Kay turned away after that. She didn’t want to talk about fiery apocalypses nor about deciding the fate of humanity. The truth was she just wanted her family back, even if only for a day or so before the world went to hell in a handbasket. Growing up, Kay’s father had been taught the traditional Rwandan stories of Imana, the Creator. While he ruled over life and death, he generally did not meddle in human affairs. When the colonial powers arrived in the late nineteenth century, they had brought with them a new form of government along with a new God. This was the one Ollie had been talking about, the sort that seemed to be filled with rage in the Old Testament just as he was filled with love in the New. If Ollie was right about the beings traveling through space toward them, Kay couldn’t help but wonder which kind of God they would be.
•••
Not long after, they pulled into the driveway of a pink bungalow on Sisson Road. The garage door opened and Sven drove the car in and killed the engine. They got out as the door began closing behind them.
“She ain’t much,” Ollie said, getting out and stretching his legs as he motioned to their humble surroundings. “But she’ll do for now.”
A tall, thin man wearing green cammies swung open the door from the house. He had the thick accent of a man born and bred in the Florida Everglades.
“I didn’t expect y’all so soon,” he said, greeting Sven with a slap of their palms followed by a hug. “Whoa, easy, big fella. I need that spine.”
Sven chuckled and moved past him and into the cool air-conditioned house.
“Patrick, this is Kay,” Ollie said, introducing them.
She smiled, doing her best to hide her weariness.
“You’re the reporter lady,” Patrick said. “Yeah, I heard about you. Haven’t had the chance to read one of your articles though, but I intend to.”
“They closed her paper, you turd,” Ollie said, embracing him before moving on.
Patrick scrunched up his mouth. “Bummer. Hey, let me grab your bag. Come on inside, I got the AC on full blast.”
Kay handed him her laptop bag, which was all she really had. Ever since discovering the D.C. cops were after her, she had resigned herself to the idea of wearing the same outfit forever. She followed Patrick inside. The house bore a striking resemblance to every other suburban home that had ever existed and Kay guessed that had been part of the point. He led her through the kitchen where pictures of young kids and finger paintings hung from fruit-shaped magnets. On the counter was a framed image of Patrick with a woman who stood at least a foot and a half shorter than he was.
“Don’t worry about all the fluff. Most of it’s for show. I’m the housekeeper.”
Kay glanced over and saw dishes piled in the sink. “You’re not doing a very good job.”
Patrick laughed. “Not that kind. I manage this safe house. I won’t lie, it was lonely until I got myself a fake wife.” He pointed at the picture Kay had seen of him and the woman. “I’m not exactly her type, if you know what I mean, but that may be ’cause I’m not a woman.”
The furniture in the living room had been pushed against the wall to make room for a large desk filled with computer monitors. The woman from the picture was sitting before them clicking away.
“Oh, hell, darling, you’re not playing that damn game again, are you?” Patrick said, setting Kay’s laptop bag on the couch.
“Don’t bother me,” she barked. “I’m about to level.”
“She’s a sweetheart, ain’t she?” Patrick said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at her.
Ollie emerged from a nearby washroom, drying his hands. “I see you’ve met everyone.”
Kay cocked her head to one side and motioned to the figure perched intently before the bank of monitors, swearing at digital goblins. “Uh, not everyone.”
“Hell, yeah!” The woman screamed with joy as the screen lit up with an explosion of stars.
Kay assumed she’d just leveled, whatever that meant.
Ollie went over and put an arm around the computer nerd as she rose from her chair. “Kay, I’d like you to meet Armoni.”
Chapter 23
42 hours, 40 minutes, 51 seconds
Given the extent of Ivan’s injuries, even Yuri was shocked that he’d made it back at all. Anna had been the first to rush to his aid. Grabbing hold of Ivan’s remaining arm, she guided him over the uneven floor inside the chamber to an unoccupied corner.
Yuri moved in to assess the damage. One of the robot’s tank treads had been ripped completely off. His right arm was missing along with the pincer from the other. Part of his face plate had also been torn away, revealing a crisscrossing network of wires and circuits leading to and from his optical receptors.
“He’s one tough son of a bitch,” Dag said. “I’ll give him that.”
“You think he can be fixed?” Mia asked.
Yuri did not look hopeful. “It will depend. The damage appears to be mostly superficial. But there isn’t much I can do for him here. We’ll need to get him back to the other technicians. That’s assuming he can make it back to the portal at all.”
“Or that any of us make it back,” Dag said under his breath, or what passed for under his breath for the outspoken Swede.
“Mr. Volkov, would you mind if I took a look at Ivan?” Anna asked, surveying the robot’s torn face plate.
Yuri’s eyes met Jack’s.
Jack shrugged. “I don’t see what harm it would do,” he reassured him. “You can always set some parameters so she doesn’t alter any of his vital architecture.”
“Feel free,” Yuri said with the wave of his hand. “What I really need is a diagnostic to be sure none of his internal components have suffered irreparable harm.”
“I can do that,” Anna said, a wide grin on her glowing face.
Yuri pulled out his tablet and had Ivan run through some hand-eye coordination tests, along with an assessment of whether his visual recognition software had been compromised.
“There is a video recording from Ivan’s battle,” Anna informed the Russian. “Would you like me to feed the data to your OHMD glasses?”
“Send it to all of us,” Jack recommended. “It might give us a better idea what we’re up against.”
Anna nodded and activated the transfer. At once, a frantic struggle played out before their eyes. Blinding flashes from Ivan’s weapons as the fight quickly closed to hand-to-hand combat. Jack paused his playback, his index finger dabbing in midair as he counted.
“I count two dead Stalkers with five others tearing off into the jungle after the fight,” Jack said. “Maybe they realized Ivan’s armor plating wasn’t nearly as tasty as flesh.”
“It’s pitch black out there,” Stokes told them. “Even with the OHMDs’ nightvision capabilities we would be at a serious disadvantage. You saw the way they circled around Ivan and came back at him time and again. I’m no biology major, but I know an ambush hunter when I see one. Not much different than a shark. Convince you they’ve gone away and then hit you where you least expect it.”
“A different planet means different evolutionary rules and behaviors might apply,” Mia replied, countering Stokes’ analysis. “Not that I’m suggesting we head back out there, especially at night. Is there any chance we could call in reinforcements? You know, to help escort us out.”
“The minute anything passes through the portal,” Jack reminded her, “communications to the other side are immediately cut.” He took her by the hand. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
She smiled and squeezed. “I’m a big girl who made the decision to join the expedition. Besides, maybe the wait will give us time to learn more about this place, in particular who built this room and why.”
“Perhaps we might learn whether or not they are still around,” Anna added.
“Right on,” Dag agreed. “So we can tell them that maybe killing everyone on Earth isn’t such a great idea.”
Kerr chimed in, fidgeting a few feet away. “If we don’t get out of
here soon, I’m gonna piss my biosuit.”
Jack laughed. “A true ambassador of the human race.”
Mia threw him a disapproving look.
Jack threw his hands in the air. “All right, I’m not much better,” he admitted. “I lost my mom’s house once in a poker game and had to work three jobs to get it back.”
“Ouch,” Dag said, shaking his hand like he’d touched something hot.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Mia told Jack. “I too know something about hitting rock bottom. We all have our poison whether we recognize it or not. For me, the scariest part was how that crutch you think is the only thing keeping you upright is often what ends up destroying you. For me that was pain pills and I’d justified taking them in my head a million different ways. First why I needed ten, then twenty and finally thirty of them a day.”
“The demons that tried to destroy us and failed,” Jack said, his eyes glassy and far away.
“Nothing tried to destroy us,” Mia corrected him.
Jack snapped back, his features twisted with uncertainty. “I don’t understand.”
“The pills didn’t try to get me,” she explained. “They weren’t forced down my throat. I made a conscious choice to take them in order to numb the searing pain. It didn’t matter the pain was mostly in my head, it stung all the same. And I convinced myself that crawling into that warm glow of oblivion would help get me back on my feet when all it was really doing was pushing me closer to the ground.”
Anna unplugged from Ivan and addressed Yuri. “As you instructed, I have run a full diagnostic on Ivan’s systems and see no area that has been compromised.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled, hardly looking up.
Anna went over to the others. “As I was helping Mr. Volkov with Ivan, I was also processing the feed I received from the drones.”
“You mean the ones that crashed?” Dag asked.
She nodded.
“Wait,” Jack said, raising his hands in the air. “I thought you only lost one drone?”
“Unfortunately, Dr. Greer, I ordered the second and last drone to fly above the treetops in order to search for incoming Stalkers and it too suffered the same fate.”
“Any idea what happened?” Mia asked, fiddling with a broken piece of what looked like glass.
“Both drones impacted a hard, inanimate object.”
“Up in the sky?” Jack said, wondering how that was even possible. “Are you saying it hit a ship of some kind?”
“No,” Anna replied. “Not a ship, a ceiling.”
Dag rubbed the side of his helmet. “How is that even possible?”
Anna’s expression became grave. “It is looking more and more certain that the extraterrestrial jungle we are in is located inside a domed enclosure.”
“What do you mean a dome?” Jack said, not trying to hide his exasperation.
“A sealed space,” Anna explained. “Designed to allow the maintenance of specified environmental conditions.”
Mia pressed her back against the ledge and considered what Anna had just told them. “That certainly implies the atmosphere beyond the dome is hostile to life.”
“That is a possibility,” Anna conceded. “But you should also know, the data from the drones I recovered appears to indicate the dome in question is not transparent.”
“But the sun,” Jack said, at a loss. It was as though every assumption he’d made about this place was turning out to be wrong. “I mean it was practically blinding when I first arrived and now it’s set. Are you saying all that is some kind of illusion?”
“Dr. Greer, I am suggesting the enclosure’s surface may be composed of a series of panels, each capable of producing a source of light similar in brightness and warmth to that of a large star.”
Yuri stopped what he was doing and cleared his throat. “What the hell is this place?” the Russian said. The fright in his voice was echoed in each of their faces.
Chapter 24
It was a question, of course, that none of them could answer, not yet at least.
“Do you have an estimate of how big this thing is?” Jack wondered.
“Based on initial calculations,” Anna told them, “the dome has an approximate diameter of two miles.”
An image popped into Mia’s mind of a barren moon or hellish planet, somewhere out along the edge of the galaxy, protected by nothing more than a thin skin, holding out the deadly environment trying desperately to get in. The last part of the vision was pure conjecture, but spoke to the feeling of vulnerability that had suddenly chilled the marrow in her bones.
Dag paced back and forth, rubbing at the arms of his biosuit. “Why do I suddenly feel like a rat in a maze?” he said, echoing the strange sense of danger and manipulation Mia was also feeling.
They weren’t the only ones. For a few tense moments, the chamber was silent, the toxic alien air around them heavy with unease.
“Hostile incoming!” Stokes shouted a split second before opening fire. The Delta operator named Conroy guarding the stairway next to him did the same, filling the narrow passage with short bursts.
Rifle in hand, Jack moved toward the archway when Anna called after him.
“Dr. Greer, there was something else I observed while reviewing Ivan’s video log,” Anna told him amidst the gunfire. “The creatures appear to have a thick hide, somewhat resistant to the impact of the .556 rounds the soldiers are using. The only real area of vulnerability I managed to detect was the soft flesh of their oral cavity. I suspect a well-placed shot there might have a devastating effect.”
“You mean blast them in the mouth,” he said succinctly.
“That is correct.”
“Those openings aren’t more than five or six inches wide,” Kerr said, rushing to the archway with the other soldiers.
“Here they come,” Stokes shouted, laying down a short, controlled burst.
The others watched from Stokes’ point of view as the rounds struck the beast’s neck and shoulders with seemingly little effect. Taking careful aim, Stokes reloaded and fired again. This time the rounds hit their mark, dropping the creature to the ground, its limp body sliding down ten more stairs before coming to a stop.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Kerr said, lowering his rifle and beaming at Anna. “She’s not just another pretty face, is she?”
Anna blushed.
“Careful you don’t start something you can’t finish,” Dag said, stifling a laugh.
Kerr glanced up the long stairway. “Looks like the sun’s starting to rise, or whatever’s passing for the sun in this giant ant farm.”
“Have you seen any more of those things?” Jack inquired, arriving next to Stokes.
The sergeant eyed his scope, which was no small feat wearing a helmet with a glass visor. “I’ve seen a few shadows zip past the entrance, if that’s what you mean. But one thing I know for sure. We can’t stay down here forever.”
Mia checked her air supply readout. “I’m about thirty minutes away from needing to change out my CO2 scrubbers.”
To those contemplating what to do, it sounded as though Stokes was advocating charging out and making a break for the portal. The video from Ivan’s memory bank had shown at least seven Stalkers. Ivan had killed two and now Stokes had taken out a third. That left four. Even with the knowledge of the animals’ narrow area of vulnerability, the risks were still great.
“I say we go,” Jack said.
“You always were a gambler,” she shot back.
He shook his head. “Think about it for a minute. If we wait any longer, Stark is likely to send out a search party and there’s a good chance those things will find them before they find us.”
Jack was right. They had to go. Not everyone might make it, but right now there were no best options, only less crappy ones.
“All right, grab your gear,” Stokes ordered. “And check your weapons are clean and loaded.”
Moments later they made their way up the long vine-covered sta
irway, two by two. The Delta team was out front, followed by the scientists in the middle. Anna and Ivan pulled up the rear. They were less than twenty paces from the opening when Anna’s head perked up. “I am detecting tremors.”
Mia and the others adjusted their external auditory sensors. The low sound of thunder came in half-second intervals.
“Why does that sound familiar?” Jack wondered as it grew close enough they felt the ground begin to tremble beneath their feet.
Through the narrow aperture ahead, they spotted two gray, six-legged Stalkers scurry into the brush. A third crossed the open patch of ground, heading straight for them. Stokes and Kerr dropped to their knees and leveled their rifles. The two Delta operators, Diaz and Bates, who were directly behind them stood and did the same.
The Stalker was about to crest the doorway when the ground gave a violent shake and a large hand reached down from above, entangling the animal and wrenching it into the air and out of sight. The creature let out an ear-piercing screech before it was silenced by a terrible crunching sound.
“Seems the hunter just became the hunted,” Jack said.
Then came more heavy footfalls as the behemoth passed in front of the entrance, blocking out the light. The lower half of a powerful leg crashed down with staggering force. It had the thickness of an elm tree. Its flesh, the color of forest mulch, was mottled and cracked.
They watched in awe as the massive creature passed by, that hand descending again to scoop up the corpses of the fallen Stalkers before it receded back into the jungle.
Slowly the group emerged into the light, realizing how wrong they had been about this place. The greenhouse wasn’t the facility they had taken shelter in. The real greenhouse was out here, shielded perhaps from a hazardous alien atmosphere pressing in all around them. But then again, maybe that too was wrong. With time quickly running out, Mia, Jack and the others knew the answers to those questions would have to wait. But something else made it perfectly clear that once those answers finally came, they would prove as crucial as they were astonishing.
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