Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

The man on the table gulped in one more breath and said the only thing he could.

“Never.”

The man standing above him squeezed.

The pain suddenly became brighter than the light.

Outside Simon's Flat

Simon never even made it inside his flat.

The cab dropped him at the curb just a few feet from the front entrance. He was raising his hand to cue the biometric lock when the waist-high hedge to his left suddenly trembled and hissed at him.

“SSSimon!”

He stopped short and turned, surprised. Without thinking, his body fell into a natural defensive posture: hands up, fingers half-curled into fists, one foot in front of the other, knees slightly bent. All those years of martial arts training instinctively took control of his body. He was ready to defend himself.

A shadow rose up from behind the hedge: slender and tall, narrow build, a fall of silver hair like wings on both sides of his face.

It was Hayden, wide-eyed and intense.

“Hayden!” Simon whispered fiercely. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Come with me,” he said softly. “We need to take a drive.”

“You’re drunk!”

Hayden cocked his head as if he was truly puzzled. “And your point is…?”

“I’m not going anywhere if you’re driving,” Simon told him.

Hayden spread his hands innocently. “Then you drive. I don’t give a rip. We just have to go.”

Simon thought about it for a second. He only had a couple of hours before he had to go to Ryan’s, and the long talk with Samantha had been exhausting. But…if Hayden wanted him, there was a good reason for it. He agreed.

He dropped his head in surrender. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s drive.”

Hayden’s odd little electrical car was parked unevenly at the curb, halfway down the block. Simon was unfamiliar with the controls, but it didn’t take long to adjust. Three minutes later they were slipping into traffic with much larger vehicles, but the Hayden-mobile zipped and maneuvered more like a sports car than a commuter-box.

Simon was astonished: the two-seater had incredible pick-up; it was almost like driving a turbo-charged internal combustion engine from the last century.

“You’ve messed around with this, haven’t you?” he said as they sailed down the highway, barely in control.

“Maybe a little,” Hayden said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Turn right here, please.”

“Here?”

“HERE!”

He dragged at the wheel and tilted into a hard right turn. The tires squealed at the strain.

“Where the hell are we going?”

“To a suburb in the north part of town,” he said. “Turn left at the next light.”

“Why-”

“I need to show you something, Simon. I’m not going to talk about it ‘til we get there, so just, for the love of Christ, drive, will you?” He took a pull at the bottle he had left on the floor of the front seat. “My god, I’m amazed I even made it to your flat in my condition.”

“Then stop drinking, Hayden!”

The older man goggled at him. “Damn, you are an old woman, aren’t you?” he said and took another swig.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled to the curb at a quiet lit corner in an anonymous suburban district. There was a fueling station on one corner, offering the usual array of hydrogen, electrical hookups, biofuels and even some hideously expensive fossil fuel. Across the narrow side street was a small tea shop and chemists, one of the vanishing breed of family-owned neighborhood everything-stores that used to fill the English countryside. And caddy-corner, near a small park, was an abandoned entrance to the underground. A lopsided gate, somewhat the worse for wear, blocked the grimy staircase that led down into the shadows. The mangled sign dangling from it read, “OPEN FOR CONNECTIONS, MARCH 2036.” Three years late, Simon thought. Just a bit behind schedule.

Hayden rolled out of the car almost before Simon had pulled to a complete stop; it was all the younger man could do to park and run after him. “Hey!” he called, still pitching his voice low. “Will you wait, please?” Hayden was heading somewhat unsteadily to the underground entrance. He passed the sign that named the station, but Simon couldn’t read it; it was completely covered with graffiti.

As he stumbled to the gate, Hayden pulled a huge rusted key from his pocket. It looked a hundred years old to Simon, at the very least, and it took more than a moment of twiddling and cursing for Hayden to fit it into the massive padlock on the entry gates and pop the lock open.

Hayden shoved the gate wide-open and bolted inside. He gestured for Simon to follow as he dashed down the steps of the old subway. There was a gate at the bottom as well; it took Hayden even less time to produce a different key and open another set of locks.

Simon closed the outer gate behind them and dashed down the stairs to join his father’s old friend…but he skidded to a halt beside him as Hayden pushed the inner gate open with a theatrical squawk. It was dead black inside; the lights had been turned off long ago.

Hayden turned to peer back up the steps, making sure no one was following. Simon could smell the stench of the street bums that lived in the area, but none were in sight. It was hard to see anything in the gloom.

“Hayden,” he said, “This is-”

There was a burst of blinding white light, strong and sudden enough to make Simon lurch back. Hayden turned to him and waved a powerful flashlight in his face. “Always prepared,” he said.

He turned and dove into the darkness. Scowling, and against his better judgment, Simon followed.

They trotted down a second series of steps, moving even deeper into the underground. There was a strangely linear gleaming light below and in front of them; it took Simon a moment to understand what he was looking at: the subway tracks, still clean and shining despite years of disuse.

“Hayden, where the hell are we going?”

This time Hayden didn’t look back. “Just follow, Simon.” As they trotted through the darkness, Simon noticed sections of the track had been disassembled. They were obviously in some long-abandoned section of the tubes, far from any working lines.

Hayden abruptly stopped, so fast that Simon almost crashed into his back. But he pulled up short as Hayden spun and shined the light directly into his face.

“Simon, you and I have never been here.”

He turned to the left and walked through a side tunnel that opened into what appeared to be a utility room. At the far end of the room was another door with yet another lock.

“Where did you get all these keys?”

“Where did you get all those questions?” Hayden muttered as if talking to Teah and pushed the third key into the third lock and turned it. He pulled the door open…only to reveal another door directly behind it. But this one was different than the others. It was newer, cleaner, and there was the dimly glowing box of a biometric sensor cut into it, almost like a small MRI with a three-dimensional scanner. It was so clean and new it seemed entirely out of place in the murk of the abandoned room.

Hayden placed his hand inside the device with an oddly casual air, as if he had done it a thousand times before. Simon saw a blue light flow out of the device as it read the entire form of the scientist’s hand.

It took only moments. The light flashed blue and then green, then the door popped open with a mechanical chunk. Hayden pushed through, gesturing for Simon to follow. “Stay close,” he said.

Simon could feel his heart pounding. They were in a short, dark corridor that led to one more door-this one with no lock at all.

“Where the hell are we?” he said again.