Escape: Omega Book 1 (Omega: Earth's Hero) (13 page)

The presence almost cried out when Omega fell over the edge. So close. So very close. Again, it seemed, all it hoped for had been lost. How it tired of such foolishness. Would it ever learn? Would it never grasp the despondency in which it existed? 

There appeared to be only one option left: self-annihilation. There would be nothing else to wait for. This had been the best and last opportunity for it to escape from purgatory beneath the crust of the earth. Success was a promise, and that promise had shattered like many before.

Just as it decided to put an end to its melancholy existence, its eye glimpsed a sight that stilled thoughts of its own demise.

It watched on.

The monitor on the wall had P-in-P capability and showed angles and feeds from the drone overhead and the cameras mounted to the Humvees. They all captured digitally, forever and for eternity, Omega’s fall over the cliff. The drone feed followed him still as he dropped like a pebble toward the rushing water below.

Her eyes glued to the screen, Sally willed herself to turn away. The impact from that height would be like a melon from a ten-story building.

Hot tears slid from the corners of her eyes.

Omega grew to just the smallest brown pinprick in a midst of pixels in an electronic death show.

Sally’s heart broke clean in two…

And the most miraculous thing she--or probably any other human being on God’s green Earth--had ever seen, happened. If there was ever a time for an orchestral score to strike up in real life, this was it.

At first, she didn’t trust her eyes. She believed she were about to pass out. That she’d experienced all her system could stand and was falling to darkness. Her head was swimming, that was true. But so was what her eyes told her brain. That wonderfully clever, purely intellectual brain of hers.

The dot that was Omega got a little bigger, a little bigger, bigger, and bigger. Suddenly, it was no longer just a speck on a huge LCD display, but the form of a man. Rising, higher and higher.

“What in the—”

“I don’t believe it. Is he—”

“Jesus wept.”

“Holy sh—”

The room was in chaos, a jubilant chaos. Just as their hearts had dropped at the premise of his death, so they soared as, well, as he soared.

Omega rose higher and higher, propelled by… propelled by nothing at all, it seemed.

“He flies too? Good God. What have you people done?” Sally recognized the voice and turned. In the doorway stood Perry Black, bruised and bandaged and beaten but standing. She noticed straightaway that there was no relief on his face at what he saw on the wall. She saw there was no happiness, nothing but grim disgust. 

General Hendricks looked back at the newcomer as well. “I don’t know, captain. I just don’t know.” Then, forgetting Captain Black, forgetting Sally, Hendricks turned back to the spectacle unfolding before him. Like a newborn seeing falling snow or the full moon for the first time, the general and everyone else looked on, their mouths huge and hanging, in absolute awe.

Rising faster than a rocket on 200 tons of jet fuel, Omega rose higher still.

Onward and upward, into the blue sky, into the clouds and beyond.

For moments, the drone’s electronic eye followed him, millions of corrections every second to chase the airborne Omega. Then, after a moment, he was gone… completely and irrevocably.

Sally’s tears still flowed, only now they weren’t of sadness, but of happiness, and her heart swelled as she stared off into the sky that had just held a flying man--a flying man that, she realized, was about to change the whole world.

Chapter 15

“Where eagles dare to fly… so high, I can see Heaven… Heaven is a place on Earth… up, up, and away.” That’s what came to him first: bits of songs, tidbits of television. He’d only been dozens of feet from the surging waters of the Pecos River. Death, his death, was imminent. Or so he believed.

At first, he thought he had died. No, that’s not exactly true; he thought he’d gone insane. One moment he was hurtling down toward the ground, toward the wet embrace of death, then the next he knew he was rising. It was ludicrous. It was preposterous. But it was real.

To his credit, it took Omega mere seconds to understand what was happening, if not
why
or
how
it was happening. He was flying. Defying gravity, he ascended skyward, slowly at first, and then more rapidly as he gained some control over himself and whatever was impelling him into the air.

He went straight up, too.

Into the deep blue sky, toward the sun and the scattered puffs of clouds, he pushed higher and higher. The wind blew his close-cropped hair and licked his face, but it did not sting his eyes, did not force them closed. As he lifted from just above the water, his arms and legs swung wheels. Now he was streamlined like a bullet shooting as fast as a missile. His arms beside him, his hands balled into fists, turned palms in as if he were about to perform barbell curls, his legs ramrod straight, his feet pointed down as if diving, but he was diving… up. 

Omega had never felt this good, this free, this strong or this powerful. Yes, powerful was the right word. A new power surged within him. He felt wide awake--alert, but calm and steady.

He was a lab rat loosed, a guinea pig broken free from its cage, but he was one with wings. Well, perhaps not wings, but the next best thing: the power of flight.

He had no idea how far he’d risen, but he looked down and saw the world beneath him, not unlike a desktop globe. The sky around him was now dark, and to his left and right he could see the curvature of the earth. Omega halted his ascent, but did not plunge downward. Suspended above the whole world, the thin air around him felt as solid as the desert floor he’d just left. Beneath him, North America made its way slowly in rotation, almost imperceptible, as it should be, but somehow he could see it.

Omega fell back and raced down. The same invisible force that pushed him up now pushed him in the opposite direction. Both arms in front of him, his hands still balled, he cut through the atmosphere at amazing velocity. His hands, then his forearms, and then his body, began to glow from the heat of reentry, but he did not feel the burn, did not feel the pain, only the lick of wind on his body.

Nonetheless, he slowed. Somehow, his body was impervious, but his BDU’s were not. They smoldered on his body.

Slowly he lifted himself up until the lack of air took care of the burning fabric.

Much slower, he drifted down, and down, and down. In the clouds, now, he picked a direction and shot off, the scenery below nothing but a blur as the world’s only flying man tested his newfound ability.

So far away from his cell below the desert--so far from Captain Black and General Hendricks, but also so far away from Dr. North. Flying, incredibly, took little concentration, so his mind focused on other things. It seemed defying gravity was to Omega like a leisurely country drive was to mortal men: a means to think, to consider, to reflect.

Omega didn’t know how fast or how far he flew, only that when he looked down again, he saw the land meeting the sea. Tired of sand, tired of heat, which he probably would no longer suffer, he turned north toward colder climates. For far too long had sand and sunlight been a reminder of Phantom Base—ironic now that he thought of it. He needed a place to come to ground, to plot his next action, to contemplate the future and to see what else he might be able to do. He could fly, after all, and while that should have been impossible, he aimed to discover just what other impossible talents he possessed.

There would be no other way to find out besides trying, he knew. There was no precedent for him. Created in a lab by government scientists from god knows what kind of secret formula--he was but one: the only, the first, and most likely the last. He was different, and he was unique.

For the first time in all his life, being different was not a stigma, a shame, or a disgrace but a welcome honor, and Omega embraced it.

Due north into a darkening sky, Omega stopped thinking, pushing everything from his mind. He just stared ahead, into the rushing wind, and, lost in the amazement, felt the wind sweep over him and take him along as if…

   …he was a creature of the sky.

Chapter 15

Hot wasn’t even the word for it. The searing desert air was like Satan’s breath, and even within the confines of army-issued Jeep, Captain Perry Black had to keep wiping the sweat from his forehead.

He was sitting in the backseat. Behind the wheel was the commanding officer’s private driver, a lieutenant whose name always seemed to escape Black. The man himself--Ole Three-Star Anvil, Lieutenant General Thurmond “Anvil” Hendricks--was riding shotgun. After leaving Phantom Base, a clandestine military operation in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada via chopper, they landed in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona--Perry could see a theme at play here--and they’d rode pretty much in silence. Anvil wasn’t the type of man for small talk, and Perry, recovering from serious wounds, wasn’t much in the mood for smacking gums, either. He’d suffered two gunshot wounds, underwent emergency surgery, and was still walking with a crutch. Yesterday morning, just after waking, the general had threatened to have him transferred, and while that pissed Black off to no end, he quickly warmed to the idea of putting the general, his spooky little secret installation, and the whole damn desert behind him.

On the horizon, a mountain range began to fill the windshield. The Black Mountains of Arizona stretched on for seventy-five miles, running north to south.  The range was a beautiful sight to behold. Majestic, proud, defiant.  If you weren’t sick of the goddamned desert, that was. Perry Black had already spent too much of his life in one desert or another. From Afghanistan to Nevada, now here to Arizona. For once, at least, could he not be granted a duty station that didn’t involve cacti and sand? While it was cool that he and these mountains shared the same surname, the novelty hadn’t lasted long. Surely to God, one of these days, he’d get lucky and catch a place with green rolling fields, or maybe even something tropical where, yes, there would be sand, but also the sea and half-naked women to make it more tolerable.

Perry didn’t have an inkling why the hell the helicopter didn’t just deliver them straight to their destination. He was sure there was a reason, but he chose not to ponder it at the moment. Instead, he leaned his head back and felt the bounce of the vehicle in every fiber of his sore being.

“I take it you were completely surprised by what you saw yesterday?”

Perry cracked his eyelids. The general spoke, but for a moment, for just a heartbeat, Perry thought he was attempting to make small talk.

“Shocked? Yes, sir. You could say that.”
And then some,
Perry thought.  

“I’m sure you’ll agree that, while what we saw was quite incredible, and I’m sure you have a good many questions about the Omega Project, I will remind you that sometimes our great military must keep secret certain aspects of its operations for reasons of... national security.”

This old man just loves to hear himself talk,
Perry thought.

“Yes, sir,” Perry answered. Lieutenant So-and-So kept his eyes ahead of him, looking very much like he wasn’t listening. As the general’s driver, he was most likely privy to things most people weren’t.

Hendricks, pleased with his answer, merely nodded. The general was a striking figure, bringing to one in the mind of the greatest of military conquerors and leaders: Douglas MacArthur, Patton, even a scandal free Oliver North. He just had that air about him, that American-as–apple-pie vibe. Until, that is, you got to know him a little better. He ran his career with one destination in mind: his fourth general star. Why it mattered so much to him Perry didn’t know, and more to the point, didn’t really care. As always, the general’s uniform--desert camo fatigues--were impeccable. Razor-sharp creases, just as if they’d left the cleaners, and Perry swore he hadn’t seen so much as one drop of perspiration drop from the geezer’s head. Though to be fair, Anvil had barely crossed the fifty-year mark and was in respectable shape for a man his age. The ever-present cigar, unlit, was clamped between his teeth. The tip rose and fell as he spoke.  

“However, we have come to a point where I feel full disclosure is not only required, but expected. Am I right?”

Perry leaned up in his seat, hoping he would be getting answers. “I would love to know more about that test-tube freak that we just let loose into the world.”

Anvil narrowed his eyes, looked back to Perry in the rearview. “That test-tube baby, as you call him, Captain, is the culmination of forty years’ worth of diligent scientific research and development. You’ve heard of Roswell?”

“New Mexico? Where the supposed UFO crashed back in the ‘50’s?”

“Actually it was 1947, but close enough. Well, as you might not know, the military initially confirmed that it was, in fact, an unidentified flying object.” Hendricks paused, pulled his cigar from his mouth, looked at it a bit oddly, and then shoved it right back in. “One of the worst mistakes the US government has ever made. And they’ve made a few. Hell, more than a few. Thing is, they recognized this quickly. By the next morning they recanted the story, spread wreckage from a weather balloon, and ever since, we haven’t known whether to believe in little green men or not.”

“Ok.” Perry had no idea where his commanding officer was going with this, but he didn’t want to interrupt.

“Well, let me tell you. Those little green men, they aren’t green, and they aren’t little. Tough as steel and tall, broad creatures. They have…”

“Just a second, general. Am I hearing you right? Are you saying aliens exist?” Perry laughed. Just couldn’t help it. “I find that hard to swallow.”

Hendricks, a man accustomed to being taken seriously at all times, turned his head in Captain Black’s direction. Perry stopped laughing. “Yesterday. Less than 24 hours ago, a man--or what you thought was a man, a synthetic man, produced in a lab for all you knew, but what you considered a man nonetheless--took an amazing amount of firepower, fell down, got back up, and…” the general's’ face was reddening to a deep scarlet. “Flew away!” the words were a struggle for him. The cigar bobbed.

“So what you’re saying is: Omega is an alien?” Perry knew not to laugh, but he had to stifle it.

“Half.”

“Half?” he asked. “Half-alien? Like his dad found a baby’s momma down here on earth?”

Hendricks’ patience was wearing thin, even with such a delicate topic. “And they call your generation the future? God help us.” Settling back into his seat, Anvil continued, “Through genetics, a hybrid--half extraterrestrial, half human--was conceived. That hybrid was the main component of the Omega Project: Omega himself. Grown in an incubator, maturing under the watchful eye of both the United States Army and a private scientific firm.”

“A half-breed?”

“Precisely. While there were no survivors to the Roswell Crash of ‘47, certain useful traits were identified in their corpses.”

“Useful traits?” Despite the ache of his body and the constant rough road beneath their wheels, Captain Black had a hard time thinking he wasn’t dreaming this conversation.

The general nodded. “Incredibly dense bone composition, nearly impenetrable. Greatly advanced neural synapses for quick thinking and conflict resolution. Thick, hard to puncture skin, tougher than industrial-grade plastic.”

“I can see the advantages. So it was decided to mix them up with a man and see what came out?”

“Super soldier programs were the flavor of the day back then. Hitler was doing it. The Japs were trying their hand at it. So were we. While we were nowhere near advanced enough to  map out the DNA, splicing from two different organisms was science fiction.”

“Just like the flying saucer.”

“A myth. The craft resembles a saucer no more than you resemble Kim Kardashian.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“We had something the Germans and the Japanese didn’t. We had the secret ingredient, the capstone on which to build. So we did, and by all accounts the project has been a success.” Anvil paused. “Until now.”

“I’m going to throw a guess out there that you didn’t know this guy could take bullets the way he did, or catch a headwind and sail off into the sunset?”

“No. If I did, I would’ve clipped his wings.” Now that sounded more like the Anvil Hendricks Black had come to know, and if not like, at least respect. The driver had to be either deaf or incredibly disciplined. He never once acknowledged there was a conversation going on.  

“So, as you were saying: Omega was the main component. I’m assuming there’s more to this experiment?”   

“Yes.” The general chewed a bit on his cigar. “You were a Blackhawk pilot, correct?”

“Still am, sir. All my certifications are current for a while longer. Grew up flying crop dusters on the farm. If it has an engine, I can just about fly it.”

“I’m curious. Why didn’t you take a commission in the air force?”

The general already knew the answer, but Perry gave it to him anyway. “My grandfather was an Army officer and my father a Ranger. He was killed in action. The flying came from my uncle. Loved the air, but had to fight. The Rangers is where I wanted to do it.”

“Good man,” Hendricks said. “I think I’ve made a good decision in not shipping you out of here as I was tempted to do.” Perry said nothing, but could feel his anger rising. The general had threatened him for something that was not his fault. They both knew that, but fault had very little to do with anything in the army. He was still here because the general had a use for him. He was anxious to find out just what that use was. “I’m afraid I might not be in the shape to be flying helicopter patrol.”

Anvil laughed at this. It was such a rare sound, Perry was a bit surprised.

“Another supposed myth is Hangar 18. That’s where the alleged spacecraft was supposed to be stored.”  The general didn’t elaborate. Perry looked up, noticed they’d left the narrow two lane, and were speeding across the hard-packed ground. It was only slightly bumpier than the road. The mountains were right there, and they looked to be heading straight for a tunnel or a cave cut into the base of the rock.

Just once I’d love a place that wasn’t hidden underground or in the side of a freaking mountain. Just once!

The Jeep left the light of day and into darkness it roared. The lieutenant switched on the headlights and they continued on through the darkness. Black looked behind them at the mouth of the tunnel as it grew smaller and smaller. Suddenly, something huge--some kind of monstrous door--swung, none too slowly, over the opening, and the darkness became absolute, save for where the headlights sliced through.

“Welcome to Hangar 99, Captain. If you thought a flying alien was something, wait until you get a load of this.”

When they drove out of the tunnel into a large space filled with bright lighting and walls with electronic apparatuses, Black knew just what the general had meant.

“My God,” was all Black could say.

“That’s just about what I said the first time I saw it, Captain.” The jeep came to a halt. The general and Black stepped out, the driver staying behind the wheel. Black took a few steps as best he could. Walking was still something quite hard for him. He gritted his teeth with each step.

“It’s incredible.” Black’s eyes played over the most incredible thing he’d ever seen. Gleaming bright with highly-polished chrome, suspended four feet above the ground was… well, something spectacular.

“That, Major, is the UFO of Roswell, New Mexico.”

“It’s true. It is actually true.” Black was stunned. To hear the general talk about it was one thing, but to actually behold it was quite another. And then it hit him. “Did you just call me major?”