Chapter 13
To clear the blockage, they used the core drills to bore a pattern of overlapping holes along the walls, floor, and ceiling, carving out the passageway section by section. Two people worked the overhead rigs while two tackled the floor level, thanks to Rachel finding a fourth drill. Dust billowed from the dry bits, choking the cave and making them thankful for the tight seal of the respirators strapped to their faces.
“Rock dust is packed with silica,” Sam said, her voice muffled as she handed a fresh rock core to Caleb for the muck pile. “Before respirators, miners got silicosis—scarred their lungs so badly they couldn't catch a breath, if the lung cancer didn't get them first.”
Caleb’s eyes widened as he considered the illness. “I panic when I can’t breath. I can’t imagine.”
They worked around the clock for the next few days, trading shifts as they shuttled back and forth from the camp and moving the debris out of the passage to a pit near the first blockage. Finally on the fourth day of drilling they met with success.
“Through!” Devon “Bull” Kowalski shouted as his drill slammed home through the hole, followed by the same excited announcement when Julian who had been operating the second high drill broke through.
The pace quickened with the excitement and before long they had the entire slab suspended by just a few inches of rock remaining at the top corners.
“I think if I put my shoulder into it it’ll give.” Bull said before looking at Julian and adding, “Ghost, lend me your strength.”
The two men braced themselves against the rock and pushed until they heard a deafening pop, pop, pop as the monolith fell away and slammed to the ground, the concussion in the closed space so violent the whole team felt it as much as they heard the BOOM!
“Would you look at that.” Gideon said softly. “Looks like a hallway in a building rather than a cave.”
The walls, ceiling and floor were smooth, swept clean of dirt and debris save for what came off of the slab as it fell and the cave transformed into what could only be described as an engineered hallway.
“Used to be like this all the way back to forward ops camp.” Mark Jr said softly. “That’s why we made that camp so far back, used to be just a couple hour hike from there all the way to the machine.”
“What could have twisted it all up like that?” Elena whispered, something like awe mixed with fear lacing her voice.
“One of the things I hope to discover.” Sam said gravely. “This kind of tech simply does not exist in our world.”
They walked in silence for the next hour, each person evaluating the last couple of weeks and contemplating the changes in the rock and how it might have happened. Finally a pale dot appeared in the distance in front of them, growing larger as they approached until it spilled them out onto a ledge in a massive cube shaped cavern.
As they made their way into the opening Rachel asked, “What keeps it from collapsing in on itself? Flat ceilings don’t typically just hold themselves up.”
“Another thing I hope to figure out.” Sam breathed as she began giving instruction. “You guys know how to set anchors?”
“I got it.” Reef announced.
“Perfect,” Sam pointed to the far end of the twenty foot long shelf they were on, “we have four anchors over there. Spread about two feet between them, the floor is solid but we don’t want to splinter it.” She turned to Mark Jr “Mark get the…”
“Drone,” Mark interrupted, “on it.”
“Thanks.” Sam said before turning to Sophia. “Soph, what can your tech tell us about this cavern and the machine? Run your filters, I want to know if there is anyone or anything living inside that thing before we go over the edge.”
“Will do.” Sophia was already setting up her computer and connecting the array of sensors that she had in her pack.
“Listen up everyone!” Sam announced loudly as she addressed the group. “The last time we were here something started whipping the ropes back and forth, like a kid playing with a jump-rope, so violently that it slammed Victor against the rock so hard we heard his bones break from twenty feet away. We will not repeat that experience today. The drone is equipped with a beacon light on top of it, watch that light! If it starts moving around at all,” she paused for emphasis before finishing, “get off the ropes! Clear?”
The mood shift was sudden, excitement and intrigue replaced instantly with trepidation and a watchful weariness that only comes with a life spent in dangerous situations. The solemnity of real danger reigning in the moment as they prepared themselves for an enemy that they couldn’t see save for the small red glow that was now suspended forty feet below them.
“Drone set at the bottom edge of the hole.” Mark Jr announced as the drone settled into its position, aligned with the enormous hole that ran horizontally through the megalithic building.
“When we lost Victor,” Sam explained, “his rope position was right about where we have the drone positioned, but watch the air currents and pay attention to how the rope feels.”
She stepped backward over the edge, determined to be the first one down and thus the one in the most danger. Twenty feet down and the next wave of rappellers stepped off int0 the void.
Sam was waiting for them at the bottom, focused on the machine itself.
“Set your gear to filter c-twenty-four and look up.” Sophia said softly as her feet touched down.
The roof of the cavern was highlighted in a shimmering pale blue glow that flowed up from the center of the edifice in a single beam of light before spreading across the top of the cavern.
“Question one answered.” Sophia announced. “I have never seen anything like it before but it seems to be a forcefield of some sort holding it up. That shimmering light you see is the magnetic spectrum, it looks like it is pressing upward and…” she paused as tried to wrap her head around the possibility. “Well, it’s just holding it up.”
“Forcefield?” Gideon asked.
“I just don’t know what to call it.” Sophia admitted. “I’ve read theories on forcefield generating technology, but nobody had published any real data on how it might work.”
“Can you tell if anyone is inside?” Vixen asked.
“The only heat signature I see are from the middle up,” Sophia said, “and I think that’s whatever is producing that field.” She paused as she searched for confidence in her answer. “If there’s anyone or anything lower than that, then this thing is shielded and I can’t see it.”
“Standard breach then.” Gideon took the lead as he barked orders to his team. “Vixen, open that thing up. Bull, Cross, Siren be ready on the breach. I’ll toss a couple cans of CS gas, we count to thirty and move in.”
“Hooah!” Came from the group in a chorus of agreement.
As soon as everyone was in position and ready Gideon gave a nod and Rachel tested the door before opening it far enough for Gideon to toss a canister inside before slamming it closed.
“Rook?”
“Thirty, Twenty-nine,” Elena started counting out loud.
“Umm, boss…” Tessa said suddenly before shouting, “GAS, GAS, GAS!”
Everyone froze.
Gas was pouring out from vents near the ground in the side of the building.
“That’s CS!” Caleb shouted.
“Stay calm everyone.” Gideon took immediate charge as he turned to Sam, Mark Jr and Sophia, “It’s our own gas, it wont hurt you. Mask up and let your tears wash the burn out of your eyes. Don’t rub!”
“What the hell happened?” Tessa said out loud though she already knew the most likely answer.
“Must have some sort of automatic vent system.” Garret said. “Breach without gas?”
Gideon was silent for a long moment as he considered the risk assessment.
“We have no idea what to expect, who to expect or how much time we will have once we’re inside, but we can be sure this much tech will be guarded by something.” Gideon was talking more to the three scientists than his own team. “You three get back to your ropes, if this goes pear-shaped I want you out of here as fast as you can run. Do not attempt to help in any way. Am I clear?”
Sam, Mark and Sophia were stunned into silence, each only managing a head nod in reply as they crossed back to the ropes and connected the ascenders.
“Three, Two…” Gideon silently mouthed the last “one” as Vixen shoved the door open and ducked out of the way.
Devon went in first, having earned the nickname Bull both by his size and tendency to overwhelm an opponent by sheer speed and force, he was almost always the first one to go through any door the team had breached. Devon side stepped and crouched the moment he was inside, both allowing Kira then Cross to enter as well as making himself as small of a target as possible while he scanned the room. As the rest of the team began to flow through the doorway Devon stood up and scratched his head in mock stupor.
The team found themselves standing in the middle of a cavernous and remarkably empty building. The walls were lined with three separate walkways running the entire circumfrence of the building with built in computer screens in clusters on all three levels. In the center of the building, taking up a square the size of a small house was the only visible work station. A massive pedistal lined with computer stations on all four sides stood reaching ten feet where it supported what looked like a bowl made of the same crystaline material as the formation that made up Victors cage.
“We’re clear guys,” Gideon announced, “come on in. You’re going to want to see this.”
Sam, Sophia and Mark raced to get unclipped from their ropes and dashed inside only to stop short at the sheer emptiness they found.
“What the…” Sam exclaimed as she crossed to one of the computer stations in the center.
“No power.” Sophia said as she clicked the power button on one of the monitors.
She glanced around the room searching for wires or cabling before seeing a large metal box with a lever on the side mounted to the wall in the corner.
“There.” She announced as she crossed to it and pulled it into the up position.
The room came to life in an instant. The computer screens around the pedistal work station flickered once then lit up with streams of data in succession as the bowl on top began to glow.
“What’d you do?” Sam shouted with a grin.
“I fixed it!” Sophia said proudly. “Now let’s figure out how to make it work. If I had to guess that bowl thing up there is where Victors cell is going to end up.”
“But how?” Mark Jr said as he inspected one of the keyboards. “This isn’t even in English!”
“Sanscrit?” Elena asked.
“Not any language I have ever seen.” Sam said, “Closest I can come is Hiragana.”
“Hira… what?” Garret asked.
“Hiragana, it’s a native Japanese phonetic alphabet.” Sophia interjected. “I studied languages for a few years, this is close but not quite. I don’t recognize it at all.”
“Well,” Sam sighed, “I’m not one to go pushing buttons without knowing what they do, so this ball is in your court Soph.”
“Trouble is,” Sophia said as she circled the pedestal searching each work station for clues, “we don’t have a way to translate any of this to English.”
She came to a closed cabinet door between two of the computer stations,
“I wonder what’s in there.” Sam reached past Sophia and tugged the door open.
Inside the cabinet the shelves were filled with tablets made from the same crystaline material, each with a label written on the spine in the foreign lettering as the keyboards and other sigenage. Sophia froze as she studied the markings, comparing them against each other and then the keys on the keyboard.
“It’s dates!” She suddenly announced.
“What?” Mark Jr asked.
“Look at the patterns,” Sophia traced one of the tablet spines with her fingertip as she spoke. “The first two characters are the same for the first thirty-one tablets, then twenty-eight, then thirty-one again then thirty.”
“And the last set of digits is the same for all of them.” Rachel added as realization dawned.
“Ok, new plan.” Sophia turned to Elena, “You handle tech for your guys, right?”
“Yes,” Elena said cautiously, “why?”
“I’m going to keep working on translating,” Sophia directed, “You guys try to figure out how to operate those tablets, if we’re right about this being dates then I have a huge leg up on translation and it means that these tablets are more than likely records or logs of some nature. They might show us how to operate this thing.”
“You’re a genius, you know that?” Elena shouted.
“Oh she knows it.” Sam laughed.
“Not genius,” Sophia argued with a smile “just extremely detail oriented.”
Hours slipped by as the group divided into teams, one to work with Sophia on translating and one on activating the tech. By the sixth hour Sophia had developed a loose grasp on the language and started working on interpreting the data that had been streaming across the computer screens.
“Life support, brain activity, physical health…” She was rattling it off at a frantic pace as understanding settled over her mind.
“Here!” Sophia shouted as she moved around the pedestal.
“You find something?” Sam walked around to where she was at.
“This one is his cage…” Sophia trailed off as she studied the screen.
“Holy shi…” Elena gasped from across the room. “Hey guys, this is more than just a tablet!” She crossed the room to where Sophia was working. “Watch this.”
As Elena touched the corner of the tablet it started glowing a pale azure then a holographic image of the room leaped off the screen.
“There’s camera angles from all over this place.” Elena explained as she flipped from one holograph to the next. “This one seems to be the main control view, I think it’s up…” she looked up at the balcony that circled the room and pointed to a spot on the second floor. “There!”
The image shifted to show the room from directly above the person at the control station as they tapped a keyboard that was just out of sight. Suddenly the bowl flashed three times, after the third flash the bowl was cradling the sphere that housed Victor. A few more keystrokes and an arm extended down from the ceiling, locked onto the top of the sphere and lifted it off leaving only the platform that made up Victor’s floor in the bowl. Victor was laying flat on his back, perfectly still with his eyes closed as the holographic scene shifted the pedestal began recessing into the floor as it delivered Victor to floor level and they moved in on him.
Sophia looked up at the balcony as a tear streaked her cheek. “Can you see what key combination they typed?”
Elena flipped from one video to the next, fast forwarding through each one as she scanned the holograph for the answer.
“No.” She said finally. “No clean view of the keyboard or screens. I’m sorry Sophia.”
“No worries.” Sophia grimaced. “I will figure this out. You guys go through some of these other logs and see what you can find, I’m going up there to look around.”
As Sophia made her way upstairs to examine the control station the rest of the team started viewing the holographic logs.
They were horrified by what they found out.
For hours and hours the team watched as Victor was systematically tortured then left in isolation to heal before being tortured some more. Each moment was meticulously recorded in video logs, voice logs and comprehensive physiological audit covering both mental and emotional changes as well as body function to the cellular level.
“He’s there rat.” Tessa said, her steely eyes turning icy as she processed the thought. “I’ve seen some pretty scary covert sci-ops, but this is inhumane even for Moscow!”
“These people don’t view us as anything more than lab experiments do they?” Devon breathed. “We need to hunt them down and extinguish them. Immediately boss!”
“I know how you’re feeling right now Bull,” Garret began, “and I agree. We will hunt them down and get to the bottom of this, but our first mission is to get Victor out. Understood?”
“Aye boss.” Devon was visibly pained by what he’d just watched.
“Take a break soldier!” Rachel ordered. “In fact everyone, put it down. We’ve seen enough to know what they were up to, time to focus on how to make this thing work. Anyone see anything useful in this slop?”
“I think I got something over here.” Elena offered. As the group gathered around her she continued. “I’m not the language expert, but Sophia showed me a bit and I think I have found the training manual, watch.”
“What?” Sophia’s shout echoed from the second floor control station.
“I’ll bring it up,” Elena was already moving toward the lift.
The team spent the next four hours watching the instructional hologram as Sophia and Elena made adjustments on the computer interface and clicked through the machine one system at a time, mastering it by the end of the video.
“How the hell can you remember all that?” Caleb exclaimed as the two women started the retrieval process from memory.
“Eidetic memory here.” Sophia said nonchalantly.
“Same.” Elena agreed.
As Sophia tapped the final button on the control panel with one hand Elena reached over and clasped hands with her. The bowl began to glow a soft azure as the machine whirred to life. Suddenly the whole room flashed three times and shuddered before the machine began it’s cool down process. Victors cage sat in the bowl as the pedestal began to lower into the floor. Sophia’s heart skipped with excitement as his windows lowered into view just to freeze with terror when she saw him.
Victor was laying on his back, body stiff and eyes closed.
Elena felt Sophia tense up, “It’s ok, I saw this in one of the logs. Whatever this thing is, it does this to him every time they retrieve him.” She frowned, “It’s how they maintain complete control.”
Within moments the bowl was nestled neatly into the floor and what appeared to be a magnet lowered from the ceiling before locking onto the top of the sphere and lifting it free.
“Is this real?” Sophia was fully sobbing.
“Lets go get your man.” Elena whispered.
Sophia didn’t take time waiting for the lift to get down from the second floor, half climbing and half falling down a ladder well. Reaching the floor she scrambled over the railing surrounding his platform and threw herself onto his chest, pressing her ear over his heart.
Heart beat!
“He’s alive!” she whispered. “Tessa, how do we wake him up? I can’t remember!”
Tessa was only a few steps behind her as she climbed down.
She laid her hand on Sophia’s shoulder as she spoke, “It’s ok, he will wake up in about five, four, three…”
Victors eyes fluttered open.
“Sophia, Măiastră...” Victor breathed. “How are you finally here in my dream?”
Sophia sat bolt upright and their eyes met for the first time without a wall between them in nearly six years, both of them sobbing with joy. Victor sat up and Sophia wrapped her arms around him neck and pulled him in tight.
“I thought you were dead.” She whispered in his ear.
“Am I not?” Victor asked softly.
“You’re free my love.” Sophia assured him. “We found you.”
“Umm…” Sam said softly with a nod toward the only door in the room, “I hate to interrupt, but we may want to speed things along before someone comes through that door.”
“That’s not where they come through.” Victor said realizing for the first time that there were other people in the room.
“What do you mean?” Gideon stepped into view, “We need to secure this place, where is the risk?”
“I figure out the language,” Victor turned and lowered his feet to the floor, “about three years ago I started writing down the words they used.” He stood up and lifted the mattress of his bed enough to slip his hand under as he pulled out a tattered notebook with the title Victors Codex scrawled across the cover and handed it to Gideon.
“Here’s my lexicon, they come and go there.” He pointed to a blank wall opposite the door they came in through. “They use key-cards, they press it to that little box outline over there and the door just materializes in the wall.”
“Key-cards?” Mark Sr asked over the comms.
“Affirmative sir.” Gideon said. “Bull, Siren, secure the wall.”
“Aye sir.” Devon and Kira both shifted tier rifles from the door to the empty wall.
“Rook find a way to activate that door, everone else find me one of those cards.” Gideon paused as he scanned the room, “If one exists.”