Chapter 14
Victor rubbed his hands together as his mind began acclimating itself to the idea of being free, the memories of the last five years standing like a bulwark against the idea of it coming to an end.
“Take your time son,” Gideon said softly, “tell us everything you can about these people. Rescuing you was just phase one of this operation.”
“Well, they are scientists.” Victor paused as he allowed his thoughts to solidify into usable details. “They hold no value in human life beyond that of lab animals, to be studied I mean. They did…” He trailed off for a moment as his expression fell, “terrible things to me. But it was to learn about humans.” His eyes flashed to Gideon’s for a moment, “They’re not from earth.” He looked around the room then down at his feet, “At least not from our earth.”
“Wait,” Elena said. “What? Not from our earth?”
“The door opens to a completely different world.” Victor looked dreamy for a moment as he searched for the right words. “When it opens it is above ground for one thing.” He paused as his eyes returned to Sophia’s. “And we are not in the desert there, what I could see looks like a park outside the window.” He looked back to Gideon then at Sam, “I only got a few brief looks, most of the time they were already here when I arrived and didn’t leave till I was gone, but when I did, it looked like the door led out to an office building situated near a park.”
“Good intel, but what can you tell me about the people…” Gideon paused, “or whatever they are.”
“Cold,” Victor said it instantly, “not just toward me but to each other. They lack feelings at all from what I could tell. A few times early on one of them was killed by a malfunction or by standing too close when they activated the portal…” he paused as sadness reclaimed his expression. “They did not seem to care, barely even noted it outside of the safety logs.” He pointed to a smooth section of wall along one side of the room, “They keep them there. There was always someone recording in the safety logs.”
Tessa crossed to the wall and traced an intricately carved design that they hadn’t seen before on the wall. The design started glowing with a soft azure light, suddenly the wall slid upward to reveal a bookshelf with a computer screen in the middle of it. The shelves were stacked with the same tablets they had found the other logs on. She picked one up and activated the hologram. As it played she searched the shelf set for anything else and found a thin rectangular seem just under the bottom edge of the computer screen.
She pushed.
Click…
She released it and after another click a shallow drawer slid open. Inside the drawer was a small bright red plastic case about the size of a credit card with words in the foreign language printed on it in neon yellow lettering.
“Boss?” she shouted across the room. “I think I found it.”
Tessa grabbed the plastic case from the drawer and rushed back to where the group was still gathered around Victor.
Handing it to Gideon she said, “Looks like an authenticator biscuit from an SSBN missile safe.”
“A what?” Sam asked.
“I served on a nuclear sub for a while.” Tessa explained. “We had a nuclear scare and almost had to launch so the skipper and the XO retrieved it to get the authenticator order confirmation for launch.”
“What happened?” Mark Jr asked.
“The order turned out to be a fake.” Tessa said. “A Hamas operative embedded it into a live transmission from STRATCOM, somehow streamed it right in.”
“And that is why they have authenticator biscuits.” Gideon said with a laugh, “Could have been world war three!”
Gideon took the case and pressed it between his fingers, snapping it in half to reveal the bright orange card inside.
“I guess we have our key.” Rachel said softly.
“Can’t think of anything else that might be that securely held.” Caleb added.
“Except a self destruct explosive.” Jaxson was just thinking out loud, but the implication made everyone stop and think.
“Only way to find out is use it.” Julian suggested.
“Not with civilians here.” Gideon commanded before adding with a smile, “We get them back to forward ops, then we will come back and go hunting.”
“Hooah to that!” Tessa breathed.
“Are you strong enough to travel?” Sophia looked at Victor.
“I…” Victor paused, “I haven’t been outside of this cage in so long…”
“Are you able?” Sophia pressed.
“A couple times early on, I tried to escape…” Victors voice was shaky as he recounted the story. “That was before they started knocking me out for my…” he sneered as he finished, “visits.”
“What happened?” Tessa asked softly.
“They used to surround the cage with guards armed with shock sticks.” Victor was nearly whispering. “I made a break for it when one of them looked away for a moment. I thought I might make it to the door…” he paused, “The the first one felt like being shocked just below the point of electrocution.” He closed his eyes as the memory flooded into his mind. “Then then pinned me to the wall and hit me with it over and over…” he looked at Sophia, “The second time I tried they broke my ankles.”
Sophia gasped as tears flooded her eyes. “It must have been so awful.”
“They healed them.” Victor pulled her into a hug. “I learned later it was to teach me not to try to escape. Fear conditioning they called it.” He pulled Sophia away far enough to look into her eyes, “It did not work my love.” He gently kissed her cheek before adding, “I knew you were out there,” he looked around the room at Sam and Mark, “all of you. I knew that if you found out I was alive you would find a way to rescue me.”
“You were very brave.” Gideon said softly. “How did you do it?”
“I watched them,” Victor continued with a smile. “I learned how the Continuum Lattice worked.”
“Continuum Lattice?” Sam asked.
“That stuff.” Victor pointed at the tablet that Tessa was still holding. “They use it to make everything, the blue structure that made up the cage around my cell where you found me. They call it the Continuum Lattice, it’s from their world, they are very…” he paused as he looked up at Gideon, “VERY advanced.” He looked back at Sophia, “You would be proud of me my love.” He smiled. “I learned how they control it and I hacked it!”
Sophia laughed. “You did?”
“They are advanced,” Victor looked back to Gideon, “but arrogant. They think of us the way our scientists use rats, nothing more than a lab animal to be used for experimenting on. They gave me cancers, then cured them, gave me mutations and removed them. They even cut off my skin and caused it to regrow. They do not care about anything but advancing science and technology, they have no regard for anything they think of as less-than.”
“Other than the shock sticks, did you ever see any weapons?” Rachel asked.
“Rifles, pistols, blades.” Victor said, “I never saw how they worked or what they did, but they look like just our military’s guns and knives.”
“Good intel soldier, thank you.” Rachel put her hand on Victors shoulder, “Lets get you out of here, I’m sure you’re ready to leave.”
The journey back to camp was difficult. Due to lack of ample exercise Victor’s muscles had atrophied, leaving him weak and needing help climbing through the twisted and deformed cave system. By the time they made it back to camp Victor was near exhaustion, but the smile he wore was bright enough light up the cavern.
“So how did you hack the lattice?” Elena asked.
“The portal uses it to make the underground pocket that they keep the cages in.” Victor started.
“Cages” Tessa interrupted.
“From what I could gather they do this all over the world.” Victor looked around the room. “And not just our world, they would talk about other worlds, other species entirely. They are everywhere. They study us, all of us. I’ve seen them go out the and into the caves, seen them bring back animals, rocks, machines and tech. They examine it in here and then bring it to their world for…” he paused, “I don’t know what for.”
“Recon for an invasion?” Kira asked.
“Possibly.” Gideon thought about it for a minute then added “But if so, I should think they wouldn’t done whatever they did to the caves, that felt more like a cover-up. Most missions would rush the invasion and press the advantage with sheer force.”
“Whatever it is they want from us,” Victor intoned, “their tech is way beyond anything we have here.”
“What do you mean?” Mark Sr handed Victor a cup of coffee.
“Well for one, the things they used on me,” Victor said between sips, “they would wave a scanner over part of my body and a perfect image would come up on the computer screen. Like, perfect! I could even see my blood flowing in my veins, and when they zoomed in it broke the image down even further.” He paused, his eyes wide with disbelief. “To the cellular level. When they took me, the impact crushed every bone in my ribs, my shoulder and even fractured my neck. Had the fracture been only a hairline worse and I would have died.”
“Well,” Sophia whispered as she sat down next to him, “at least I have them to thank for healing you from that.”
“They have nano-bot technology for healing.” Victor looked up at Mark Sr. “They injected them when they first took me, I heard one of them talking about it. She said it was a good thing I survived the broken bones so she could test them on a living subject.” He paused, “She said I was a convenient opportunity to test them so they could start marketing the technology to hospitals and get their profits balanced.”
“ROI” Mark Jr whispered mostly to himself but his father heard.
“Profit driven then,” Mark Sr offered, “now we know how to get an upper hand at least.”
“The nano-bots have healed every single thing they have done to my body.” Victor announced. “I even tested it once or twice.”
Victor grabbed a knife from the food prep area and dragged it across his arm, he grimaced in pain as the knife slid through his skin and blood began to pool up and run from the wound.
“There,” he said as he put the knife down. “Now watch!”
Victor held his arm up and within moments the blood stopped flowing from the wound and the skin began knitting itself back together leaving only a faded thin line in its place. The silence felt like the cave itself was holding its breath, nobody moved for a full minute before Gideon broke the silence.
“That, has some true battleground usefulness.” Gideon exclaimed. “What more can you tell us about them?”
“Just that no matter what they did to me,” Victor said softly, “it healed within a day.”
“Tell us more about this continuum lattice.” Gideon pressed.
“It is a substance from their world,” Victor began, “they control it with what they call a lattice weaver device inside the sphere. When they activate the portal it fires the weaver it burrows through the earth making everything from the tunnels we’ve found to the cage.” He shivered. “After I heard them talking about it I started pulling the panels off the inside of my cell, first the one under my table so the legs would hide any damage, but they snap right out.”
“I guess they didn’t expect you to be smart enough to figure it out.” Jaxson shook his head.
“Like I said,” Victor continued, “arrogant. I finally found what I was looking for under the floor panels, they were particularly difficult to remove but I managed it. Theres an entire control station in there, the computer interface was pass-coded but I found the fibers it uses to communicate with the weaver head. Every time the light frequency changes in the fiber-optics it changes the direction of the lattice, I didn’t have a way to make the minute adjustments it’s designed to use but I found some colored plastic and glass in my cell and used that.” He paused with a laugh, “Not at all accurate but I did my best to put the protrusion right where my desk was.”
“How the hell did you do that?” Rachel asked.
“The interface showed me the GPS location of the weaver head on earth.” Victor said proudly, “After that it was just a matter of learning to drive the tech.”
“You know the GPS location of your desk?” Devon sounded incredulous.
“Of course,” Victor said it as though it should be common, “don’t you?”
“I barely know my own GPS coordinates,” Devon laughed, “much less that of my office!”
“Victor is an avid adventurer.” Sam said with a smile, “Like the rest of us, knowing your exact location can be a matter of pure survival.”
“Exactly!” Victor added. “And I knew that if I got that thing to come above ground right where my desk was,” he looked at Sophia, “my angel would find me and rescue me.”
“It was genius!” Sophia said as she hugged him. “I knew it was you even when everyone else doubted me.”
Sam let out a soft laugh, “Sorry about that.”
“Really we should have known,” Mark Jr added, “Sophia is rarely wrong.”
“You thought I was dead.” Victor said bluntly. “I don't blame you, I’m just thankful that you listened to her.”
“Not even death can keep me away from you my love.” Sophia whispered into his ear.
“This mission,” Gideon announced, “will require some preparation, extra gear and weapons that wont fit through the caves. Any suggestions?”
“Sophia,” Mark Sr started, “you said we were around a hundred feet here, right?”
“Yes, one hundred twenty feet to be exact.” She said.
“I have been studying the ground survey data that your system is returning while you all were gone and I think we can bring an elevator directly into this cavern pretty easily.” Mark Sr pointed to a spot near a wall. “Right there it looks like theres a natural chimney of relatively easy dirt. We should be able to push through that hundred feet and at least start getting an elevator in in less than a month.”
He paused as he clicked a button on his computer, the screen flicked to life showing an image with ground composition data laced through it. Sophia leaned in for a closer look before grabbing her goggles and crossing to the spot in the cavern wall that Mark Sr had pointed to.
“Take a closer look.” She said as she examined the wall. “The molecules look stretched here, like the walls in the cave.”
“That’s not a natural chimney.” Sam was studying the computer screen as she traced the data with her fingertip.
Sophia moved back to the computer screen and grabbed the mouse and started clicking the screen. “Let’s tip the axis a little.”
“You can do that?” Mark Sr asked as he moved closer to watch.
“Of course she can,” Sam laughed, clapping Sophia on the back, “This woman can do anything!”
Sophia moved the mouse and the data map switched from a front on view to a top down view.
“Look here,” she said pointing to the screen, “It’s near perfectly round.”
“That looks manufactured.” Gideon said softly.
“Very manufactured.” Sophia agreed. “And we are going to open it back up. Let’s do it Mr. H.”
“I already have the team standing by.” He said as he grabbed his phone and started typing.
Over the next few weeks they made the journey back to the surface and began preparations for the next phase of the mission, studying any and all records and log tablets they could find in the machine. The video logs were mostly records on the experiments they performed on Victor over the course of the nearly six years they held him. The footages was horrific, gruesome at times and detailed a epoch of pure torture in the name of science. Tessa and Elena poured over the training videos, becoming veritable experts on its operation, all the while Rachel, Julian and Kira worked with Sophia to learn the language.
“Elruke karat.” Julian said as Rachel came back in the room, roughly translating his greeting to the new language.
“Close!” Sophia exclaimed, “But you missed the ultimate in your enunciation, it’s supposed to sound like this, Elruke karat.”
“Elruke…” Julian repeated, “Thanks.”
We don’t have to be able to conversant, but we need to understand what they are saying, so learning the word parts is vital.” She instructed as she turned to the entire group. “You will also need to be able to read the language, so pay extra attention to diacritics, you don’t want to open the wrong door and find yourselves in a dangerous situation.”
A month passed.
Then another.
“I think we’re ready.” Gideon finally announced. “How’s that elevator shaft Mr. Halvorsen.”
“It’ll be done by next week.” He shuffled a couple papers on the desk in front of him.
“Perfect,” Gideon smiled, “time to start staging gear. Sophia were you able to duplicate the key card?”
“Of course!” Sophia responded with mock indignation as she handed each person a card. “These should work, but make sure you test more than before you go through that door.”
The rest of the wait was spent assembling lists, calculating probabilities and running risk assessment after risk assessment. Finally the day came to venture back through the cave system, lightly charged explosives in hand to finish clearing the blockages.
“Mr. Halvorsen,” Gideon had the grave expression of a man who had made final preparations far too many times, “the plan is two weeks. Week one will be opening up the cave system enough to get all of our equipment to the portal and setting up a new forward ops center, week two will be the breach and recon. Today is Sunday the ninth, if we are not back by the sixteenth call Richard and tell him I need assistance. Tell him to send the mustard seed.”
“Mustard seed?” Sam asked with a grin, “What exactly is that?”
Gideon laughed, “Mustard seeds are small, but with that much faith you can move mountains.”
“Our company has a specialized team call the Mustard Seed.” Rachel explained. “They the littoral nuclear option, they specialize in overthrowing governments.”
“By whatever means necessary.” Bull added with a smile, “My kind of people!”
“We plan to be careful and quiet Bull,” Gideon said with a stern expression. “We are only there to recon the terrain, assess the enemies strength and tech and hopefully find somewhere safe to setup a small base to run future missions out of.”
“And,” Julian suggested with a smile, “if we can make contact with some of the people there, maybe start an insurrection.”
“Always with the counter-intelligence.” Jaxson laughed.
“That was his specialty.” Rachel smiled, “and that’s why we stole him from the Company.”
They loaded everything into the elevator and sent the first two down to unload. When the elevator returned they piled in the next load. Six trips later the team was together again underground converting the scientific forward ops camp into a more militarized transfer station. It took them another three days to blast through the blockages and start setting up the new forward operations camp outside of the underground building that housed the portal machine.