Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

“…there is more than one network of tunnels down here?”

“Precisely,” replied a German scientist named Rolfe-once rotund, now hollow-cheeked and flabby from malnutrition and stress. “High-speed tunnels, not meant for human transport. They are using special pods that travel hundreds of miles across the continent suspended magnetically from structures embedded into the ice tunnels for transport of resources from one end of the continent to the other. There are only a few vehicles fast enough to travel in these high-speed shafts, and sometimes Vector5 uses them. They are known as Ice Raptors.”

“Well, people wouldn’t need to use them for the most part, would they?” Ryan asked. “Moving resources and supplies I understand, but surely with the cameras and communication systems, it doesn’t make sense for Vector5 to have humans travel these distances at these speeds.”

Rolfe shrugged. “I agree, but sometimes Vector5 has to transport personnel. Using the Raptor is very dangerous, however. There have been more than a few catastrophes where pods have slammed into the receptors and sliced through them. We’ve heard of a few openings on the other side that are easier to escape with, but I definitely do not suggest traveling through the transport tunnels to get there!”

Hayden looked bitter-another alternative eliminated. Samantha watched the men converse for a moment longer, then turned to walk along to the makeshift kitchen area where their meager food supplies had been laid out, scattered over random cases sitting on the icy floor.

She started to pick up an unopened MRE and noticed Nastasia’s nutrition pack slumped against the back of a crate, half-buried in discarded wrappers. It almost looked hidden.

Samantha pulled it from the trash and walked over to Hayden with a confused look on her face. Hayden was still in deep concentration over the plan to restart the damaged Spector, even though it was stuck in an icy tunnel miles away. She plopped it down on the floor next to Hayden.

“She left her med-bag here.”

Hayden looked up, completely distracted. “Who left what?”

It caught Andrew’s attention. “That’s odd,” he said. “She held onto that thing as if her life depended on it.”

Samantha nodded thoughtfully, then turned the pack over, letting the contents spill onto the worktable next to Hayden’s plans.

“Hey!” he protested, but she ignored him.

She pushed her fingers through the debris that had been in the bag. Nothing important, really: scraps of papers, a pen, a bottle of headache pills. “The inhaler is gone,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “She must have taken it with her.”

“No she didn’t,” Andrew said. “She left it on the Spector.”

Samantha frowned. “But I saw her with it, just a few minutes ago-just before they left.”

“I’m sure,” he said and squinted as he recalled the last few minutes aboard the amphibious vehicle. “She was using it for whatever was bothering her. Then she shoved it into her nutrition pack and left it in the ready room. I’m positive.”

Samantha shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she do that? And why would she have two of them?”

“Back-up?”

She shook her head one more time. “Have you seen these new inhalers? A year’s supply or more. And still: why put it in with a med-pack of vitamins and protein powders of all things?

“Maybe she took the other one with her,” replied Ryan. “She-”

“No,” Lucas said shortly, still out of sorts from his earlier disagreement with Simon. “I helped her buckle in. She was carrying nothing-certainly not an inhaler or…or any kind of small bag. “

Samantha began to lose herself in thought.

Lucas mistook her confusion and concern for weariness-though he wasn’t far wrong.

“Here,” he said, “let me show you a place you can rest for a little while.”

She wanted to say “no”-she wanted to resist with all her strength, but she realized resting would be the smart thing to do. She was going to need her strength.

“Thank you,” she said quietly and followed him to an insulated sleeping tent.

7:05 AM

Nastasia used all her strength to grip the armrests of the chair beneath her, steeling herself against the tremendous pressure of the MagCycle’s acceleration. She gritted her teeth as the unrelenting weight pushed and pushed against every square inch of her body.

The MC-7 was an ergonomically designed little cockpit connected to a massive ice-tire by a magnetic field, and that huge wheel carried its passengers down the cored tunnels of the Vector5 network at speeds that were beyond comprehension. It felt as fast as a bullet shot from the barrel of a rifle because of the narrow tunnels. Max struggled to control their headlong flight through a console that closely resembled the yoke of a small fixed-wing plane with foot-pedals and slide-buttons that dictated speed, attitude, and acceleration. He wore a flat-faced HUD navigation helmet that gave him a supernaturally clear view of the tunnel ahead, complete with luminous annotations on cracks, irregularities, and potential hazards. Max had used similar rigs in supersonic fighter planes over the years, but he had never seen one on a land vehicle before-and certainly never on a magnetically constructed unicycle that traveled over a hundred miles an hour.

All Nastasia could see outside the cockpit windscreen was a blur of black shadows flowing past in an endless torrent, illuminated only by the fitful flicker of the MagCycle’s own headlights. Her body swayed to one side, then the other, then back again as they careened forward through a darkness as thick as ink. And still the pressure made it almost impossible to breathe.

Max concentrated on his HUD diagram. In no time at all, he knew, they would reach the end of the tunnel, where it had been sliced open, sharp as a knife-cut from the great earthquake a dozen years ago. They would actually have to leap across that gap to the tunnel opening on the far side, if they hoped to reach Dragger Pass and below onto deeper tunnels and the elevator shaft that would take them to Oliver Fitzpatrick. He knew leaping across that Gorge almost meant suicide and they needed to accelerate full speed to even have a chance.

He did the only thing he could: he pushed his foot down even harder on the accelerator pedal and poured the last bit of power from the MagCycle’s electric generator into its wheel. He actually felt it jump forward, yet again, hitting and exceeding its top speed.

It was the fastest he had ever traveled on land.

Nastasia was painfully aware of how the massive acceleration was hurting Simon, sitting behind her, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Simon?” she said between clenched teeth. “Are you all right?”

He didn’t speak, but she felt the tight, brief nod of his head against her collarbone as he struggled to bring it forward from the pressure of the speed.

The downward angle of their headlong flight suddenly grew steeper, and the MagCycle picked up even more speed. I didn’t think that was possible, she told herself. She heard Simon curse under his breath as blood started rushing into their heads.

“Mother of god!” Max shouted as he looked into the lens of his helmet. “See the Gorge, and it’s fucking huge.”

“Think we’ll make it?” Simon shouted back, his voice betraying some of the strain of her weight on him, as well as fear for all their lives.

“We have to,” Max said simply as he steered them down one last, long straightaway. His gloves gripped the yoke more tightly than ever.

“When will we-”

“NOW! HOLD ON!”

Max stamped on the accelerator to gain the last threshold speed, and Nastasia saw the world open up, revealed in a dim gray light that fell from high above them. The end of the tunnel spread wide open directly ahead; a cliff was visible on the far side of the Gorge, absolutely uninterrupted but for one ridiculously small circle-the other side of the tunnel directly ahead and below them, their target. But she was seeing so much more: a world that went up and up and disappeared into infinity and that plunged downward into impenetrable darkness. One that spread its arms into invisibly distant corridors left and right. She gaped at the tremendous space all around her, rushing toward her, during the one brief heartbeat that she still had solid ground beneath her.