Chapter 10
Everyone in the chamber froze, Sam looked at Mark then back up to Sophia as she struggled past the words that had choked in her throat.
“What?” Sam managed.
Sophia’s eyes shot from the window down to Sam then back to Victor, “It’s Victor! He’s alive!”
“Victor?” Sam shouted as she scrambled to clip onto her rope. “Hold on, I’m coming up.”
Sam’s ascender motor whined into action as her feet left the floor. Her first view into the room inside the sphere felt more like looking through the gallery viewing windows into a lab. The walls were stark white with no decoration, one small table with a plate of uneaten food on it on the far end and a desk on the near side, its surface scattered with loose papers and colored pencils. No light fixtures were visible but the room seemed to illuminate itself, soft white light emanating from the walls and ceiling alike and a single bed with only a pillow but no blanket.
Then she saw Victor.
His head was partially bandaged covering his left eye, the right side of his face showed several scars in various states of recovery with some fleshy white and others still the bright pink of newly closed wounds. His arms and legs faired no better, the portions showing from under his t-shirt and boxer shorts reporting endless torture and recovery. There wasn’t more than a few inches of his body that weren’t scarred.
Sam’s heart broke and a great sob swelled in her throat. “We will get you out!”
Victor put his hand up to his ear as he shook his head no to indicate that he couldn’t hear them as he grabbed a blank sheet of paper and started writing.
“Sound proof.” He scribbled.
Sophia instinctively reached into her backpack’s side pocket and slid out her tablet, opening a sketchpad app in the process.
“Where’s the door?” she wrote before holding it up to show Victor.
“No door.” He wrote, then after holding it up for them to read he added, “Splits at floor. Whole top lifts off.”
Sophia’s eyes instantly shot to the cage that was holding the two pieces together as panic surged through her body.
“How do we get you out?” She scratched furiously on her tablet.
Victor’s eyes dropped with defeat as he wrote his reply, “impossible here.”
“Then where?” Sophia wrote.
Victor closed his eyes as the memories flushed through his mind, “The machine.”
“How?” Sophia only wrote the single word, Victor simply shrugged his shoulders in reply.
“I will find a way.” Sophia mouthed as she locked eyes with Victor before placing her had against the glass and adding, “I love you.”
Tears streamed down Victor’s face as he watched her and Sam ascend through the roof of the chamber and disappear. Mark was only a second behind the girls as the three of them raced to get back to the surface, frantically working through frozen fingers at each platform rope change before continuing up. The trip took less than two hours, but it felt like an eternity as the three of them dangled from the ropes helpless to move any faster. By the last platform Sam had gotten Sophia to clam down and use rational thought as she searched for a way to rescue Victor.
“I need to see it all.” She snapped as she raced to her computer station. “Mark you’re on numbers, if it moved down there it was recorded, get me the raw numerics from the moment we touched down until right after Victor appeared. Sam you got video, I saw three high speed cams going down there. Search through all angle from the same time period, I’ll analyze the data from my system with the LIDAR overlays and see if I can find a weakness.”
The three of them dove headlong into the assigned tasks, each sifting through enough data to keep an entire research team busy for hours. It wasn’t long before one of them spoke.
“What the hell?” Mark said softly.
“What?” Sam looked up from her screen for a moment. “You find something?”
“Right here,” he started tracing a line of numbers across his screen, “look at these spikes right as the sphere showed up. The magnetics are twisting, you can almost see the vortex right here in the numbers, and gravitational readings are spinning in the opposite direction!”
“Bring that here for a second.” Sophia’s voice was clipped but laced with curiosity as she set the two laptops next to each other and started tracing her finger on the screens. “Mine gets haywire at the exact moment your’s does, look.”
“What the…” Sam started but Sophia cut her off.
“What? Did you find something too?”
“Check this out.” Sam said pointing to her screen. “I slowed the high speed down so we are seeing this one frame at a time, watch. At precisely three hours twenty eight minutes and fourteen seconds…”
“The same time as our anomalies.” Mark interrupted.
“Precisely!” Sam got up and ushered Sophia into her chair as she pointed to the screen showing the chamber from the top down, “Right there under the cage.”
As she talked the ground seemed to twist and blur slightly before resolving into a black hole in the center of the floor. A single frame later the screen filled with a bright blue flash as a streak of white shot from the hole into the center of the cage. The next three frames revealed a sterile looking lab where a group of five scientists were standing, frozen as they realized they were being recorded just before the view solidified back into the chamber floor.
“What did we just see?” Mark asked.
“Print the shot with their faces,” Sophia commanded, “we need to ask Victor if he knows who they are.”
A few seconds later the printer spit out the image displaying the five faces frozen in time. Snatching it up Sophia raced into her climbing harness, tucked the page into her shirt pocket and jumped into the hole with Sam and Mark right on her heels. To label the descent as a rappel would be generous, the three rockets down at a near free-fall pausing only briefly at each platform to change ropes. Sophia dropped into the chamber and locked her break bringing her to a bouncing stop in front of Victor’s window.
“Who?” she shouted as she slammed the page against the window.
Victor shuddered as he stammered backward shaking his head.
“Who!” Sophia demanded.
Victor slowly started writing.
“Bad creatures.” He paused to make sure they were watching. “Like humans but not. Cruel, heartless.” A tear escaped the corner of his eye as he continued. “Strong too. They built this.”
Victor pointed to the sphere he was in then out the window to the cage bars of the formation as he mouthed the word “All!”
Sophia’s eyes flashed with panic for only a moment before steeling into icy resolve.
“I will kill them if I have to.” She muttered as she activated the ascender again.
“Back up?” Mark asked as she shot passed him into the shaft.
It took Sam and Mark nearly the entire climb to catch up with her and they only managed to calm her down as they emerged into the field office.
“Security.” Sophia said as she looked at Mark. “I know your father knows people.”
“On it.” Mark grabbed his phone and tapped the screen twice before putting it against his ear.
“Hannah, Mark Jr.” He barked into the phone, “I need to speak to my father.”
“Good afternoon Mark,” the disembodied voice soothed. “I am sorry, he is in a meeting right now. Can I hav…”
“Now Hannah!” Mark shouted
“Right away Mr. Halvorsen.”
“Marcus,” Mark Sr said sternly, “is something the matter?”
“We found him dad.” Mark hadn’t called his father dad since middle school, his father froze. “We found Victor dad, and he’s alive!”
“Victor,” Mark Sr paused. “The kid who died five years ago?”
“He didn’t die, someone kidnapped him.” Mark choked back a sob, “They’ve been torturing him dad!”
“What do you need son?” Sam and Sophia froze at the barely audible words coming from Mark’s phone.
“Victor says we will need a security team.” Mark Jr regained his composure as he spoke. “A good one dad, I have no idea what we are up against but by the looks of what they did to Victor, they’re evil.”
“How soon?” Mark Sr asked softly.
“We’re going tonight, in a few hours.” Mark said firmly, “How soon can you get them here?”
“Give me three.” The phone call ended as Mark Sr shouted, “Hannah, get my wife on the phone please.” Turning to the executives he was meeting with he added, “Mrs. Halvorsen will resume this meeting tomorrow at three pm, for now we are adjourned.”
The room sat still, each person trying to comprehend what just happened.
“Leave!” Mark Sr. said as he shooed them away from the table tapped his phone screen.
“Richard, Halvorsen here.” He barked into the phone.
“Good evening sir,” the man on the other end announced, “what can I do for you?”
“I need a team.” Mark Sr said gravely. “Your best, and I need them at the airport in thirty minutes.” He paused then added, “And I don’t know how long.”
“That’s a tough order to fill sir.” Richard fumbled as he mashed buttons on his computer.
“I will have a five hundred thousand dollar bonus waiting at my terminal for each of ten.” Mark Sr snapped. “Just get them there.”
Mark Sr hung up the call and picked up his desk phone. “Eleanor hi.”
“Hi Mark.” She replied quickly, “Hannah sounded urgent, is something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Mark Sr leaned back into his chair. “Do you remember that boy that died on one of their research trips into the caves about six years ago?”
“Victor, right?” she asked.
“Yes, Victor.” Mark explained. “Evidently he was not killed but rather kidnapped.”
“What?” Eleanor’s shock was palpable.
“Yeah, and tortured from what Mark said.” Mark Sr turned serious, “I am going to go out there with a team from Richard’s firm and see what’s going on. I’m going to need you to cover my meetings until I get back if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, absolutely.” Eleanor said absent mindedly. “You just make sure Mark’s ok, I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Thank you.” Mark hung up and dialed his phone again. “Violet, Mark Halvorsen here, I need the super-sonic fueled up and ready at the terminal in a half hour. I am taking ten people with me and we will be landing at the strip near Vegas.”
“Yes sir,” Violet was quick to respond, “I will call Bill and get the flight crew together, they will be there sir.”
Mark laid his cell phone on the desk and looked at his office door again before calling for Hannah. “I need the car to take me to the terminal please Hannah, ASAP!”
“Right away sir.” Hannah ran back to her desk.
A half hour later Mark Sr stepped out of his car in his private hangar to find six men and four women in black body armor waiting.
“Marcus Vance sir, call me Gideon.” A large man extended a handshake, “This is my team, must be a big mission for Dick to call us out this rapidly, but we’re happy to see it through.” He paused as he turned toward his team. “From the right, Rachel code name Vixen, surveillance specialist. Nothing moves without her seeing it.” He moved to the next person in the lineup “We call him Ghost, tactacle intel and counter-surveillance. They came over with me from the CIA.”
“Julian Mercer sir, nice to meet you.” Ghost’s voice felt almost soothingly calm as he shook Mark Sr’s hand.
“Next our four seals came to us straight from Team 3, Devon, Kira, Caleb and Jaxson, callsigns Bull, Siren, Cross and Reef.” Gideon gave a wry laugh, “Between the four they cover heavy weapons assault, CQC, infiltration and medical. Our Bishop and Rook are Garret who handles anything that goes boom and Elena is the master of electronic warfare. If it involves tech, she’s the best you will find.”
“I think one of my people on the ground out there might give you a run for your money.” Mark Sr laughed as he shook Elena’s hand. “She invented an entire underground mapping system when she was in high school!”
“Can’t wait to get a look.” Elena said dryly.
Mark Sr turned to the only person not introduced yet, a muscular woman with the sort of expression that carries the weight of other peoples lives.
“Tessa,” her face was expressionless as she added. “Over-watch, call me Wyvern.”
“Over…” Mark Sr said, “what?”
“Over-watch.” Gideon chimed in. “Don’t let her charming demener fool you sir, they don’t get more deadly than this one. She’s our sniper, she earned records in the Marines that still haven’t been broken.”
“Nice to have you.” Mark said.
Tessa looked at him for a second before accepting the handshake.
“How long till wheels up sir?” Bill called out from the top of the airstairs.
“As soon as possible!” Mark Sr shouted back.
“We better load up, people!” Gideon ordered.
The main cabin of the plane was spacious, at the front positioned against the cockpit wall was a large oak desk. Mark Sr slid into the chair and opened the laptop on the desk as the rest of the team filed by, on the screen the daily video feed from the project site showed the anomaly in real time as Victor’s cell returned to his cage in the antechamber. Mark paused the video as the five scientists appeared in the frame.
“Gideon,” Mark Sr called out, “come look at this for a minute, your targets are on screen.”
“Targets?” Gideon questioned.
“The people who have been torturing Victor.” Mark clarified. “I don’t think they intended for us to capture their faces, we might as well take advantage of it.”
Gideon slid behind the desk and leaned against the wall as he watched the video, an audible gasp slipping out of his mouth as he saw the anomaly.
“What the hell is that?” Gideon breathed before barking a command. “Ghost get over here!”
“Aye boss, what’s up?” Julian asked as he approached.
“You ever see anything like this before?” Gideon asked as he turned the computer around so Julian could see.
“How…” Julian gasped “Hey Rook, come check this out!”
Elena watched the video as it replayed the scene again. “You got any data other than the video?” she asked looking at Mark Sr.
Mark clicked a couple files on the computer and an array of graphs overlaid half the screen as the video replayed.
“Look at the magnetics involved.” Elena said softly, “Those people should have been ripped to shreds, I’m sure they would have been had any of them been between that thing and the floor when that happened. If we had something like this…” her voice trailed off for a second before she snapped back to the present. “My guess is they figured out how to tear a hole in space-time and jump from one location to another in an instant. If we could figure out how, we could insert anywhere in the world. No matter the conflict, it would be over in seconds with this tech.”
The idea sparked in Mark Sr’s mind for the first time and in that moment he made the decision, the new mission was to recover the technology, reverse engineer it and put it to use. Mark Sr grabbed his phone and tapped the screen.
“Hannah,” he barked before she could say anything. “I need R&D at the project site. Find at least twenty people and send them out, they will be reverse engineering advanced tech so make sure all fields are represented.”
“Yes sir, right away.” She replied quickly. “Shall I book them on commercial flights?”
“No,” Mark’s words were clipped and abrupt as he spoke finished. “I’m sending a list of equipment to bring with them, they will need the ACJ320 to carry it all.”
“When do you need them there sir?” Hannah asked.
“Tomorrow please.” Mark paused, “Trip length will be two months minimum, I will be giving a bonus for the assignment.”
“Yes sir, I will let Vivian in personnel know and we will have them airborne first thing in the morning.” Hannah clicked the receiver to disconnect the call.
“I like the way you think Mr. Halvorsen.” Elena smiled, “may I join them in the process once we have the target secure?”
“One job at a time Rook.” Gideon said flatly before adding with a laugh, “You’re weapons and warfare before you get to run off and play with the other mad scientists.”
“Aye sir.” Elena answered without taking her eyes off the computer screen. “Something to look forward to at least.”
Sam and Sophia had barely looked up from the map showing the complete ground composition and structure in colored overlays generated by the computers when Mark Sr stepped inside the field office.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Mark Sr announced after clearing his throat.
Mark Jr and Sam froze, Sophia stood straight up and smiled.
“Mr H!” she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him the way a daughter would greet her father. “Did you come to see the product of your R&D dept at work?”
Mark Jr looked at Sam with a wide eyed expression that said one word. “What!?”
Sam leaned over and whispered, “Long story, I’ll fill you in later.”
“Is that what’s got your attention Sophia?” Mark Sr asked.
“It’s better then we expected!” Sophia eagerly explained, “In the city there was too much noise interfering with our frequency range to get very far, but out here, where there are very few people and even fewer communications signals.”
Mark Sr’s smile spread as he asked, “How far?”
“A little more than fifty miles!” Sophia nearly squealed. “And the details are incredible. I can see every cavern, every aquifer, every mineral pocket in every direction for fifty miles!”
“That is incredible!” Mark Sr was already thinking about the applications, and benefits to his company.
“Thank you sir.” Sophia flushed. “Everyone worked very hard on it, I miss the team.”
“Well you wont be missing them all after tomorrow.” Mark Sr turned to the others and added, “After watching that video, those people just appeared then disappeared right on camera. I wanted to be here while this machine is secured and then I will have a team of the brightest minds on this continent waiting to reverse engineer it so we can learn how to operate it,” he paused as he gently touched Sophia’s shoulder, “and rescue Victor!”
Sophia hugged him again before thanking him and inviting him to join the team at the map table as Mark Jr explained the mission.
“You can see where we are here,” Mark Jr pointed to a green dot on the map. “This blue line represents the trail markers we left in the shaft, about fifty feet below the floor of the original cavern where we found the machine.” He paused to make eye contact with a few of them before continuing. “And it’s where we have to go to get Victor back.”
“What do we know about these people other than the picture?” Gideon asked.
“Only what Victor told us.” Sophia looked up, “When I showed him the picture, he recoiled and shook his head no.” Her eyes dropped to her feet for a moment. “He was terrified.” She looked back up at Gideon, “He said they are very strong and extremely smart, that they have no regard for humanity as we know it and they have been experimenting on him for the last five and a half years.” She closed her eyes for a moment as she found the right words. “He’s covered in scars and I will not rest until I have him back.” What was sorrow in her eyes resolved to fire as she added, “And they pay for what they did.”
“Sounds like you picked the right team.” Gideon leaned in to look a the map. “Route seems simple enough.”
“And most of it’s already got infrastructure.” Mark Jr spoke up, “just before discovering this formation we had been in a big push to get back to the machine with our hard lines and everything.” He looked over at his father then added, “Now that we know where this one ends, we see it actually points us back to where it all started.”
Mark Sr smiled, seeming to see his son in a new light. “You are already ten steps ahead.”
“Always ten steps ahead.” Mark Jr corrected with a smile.