The Deep Beneath (7 page)

“I know you can. Your powers are most impressive. But it is time for you to stop this game. You must return to A.H.D.N.A. before you are seen by anyone else.”

“What of these humans?” he asked.

Commander Sturgis sighed heavily. “You understand I cannot let them live after what they’ve seen. The world is not ready for you, 9.”

Fresh tears sprang to Erika’s eyes. Ian squeezed her hand. His arm trembled next to hers. Her mind was filled with memories of Ian riding on the back of her bike, of them laughing together, playing video games and eating popcorn, of Ian throwing a tight spiral to win the game. The thought that he would no longer walk the halls at school or eat his mom’s Sunday fried chicken made the tears she’d kept in check fall from her face.
I’m sorry, Ian. I’m so sorry.

“No, Commander. You will not terminate them.”

The commander took a few steps toward H.A.L.F. 9. Her hands were on her hips as she yelled at him, “How dare you give me orders.”

“Let the humans go, or I shall terminate your soldiers.”

“Do not threaten me, 9. The game is over. Now get in the chopper.”

H.A.L.F. 9 stood his ground, but the men slowly got up. They rubbed at their necks and coughed a bit but soon took up their positions again around Erika, Ian, and Joe.

H.A.L.F. 9 looked back at Commander Sturgis, then to Erika. “I will not go with you, Commander. I will terminate these men – and you too – if I have to. But I will not return to my prison cell.”

What kind of prison?
Erika knew of no prison in the area. But it was clear from the way he was able to kill people apparently using only his mind that he was no ordinary prisoner. In fact, he was extraordinary.
Maybe they’re holding him against his will because of his mental abilities?
Erika had immediately formed a dislike for Commander Sturgis and this new idea – that H.A.L.F. 9 was being held against his will – made her detest the woman even more.

The commander said nothing to H.A.L.F. 9 but held her ground.

“It is time for you to take orders from me,” H.A.L.F. 9 said. “Let me and the humans go and I will let you live. For now.”

Even with the bright helicopter lights, it was difficult for Erika to see the commander’s facial expressions. But she remained planted, her body rigid, her hands still on her hips. After a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, Commander Sturgis shouted out her orders.

“Back to the Hawk. Come on. Move out!”

The soldiers looked quizzically at each other and did not immediately move. It was as though they had not heard the commander’s last order.

The commander hollered out again. This time, her voice boomed authoritatively without a tinge of shrill fear. “I said get your butts to the chopper. Now!”

The men scrambled back to the helicopter without giving the three of them a second glance.

As the men piled into the chopper, Commander Sturgis stood still and silent, glaring at H.A.L.F. 9. “Do not think that you have gotten away with anything here, because you most certainly have not. Go ahead and run if that is what you feel you must do. But beware the deep beneath you, 9. You will be back at A.H.D.N.A. by this time tomorrow, and you will pay dearly for what you have done.” Sturgis turned and walked back to the helicopter. “Take ’er up,” she yelled.

As quickly as the Black Hawk had appeared, it disappeared into the night sky. The desert was once again still.

Erika took a breath and realized she’d been holding it. She filled her lungs with the dry, warm air and tried to quickly process all that had happened.

H.A.L.F. 9 continued to stand as still as a statue. As the helicopter flew over their heads, it created a cool breeze that made Erika’s skin prickle with goose bumps. 9 tilted his head up slightly to look at the copter, but then returned his gaze to Erika.

Erika still had her hand in Ian’s. Their palms were wet and sticky. Erika released Ian’s hand and knelt on the bare ground where Jack lay.

“I’d run if I were you,” Ian said to Joe, who still stood where he’d been glued since the helicopter arrived. The desert scrub rustled as Joe ran away.

Erika rolled Jack toward her. “Jack? Jack, talk to me. Are you still with us?” Erika touched her fingers to his neck. His pulse was fainter than it had been before. His eyes were closed and he felt cold. “Ian, he’s got to get to a hospital now.”

Ian pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call 911.”

“There’s no time. We’ll lose at least half an hour waiting for them to get all the way out here. It’ll be faster if we take him ourselves.”

Ian looked down at his phone. “No service anyway.”

“Help me lift him, and we’ll carry him to the car. Hurry.”

Ian knelt and each of them hooked their arm behind Jack and got his limp body up and resting between them. They hadn’t taken three steps when they nearly ran into H.A.L.F. 9., who stood between them and the car.

“What are you going to do to us?” Ian asked.

“Help you,” H.A.L.F. 9 replied.

Commander Sturgis ordered the Black Hawk helicopter back to the entrance of A.H.D.N.A., the underground home of the H.A.L.F. project. She pressed herself into a seat, strapped herself in and smoothed her navy blue pencil skirt. She pulled a small electronic tablet from the inside breast pocket of her jacket and glanced at her messages. It was as if she had hung a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on herself. The soldiers fastened their own harnesses and remained silent, apparently heeding the commander’s unspoken command to leave her alone.

To onlookers, Commander Sturgis likely appeared calm and in control. But on the inside, her mind was uncharacteristically rattled and she seethed with anger. She would have liked to lay the blame for the failed attempt to retrieve 9 on her assistant Sewell or her crew. Her anger, though, was with herself. She had bungled the mission and she knew it. Even though 9 had been sedated most of his life, his full capabilities suppressed, she should have foreseen that he could not be taken down by a few ex-marines toting guns. It was a mistake she would not make again.

“Tell Sewell to get the containment crew out here straight away. They need to dispose of that dead scum and erase every trace of H.A.L.F. 9’s work out here. Not a single thread of DNA, do you understand me?”

The helicopter pilot nodded and passed her command along to Sewell on an encrypted channel. The containment crew would be on the scene within minutes. They’d collect the dead body and scour the desert floor to gather every bit of debris that may have been left behind. They’d irradiate the soil with machines designed to erase evidence of anything that once lived. When the morning sun came up on that patch of Arizona desert, there would be a sizeable swath of bare dirt and rock covered with dead plants and nothing more.

Anyone who dared to venture into the gunnery range may find the spot. She had no doubt the UFO nuts may have already put out the word. They seemed to have an uncanny way of spotting her special Black Hawk helicopters equipped with the same stealth technology as the B-2 stealth bomber. MUFON, those so-called UFO investigators, may find higher than normal levels of radiation and the dead plants. They’d make a show about it and claim it was the landing site of an alien ship. But Commander Sturgis was unconcerned about the babblings of the alien enthusiast fringe. All she cared about was that no one find a clue about what had actually gone down in that spot. They would not discover any evidence of the alien-human hybrid she had created or of the dead body of 9’s victim.

The cabin of the copter was quiet save for the sound of the blades chopping the air. The six soldiers looked straight ahead and remained silent. She was glad of it. She was in no mood for idle banter. Commander Sturgis kept her gaze on the bright white screen of her handheld. She had a message from General Bardsley, her commanding officer, asking for an update.
Hell’s bells.
He would go through the roof when he heard about the fiasco of 9’s escape. She did not respond to Bardsley’s message.
I will have to consider how best to put this to him, but now I have more important things to think about.

Like how to get 9 back into her custody. Commander Sturgis and Dr. Randall had created 9 to be a killing machine, unfettered by human frailties of the mind such as guilt and mercy. H.A.L.F. 9 had shown no mercy to her soldiers, but he had displayed a weakness toward the teenagers. That concerned her far more than the fact that he’d killed a man. It was exactly what she’d been worried about and why she’d chided Dr. Randall for treating 9 more like a human child than the weapon he was supposed to be. Dr. Randall made 9 soft. But Commander Sturgis was confident that with Randall out of the way, she’d be able to train the softness out of 9.
First I have to retrieve him.

The demonstration of the extent of 9’s powers surprised her. She’d had to keep him sedated for her own protection, as well as the staff’s. She had no way of knowing that he’d be so strong so quickly once beyond the artificially humid environment of A.H.D.N.A. No way of knowing that he could kill six men at once. His little excursion into the desert gave her proof of aptitudes that she could not test in a lab. She would have to work on his temperament, but clearly he had the power to be the weapon the Makers had asked her to create.
I wonder what his limits are.
A part of her wanted to go after him again with a dozen soldiers, maybe twenty, just to see how many he could handle. But she had enough trouble on her hands with one scumbag lying lifeless in the desert. Bardsley would go ballistic over a dead soldier.

When she delivered her report to General Bardsley about 9’s capabilities, he’d get her all the funding she needed to begin the next phase of the project. And she’d finally get the full support of the Makers. They’d see to it that her share of the secretive black budget increased. All of them had doubted her. No doubt the fact that she was a woman played a role.
I’ll show those chauvinists. I’ll show Croft.
When General Bardsley saw the video of the operation shot from the helicopter … Well, he’d doubt her no more.

In less than ten minutes the helicopter set down. “Freeman and Lopez, with me. The rest of you go back to the air base. And stay put. You may be called back out before the night’s over.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Sturgis disembarked with Freeman and Lopez. The helicopter silently took off and melded into the night. They ran to a small opening in the side of the mountain, trying to avoid running into any cholla or prickly pear cactus. They arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned mine shaft complete with boards nailed across the opening with the warnings “Extreme Hazard!” and “Keep Out!” They had been effective at keeping people out. Sturgis squeezed through a small gap in the boards and into a cave the size of a small room but with a large, black hole in the middle. She stood on a ledge of rock, careful not to fall into the abandoned mine shaft. A narrow ladder made of iron rungs descended into the darkness down the old mine shaft. Commander Sturgis was glad she did not have to use the ladder and climb down into a pitch-black hole. Though she was angry beyond measure at 9 for escaping, she had to admit that she was impressed that he had the mettle to make the long, dark climb on his own.

Commander Sturgis felt along the rock wall inside the cave for a small indentation. Her fingers found the small metal disc and pushed it. A row of blue LED lights set into the ground around the hole came on and illuminated an elevator on the other side. The elevator would take them nearly a mile underground to the world’s best-kept secret: A.H.D.N.A., the home of Project H.A.L.F. Of course, her budget reports used the official name, “The Alliance for Healthy DNA,” a genetic research project overseen by the air force. That was the official story. Unofficially, Dr. Lilly Sturgis was a brilliant geneticist who had been hired by the Makers to fulfill the mission of the above top-secret H.A.L.F. project: to create human-alien hybrids.

She had done her job and done it well. And now one of her creations was out in the world, potentially being discovered by others and risking exposure of the project to the entire world. Commander Sturgis involuntarily shuddered at the thought that the high council of the Makers would learn of 9’s escape. Bardsley’s wrath was like a fleabite compared to the hammer that the leader of the Makers, William Croft, might wield on her.

Sturgis entered the elevator and pushed the only button available. The two soldiers followed behind her and were quiet the entire elevator ride. It gave Commander Sturgis time to consider how best to handle the runaway hybrid.

Her primary objective was to retrieve 9, but Bardsley would not like being kept waiting.
Perhaps if I can get 9 back here tonight, General Bardsley won’t have to know that he escaped in the first place.
Yes, Bardsley would have to wait. She couldn’t have 9 running around the desert or, worse, making it into a town. And there was only one weapon in her arsenal powerful enough to bring him in.

The elevator doors opened to a long windowless and doorless corridor. The ceiling was formed concrete as were the walls. Overhead fluorescents flooded the hall with bright, white light.

Commander Sturgis’ assistant, Sewell, met her at the elevator. His plump face was red and splotchy from hoofing it from his office in the administrative wing to the seldom-used desert entrance. Sturgis did not pause to allow him to catch his breath. She walked briskly down the hall, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor. Sewell followed behind her at nearly a jog, his breathing loud and ragged. “Containment crew is on its way,” he said.

Sturgis looked at her watch without stopping. “A little slow, aren’t they?”

“It’s been less than ten minutes since we received the transmission, Commander.”

“That’s five minutes too slow. This is critical to everything we’ve worked for. If we don’t get 9 back tonight, we’re done.”

“Yes, ma’am. What now?”

“We bring 9 in.”

“What is your plan, Commander?”

Sturgis stopped and turned to face Sewell. “What’s the one weapon strong enough to go up against a H.A.L.F.?”