Infernal

This is becoming a habit, Richard thought. Unable to rouse Sophia from her faint—blackout?—Richard picked her up and cradled her to his chest like a small child. Her hair smelled of lavender over the stale odor of this dead Earth. Just as her Mirror’s had back in Kansas. His senses told him this was the same woman though he’d watched her Mirror die and knew it was not so.

He carried her, despite his own fatigue and waning strength, adding her weight to that of the duffel strapped across his shoulder. He’d considered leaving it behind but had discarded the notion. There were things in there besides the weapons and ammo that he might find useful before this journey was over. If it were ever over.

The edifice Sophia had pointed to was a pyramid at least five times his height. Stepped blocks, so large a grown man would find them difficult to scale, led to the top. It may have served as a ceremonial altar but had more likely been a tomb for one or more of Copan’s many kings.

As he approached he noted an incongruity in the worn, hand chiseled stone. What appeared to be a steel door was set into the base of the pyramid. To the right of this was an illuminated keypad glowing green in the waning evening light.

He lay Sophia gently on the ground and examined the alpha-numeric pad. It resembled a telephone keypad with CLEAR and ENTER where the asterisk and pound symbols would be. He tapped Sophia63 into the pad and hit enter. A negative buzz issued from a speaker set beneath the keypad. The door remained closed.

“Worth a try,” he muttered.

Sophia made a noise at his feet Richard leaned over her and she breathed in his ear.

“RLP.”

Of course. BanaTech wouldn’t send people through the Rips without some way of accessing research facilities and bases like this one. The RLP’s looked like common cell phones, but were, in fact, uplinks to the satellites BanaTech had in place around the worlds they either controlled or had interest in. The RLP’s themselves were password protected which eliminated the need to further protect any data they or the Quantum-Cray’s back on the Homeworld contained.

“Sorry,” Richard murmured as he fished around in the pockets of Sophia’s BDU for the RLP. She gave him a weak smile and her eyelids fluttered shut.

With the device in hand, Richard hesitated to use it. Sophia had told him that the QC’s could track the RLP’s anywhere. It was a safe bet BanaTech already knew where they were and it was only a matter of time before a Rip opened that brought Jefferson and his goons screaming down on their heads like the meteor that had destroyed this world decades ago. But there was little choice. If he couldn’t get the door open and find the water Sophia had promised was inside, they were going to die.

Richard opened the slider. At the prompt he typed in Sophia’s password. The screen cleared and showed their present location as a blue dot on the GPS map of the ruins. Back on his version of Earth he’d noted a Help tab on the screen. He scrolled to it and hit enter.

The screen dissolved to a list of options. He ignored these and typed PASSCODE into the search bar. A long list of locations scrolled down the screen. There were thousands of entries under that keyword. He thought for a moment, hit CANCEL, and was returned to the help prompt. He typed in the keywords: PASSCODE, X-372, and OXWITIC.

The RLP listed four options: MAIN COMPOUND, LABS, ARMORY, and FPGR. The ARMORY and FPGR listings were marked RESTRICTED.

He keyed on MAIN COMPOUND and received a ten-digit code that he keyed into the pad beside the steel door. The door sank into the ground without pause and a light flickered on inside revealing an airlock.

Richard pocketed the RLP, gathered Sophia into his arms and carried her inside. The door rose behind them. He heard a whirring and a thunk, followed by a soft chime. The door directly in front of them rose into the ceiling and a blast of cool air enveloped them.

It was oxygen rich and sweet smelling. Richard breathed deep and Sophia stirred in his arms, revived by the fresh air.

“I can stand,” Sophia said. Richard set her on her feet and, after a wobbly moment, she stood on her own.

“Water?” Richard said. His throat felt like sandpaper.

“You bet,” Sophia said.

She motioned for the RLP and Richard handed it over. Her fingers worked the tiny keypad much faster than his clumsy pecking.

“Here,” Sophia held up the RLP and showed him a section of floor plan for the installation. “The dining hall is our best bet. It’s one level down. This is all maintenance and garages up here.”

Sophia led him down the corridor. Lights, activated by motion sensors, blinked to life as they progressed. Richard’s vision was becoming shiny around the edges as if the fluorescents overhead were putting out too much light. His thirst had become a need that was driving out all other consideration.

When they reached a door marked SL 2-8, Sophia straight-armed the bar that held it shut and pushed through, descending the staircase beyond without waiting for the overheads to fully illuminate.

One level down was a door marked LIVING QUARTERS.

If it’s locked, Richard thought, I’ll tear the damn thing off its hinges.

It wasn’t locked. Sophia opened the door and then stopped. Richard caught up with her and saw a wondrous sight. On the wall opposite the door was a pair of drinking fountains, one set higher than the other. Their brushed chrome surfaces gleamed invitingly.

They looked at each other and grinned like children. Then they burst through the door.

“This is amazing,” Richard said forty minutes later.

They were seated at a table in the dining hall, a vast space that could easily accommodate a hundred people. The lights in the food prep and serving areas had blinked on as they’d entered but the dining area had remained unlit. Either the motion sensors were rigged to conserve energy or there was a bank of light switches they hadn’t found. The result was eerily thrown shadows and murky corners where anything could be waiting. Watching.

After drinking their fill at the water fountains—Sophia had vomited up her first greedy gulps despite Richard’s warning to drink slowly—they had discovered hunger. Richard had had nothing to eat since Sophia had barged through his front door a day and a half ago. He had no idea when she might have last eaten.

The dining hall, several hundred yards down the corridor past dozens of living units, was their next stop. In a pantry tucked away behind the food prep area Sophia had found hundreds of foil wrapped packages marked MEALS READY TO EAT. They had both taken double handfuls at random. Richard had torn through two helpings of roast beef and Sophia was busily scooping the eggs from three different packages into her mouth.

Sophia said: “I never thought green eggs could taste so good.”

Richard tore open a ration of beef stew, dumped it on a plate, and dug in.

“Or meat that’s probably older than I am,”

Sophia chuckled and then froze; staring at a shadowy spot behind Richard’s left shoulder.

“What is it?” Richard said.

“Nothing,” Sophia blinked. “Just my eyes playing tricks on me. For a second there the tables behind you looked like spiders. Big spiders.”

“Visual matrixing,” Richard said. “When you see a mass of shadows and shapes your brain doesn’t understand it imposes familiar images onto them in an attempt to make sense out of chaos. It works the same way with sound. The hum of the compressors and pumps on the refrigerators in here are unfamiliar to me so I’ve been hearing whispering. Auditory matrixing. Like when you hear someone call your name while you’re running a vacuum cleaner but no one is there. It gets worse when you’re tired.”

“I passed tired about twelve hours ago,” Sophia said. “I’m wasted.”

“So am I. We need sleep, but is it a good idea to sleep here? On this base?”

“We’re going to have to risk it,” Sophia said. “I’ve reached my limit. I was sleeping on my feet out there. I’m not sure if I blacked out because of oxygen deprivation, dehydration, or just plain old exhaustion.”

“What about Jefferson and his goons?” Richard asked.

“They already know where we are,” Sophia replied. “They’re probably just waiting on a Rip that will bring them close enough to the compound to launch an assault. That could be hours or days from now—or minutes. The QC’s are pretty good at predicting the duration of a Rip once it has formed, as well as where it will terminate, but not so good at predicting when one will form in the first place. Jefferson could be cooling his heels for a while.”

She yawned, her red-rimmed eyes watering. Observing this, Richard yawned hugely himself. The nature of human physiology.

“We also have access to the computers here,” Sophia continued, “That gives us an advantage. BanaTech can’t sever that as long as we’re on site, nor can they sever our link to the satellites without blinding themselves as well. So we’ll see them coming if they show up before we can bug out.”

“How are your computer algorithm skills?”

“Pretty good actually,” Richard said. “Why?”

“If you can re-write the password protocols we can change all the codes and lock the facility down. They can’t attack us if they can’t get in. How long would it take?”

“Not very long. Forty minutes, maybe an hour. Providing I can get past the internal firewalls and gain administrative access.”

“Not a problem. I’m in research, remember?” Sophia smiled. “I have access to those codes.”

“Then let’s do it,” Richard said, “while I still have the energy to stay awake.”

It took better than two hours. By the end of it Richard could barely hold his head up. He’d nodded off a time or two, awakened to find his forehead resting on the keyboard, holding down keys and entering nonsense strings into commands he’d been trying to write.

The facility was made up of eight sublevels. The computer mainframe was located on sublevel seven, above an entire level of cooling towers and air handlers for the facility. Sublevel three was comprised of more housing units sans dining hall. These larger, single living units were presumably for the brass rather than the three and four bed units for the grunts upstairs. Levels four and five housed laboratories covering everything from human physiology to biochemistry to electronics.

All of Level six was restricted. Access was by elevator only, and then only with a special code Sophia did not possess. The level was marked FPGR: RESTRICTED. Richard asked Sophia what that was all about as they descended to sublevel seven.

“Later,” she replied, her voice hoarse. Given her bloodshot eyes and the fact that she had to lean on a rail in the elevator just to stay on her feet, Richard let it pass.

The facility was massive. Sublevels four, five, and six ranged out over a square mile beneath the surface of the planet.

“How did they accomplish all this?” Richard had asked.

“The Mayans built Oxwitic atop existing ruins. And that city had been built atop the remains of another. BanaTech’s Corps of Engineers only had to remove what they didn’t need from existing tunnels and seal off the rest. The entire operation took months instead of the years it might have taken to excavate it all at once.”

Scanning the mainframe, Richard discovered there were five access points to the facility. In addition to the door they had entered through there were two ramp entrances concealed beneath cleverly disguised doors that accessed the motor pool; one large enough to move small aircraft through. Another, larger door was concealed within Copan’s cemetery group far to the west of the city where the Maya had disposed of their dead. This door led to an elevator shaft that serviced level six exclusively.

Shuttered twin shafts leading directly to sublevel eight were the fifth and final access point. They were simple vent shafts; one drew fresh air in from the surface, the other vented stale air out from the facility. At the bottom of each two-hundred foot shaft was a twenty-four foot fan spinning at eighteen-hundred RPM’s. Anyone attempting to enter through these shafts would likely find out what fruit feels like in a Cuisinart. Still, Richard re-wrote the access codes to the shutters. Better safe than sorry.

The computer was more advanced than Richard anticipated; the language far more complex than anything he’d worked with before. Still, the root of all code came down to math. He applied his skills—and quite a bit of instinct—to bend the machine to his will.

He ultimately managed to not only lock the facility down but also activated a perimeter defense system consisting of forty-eight Browning M2 quad-mounted guns on pop-up gimbals Each would pour .50 caliber rounds into anything larger than a dog that moved within twenty-five hundred yards of the facility. Richard had no qualms about activating a lethal system on a dead world where the only thing moving would be BanaTech’s security forces.

Last, Richard locked out any changes to the system without his own personal password. Then he and Sophia returned to level three where unmade but inviting bunks and much needed sleep awaited.

The dreamer seldom realizes he’s dreaming. Or that more can be observed when the subconscious is running the show. Things misunderstood, things overlooked.

They was sweet, you know, Patrick McCormack said. Buried in the ground up to his neck there was little need for pretense. The innocent man he’d tried to portray had fled. The evil that lived in his heart had stepped up to be heard.

As he slept a deep but restless sleep in an ancient Mayan ruin on an Earth that had been murdered by a meteor decades before, Richard remembered the clear, strong voice that had spoken up in his head as he stood over Patrick McCormack, his grandfathers M1911 pointed at the child killer’s head. It was his voice, of course, the voice he heard whenever deep in thought. But there was something more there too.

Something righteous.

“This is the beast that must be vanquished. The evil light that must be banished from the All.”

At the time, Richard had chalked the unbidden thought up to the many sleepless nights he’d had since the McCormack trial had concluded so disastrously; to the adrenaline surging through his body since the realization that justice would require kidnapping and murder.

The All? He asked himself now, as in the dream time slowed and his perceptions sharpened.

McCormack was speaking again. Richard cast his attention back to the talking dead.

…tore the innocence right out of ’em. Defiled them. And the All.

Something was pushing its way up out of McCormack. Up out of the ground he was buried in. A shadow perhaps, or a shade. Except the afternoon sun was directly overhead and still the shadow emerged where none should be.

Sinuous arms reached up out of the soil. Elbows rested near McCormack’s neck, then pushed downwards. A dark shape rose from within McCormack, shaking its head as if to free itself from the confines of its human host. McCormack spoke, and the shadow spoke with him.

You go on keep her, McCormack and the shadow said in unison. You do what you have to do. I’ll just move along somewhere’s else. I ain’t tellin’ you shit.

Keep her? Richard thought. Or keeper?

The apparition ceased struggling to free itself from McCormack. It had no definition to speak of, was still a shadowy form without substance. To Richard’s heightened dream sense it now seemed bored. It crossed its arms and began drumming its fingers on the soil as if waiting impatiently for Richard to act.

And act he did.

Just before the front axle of the riding mower passed over McCormack, before the machine’s blades cut into his skull ridding the world of his miserable existence, the shadow rose fully from the earth. It touched Richard’s shoulder as it passed. Gooseflesh broke out on his arms and he shuddered as one word rang out in his mind.

Infernal.