Alex Gore - The Cube

Suddenly the picture disappeared and the screen became fuzzy with strong cracking of static electricity, the recording was obviously damaged. Marcela abruptly took the headset off and pressed the fast forward button.

Unexpectedly the image became clear and everybody instinctively took a step back. Marcela turned her head aside. The screen showed the command room of the ship: people, objects and devices were in utter turmoil. Bodies and pieces of crushed metal equipment were flying all over the place. The cries of the dying sailors were echoing loudly and piercingly and blood gushed from their bodies in all directions. The faces were with gouged out eyes and lacerated mouths, the limbs were separating from the corps, accompanied by unbelievable agony. Some people, dressed in Russian military uniforms were attacking other people in uniforms. All of them looked the same, nobody could distinguish between victims and butchers.

The struggle was unequal and looked more like a planned slaughtering of cattle in a sophisticated slaughterhouse, than like a battle for survival.

They replayed the recording and were struck by the fact that the attackers used no weapons whatsoever – no guns or knives or anything. They killed their victims with bare hands, sticking their fingers in the eyes of the wretched human beings, who were hauling with pain. The hands of the assassins were surprisingly strong, they pierced the skin and muscles of the victims, breaking their bones as if they were bread-sticks.

The recording was interrupted now and again and its quality was exceptionally bad.

The film was cut to black screen at some point, then it was resumed outside by the very corps of the submarine. On the tower a scary man with pale face and puffy eyes was dragging the body of his victim. Under the military uniform the inhuman strength of his body was quite visible. He lifted the body high above his head and thrust it down over the periscope, that pierced the chest. The poor being was still alive, although as if impaled, and desperately moved his limbs in final attempts to escape death. The convulsions of his dying flesh were synchronized with the music that sounded from the camera of the military person. A somber symphony in the last hour of the dying man.

An Orthodox religious hymn. It resembled a sinister musical.

The man in the navy-blue uniform thrusted both his arms in the victim’s abdomen and tore the body into pieces. In seconds he took out the liver and stomach and waved them above his head. The fresh blood was trickling over his face. He looked like a fiery shaman, performing an ugly human sacrifice. His lips were moving in an unintelligible whisper and his eyes were directed upwards. He stood as if in a trance for about a minute, after which he took the wretched person’s inwards to his face, licked them with his tongue and brushed them down from his forehead to his chest.

Then he started writing letters on the corps of the tower. His writing could not be seen, shielded by his body, but when he finished, he stepped to one side and everybody in the room saw it clearly on the screen: Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people.

The blood, still hot, was dripping down and blurred the letters on the metal.

Marcela turned away her head, sickened to the core of her being and ran out of the room. Alan followed her.

He reached her only outside the dome, where he saw her throwing up on the sand with her head buried between her hands. Her hair was in disorder, brushing the sand. The contents of her stomach were expelled by the spasms, she could barely breathe, sobbing and choking.

Alan waited for a minute, then approached her, lifted her up and embraced her.

“Do you have any explanation, Hans?”, Norman asked and shot a searching glance at him.

“I prefer not to have one, Sir.”

“Then why are you here, if you have no answers, Professor?”

“I am here to solve codes and equations, not to watch horror movies, don’t you agree, Sir?”

At this moment a soldier came in and whispered something in Norman’s ear.

“Yes, okay, let them come in.”

Sergey and Ivanov both entered the room and their eyes went straight to the screen where the shot with the man writing with blood was paused.

“Can you translate for me, gentlemen? Rewind to the beginning, Lieutenant. Then you can explain to me why you lied about the Core, the submarine and tell anything else that you have concealed. The rest of you, take a rest till I call you back.

Hans, Alan, Marcela and Michael stood up and started for the door.

“One thing bothers me”, Hans said and stopped for a moment. “There isn’t a trace of all that mayhem in the submarine now.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned his back to them and exited the room.

The Lieutenant was standing before the three computers in the command room in the central dome and was watching the twinkling columns of data: communication with the US headquarters, announcements of seismic activity, the radar around the base, the red dots, representing all live organisms over three feet tall in a radius of three miles, weather forecast…

The meteorological forecast was not good at all. The barometer was falling, the weather was getting bad. The hurricane was caming from the north and was going to hit them strong. It was big and powerful, and they were going to be in its eye.

However, inside the base it was peaceful, the fifteen red dots, showing the position of the people, were in their places.

He liked things being in their places, then they could be seen easily. And to be able to see was to be able to control. Control was the premise for success of each mission. He only wanted to make his superiors happy.

Suddenly the screens before him went dark. The lamps on the ceiling blinked three or four times. The Lieutenant started nervously pressing keys and cursing.

“What’s going on, for fuck’s sake?”

The first thing he did was to restart the computers. He made sure all red dots were in their places. Then he checked the other data. Everything seemed okay.

The Lieutenant was extremely accurate and would never be careless about his job. He started tracing all the secret aps for new messages, that might be missed for those few seconds offline.

Suddenly the media player opened. Music sounded.

Babyface switched on the additional speakers and turned the volume up: a rock piece with lots of guitars.

He was not a great music fan.

The goddamn computer! Obviously, it was activated by chance or he opened involuntary some menu. He closed it and again started checking the secret communiques.

After two minutes the window opened again.

The same song.

The Lieutenant was a punctilious and responsible military man, but he did not like thinking much and was not good in taking decisions. Without improvising, he chose to follow the protocol for such cases.

He picked up the receiver.

“1. If you think that you are a melon, then you really are a melon.

2. If you are a melon, you think like a melon.”

“I find it naive”, Alan said.

“Some outdated rock’n roll from the previous century”

Michael’s comment was.

“This music was forbidden in our country during the communist regime”, Sergey remarked.