A. Colucci - The Colony

The pilot took Kendra’s hand as she came down the stairs. LT. COLONEL DALE HASKIN was printed on the gold wings pinned to the lapel of his uniform. He hadn’t said a word during the flight but now he was friendly, smiling, and picked up her duffel bag.

“Trip okay?”

“Terrific.”

A black-windowed sedan was idling on the tarmac. Cameron waited by the open door and slipped into the backseat after Kendra, but this time she wasn’t afraid. Anger blunted fear. And besides, her curiosity was piqued. She found it intriguing to be back in this particular city and wondered if it had anything to do with the one person she knew in New York: her ex-husband.

KENDRA GAZED AT THE overlapping skyscrapers through the tinted windows of the car. She had grown accustomed to the vastness of the desert landscape, layered in earth tones and unbroken sky. New York City seemed like another planet with its gray sooty streets and towering granite buildings, throngs of pedestrians, steaming metal carts of food, vendors hawking knockoff designer watches and handbags. Angular women in bright-colored suits and white sneakers walked briskly by and swarthy men in hard hats relaxed along a chain-link fence.

It was close to rush hour and the car moved slowly. Kendra tried to figure out which direction they were headed. The street numbers were getting smaller, so it was definitely downtown, away from the Museum of Natural History and Paul. That was some relief. Besides, she thought, with all the traveling Paul did it was unlikely he was even in New York. He was probably in some exotic country or lecture hall or picking up an award for being so damn perfect. It was Kendra, after all, being summoned by the FBI as a scientist for her expertise and knowledge. Something her former husband never seemed to notice.

Still, she could almost feel Paul somewhere in the city and suddenly found herself reeling back in time, to the first moment she’d set eyes on him. It was her junior year at Harvard. Paul was teaching insect ecology and Kendra fell head over heels on the first day of class. His velvety brown eyes seemed to look into her soul and he had the hands of an artist, long and graceful with large bony knuckles. They moved slowly and sensually. She remembered one particular day when Paul was tracing the exoskeleton of an enlarged plastic termite, his fingers gliding across its body, his soothing voice in a whisper that transfixed her. A delicious feeling of excitement was building inside her and when he placed his hand down on the figurine, cupping its enormous petiole, she actually moaned out loud. Fortunately, hers blended in with a dozen other moans. Unbeknownst to him, there was a fairly large consensus among the female student body that Dr. Paul O’Keefe had some kind of mystical power over women’s libidos and they began to refer to his lectures as “quickies.”

Kendra grew warm in the back of the sedan, thinking about their sizzling romance in the early years, but her skin cooled as she recalled five trying years of marriage. Paul insisted she play the part of the doting wife. She moved to New York and gave up her research while he flew around the world. Paul was on retainer for a chemical company and they had endless fights over everything from pesticide use to corporate control of the world’s food supply. Finally, she had enough and started a research company in California. They excelled in their careers but on opposite coasts, and while their passion for each other never waned, work seemed to overtake their lives, especially for Paul, whose visits and phone calls became more infrequent.

In the end, though, it was Kendra who had an affair and severed their marriage. It was stupid; she’d been angry and she never told Paul about the other man.

Kendra gazed out the window, to the United Nations complex and its majestic array of colorful flags slapping against the wind. The car slowed as it approached the General Assembly building. They rounded a corner to a massive windowless fortress of concrete and steel. A metal bar was raised and they parked in a garage with ten other black sedans.

Agent Cameron led Kendra to the back of the garage, checked his watch and muttered that they were running late. He traveled through a series of hallways and doors that required the swipe of an ID tag, a thumbprint match or iris scan. A rather odd-looking elevator was waiting at the end of the journey. It was circular and made of polycarbonate glass. Cameron touched the small of Kendra’s back to hurry her inside. There were no buttons on the wall but the curved transparent doors shut quietly. As they descended, a burst of air shot down from the ceiling as if from an exhausted locomotive, startling Kendra.

“You’ll wear this while you’re here,” Cameron said, patting his jacket and retrieving an ID tag that displayed a photo of Kendra.

She eyed it hesitantly, rubbing a thumb over the photo and wondering when it was taken. In the snapshot she was wearing a bright yellow blouse. She didn’t remember ever owning a yellow blouse. She clipped the card to her breast pocket.

Through the clear walls of the elevator Kendra could see that they were dropping swiftly through a narrow tunnel that seemed to be cut right out of the earth.

“How far down are we going?” she asked.

“About three hundred feet.”

Kendra felt her throat tighten. “To where?”

Cameron didn’t answer but rattled off another warning about restricted space, an oath of secrecy and then repeated the threat of twenty-five years in federal prison. “You’re not to tell anyone about this place. Ever, ” he concluded. As the elevator made a smooth but abrupt landing, he added, “It’s an underground bunker, the largest in the world.”

Kendra felt her stomach drop. The doors slid open and her mind flashed to Dorothy, opening the door to Oz.

They were at the entrance to an enormous cavern, fifty feet high and the size of a gymnasium. Kendra couldn’t imagine what sort of monstrous drill could have sculpted such a colossal space. The bedrock walls were rough and jagged with flecks that glittered like diamonds, but the technology inside looked like something out of a futuristic movie. Scattered about the room were aerodynamic workstations; curved black oval chairs under floating touch-screen monitors that displayed 3-D images of places in New York City: crowded intersections, famous streets and buildings. The floor was covered in shiny metal, and thick steel plates climbed one wall. A network of pipes floated overhead like a silver spiderweb, along with panels of black grating, backlit with colorful luminescent patterns. Three identical elevators sat inside clear tubes that vanished into the rock ceiling.

You’re not in Kansas anymore. Kendra stepped out of the elevator. The industrial floor was covered with tiny holes and she felt cold air flow against her shoes, as another burst of wind shot out from somewhere above.

“Radiation checkpoint,” Cameron said, “but it detects anything chemical, biological. Real high-tech stuff. The whole place is surrounded by a ground-penetrating radar system that can spot a mole tunneling through the dirt. We can tell if anyone tries to get in,” he said, “or out.”

She followed him to a procession of crazy-shaped golf carts. Titanium potato chips on wheels, Kendra thought as she eased into the seat next to him. There was no steering wheel or controls, but Cameron muttered, “B-Seventeen,” and the driverless cart took off.

It was a smooth, fantastic journey through white hexagon-shaped hallways that were narrow enough to kick Kendra’s claustrophobia into overdrive. The cart followed a pattern of diamonds on the ceiling, backlit in bright shades of red, blue and green, as a mechanical voice repeated several times, “Please keep hands inside… This vehicle stops for pedestrians…” The cart traversed down straight paths, and other times it would turn or spiral downward and take a new direction. After several sharp turns Kendra felt dizzy.