Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

Lucas continued, struggling to breathe and still speaking through the thick mask covering his face.

“We’ve been trying for years-years-to transmit information to the outside world, but our efforts have been futile. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that eighteen scientists including myself escaped the Dragger Station, approximately two thousand feet below where we’re standing.” They were inside the branching tunnel now, traveling over a sheet of ice so hard they left no footprints at all. “Frankly, it was a miracle that we escaped at all. It took literally months of planning-stealing supplies, hiding and even building weapons. There were forty-eight scientists, researchers, and support staff all together. Eighteen of us got out. The rest…dead. And we’ve been surviving on stolen tech and leftovers ever since.”

He sighed heavily and shook his head. “I never imagined I could be capable of cold-blooded murder,” he said quietly, not looking at either of them. “But I had no choice. None of us did. All we wanted was to get out of this icy hell! That’s all we wanted.” He paused to contemplate what he had done for a moment and then continued, “Anyway, it’s done. We seized an opportunity and capitalized on it. Since then, we’ve been on the run. Luckily, we found an old repair station that was connected to one of the utility tunnels. Thank god, with the group of scientists and engineers that we had, we were able to re-activate some of the old vehicles that had been abandoned. We are only traveling in adjacent tunnels at the moment, the ones that were used for ventilation and removal of ice during the coring process years ago. Vector5 can’t reach us-at least not at the moment. It’s not worth their time. But if and when they really want to dig us out, believe me, they can. And that will happen sooner than later, I’m afraid. Unless we can finally find a way to escape Antarctica completely.”

“So these aren’t the main tunnels?” Max said, looking up into the endless dark, remembering the massive domes, the high arches all around, the incredibly complex map they had seen in the Spector. “These are the utility tunnels?”

“Max,” he said with a wicked smile, “Believe me, you wouldn’t stand a chance against the machinery that travels through the main tunnels.”

Simon pushed it away. It was too much, just…too much. But he still had only one question; he still wanted only one answer. “Where, exactly, is my father, Lucas? How do I get to him?”

Lucas slowed down for a second and hunched over, putting his hands on his tired knees as he tried to catch his breath. Then he said in a very different voice-one far older, far wearier than the one that had begun his story.

“Simon,” he said, “there are a few hundred scientists that are held captive. I’m not positive exactly how many. But those that are finished with their task are terminated very rapidly and without remorse, or a sense of humanity, or even the remotest inkling of guilt. No one down here is certain if they will live from one day to the next. I can’t tell you if your dad is still alive, but I’ll tell you something for certain: entering this world is suicide. Suicide. And I, for one, will not face Vector5 again!”

He straightened up and looked forward-at the tiny, glowing light that was the scientists’ current refuge.

It was a robot graveyard. There were wheels, legs, pistons, printed circuit boards, hydraulics-all the left over pieces of two generations of technology, from vehicles to computers to discarded AIs. They filled the narrowing cave from side to side, a tangle of metal and wire and fiber-optics that would never be untangled. A set of inflatable tents, luminous domes, cones and ziggurats was attached to the ice as the floor curved up into a wall-living quarters for the renegade scientists.

They had nearly reached their destination. Lucas was nearly home.

“We are almost out of this hell,” he said. “And whether we make it the rest of the way or die right here, I don’t care, you are not dragging me or any of my people down there.”

He risked a glance at Simon only when he had finished. All he saw there was grim determination. No fear, no weariness, no fatigue, just resolve.

Simon gave Lucas the hardest look he’d ever seen. “Fair enough,” Simon told him. “You’ve made yourself clear. Now you listen to me.” His head lowered. His eyes seemed to burn with a fire all their own. “I don’t give a fuck who is here, or how dangerous they think they are. I will find my father even if I have to climb all the way to the bottom of this hellhole myself. And all you have to do is tell me how to get to Central Command.”

Lucas’ chin came up defiantly as if he was about to challenge Simon’s demand. Max saw the worst possible outcome. He put a hand on his best friend’s shoulder and squeezed, very gently, ready to counter an angry, reflexive blow. He knew that Simon could kill this man with a single blow if he wanted to. But Simon didn’t move. His shoulder felt like solid stone inside his suit.

“Simon,” Lucas said in a surprisingly measured tone, “I don’t care what the hell you do. But don’t count me in. I’ll tell you how to get there. I have no reason not to. You haven’t got a clue where you are, and I’ll make sure you couldn’t lead Vector5 back here even if you tried. So you’ll get your intel and all the supplies you need, and that’s where we part ways.” He turned away from him and crossed the last few steps toward the encampment.

“This is your hell now, not mine.” Lucas said. “I would rather die of hunger and hypothermia than to go down there again.”

He pulled away from Simon and moved steadily, determined, toward the tents.

There were shadowy figures near the tents, moving slowly in the bitter cold. One of them detached itself from the group and came toward Simon. It took him a moment to recognize Samantha as she approached.

She smiled as the light from his flare and flashlight connected them. “I’m glad to see you,” she said. “We were getting a bit concerned.”

Simon shrugged, trying to put on as casual a demeanor as he could manage. “Just talking a bit,” he said.

She gave him a huge hug, put her head on his shoulder, and sighed. “Simon,” she whispered. “This is crazy. What the hell is going on?”

Simon shook his head. “Right now, Sammy, I must tell you…I really don’t know. But we’ll figure it out.”

He gently turned her around, put his arm around her padded waist, and walked her back toward the tents and the rest of the team. “So tell me,” he said, “did Ryan get that case of Macallan out of the Spector?”

Blackburn stood alone at the apex of his empire and looked on all that he’d helped created.

All this, he told himself, in half a lifetime. And we have barely begun.

From where he stood, he had almost a 360-degree view of the buildings that hung like tethered wasp nests from the underside of Command Central’s massive dome. They were constructed completely of modules like a space station, built piece-by-piece by submarines delivering components one at a time over a twenty-year span. From below, he knew, the buildings looked like upside-down skyscrapers, unbroken cocoons, their surface soft and pockmarked, but clinging to massive sheets of ice so compressed, they were strong and durable like steel. Inside each structure was a web of interior insulating modules that kept the core temperature at a constant comfortable degree for human habitation, while the exteriors took advantage of the subzero temperature to freeze themselves immovably to the ice dome itself.

The Vector5 network was both vast and efficient. Blackburn was certain of that; he was the one who had hired or captured the scientists and engineers who made it so. He had witnessed the construction of all three phases-the first shelf at three thousand feet, the second at six thousand, and Shelf 3 at more than nine thousand feet below the ice. He had overseen the construction of the tunnels and speedways. He had piloted virtually every kind of vehicle that Vector5 used, from the personnel transports to the weapons platforms to the robotic vehicles that moved too fast for humans to pilot directly.