’s development group is working on the procurement of a new sniping rifle?”

  “Absolutely correct.” Holt’s deep voice was deadly serious now. “He reports directly to me. And he has been sending me detailed reports of you and your men field testing three different calibers of rifle in combat, and under dusty, arid conditions. I assumed when you called me, that the deployment had ended. Are you still in Yemen?”

  “No sir. We never left the United States.” Shepard felt a cold fury building up inside his chest, but his voice remained calm. “Sir, have you heard of anything relating to a Project Lazarus?”

  “Project Lazarus? No, I have not. And what do you mean you never left the United States. John, is everything okay?”

  No everything is not ok. Shepard realized that, other than his initial transfer orders to the DARPA development group, he had not seen a single piece of paperwork from any other senior officer other than General White. That bastard never intended to let us back out of the quarantine zone. This whole damn thing is some insane, private project of his.

  “No sir, everything is not ok. I have not been to Yemen,” Shepard said, his mind whirling. “My men and I have spent the last two months inside the Lyssavirus quarantine zone down in Fort Lauderdale. General White is trying to develop useful biotech from the virus.” He swallowed hard, before continuing. “Sir, under the direct orders of General White, I believe that we have been performing criminal acts up to and including the murder of US citizens.” Jesus Christ, we have been feeding people to zombies! Of course, there was never any authorization for this. I must have been crazy to think this was legit. White has been running this whole operation himself.

  “What!” Holt exploded but almost immediately reined himself in. In his mind’s eye Shepard could clearly picture his former CO taking a deep breath to calm himself and deal with whatever he had just been told, no matter how unexpected or surprising it was. “You wouldn’t joke about something like this, of course. Tell me more.”

  Shepard thought of Vockler on the phone to General White informing him that the civilians detained in ‘quarantine’ knew about his personal involvement in bringing the Lyssavirus to the United States, and also that they knew that DARPA was using live humans in illegal experiments. For that matter, Indika has only just found out about White unleashing the virus on his family. God knows what either Indika or White is liable to do now.

  “Sir, with all due respect, a situation has just arisen down here within the last few minutes, and in light of what you have just told me, I need to urgently attend to some matters right now. I will deal with them and call you back in fifteen minutes.”

  “Go do what you have to do. I’ll wait for your call.”

  Shepard slipped the phone into a pocket, checked that his pistol was loaded and tucked it into his waistband at the small of his back, before pulling his tunic down over it. Then he quietly exited his office and, with a last glare at Vockler’s still closed door, headed back to the operations room. His face was hard as stone and his thoughts were grim. General White is insane. And criminal. He will order Vockler to get rid of any witnesses, and that equally crazy bastard will do it. I need to assure the safety of those civilians, and then find Indika and check that he isn’t going to do something impulsive that we will all regret later.

  Ten minutes later Shepard made his way towards the containment block where the civilians were being held. He had relieved the duty watchkeepers and replaced them with two of his own trusted soldiers, Foster and Eicker; men that he regarded as friends from their multiple deployments to Afghanistan together. He realized now why General White had insisted on hand-picking the overwhelming majority of the troops on the Lazarus project himself. Because they have all, no doubt, worked for him before on God knows what dirty, black ops around the world. They will do whatever he tells them to do, and keep their mouths shut about it aft
erwards.

  Approaching the cell door Shepard sighed to himself as he heard the low chatter of the civilians echoing down the antiseptic, white hallway. Even from a distance he could make out words like ‘escape’, ‘Taylor’, and one of the men, he thought it was Behnke, saying that they had to ‘get out of here’.

  “Hey,” he tapped at the bars of the door, startling them into silence. “Shut up and stop talking about your escape plans. Apart from the fact that the entire block can hear you, you’re also being recorded.”

  Shepard paused, looking at each of them for a moment, wondering if the course of action he was about to take was still the right thing to do. They in turn looked him up and down apprehensively, with a mixture of curiosity and fear. After a short moment Hugh spoke up, breaking the silence.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  Shepard looked down at the duffle bag slung at his side, glanced left and right down the corridor to make sure it was empty and then beckoned Hugh over urgently.

  “I stopped by the storage room on the way here and got out your personal effects.” He unzipped the bag and started handing items from it through the bars to the surprised mechanic. “But I couldn’t get any of your weapons, obviously. Come on all of you, get over here and take your stuff.”

  They quickly clustered around and there were gasps of surprise and pleasure as Shepard handed over wallets, Rob’s cameras and memory cards, and their cell phones and other personal effects, which they quickly passed around to the relevant owners. Thomas and Behnke in particular seemed very happy to get back their chunky, matching diver’s wristwatches. Hana’s eyes widened slightly in surprise as Shepard passed Hugh two steel tubes, which Hugh immediately turned and gave to her. My Farpunch daggers! They can’t have recognized them for what they are. Hugh’s eyes met hers for a moment as he handed her the daggers, but he kept his face blank and said nothing.