Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

“No,” Simon assured her, “they’re just heading to our last known location, before we disappeared from their scans. Which means we should be somewhere else.” He cast a hard look at Max who nodded without looking back.

“No worries,” he said. “We’re out of here.” He ticked up the power to the thruster, and they surged forward, finally emerging from the endless tunnel that they had entered fourteen miles earlier, back at Station 35, and flew into a vast basin, half a mile deep.

The holo-display showed it clearly: The Spector had burst into a large bowl-shaped depression several hundred feet in diameter. Above it was a gigantic dome and a thin blue plane just a hundred feet over the Spector itself. It took Simon a moment to realize it was an indicator of the water/atmosphere interface.

“So…some of these tunnels are dry?” he said. “I mean, above the water line?”

“By my estimate,” Ryan said, “most of them. We’re more than ten miles inland, remember. We may have entered at four hundred feet below sea level, but we’ve gradually-very gradually-been moving upward. And now, we’re at sea level.”

“It’ll take us a few minutes to breach,” Max said. “Assuming we want to. Then we’ve got to find a way to take cover and quick.” He glanced at the deepscan holo-display and scowled. “Whatever is in that tunnel,” he said, referring to the Dragger Pass, “is approaching us pretty rapidly.”

“I agree. I don’t want to introduce us just yet,” Simon added.

Everyone on board knew the consequences. If they were discovered, their careers and possibly lives would be short-lived.

They ascended to just a few feet below the surface in silence, every eye focused on the deepscan or the flat-screen, trying to draw more information-or even a solution-through sheer force of will.

Hayden was gazing into the infinitely complex maze. “Simon,” he said, “Whatever Oliver has told you must be true. We’ve stumbled on to something dangerous here. Too dangerous for us to be a part of.”

Simon looked at Nastasia, trying to guess at what she was thinking. “I can’t tell you anything that will help you, Simon,” she said. “To my knowledge, there is no technology that can create these tunnels, let alone survive this deep within the ice. These are not the tunnels I spoke of.”

Ryan nodded in agreement. “Way beyond anything I’ve seen. And I’d have to agree with Hayden, this is definitely something we shouldn’t be a part of. It’s just too unbelievable to be true.”

Samantha was shaking her head in astonishment as she stared at the approaching blobs of light. “It makes no sense,” she said. “The Madrid Protocol is still in place, not to mention that Protocol 7 was just initiated. There is an absolute quarantine in Antarctica. No one should be here. No one. This is a violation of global magnitude.”

Simon took it all in, thinking furiously as the Spector pushed toward the open air above them. He tried to take in everything they had learned, everything that had happened in the last few weeks-even in the last few hours. He wondered if Oliver had been dragged down here knowingly or by force. But it didn’t matter-his father was in danger, and he would find him.

Whoever was down here, whoever was running this mad operation, knew where Oliver was and what had happened to him, and Simon would find him and find out for himself.

A small, sudden movement made him turn to look at Nastasia. That mark on the back of her neck, he thought. What does it mean? What does it have to do with my father-with Nastasia herself, and her reason for being here? Does she know I saw it? Why would she have that symbol on her neck?

Her remarkable sapphire eyes revealed nothing. Her small, enigmatic smile offered even less.

Max’s voice broke the silence and brought Simon back into the moment. “Ready to surface,” he said to Simon. “Shall we?”

“Won’t we look like a big dent in the water?” Samantha said. “I mean, just because the Spector is invisible, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Hayden shook his head. “No, the smartskin samples the terrain and builds a multi-spectrum camouflage. We just look like another piece of the sea, with the right color and wave action.”

She shook her head. “Amazing.”

“Yes,” he admitted.

In the brief seconds that remained, Simon tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. He wondered if there was a connection between UNED and what was happening in Antarctica. Did they know what was going on, or was this somehow beyond them as well? Oliver himself may have been played for a fool. He was requested by UNED for the Antarctica project, but soon he was working for some “department” that had no real name, and not long after that he had “died”-or, rather, disappeared.

And then there were the rumors of all the other scientists who had mysteriously vanished in recent months and years.

Max let the Spector hover just below the surface and put his full attention on the blobs of light-the whatever-they-were who were approaching from the side tunnels. They would be arriving in ten minutes or less.

“Invisible or not,” he said, “I think we’d be much better off confronting these…people…from land. I’m going up.”

Simon turned back to Max with a new look of resolve. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

Max grinned. “Thought so.”

He put his hands out, spread his fingers and lifted them both very slowly, and Spector VI rose to breach the frigid water, like some vast supernatural creature of the sea, invisible to mortals but larger than any whale. Water streamed down its glittering sides. Flukes on the left and right side opened, breathing out foul carbon dioxide and replenishing the breathable air.

They were just a few hundred feet from the edge of the icebound shoreline. The cavernous space was lit by some sort of dull illumination that seemed to come from within the ice itself. It was no brighter than the outside world would have been a few moments after sunset, but it was enough to see by. More than enough.

“Let’s get her to shore,” Max said. He snapped his fingers together, locking the console for a moment, then pulled his hands back and turned to his best friends. “So,” he said, “you want to help me engage the treads on this monster?” referring to the tracks that would convert the Spector to an amphibian transport vehicle.

Simon grinned. “What do you need?” he asked.

It took the consent of two pilots, one at either side, to convert the vessel from full submarine capacity to amphibious form. They both palmed the sensor plates at the same time, touched the approval panels when they turned green, and looked down at the floor as the faint rrrrrrrr sound grew louder. The exterior plates were pulling back and locking. The tread compartment was flooding as it was supposed to. The treads were extending downward, covering the curved underside of the vessel, then locking into place. Test lights flashed. Ready lights illuminated as the treads extended fully.

Max slipped back into the command chair and grinned. “We’re good,” he said. He looked at Simon almost triumphantly. He could barely believe what they had accomplished. “We’re going to the surface of the ice.”

For a moment Simon stood silently looking at the holo-screen in front of them. Then he said without needing acknowledgment, “Let’s go get my father.”

“Commander,” the surveillance officer said, “I think you should see this.”

The DITV was making record speed, careening down the slick, smooth walls of Tunnel 3 at twice the recommended speed. But Roland was determined to get there first and do what needed to be done.