The Siren Project (49 page)

Mitch saw the six circular marks on the
young man’s head, then glanced back at the woman with the metal plate still
attached to her head. “It's the same as the Chimp Room in the Newton Institute!
Only down here, they’re doing it to human beings.”

Gunter checked several more tables. “They
have all had metal plates fitted to their heads. Most are removed now.”

Mitch looked confused. “I don’t get it. They’ve
got mind control technology, why do this? Wiring human brains is a lot cruder
than controlling them with ENP.”

“There may be something else, something we
have not yet seen. More than just conditioning.”

“Whatever it is, we’ve got to find Christa
before they bolt one of those things on her head,” Mitch said, examining the
interior metal door. It was lined with rubber insulation, like the exterior
door, but had a metallic lever in its center to lock it in place. He leant on
the handle, feeling it give slowly as the thermal seal loosened, followed by a
soft hiss of escaping air, indicating the refrigeration room's air pressure was
slightly higher than ambient pressure to reduce the risk of contamination. Mitch
pushed the door open and stepped through into a darkened, empty laboratory. Long,
low tables ran parallel through the center of the room, some with computer
terminals, others with instruments and machines of unknown purpose. Gunter
resealed the door behind them, while Mitch moved between the tables toward the
far door. He was halfway across the lab when movement to his left caught his
eye. He froze, slowly drawing his gun, signaling Gunter silently.

A small shape passed through the shadows,
under a table and stopped. Mitch edged sideways, to get a clear view as it moved
again, this time into the aisle he was standing in. It was a squat robotic
janitor, with all its cleaning tools retracted. The robot turned on the spot
until its optic sensor faced Mitch, then it whirred slowly toward him, stopping
six feet away as the lights came on, giving the robot a clear view of him.

“Now what?” Mitch muttered.

Gunter circled around one of the lab tables
to the aisle the robot was standing in and approached from the rear for a
closer look. “It may be confused. It is probably programmed to expect the room
to be empty this time of night.”

Mitch stepped sideways, moving around a lab
table into the next aisle. The robotic janitor electrically hummed its way
under the table into the next aisle, blocking Mitch.

“Yeah? Then why did it do that?”

“Step past it,” Gunter suggested.

Mitch advanced toward the robotic janitor. Just
before he passed it, a telescopic arm fitted with a window cleaner extended,
barring his way. Mitch looked down at the machine skeptically. “If this thing
is supposed to be a guard, it’s the dumbest looking guard I’ve ever seen. Maybe
I should just shoot it!” he said, pointing his gun at the robot.

“Not yet,” Gunter said, now studying the
robot with growing interest.

Mitch relaxed, lowering the gun. “Consider
yourself one very lucky vacuum cleaner.” He stepped over the thin metal arm and
moved toward the door.

The robotic janitor retracted its arm and
buzzed quickly under several tables, down an aisle, arriving at the lab exit ahead
of Mitch and Gunter. It turned to face them, extending telescopic arms left and
right.

“Am I imagining it,” Mitch said, “Or is
that sorry excuse for a pooper scooper telling us not to go through that door?”

“That is exactly what it is telling us.”

“Maybe the floor's wet and it doesn’t want
us leaving foot prints?”

Gunter looked around the lab. There was
another door further to the left. “Maybe it wants us to go through that door.”

Mitch looked irritated. “You’re joking,
right? You want us to do what a vacuum cleaner tells us to do?”

“It turned on the lights, but there is no
alarm. I say we see what is on the other side of that door.”

“Okay, but if it’s a broom closet, the
vacuum cleaner dies.”

Mitch followed Gunter to the door, which
was secured by an electronic lock. Gunter glanced at the keypad, produced his
crowbar and prepared to jimmy the door open. The robotic janitor zipped up
behind them, extended a telescopic arm fitted with a claw, and locked on the
crow bar. It attempted to retract its arm, but Gunter would not release the
crowbar.

“All right, that’s it,” Mitch said, taking
aim on the robot. “Consider yourself superseded!”

“Wait,” Gunter said, releasing the crow
bar.

The little robot pulled the crowbar to its
metal skin, then the numbers on the keypad beside the door glowed rapidly in
sequence as the combination was processed by remote control and the door bolt
clicked open.

“Mouse must be running the internal
systems,” Gunter guessed. “He’s probably got a map of the base.”

Mitch relaxed. “Right.” He patted the
little robot on the head. “Forget that crack about pooper scooper.”

They stepped through into a small room with
a metal chair placed in the center and a door on the far side of the room. Arm
and leg clamps were fixed to the chair and many sensor attachments hung from
wires leading up into the ceiling. Computers and monitors lined one wall and a
large display screen filled the wall in front of the chair.

“Looks like an electric chair,” Mitch
muttered, then glanced at the display screen, “With cable TV.”

“It is a testing station,” Gunter reported
after studying the equipment, “Perhaps for the head plates we saw in the
autopsy room.”

The door behind them swung shut, followed
immediately by the sound of the bolt locking. Mitch spun around, realizing the
robotic janitor had not followed them into the room. “Uh-oh!”

Gunter tried the door, then the second exit
on the other side of the room. He shook his head, both metal doors were firmly
bolted shut. He examined the metal work of the doors and their frames, then
sighed. “Titanium and steel. No way we can force either one, even if we had the
crowbar.” Gunter nodded meaningfully to the door, indicating the robotic
janitor had stolen it.

“Like rats in a trap,” Mitch declared, “Tricked
by a lying little vacuum cleaner!”

* * * *

They searched the testing room for
nearly a hour, but found no avenue of escape. The metal doors were impenetrable
and the electronic locks could not be deactivated without sensitive computer
equipment.

Mitch sat on the metal chair in the center
of the room with a sense of defeat, mixed with confusion. “Why don’t they come?”

“Perhaps they know we cannot escape and are
waiting until morning.”

The click of the door lock sliding open echoed
into the chamber, followed by the buzz of the robotic janitor's small electric
motor, pushing against the door. Mitch pulled the door open, and the little
robot skidded into the room, towing a wheeled bed behind it, with Mouse asleep
on top. When the robot had pulled the bed fully into the room, Mitch partly
closed the door, leaving it wedged open with his binoculars. The robot’s claw
arm released the bed, then the robot sped across the floor to the second door.

Gunter pressed his fingers to Mouse’s neck
searching for a pulse. “He is alive.”

“And Mouse isn’t controlling R2-D2 over there,”
Mitch said warily.

“He is drugged, but not deeply.” Gunter
gently slapped Mouse’s cheek several times. “Mouse, can you hear me? Wake up.”

Mouse emitted a barely perceptible groan as
his eyelids twitched, but remained closed.

“Nice hair cut,” Mitch said dryly,
indicating Mouse’s shaved head.

A click sounded as the electronic lock
securing the second door released, then the robotic janitor began pushing the
door, trying to open it.

“Looks like the vacuum cleaner wants us to
go through there,” Mitch said scooping up his binoculars and hurrying to the
second door, as the first door locked behind them. “Out of the way
hoover-droid,” he said, pushing the second door open to reveal a short dark
passage opening into a large cavernous room beyond. “Wheel sleeping beauty in
here.”

The robotic janitor scooted ahead into the
darkness, while Mitch held the door open for Gunter, who guided the bed through
the metal door frame and down the lightless passage. When Mitch followed, he noted
uncomfortably how the door automatically locked behind them, sealing off their
escape route. At the end of the corridor, Gunter stopped to stare off to the
left, mesmerized.

“What is it?” Mitch asked, hurrying forward
to the edge of the passage, bringing his gun up level.

An immense reinforced glass wall spanned
almost the width of the facility and rose several stories above them. In front
of the glass wall was a single control console thirty feet wide, with chairs
for six operators. Beyond the glass window was a tank of vast proportions that
stretched back toward the southern wall of the building. It was filled with a
clear liquid, the surface of which was lost from sight far above. Immersed in
the liquid and supported by a multilayered superstructure were rows and rows of
unconscious, naked men and woman. Each person was fitted with a metal skull cap,
that was in turn connected by wires to a bulbous black node above their heads. Water
tight masks were attached to their faces, providing a carefully regulated air
supply, and other plumbing was attached to meet the needs of bodily waste. Tubes
intravenously fed nutrients into the arms of the comatose population to maintain
body mass.

Suspended between the rows of nodes were
underwater lights, illuminating the submerged complex, strangely silhouetting
the black nodes and naked bodies. Black cables carrying power and data links
formed an elaborate web between the nodes and the superstructure, while an
intricate pattern of black metal supports and straps secured the bodies in
place. The nodes themselves were suspended from the superstructure, which was
built of black metal girders assembled into a multilayered grid.

Mitch and Gunter walked past the control
console toward the giant glass wall, at once both repulsed and hypnotized. It
was then they realized the immersion tank reached some way below ground level
and that there were four distinct horizontal layers to the nodal superstructure.

“There must be hundreds of them,” Mitch
murmured barely above a whisper.

“Fascinating,” Gunter said with more
curiosity than revulsion.

“They’re alive in there,” Mitch realized,
seeing the slight movement of chests as shallow breathing mechanically inhaled
air into lungs. “What do you think it is?”

“I have no idea.” Gunter put his hand on
the glass, testing it. “The glass is warm, which means the liquid is warm,
perhaps a degree or two above body temperature. That would prevent hypothermia.”

Mitch felt something pull on the leg of his
pants and looked down to see the robotic janitor’s claw trying to pull him away
from the glass.

“What now?” He muttered as he allowed the
robot to turn him slowly around to see a large display screen on the wall
opposite the tank. Words glowed to life on the screen:

HELLO JOHN MITCHELL. I AM HERE. EB.

“Gunter! EB's in there! He’s one of them!”

Gunter followed Mitch’s gaze to the big
screen, then stared back into the tank to the hundreds of unconscious people
attached to the nodes. A moment later, the words on the big screen changed
again.

USE CONSOLE FOUR TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME.

Mitch hurried to the fourth workstation. It
was equipped with a keyboard, screen and several banks of illuminated buttons
with cryptic symbols. On the console's screen were the same words as on the big
screen. Mitch typed:
How can we get you out?

OUT OF WHERE?

“Maybe he does not realize where he is,” Gunter
said while reading over Mitch’s shoulder. “He may have only partial
consciousness, induced by that metal device attached to the head.”

Behind them, they heard a clatter of wheels
as the bed Mouse was on toppled over. He'd tried to rise, but had only
succeeded in tumbling off the bed. Now he struggled to rouse himself like a
punch drunk fighter, managing to do no more than writhe helplessly on the floor.
Gunter lifted him to a sitting position and studied his face, trying to assess
his health.

“Where am . . . G? . . .” Mouse mumbled
incoherently, barely able open his eyes,.

Gunter carried him to the command console, and
placed him gently in a chair beside it. Mouse flopped back, blinking, eyes
unfocused, too weak to control his arms and legs beyond simple uncoordinated
movements. “He is coming out of it.”

Mitch returned his attention to the
keyboard.
You're in a tank, attached to a machine. You may
not realize where you are. There are hundreds of people in the tank with you. If
you tell us which one you are, we'll get you out.

I AM HERE.

“You’re right G, EB’s confused. He doesn’t
know where he is.”

Can you give us a
coordinate, a physical location? There are so many people in there, we need to
know which one you are.