Modern Rituals (28 page)

He continued, “Anyway, I teamed up with the nanotech folks. They built nanomachines to stimulate the body’s cells based on my modeling and wrapped it up in a serum called MINIMITE. It can vary your hormonal output at any given moment,” he looked at James. “So, when I’m not cleaning up other people’s messes, most of my time is devoted to improving MINIMITE—that, and I step into the odd research gig when they reach a dead end.

“James, have you been feeling more pumped-up?” Trevor said. “More ‘go get ‘em?’”
 

James reflected on the past few hours. He had been behaving slightly out of character. He tended to be creative and maybe somewhat lazy, sorta aloof—or so he was told. These heroic tendencies surprised and excited him. From a chasm in the pit of his being, a newborn, tumultuous passion stirred.

“I thought it was just the adrenaline.”

“No doubt, it’s a combination of both. Thing is, we need you to keep your head on your shoulders, so your adrenaline is reduced while other hormones are increased.”
 

“You are this ritual’s protector, and subsequently your testosterone is through the roof. You see, each of you has an archetype to play, but we can’t tell you how to play it. We just manipulate your hormones as well as offer a mild suggestion on the cards you received. Man, before MINIMITE, you wouldn’t believe the shit Magnus had to do to get participants to comply—” Trevor said.

“Hold on. You are saying this stuff is in our bodies right now?” Olivia said.

“Yes,” Trevor said. “It’s also relaying your vitals to a monitoring station,” Trevor said.

“What the fuck!” James said. “Is this shit safe? I’m not gonna get cancer or something, am I?”

“God, no—you really think we’d allow a travesty like that?” Trevor said with a startling lack of irony. James rolled his eyes. Trevor continued. “Our work is stellar. Plus, if you did, we have a cure for it.”

James halted.
 

“Hold up. A
cure
for cancer? You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Trevor stopped and faced him. “Cancer is tricky,” Trevor said. “Every person reacts differently to treatment. That changed when the human genome was decoded. Now we can design a custom treatment based on your genetic identity to attack and destroy
any
form of cancer. It was developed right here in this very facility. Magnus owns and operates all of the major pharmaceutical corporations. They plan to introduce the technique over the next ten years.”

James slowed. There are certain truths that can incapacitate—can render the student immobile—and this fact sucked the strength from James’ legs. Olivia appeared affected too. She cast James a stunned glance.

“What about our location? Can they track that also?” Olivia said.

“Of course,” Trevor said. “But not through the serum. That reminds me—we need to take care of that little issue…”

Colette grabbed hold of Trevor’s arm.

“It was
you
,” she said, tears in her eyes. “You did something to me to make me feel the way I did for Keto, didn’t you?”

“Colette,” Trevor said. “Yes. I’m sorry. Amida is a dirty old man of a god. He likes a little T&A. You were manipulated. Now, back to the GPS issue—I need your hands, everyone.”
 

James stood near Trevor. Olivia fell in next to James and Colette completed the circle. Trevor held out his left hand, palm up, and pointed at his ring finger.

“There’s a sub-dermal, rice-sized location chip embedded in each of your ring fingers,” Trevor said and pulled out a short pocket knife. “We need to remove them.”

He placed the tip of the knife on the fleshy, inner connection between his palm and first knuckle. Blood ran from the incision as he drove the flaps of skin apart and coaxed a tiny piece of plastic from the wound, dropping it to the floor.
 

“You had one too?” Olivia said.

“Standard Magnus protocol. It can also be used as a communication device. Your turn,” Trevor said to James.

What happened to ladies first?
James thought, and immediately felt like an ass.

Trevor made short work of removing each of their tracking devices. His steady hand kept the procedure near-painless.

“Thanks,” James said.

“Yes, thank you Trevor,” Olivia said, rubbing then sucking on her finger.

Colette stared at the ground.

“Doesn’t this officially mean you’ve aided and abetted fugitives?” James said.

Trevor laughed.

“We’re in the same boat at this point,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong, and I intend to find out what’s up—with my head intact.”

They resumed their pace until sweat flushed their foreheads.

“If we keep traveling north, won’t we eventually hit the edge of the facility? What happens when we run into the…uh…thermal mesh?” James said.

“That sits as a dome over the school and forest, like a big snow globe,” Trevor said. “It doesn’t extend much further into the ground. We’ll pass under it. In fact, we should be doing that just around the bend up there.”
 

James wrestled with how Trevor made heads or tails of the passages—they appeared identical to his untrained eyes.

 
“There should be a connection nexus there as well—we can finally free ourselves of these boring tunnels,” Trevor said and sighed.

“As long as there aren’t any serial killers or ghosts, I couldn’t care less where we end up,” James said.

“True, that,” Trevor said.

The corridor widened, doubling in height and width. Above them, a riveted, concrete conduit about the size of a semi-truck ran perpendicular to the ceiling. A cool staleness chilled the air.

“There’s the thermal projection unit,” Trevor said, pointing at the conduit. “Believe it or not, that concrete box runs the circumference of the facility. See that large fan positioned in the center? That’s one of the cooling units—it’s filled with liquid nitrogen and jet turbines. It can freeze a room to negative two-hundred Celsius, though it keeps the thermal mesh at a steady thirty degrees.”

James performed the mental math, furrowing his eyebrows.

“That’s insane,” he said.

“Magnus exists in a different reality from the rest of the world,” Trevor said.

“You think?” James said.

“I’m not following—but I’ll take your word for it,” Olivia said.

As they passed under the thermal mesh division, the corridor returned to its original size. They turned a corner and ran into a thick, metal door.

“This is the nexus intersection. Through here is a bridge to Una Corda’s campus,” Trevor said. He looked at each of them. “Listen, we’re going to be discovered at some point—it’s inevitable. Just follow my lead when the time comes. They’ve probably discovered our location trackers and are scouting the tunnels. We bought ourselves a little time, as the nexus is the last place they’ll start looking within Facility 7—plus there are a few blind spots we can stick to.”

“You said a bridge?” James said.

“Here’s a fun fact about Facility 7: it’s miles underground,” Trevor said.

“Come again?” James said.

“The school, the forest—it’s all underground,” Trevor said.
 

“But we were outside. We saw the sun and moon,” James said. “And no stars…”

“You
thought
you saw the sun and the moon,” Trevor said. “They were holographic projections on the thermal mesh. Everything is artificial and self-contained. When I said it was like a snow globe, I was being pretty literal. Facility 7 is a large sphere—the top half contains the ritual grounds, and the bottom half is filled with all the parts to make the top half go.”

“I don’t believe you,” James said.

“No? Follow me,” Trevor said. He opened the metal door and entered a hallway.
 

Where the service tunnels had lacked finish—where grime-slicked halls dissuaded the most eager explorers—this place invited them in with machined aluminum and warm, sun-colored lighting. Geometric patches of thick, white vinyl lined the walls in appealing patterns, and embedded into these were head-shaped windows that lined the hallway’s length like portholes on a submarine. The pristine nature of the passage coupled with the decorative patches reminded James of a starship in a sci-fi movie—he rushed to a window, cupped his hands over it and saw only black.

“I can’t see anything,” James said.

“Keep walking,” Trevor said. “I’ll show you.”

They did as he said, trekking along for several minutes before Trevor stopped and peered through one of the windows himself.

“Have a look,” he said.

James, Colette and Olivia each chose a window and brought their faces close to the polycarbonate glass. What James saw transformed his understanding of reality.

A planet-sized mechanical globe rested in unending darkness. Just as Trevor had said, a translucent dome—the thermal mesh—composed the sphere’s top half, under which the school stood centered and surrounded by a vast forest. Their position offered a bird’s-eye view, looking down and into Facility 7, and while the top hemisphere did remind James of a snow globe, the bottom half was more like half a Death Star or a spherical space station, where thousands of bridges and conduits and cables and cords and wires crisscrossed massive trusses and pinions that spanned from every angle—James wobbled and grew dizzy trying to determine where form met function. An enormous mechanical arm fixed to the top of the globe held the sphere around its equator like giant fingers holding a giant marble.
 

“This…that…that’s where we were?” James said. “It’s
huge
.”
 

“It’s like a tiny planet,” Olivia said.

Colette’s face melted against the glass. She punched the wall.

“It’s all true!” she said. “My God—it’s all true!”

“Yup,” Trevor said. “See that large arm? That projects the sun and moon onto the thermal mesh. It also retrieves other facilities.”

“I’m sorry,” James said, turning toward Trevor. “Retrieves other facilities?”

“Yes,” Trevor said. “This is Facility
Seven,
remember? There are hundreds of these facilities, each tailored to ritual requirements.”

“Why would you need to swap facilities?” he said.

“Look down.”
 

They did. James experienced the same vertigo he had when he’d saved Olivia from falling through the air duct panel—the distance between him and the darkness felt bottomless. His eyes adjusted. A faint wisp of light formed in the recesses of the massive cavern’s floor.

“There’s something…” he said, squinting. His breath fogged the panel’s glass.

“There is indeed,” Trevor said. “Amida, to be exact—well, a chamber containing his blood. He feeds on those sacrificed in the ritual. Proximity is important—he’s exactly one mile beneath the facility.”

“Surely what we’re looking at isn’t
mobile
?” Olivia said.

Trevor grinned. “Oh, it’s mobile all right. You should see the warehouse for these things. It’s its own little universe,” he said. “But yes, that mechanical arm is used for transport. Only one ritual may occur at any given time. This is a contract among the Gods, who also dictate the setting for a ritual. We have every configuration imaginable, from schools—as you see here—to recreations of entire cities, volcanic islands, underwater civilizations, ruins like Machu Picchu, industrial complexes, shopping malls, amusement parks, and yes, even a cabin in the woods.”
 

A vision appeared before James: an immense robotic arm grasping and dislodging the sphere as a hand would carry a tennis ball. This oversimplification then met the immense reality staring at him through the window and his brain exploded into pieces.

“Anyway, enough idle chat. We need to move,” Trevor said.

James stayed transfixed on the spherical monstrosity, then jostled his head with a quick neck snap.
 

“Sorry guys, I know it’s a hell of a sight, but we need to go. Now,” he said.

Blinking away the blurred gunk formed from fixating without blinking, James turned toward Colette. Purple and red smeared her eyes—it was difficult to tell if she was frightened, sad, amazed or a nasty combination of them all.
 

Trevor led them to the end of the nexus bridge. “We’re about a mile from the facility now.” They stopped in front of a pair of metal doors with long horizontal handles. Trevor pushed the left door open, stuck his head in the gap and glanced around. All clear. He held open the door and waved Olivia inside first, then Colette. James followed last.

Once they moved beyond the nexus’ threshold, Trevor said, “Welcome to Una Corda. You were unconscious the last time you were here. Come to think of it, I doubt we’ve ever had conscious participants on campus before. Congratulations—you’re the first.”
 

“The honor is all yours, Trevor,” James said, examining the new area. “Are all the hallways in this place so…aluminum? I feel like I’m inside a perfectly machined tin can.”

“Pretty much. Though it’s an aluminum-aerogel-carbon composite. It can withstand an enormous impact while keeping the weight low,” he said and tugged on James’ shirt, beckoning him to follow.

“The way I see it, we have maybe five minutes until they drop on us,” Trevor said as they walked. “There are three potential exits from this area. I’m not fond of where two of them lead, so we’re going to the chamber elevator—which, unfortunately, only goes down. I remember reading about some ancient canals that run under the chamber—we may be able to safely leave through those,” Trevor said.

“And if we can’t?” James said.

Trevor threw James an uneasy glance and kept moving.

“Great,” James said.

A crisp, straight hallway retreated from them. Actually, James now saw that it curved ever so slightly to the right, and he guessed if it continued into an eventual loop, its diameter would trounce the Pentagon’s.
 

This structure is underground? My God…
 

Tingling shivers coalesced beneath his skin. Una Corda: a secret lair of untold size—it dismantled his notions of how the world operated, or rather, introduced to him
how
Magnus operated the world. He wanted desperately to escape with his memory whole.