Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

Still marching, I don’t slow down.

“You think they’re building a weapon, don’t you?” Viv calls out.

I stop right there. “Viv, they could be doing anything from nanotech to bringing dinosaurs back to life. But whatever’s in there, Matthew and Pasternak were both killed for it, and it’s now our necks they’re sizing the nooses for. Now you can either wait out here or come inside — I won’t think less of you either way — but unless you plan on living in a car for the rest of your life, we need to get our rear ends inside that room and figure out what the hell is behind curtain number three.”

Spinning back toward the submarine door, I grab the lock and give it a sharp turn. It spins easily, like it’s been newly greased. There’s a loud tunk as the wheel stops. The door unlatches from the inside and pops open slightly.

Over my shoulder, Viv steps in right behind me. As I glance back, she doesn’t make a joke or a cute remark. She just stands there.

I have to push the door with both hands to get it open. Here we go. As the door swings into the wall, we’re once again hit with a new smell — sharp and sour. It cuts right to my sinuses.

“Oh, man,” Viv says. “What is that? Smells like a…”

“… dry cleaner’s,” I say as she nods. “Is that what was in those canisters out there? Dry-cleaning fluid?”

Stepping up and over the oval threshold, we scan around for the answer. The room is even more spotless than the one we came from. I can’t find a speck of dirt. But it’s not the cleanliness that catches our eyes. Straight in front of us, an enormous fifty-yard-wide crater is dug into the floor. Inside the crater is a huge, round metal bowl that’s the size of a hot-air balloon cut in half. It’s like a giant empty swimming pool — but instead of being filled with liquid, the walls of the sphere are lined with at least five thousand camera lenses, one right next to the other, each lens peering inward toward the center of the sphere. The ultimate effect is that the five thousand perfectly aligned telescopes form their own glass layer within the sphere. Hanging from the ceiling by a dozen steel wires is the other half of the sphere. Like the lower half, it’s filled with thousands of lenses. When the two halves are put together, it’ll be a perfect spherical chamber, but for now, the top is still suspended in the air, waiting to be loaded into place.

“What in the hell?” Viv asks.

“No idea, but I’m guessing those things are the photomultiplier-”

“What do you think you’re doing?” someone yells from the left side of the room. The voice is grainy, like it’s being broadcast through an intercom.

I turn to follow the sound, but I almost fall over when I see what’s coming.

“Oh, Lord…” Viv whispers.

Rushing straight at us is a man in a bright orange hazardous-materials suit, complete with its own Plexiglas face plate and built-in gas mask. If he’s wearing that…

“We’re in trouble…” Viv mutters.

“You have any idea what you’ve done?” the man yells, racing toward us in the orange containment suit.

I want to run, but my legs won’t move. I can’t believe I led us into this — even the smallest amount of radiation could…

The man reaches toward the back of his neck, then yanks the radiation hood off his head, tossing it to the ground. “These are supposed to be clean-room conditions — you know how much time and money you just cost us?!” he shouts, raging forward. If I had to guess his accent, I’d go with eastern European, but something’s off. He’s got sunken dark eyes, a black mustache, and silver wire-rimmed glasses. He’s also much thinner than he looked when the hood was on.

“There’s no radiation?” Viv asks.

“How’d you get down here?!” the man shoots back. Ignoring our orange vests, he takes one look at our clothes. Slacks and button-downs. “You’re not even mining people, are you?” Along the wall is an intercom with a telephone receiver. Right next to that is a red button. The man goes right for it. I know an alarm when I see one.

“Harris…”

I’m already on it. The man with the mustache dives for the alarm. I grab him by the wrist and shove him back. He’s stronger than I expected. Using my own weight against me, he whips me around, slamming me into the white concrete wall. My head jerks backward, and my helmet hits the wall so hard, I actually see stars. He adds a rabbit punch to my gut, hoping it’ll take the fight out of me. He doesn’t know me at all.

His head’s exposed; I’m wearing an unbreakable mine light. Grabbing him by the shoulders, I ram my head forward, put all my weight behind it, and head-butt him with my helmet. The brim slices him across the bridge of his nose. As he staggers backwards, I look over at Viv.

She stares at me blankly, unclear what to do.

“Get out of here!” I tell her.

“They’ll kill you for this!” the man with the mustache yells.

Holding him tight, I grip his shoulder with one hand and wind up to hit him again. Thrashing wildly, he digs his fingers into my wrist. As I let go, he tries to make a run for it. He’s heading straight toward Viv — but before he gets there, I grab him by the back of his containment suit and yank him as hard as I can. He may not have been the one to kill Matthew and Pasternak, but right now he’s the only punching bag I’ve got. As he stumbles off balance, I give him one last shove — straight for the edge of the crater.

“No…!” he screams. “It’ll all-!”

There’s a loud, shattering crash as he clears the ledge and lands on half a dozen of the photomultiplier tubes. Sliding headfirst down the inside of the sphere, he smashes through every tube he hits like a human sled, clearing a path all the way to the bottom. The tubes crack easily, barely slowing him down… that is, until he smacks into the thick metal pylon at the base of the sphere. He looks up just in time to hit it face first. He tries to turn, but the pylon collides with his collarbone. There’s a sharp, muted crunch. Bone against metal. As his shoulder hits, his body spins awkwardly around the pylon — but the man doesn’t move. Facedown and unconscious, he’s sprawled across the base of the sphere.

“Time to go!” Viv says, tugging me back toward the entrance.

I look around the rest of the room. Across the sphere, there’re two more submarine doors. They’re both shut.

“Harris, c’mon!” Viv begs, pointing down at the scientist. “The moment he gets up, he’s gonna howl at the moon! We gotta get out of here now!”

Knowing she’s right, I turn around and leap out through the submarine door. Jackrabbiting out of there, we run back through the lab, retracing our steps past the mercury, past the tetrachloroethylene, and past the lab tables and computer servers. Just behind the servers, I notice a small bookshelf filled with black three-ring binders and empty clipboards. From the angle we originally came in, it was easy to miss.

“Harris…”

“Just a sec…”

I shove the server out of the way and scan the binders as fast as I can. Like the clipboards, they’re all empty. All but one. On the top shelf is a black binder with a printed label that reads: The Midas Project . Pulling it off the shelf, I flip to the first page. It’s filled with numbers and dates. All meaningless. But in the top right-hand corner of the page are the words Arrivals/Neutrino . As I continue to flip, it’s the same on every page. Neutrino. Neutrino. Neutrino . I have no idea what a neutrino is, but I don’t need a Ph.D. to see the trend.

“Harris, we gotta get out of here…!”

I slap the book shut, tuck it under my arm, and follow Viv through the room.