David Golemon - Ripper

The beast was caught off-guard by the blows raining into its face delivered by Mendenhall. It reacted by squeezing his grip even harder on the airman. The beast roared with insult as Will continued to fight for the young security man’s life. Then, even through the screams of outrage from the creature, Will heard the airman’s neck snap. It was a sound the lieutenant would never forget. The struggles of the giant and the security man ceased at once. The beast let the boy slip through its grip as the large, unnatural eyes fell on Will. The giant brows rose and the creature smiled. With its bare chest almost through the door it reached out with lightning-quick speed and grabbed Mendenhall around the neck. The lieutenant knew that he hadn’t moved fast enough just as his life force was being squeezed from his body.

Suddenly the grip was released and a roar of pain sounded that actually shook the pictures from the clinic’s walls. As Will fell to the floor he looked up in time to see Henri Farbeaux step away from the flailing, infuriated giant. Then Mendenhall finally saw why the beast had let go as it pulled the ballpoint pen from its right eye. Farbeaux and Sarah were there to pull him up and out of the creature’s flailing arms.

“Thanks!” he screamed.

As they ran for the stairwell door being held open by Virginia and Dr. Gilliam, Farbeaux looked back as the creature now began to concentrate on the only remaining obstacle trapping it, the second door.

“This is the second time I’ve been here, and I must say you people go out of your way to make my stay vigorous and exciting,” Henri said.

A choking Mendenhall reached the door and allowed Henri and Sarah to go through first just as the beast bent over the remaining door.

“That’s what we’re here for Colonel, to make sure your days are filled with wonder and awe.”

Virginia cursed and pulled Will into the complete darkness of the stairwell.

For the first time in Compton’s fifteen years and Pete Golding’s ten at the Event Group, they saw the computer center go dark. With Europa being down for the first time ever, the sight was surreal for both men. As Pete pushed the large bulletproof glass security door open, he realized with the only lighting coming from the battery-powered floods in the corners and center of the large room, that the cavernous area with its empty theater-style seating and main-floor desks looked ghostly. The fifty-foot main computer screen with the flashing red light at its base was a reminder just how vulnerable the complex was without Europa running things.

“How long to reboot the system, Pete?” Niles asked as he walked down the main aisle of seating while looking through the glass walls out into the main hallway. He felt like they were being watched. He knew that was probably a wrong sensory input due to the stress of the situation.

“She should come right up,” Pete said as he practically ran down the steps to his large desk on the main floor. He immediately checked his personal system and then paused as his security code challenge came up on the monitor. He entered Golding-Hercules — Marilyn 11900-A-1.

“You better not let Jack see the Marilyn part of the code — he’ll kill you.”

“Ah, what the colonel doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Even through the terrifying situation they were now locked into, Niles Compton had to smile and shake his head. After all of this time he just learned that it had been Pete Golding all along who had programmed Europa’s voice synthesizer to mimic the sex symbol Marilyn Monroe’s voice. Collins had been looking for the culprit from the first day he started at the Group.

“Come on old girl, come on,” Pete urged. “I’m feeling mighty exposed here.”

Suddenly the main screen flashed a bright white. Then it did it again. Finally it went to a solid blue and the code Pete had entered started flashing at the top minus the numbers in case Pete wasn’t alone. This was a very good indication that Europa was regaining her programming. Golding lowered the microphone on his desktop and leaned in. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

“Europa, are you online?”

Silence filled the giant room. Then: “Good evening Dr. Golding. With my systems down, can you tell me if the emergency on level seventeen has been resolved?”

“We need you to help with that assessment.”

“I will need five minutes, thirty-seven seconds to regain sensory input from that section.”

“Hurry, please hurry,” Pete said as he pushed the microphone away from him and looked at Niles who was looking up through the bulletproof wall upstairs. As Pete started to inform Niles of the delay in case he hadn’t heard, the lights flickered overhead and Golding breathed a sigh of relief. He waited, but the lights didn’t come back on. He grabbed for the microphone once more. “Europa, is that you getting the power grid back up? Is that the first protocol?” Pete asked as he tried his hardest to remember the sequence of her reboot program.

“Dr. Golding, the power has been severed at the source. With my surveillance systems still down, that is my best estimation.”

Niles heard that. He turned and faced Pete who lost all the feeling in his legs and had to sit. Then he caught himself and sat back up.

“Europa, do you have a status report on nuclear reactors one and two?”

“I must source query by utilizing the programs that are currently available, Doctor. Standby.”

“Pete, what are the odds that one of those soldiers could access the reactor area on eighty-four?” Niles asked, no longer concerned about the boogeymen in the darkness outside the walls.

Pete shook his head. “Niles, with her systems down, the area could have been unsecured to allow our reactor technicians to get to the evacuation point. God only knows, but if Europa shut down her systems for a security breach, resecuring that area may have come too late.”

“Doctor, by accessing the main water systems and the sublevel systems such as distilled water storage, I have calculated that the hard-water levels in all four reactor pumping stations are down 46 percent,” Europa said.

“Is this an occurrence due to the emergency shutdown procedure?” Pete asked, doubting his own question.

“Negative, Dr. Golding. The pumps have been shut down at the source and both reactors have scrammed.”

“They can’t be capable of that!” Niles said as he ran over to Pete’s desk. “Europa, we need you to bypass normal start-up procedures and go directly to your surveillance systems. Reboot now!”

Before she could react, the red flashing of her warning systems started back up with the irritating buzz of the alarm.

“Doctor, we have a biohazard warning on level seventeen and a security breach on levels one, four, eight, eighteen, and eighty-four. Untagged persons are inside the complex.”

By untagged Europa meant that all Event Group members had a microscopic bug placed in their thigh area just under their skin that told Europa where every member of the Group was currently located. Event guests like Gloria Bannister and Henri Farbeaux had been tagged on a temporary basis. The untagged people she was currently picking up on her security scan were obviously the intruder element inside the complex.

“God, they made it into the reactor section and shut down the cooling pumps and water,” Niles said as he reached for the phone on an empty desk. “Europa, I need communications ASAP!”

“Estimate two minutes until program reboot on communications, Dr. Compton. I am now receiving security video from level eighty-four. Low-quality night vision has been achieved.”

As the two men watched, a hazy and greenish picture came on the main screen. At first they saw nothing out of the ordinary except for the flashing red and yellow lights indicating that the reactors, both one and two, had scrammed automatically or had shut down as per fail-safe protocol when they started being starved of coolant.