Ashlyn Chronicles 1: 2287 A.D. (4 page)

“From everywhere. There are hundreds of them and more are coming. And, since you asked, Moore, it’s your job to keep an eye on the large underground tunnel behind us. There’s something big in there and it’s headed this way.”

Moore spun around and cranked up his magnification. The scope zoomed into the depths of the tunnel, revealing nothing.

“Sir, how do you know all that? There’s nothing on the movement scanner or any of the other arrays,” said Stratton.

Steven held his fist up, quieting them. He closed his eyes and listened. After a moment he said, “The web song. The spiders are communicating. They believe we’re trapped.”

“Sir, the web song is just white noise. Gena would have deciphered anything with a pattern to it years ago,” said Stratton.

Steven’s brow tensed. “Later. We need to hurry. We’re running out of time!” Taking a first and strong step forward, a small puff of dust arose from where his heavy armored boot set down. “Let’s roll.”

“You know the drill. Tomlinson, back up Stratt on point. Cole, flank left. Martinez, split right. No sudden movements. Let them make the first move, but once they do, light the place up! Hitch and Paris, you’re with me, front and center,” Steven said, ordering the two women in the group to stay close to him. “As for you, Moore, you get to admire my ass! And don’t forget to watch the tunnel behind us!”

Having gotten the desired roll-of-the-eyes reaction from the youngest member of the team, Steven threw a wink and a smile at the two women beside him. “Report all movement and don’t forget to keep an eye on your perimeter sensors.”

***

The team fanned out behind Stratton, who had an uncanny ability to notice the tiniest of details, whether it be a false shadow or a distant sound that was out of place. Somehow, he was always able to ignore the buzz of whirring servos and the clanking thuds of the teams’ plated boots hitting the ground.

With guarded caution, the team moved down the street, watchful for movement within the shadows. The eyes of Cole and Martinez darted between the fragmented walls and broken windows. Tall swaying grass and brush lent cover to hundreds of dark, cavernous areas. With their scanners set to detect movement and heat signatures, the team caught fleeting glimpses of spiders scampering deep in the depths.

It was the job of Cole and Martinez to become familiar with their surroundings, making sure the team always had an avenue of escape.

Nearing the building, Steven took note of the scratches and scars that the building had sustained from the spiders’ attack. He had no explanation for why the spiders had not been able to breach it, for they were unstoppable.

On the heavy security door, Steven could just make out the scratched and worn symbol of a double helix. Running his fingers over the logo, a name came to mind. “Gena, do the archives have any information on a company called, The Children of Destiny Foundation?”

“The Children of Destiny Foundation. Raising families is your business. Making them is ours! All genetic designs guaranteed in writing. Eighteen-year payment plans available. A proud member of the Downtown Denver Better Business Bureau,” answered Gena. “It appears that they were a genetics catalog ordering outlet for couples who had trouble conceiving. The address matches that of your current location.”

“Gena, where did you get that information from?” inquired Steven.

“Google,” responded Gena.

“I should’ve known.”

“Sir, where did you hear of the Children of Destiny Foundation?” asked Stratton. “I swear. It’s like you suddenly became clairvoyant.”

“I don’t know,” said Steven shaking his head. His eyes tightened. “There’s something about this building. The door—the logo. I’ve seen them before.”

Just then, the sky lit up with brilliance as another flash of black lightning erupted. A long, intimidating clap of thunder followed it fifteen seconds later. All of their vibration sensors spiked in wild arcs. “Gena, when did the last supercell pass over this area?”

“Five years and three months ago,” came Gena’s instant reply to Steven’s question.

“So, what are the odds of us receiving a distress signal at the exact same time that the storm is arriving?” asked Tomlinson.

“The kid’s got a point,” said Stratton.

“Agreed, but it’s not like we had a choice.” Inwardly correcting himself,
It’s not like I had a choice.

Hurrying the team, Steven continued his instructions. “Let’s pick up the pace. We don’t want to be here when the storm hits.”

“I’d like to be home in time for dinner,” said Moore.

As Steven’s hand neared the door’s polished-steel handle, they all heard a loud
click
. The team pointed their weapons at the door. Steven hesitated briefly, waiting to see if the door was going to open. It didn’t. In trying the handle, he found that it turned easily, but still, the door held fast. With a braced stance, he put his weight behind it and rammed his shoulder into it. To a sharp
cracking
sound, the door opened a tiny bit before it again jammed tight. From the thin slit, a cloud of fog escaped that was quickly devoured by the hot air outside.

“Gena, increase servo assist to 10 percent for 5 seconds.” Recoiling, he rammed the door, hard. The door blasted open, scraping away a thick layer of hardened frost on the floor.
I wasn’t expecting that!

Crouching to get through the doorway, Steven took a few steps inside. A few of the team followed, crowding around him. Looking about the room, he saw that it was entirely covered in frost. The retina-locked light atop his helmet refracted off the ice, forming a thousand prismatic pinpoints of light.

Subconsciously, Steven placed his hand on the wall of ice nearest him. Likewise, in response, he could feel the presence reaching out to him—closer and more powerful than before.

Tomlinson had only taken a few steps before he spotted two frost-covered bodies huddled behind a desk in the far left corner of the room. “Sir, we have two people over here!” Kneeling before them, Tomlinson softly wiped the snow away from the nearest victim’s face. “Sir, it’s a woman—and—she still has her skin, if you want to call it that.” The woman’s head was tipped to the side, resting on the shoulder of the person beside her. Tomlinson then wiped away the frost from the second person. “It’s a man, probably her husband.”

“Two dead people in a freezer,” said Hitch. “That’s not something you see every day.”

Steven’s attention fell upon the ceiling vent, where the frost was thickest. “The ventilation system is piping in the cold air.” He then queried Gena for the room’s temperature.

“External temperature is minus 64.2 degrees Fahrenheit and rising.”

“I wonder how long they survived?” said Tomlinson.

“Almost five months,” said Stratton, standing just behind Steven on the threshold of the doorway.

“How do you know that?” asked Tomlinson.

Stratton nodded toward the wall on his left. Less than two meters away, hanging on the wall beneath a few centimeters of clear ice was a large digital calendar. “They activated the pause button, marking the date for whoever found them. Bottom-line, they’ve been dead more than fourteen years,” said Stratton.

A guttural, rolling clap of thunder vibrated the ground beneath their feet. The webs sang in response, resonating like a thousand soft wind chimes.

Steven wondered if the spiders were aware of the danger the storm posed to them, or if they even cared.

Instinctively, the team standing outside moved closer to the doorway, tightening their ranks.

“Stratt—take Moore, Cole, and Martinez outside and maintain an eighty-meter perimeter around the doorway. Keep the courtyard clear for Robbie to pick us up later. If the spiders attack, throw the frying pan at them if you need to, but don’t let them close up ranks.”

“Aye, sir. Come on, grunts. You heard the man.” The four of them fanned out, taking up defensive positions in the square.

“I don’t understand it, sir,” said Tomlinson. “We’re standing at the precise coordinates, yet the readouts say the source of the transmission is still fifty-nine meters away.”

Since the moment Steven entered the room, he had the distinct feeling that he was being watched. It was a feeling he had experienced once before when tracking a marauding mountain lion on his parents’ ranch as a teenager in Montana. Without thought, his hand went toward the scar on his left shoulder where the big cat had wounded him long ago. Now, like then, he instinctively held his breath, his heart speeding in expectation of a sudden confrontation. He studied the depths of the room, the ceiling, the corners—and that is when he saw it. In the upper, far right corner of the room, the glass lens of a small frost covered camera zoomed in on him.

Taking a step toward it, the frost crunching beneath his feet, a yellow emergency light twinkled to life above him. He glanced upwards at the ice-laden light that was straining to be brighter—but lacking the power to do so—and then back at the camera.

Without warning, the steel security door behind them slammed shut. The loud
clang
made them all jump and they spun in reaction. Fanning their guns around the room, they stood at the ready, searching for an unseen intruder. The scanners revealed nothing, besides their own team and the two frozen corpses slumped against the wall.

Hitch tried the handle and found that it was locked. The latch to unlock it spun uselessly. “Why do I suddenly feel like a trapped mouse?”

“Take it easy, everyone. No twitchy fingers,” said Steven.

“Admiral, did you close the door?” asked Stratt from outside over his comm.

“No! It closed by itself. Apparently, it’s locked internally. Is everything all right outside?”

“So far,” said Stratt, uncharacteristically sounding a bit on edge.

“Robbie, I’ve got the feeling we are going to be here longer than expected. With the storm closing in, before things get too rough, I want you to pick up Stratton’s team. We can ride it out in here if we need to.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Will do.”

“Sir, you’ll want to see this. The man is holding something. It started to glow just as the door closed,” said Tomlinson.

“Stratt. Watch your back.”

“Aye, sir. We are.”

Tomlinson moved away from the frozen bodies to make room for Steven. Kneeling, Steven swiped the snow away to find that the man was holding an oblong box. Recognizing it as a security box used for transporting precious documents, he pried the man’s frozen fingers away. Taking it, he set it upon his knee. Its luminous, red security scan latch was lit and waiting to be deactivated.

Without hesitation, Steven disengaged the latch on his armor’s cybernetic, right glove. A tiny wisp of heated air escaped as it clashed with the cold air inside the room. Removing his glove, he set it down on the floor beside him and put his thumb to the box’s thumbprint recognition lock—showing no surprise as it turned from red to green. As the box unlocked, the lid popped up slightly.

Though Steven never looked up at his team, he could feel their astonishment.

Triggered by the opening of the box, the west wall slid aside. Behind it laid an ice-covered corridor that led to an elevator and a stairwell door.

“Open sesame,” jested Hitch as they all watched the shorn snow settle to the floor in a light mist.

“Keep watch on the hallway, Hitch. Might be a Yeti hiding in there,” teased Steven.

Turning his attention back to the box, his eyes wide with expectation, he slowly lifted the lid. Inside, he found three items. The first, an antique NASA patch with a picture of the centuries-old lunar lander that displayed the famous words spoken long ago by Neil Armstrong. He read it aloud, “One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind.”

Beneath the patch lay a small vial of unlabeled, green liquid. Next to it, a flashcard holo-player. Sensing its importance, Steven ran his fingers over it.

Standing, he set the player atop a desk in the center of the room and with an anxious tap activated it.

In the air above it, a blue shimmering field appeared. In its center stood a life-size holo of a man in a white smock.

“Hello, Steven.”

Tomlinson voiced the team’s thoughts, “How in the hell is that possible?”

Steven looked at Tomlinson, his own mind unable to supply the answer.

“The only possibility is that they knew the admiral would be the one coming,” said Stratton, who was watching the video feed through his helmet’s monitor from outside.

“Thanks for explaining the obvious,” said Tomlinson. “Maybe I should say it again. How the damn-shit-fucking-hell is that possible? According to you, the message was left fourteen years ago!”

No one dared to blink. They stood transfixed as the man moved to situate himself on the edge of a desk. Steven saw anguish and sadness etched into the man’s face. It appeared that he was trying hard to hold back tears. He watched the middle-aged man, probably no more than a hundred and seventy years of age, remove a handkerchief from his smock’s right pocket. He dabbed his eyes, his forehead. When he was done, he folded it and put it back.

After letting out an audible sigh he said, “Now that the shock of my welcome is over, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Tynabo Takamura.” The doctor then bowed his head in honor.

“Since you are here, I must assume that this facility’s energy reserves have become critically low, and my security system has been forced to activate the distress beacon. Over these last months, I have often wrestled with the idea of contacting you, but our lack of pertinent outside information might have put you and this facility in danger. To address your first concern, Steven—yes, the door to this room is now sealed. As for ‘why?’, the answer is simple—to protect our lifetime of work. Thus, this facility is now set to self-destruct. Had anyone else besides you tried to open the box that held this hologram, this facility would now be part of a large mushroom cloud. I should also mention that any attempt to escape will also trigger my security measures.”

His words were punctuated by three short blasts from the facility’s alarm and an announcement: “Facility secured. Self-destruct has been enabled.”

“He sure is a paranoid bastard!” said Hitch.

“Stratt, are you seeing all this?”

“Aye, sir. We’re watching your video feed.”

Tynabo continued, “Steven, you are the only person alive who can disable the security system. To do so, you must see past your confusion and anxiety. You must learn to listen to your heart. The moment you arrived here, you began a journey. That journey will end in either your salvation, or your destruction. Steven, to survive, you must let the longing that you feel inside your heart guide you.

“Perhaps this will help you to understand. I wish to share with you the story of Pandora’s Box. It is one of the few Greek stories with a—”—a smug smile tilted the doctor’s lips—“happy ending.” He looked fully like a cat who had caught a mouse.