Overrun: Project Hideaway (5 page)

“Our only chance is the pilots!”
Dr. Korcheck yelled back to Dr. Rone who ran after him down the corridor.
"Those people in that meeting, they don’t know what I know. What the
scientific group risks to give up is more than my conscience or any of theirs
should be able to allow."

He turned a corner and charged
down a set of utility steps crowded with Science Dome 15 personnel heading down
and also clawing at anything to drag themselves up. Korcheck’s feet skipped
two, sometimes three at a time until he hit the bottom at a dead run. Rone
chased as best she could after him, not answering, but just trying to keep up.

Two more blasts shook the
facility dimming the overhead lights and finally knocking them completely out.
Emergency lights stabbed into the dark. The explosions from outside the dome
had become more frequent.

A multitude of electronic voices
droned evacuation orders and procedures at a volume barely audible over the
blasts outside and the rush of people cramming the corridors.

Rone could barely hear what
Korcheck shouted at her over the frenzied din. But, she knew and felt exactly
what he was saying. And that was why she wasn’t trying to escape with the other
scientists, but instead followed after him deeper into the dome.

"I didn't spend my entire
life crawling underground like a rat so that this technology could just float
in space over a world left to rot beneath it,” she heard him say when they
turned another corner. “I gave up my family, friends, and my youth a long time
ago to come live here for a purpose. Not for my own ego, or as a way to keep
myself and my family alive. There is a means within our grasp in which this
world can be saved. And I'm not going to let anybody bury that away."

"Are we that close?"
Rone asked him when they descended two more flights of stairs and reached a
less crowded corridor. “I mean are we really that close, where we can finally
say to people on the outside that we’re finally going to help them, and they’re
really not going to die?”

Korcheck stopped for a moment
and turned to stare at her.

Rone leaned against a wall,
thanking God for the break to rest her beating heart and ease the swelling that
threatened to tear out her lungs. She crouched down on her haunches and bent
her head between her knees. She could taste the raunchy bitterness of her own
stomach bile rising up her throat.

“I’ve been studying and offering
insights on the classified schematics of the technological design since I was
eighteen. I’ve drawn up and examined scenarios for its implementation since I
was twenty-one. I’ve thoroughly researched this technology and examined every
conceivable facet of how it could affect the world.”

Rone coughed twice and gave up
the urge to stop it in her mouth.

“And it will affect it….,”
Korcheck said trailing off but not looking away. He waited pensively for her to
finish.

Rone wiped at what remained on
her lips and slowly stood up.

"It will work,” he said as
they moved again down the corridor. “Some have always known this.”

At the edge of the next
intersection of hallways, Korcheck slowed. His eyes darted quickly about
looking behind Rone to her left side. "Construction is completely feasible
in all of our lifetimes."

Another explosion rocked the
dome. More lights became dark, and red emergency beams turned the smoke that
filled the air a dark red.

"Well, somebody's
lifetime," he said turning and running again down the hall. Rone ignored
the pain in her side and trotted as best she could after him. She watched him
curiously while he searched frantically for something along the walls.

“I’ve seen the true picture.
This is it. What’s floating up there right now….it will save the world. By
leaving it up there, we’re giving up the human race and just allowing it to
die,” he said slowing his pace. “Most of those that originally started on the
project are dead, so they can’t tell you like I am.”

His eyes tore up and down the
surface of the walls not quite finding what he was looking for.

"They were so close,”
Korcheck continued. “But it wouldn't have quite worked. Those that came after
the original group, the ones I came to be a part of…with fresh perspectives, we
were able to run where they left off and correct what needed to be fixed. Power
problems were solved. Beam intensity was increased. The number of cannon units
needed to create an entire area of atmosphere was cut by seven eighths.

Do you know what that means?” he
said turning to her.

“No,” Rone answered him both
surprised and confused at the same time.

“It means that the local citizen
displacement figure was reduced by more than seventy-five percent.”

“What?” Rone looked at him
sickly. "What are you saying? Are you saying….?"

"I'm saying many, if not
most of the people on the outside would not need to be removed. There would be
plenty of room.”

Rone felt her stomach beginning
again to turn on itself.

“There would be no need for what
is going on now,” Korcheck did not stop this time while she vomited. He moved
more slowly down the hall and shouted at her over his shoulder. “Destroying the
cities on the outside. Eliminating those that live within. This has never been
necessary. We’re euthanizing these people when there is no need. There has
never been a need. And those that lead us have always known that.”

They turned a corner, and she
could barely hear him again.

“When implemented, with the
technological designs that are up there in the Hideaway right now, the people
on the outside will not have to be moved hardly at all. Millions can be saved.
People can be protected right away. Many may even be totally healed.

“All of our research. All their
creations. Everything has been sent up there. Almost everything needed to save
this dying planet is floating around unused in space on a sleeping ship.
Waiting for someone to bring it down.”

Sirens screamed, and people
again poured at them through the corridors. The flash of explosions danced
about the monitors along the corridor walls. The muffled booming sounds of the
blasts reverberated through the passages.

“And if we leave it up there as
it’s been decided, and the ship does come back…?” Korcheck still screamed at
her over his shoulder despite the crowd moving around them. “It comes back and
it’s not us that retrieved it? Then so be it. Yes. This is the point of this
war. If we lose it, life in our country, for our people, will be changed
forever. Many of our own will die. Yet, somewhere on Earth people will continue
to exist because of it. Someday, somewhere, a new world will grow. It will be
only us, that created and then hoarded these secrets, that will not live to see
it through.

“I’m willing to risk bringing
that ship down. The ship, and only under our control, is really this planet’s
last hope.”

Rone tried to process everything
this man had just said. She reflected on her own debates with people such as
her colleague, Kobus. She had tried everything in her power to convince them of
the same thing she was hearing from the individual she still ran behind.

She also marveled at the fact
that they’d both dedicated their careers, in Korcheck’s case his very life, to
something as intense as the Hideaway Project, and up until now never had the
opportunity to speak.

Her research theories focused on
the physical health and behavioral tendencies of the pilots. His was on the
technology itself. Rone’s work, however, only involved the actions and outcomes
of two people. Korcheck’s involved these same two also, and then the entire
world.

Rone thought it would have been
fascinating to develop her opinions and mold her research alongside this man.
How much more she might have accomplished if only she had been able to share
her hope for the world with someone like Korcheck, a man whose stoic passion
for this project closely rivaled if not surpassed her own.

"This way," Korcheck
grabbed her hard by the arm and jerked her along after him through the crowd.
Rone winced at the slight pain of her joint being strained abruptly from its
socket.

It was too loud for Korcheck to
talk anymore. Continuing to hold her by the arm, he pulled her through the maze
of intersecting hallways.

Descending another two levels of
stairways, they were very close to the ground floor of Science Dome 15. How
close, however, she could not tell.

Not fighting the pain in her
arm, Rone trailed after him, allowing what he had just said sink into her
system. The force of his words in an instant had suddenly grabbed her and shook
her awake. She was now fully aware why she followed him and hurried to match
his pace.

They turned another corner.
Before Rone was entirely around it, Korcheck’s grip on her arm loosened. But,
he did not quite let go.

A man, taller and more than half
the size of Korcheck’s average frame, slammed into him from the other side of
the hall. His large arms smacked hard against the front of Korcheck’s neck and
knocked him violently backwards. With a gasp of surprise and pain, Korcheck’s
legs kicked up into the air, and his head bounced against the metal floor.

Two women running directly
behind Korcheck crashed down on top of him when he fell.

Not realizing her own grip on
the man she followed, Rone found herself crashing down across the heap of
fallen bodies.

The only person to escape the
pile was the large man who initially caused the collision. Without looking
back, he raced further down the passage while the rest struggled to untangle
themselves and stand up.

"Son of a bitch,"
Korcheck swore quietly and spit a bubble of blood from a gash his teeth caused
across his lip onto the floor. He then rolled over on his side and pulled
himself up. "C'mon."

He lowered his arm and helped
haul her from the pile.

Blood also trickled from a small
cut above Korcheck’s eye, and Rone could feel a bruise already forming around
her own.

Paper and pieces of electronic
equipment and gear littered the floor. Korcheck moved hurriedly through the two
women still trying to get up. In a daze, they slowly stood while Rone and
Korcheck hurried away.

Another two hundred meters down,
the passage snaked towards the left. Korcheck pulled her roughly against a wall
to the side next to two smoking elevator doors.

Larger throngs of people now
sprinted in a panic through the halls. Sparks falling from exploding lights
dropped across and ignited paper and other discarded items from the fleeing
crowd. Small fires were scattered about the metal floor.

"Security Alert! Repeat!
Security Alert!" an electronic voice bellowed across the sea of the
riotous throng. "Enemy personnel now entering the dome! Emergency
evacuate! Execute! Repeat! Emergency evacuate! Execute! All Personnel!"

"Oh my God," Rone said
into her hands which were cupped across her mouth.

Brilliant glowing filaments from
the shattering lights lit the air as they fell in a flurry around her. A series
of four explosions rocked the floor beneath their feet. A support beam crashed
through the ceiling to their left and slammed into the ground. Its point
pierced the solid metal of the floor. The sound of the metal tearing into more
metal resembled a drawn out tortured scream.

“It’s been a long time since
I’ve been down here,” Korcheck said while pulling a security card from his
pocket and jabbing it into a slot in the center of the wall. When he did, a
panel opened slowly revealing a hidden elevator deep within the wall.

Its cabin doors opened
ominously.

“For obvious reasons, the
entrance is not always the easiest to find,” Korcheck said darting quickly
inside the compartment and motioning her to follow.

Rone hesitated for a second. She
stood alone in the hallway in front of Korcheck waiting for her inside the
elevator cabin. She turned her head and looked down the hallway. The heat from
the small fires began to increase causing beads of sweat to slide from her
forehead down her cheek.

The flames danced higher in the
corridors, and the crowds struggling to escape had finally thinned.

Korcheck held his hand out to
her.

"Go!" he screamed over
the roar of the chaos befalling the dome. "Go, if you have to! I have to
go down! I can still wake up the ship from the lab!"

"Can you really do
it?!" she screamed at him. “What about the safeguards?!”

"Alert! Alert! Soldiers
within the compound!" the mechanized voice bellowed throughout the
passages. "All personnel must evacuate. Repeat. All personnel must
evacuate. Soldiers within the compound!"

Rone saw him scream back to her
but couldn’t hear what he said. She fought the urge to just lie down across the
ground and throw her arms across her head.

And then the sights and sounds
of the turmoil around them suddenly softened as if someone had adjusted a
volume switch. The smoke clogging the air cleared slightly, and the heat from
the flames seemed to cool.

Everything became calm around
her. For an instant, Rone forgot why she was even there.

She just stared at Korcheck’s
outstretched hand and looked deeply into his pleading face.

"Can you even do it
alone?!" she screamed at him. She turned her head and watched some of the
last remaining personnel run away down the hallway still trying to escape.

In that moment, all the tension
and stress driving both of them seemed to leave Korcheck's body. A gentle
sedateness washed over him as he leaned against the back wall of the elevator.

Rone felt her heart flood with
an emotion she couldn’t describe at the sight of the man before her. A sad
determination and look of acceptance had settled across his face, the vision of
a fellow human being knowingly about to embrace his fate.