The emergency lighting came on, and in its orange glow he could see Hoskins struggling to sit up. Blood from a scalp wound flowed over the marine’s nose and mouth but he was standing now, a grim expression on his face. As warning sirens began to sound in the distance he leveled his rifle, took aim. Crane ducked back behind the closing elevator door as a bullet whined past…and then the doors shut and he felt himself ascend.
51
Gordon Stamper, machinist first class, ran down the steps from deck 9 two at a time. The yellow turnout gear clung heavily to his back and shoulders; the hooks, portable radio, and other equipment clipped to his nylon gut belt rattled with every footfall. The rest of the rescue team followed, carrying oxygen supplies, tubular webbing, pick-head axes, and supplemental gear.
The call that had gone out over the emergency channel said this wasn’t a drill. And yet Stamper wasn’t so sure. Oh, it was clear something had happened: there’d been that godawful explosion, the brief loss of power. But the lights had come back and the Facility didn’t seem any the worse for wear. He sure as hell didn’t put it past the powers that be to stage something like this just to see if Rescue Operations was on its toes. The brass was always looking for ways to bust the balls of the enlisted men.
He threw open the door to deck 8. An empty corridor greeted him, doors on both sides of the hall all shut. This wasn’t surprising: the end of the shift was approaching, and most administrators and researchers working on this floor would be elsewhere, grabbing a meal inside Central or, more likely, conducting wrap-up meetings in the conference rooms on deck 7.
The microphone for his portable radio was clipped to a shoulder epaulet. He clicked it on with a press of his thumb. “Stamper to Rescue One.”
The radio crackled. “Rescue One, roger.”
“We’re on deck eight.”
“Roger that.”
Stamper clicked the radio off with a certain grim satisfaction. They sure as hell couldn’t complain about the response this time: the call had come through only four minutes before and they were already on the scene.
Their objective was Environmental Control, which was at the other end of the level. Stamper glanced around at his team, made sure they were assembled and ready, then gave the signal to move out.
The more he thought about it, the more he was sure this was bogus, a drill. The call—as he understood it, there had only been one, frantic and half incoherent, and it had been terminated prematurely—had said something about a breach; about water. And that was bullshit, plain and simple. Everybody knew there was a protective dome between the Facility and the North Atlantic and the space between was pressurized and dry. And if it wasn’t a drill, it was probably just a broken water pipe; this floor was manned by pencil-necked scientists and paper pushers, apt to faint or cry wolf at the first bead of moisture.
They moved down the corridor, gear clanking, and paused when they reached a T-shaped intersection. The left passage led to the administrative sector, a complicated warren of offices and narrow passageways. By turning right and heading through the research labs, they could reach Environmental Control faster, and—
There was a clang of metal from the direction of the labs, followed by a frantic babel of voices. He paused, listening. The voices were low, but they seemed to be coming nearer.
He cupped a hand to the side of his mouth. “Yo!”
The voices stopped.
“This is Rescue Operations!”
The excited, nervous chatter resumed, and now Stamper heard the sound of running feet. He turned back toward his team, jerking his hand in the direction of the voices.
As he rounded the corner into the research sector, Stamper caught sight of them: maybe five or six scientists, running toward him. They were wild-eyed, clothes and lab coats in disarray. One of them, a middle-aged woman, was crying softly. Their leader—a tall, thin man with curly blond hair—was half drenched in water.
About fifty feet down the corridor beyond them, the watertight hatch had been sealed.
Stamper stepped forward as the group came running up. “Gordon Stamper, team leader,” he said in his most authoritative voice. “What’s the problem?”
“We’ve got to get out of here—all of us!” the tall man said breathlessly. The woman’s cries increased in volume.
“Just what, exactly, has—”
“There’s no time to explain!” the man interrupted. His voice was high and uneven, perched on the edge of hysteria. “We’ve dogged all the hatches we could, but the pressure’s just too great. They won’t hold, they’ll go any second—”
“Just a minute,” Stamper said. “Get a grip on yourself, settle down, and tell us what’s happened.”
The man turned to the rest of the scientists. “You get up to deck nine, quick as you can.”
The panicked group needed no further encouragement. Without another word they ran past the rescue party and disappeared down the hall, heading for the stairwell.
Stamper watched them flee, an impassive expression on his face. Then he turned back to the blond man. “Let’s hear it.”
The man swallowed, made a visible effort to master himself. “I was in the corridor outside the Seismo-Acoustic Sonar Lab. I had an end-of-shift meeting, and I was just verifying which conference room before heading down to deck seven. There was this…” His voice faltered, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “This huge explosion. It knocked me to the ground. When I got up, I saw…a wall of water, flooding the Environmental Control spaces at the end of the corridor. There was blood in the water, body parts. Lots of body parts.”
He swallowed again. “A colleague and I ran to the outer Environmental Control hatch, dogged it shut. Then we retreated down the hall, checking the labs and gathering anyone we could find. Just as we were leaving, the hatch we’d shut blew open, water started pouring in, and the research labs started to flood. We dogged the inner hatches of the research sector as we fell back. But the pressure’s just too great, they’re going to go any moment, and—”
Suddenly, his voice was drowned out by a terrific boom from the spaces up ahead.
The scientist started, gave a small cry of terror. “You see! There goes the hatch! We have to get out, get out now!” And he turned and fled in the direction of the rear stairwell.
Stamper watched his retreat. Then, very deliberately, he clicked his microphone into life once again. “Stamper to Rescue One.”
“Rescue One, your signal is five by five.”
“Be advised we have intercepted personnel retreating from the Research sector. They have retreated up stairwell bravo two. Intel obtained from deck eight indicates a large-scale breach in the vicinity of Environmental Control.”
There was a pause. “Will you repeat that last, please? Over.”
“A large-scale breach. Recommend you seal off this entire grid section and send down containment crews to repair the breach and secure the deck.”
Another pause. “Have you verified this yourself?”
“No.”
“Please perform a visual and give us a sit rep. Over.”
“Roger and out.” Shit.
Stamper stared down the corridor, in the direction of the dogged hatch. He wasn’t nervous, not exactly; he’d performed this drill so many times it was hard for it to seem anything but routine, even now. Yet there was something about the terror that had radiated from the group of scientists, something about the naked fear in the blond man’s eyes…
He turned to his team. “Let’s go.”
But even as his words died away, he became aware of another sound, coming from the research spaces ahead: a low groaning, gurgling, rushing unlike anything he’d ever heard before. It spiked in volume abruptly and the hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end.
Almost without realizing it, he took an involuntary step backward.
“Stamper?” one of the rescue crew said behind them.
And then, with an almost animal squeal, the dogs securing the
hatch ahead of them flew out of their housings, one after the other, with reports like pistol shots. The hatch popped from its housing like a champagne cork. And a living mass of water boiled toward them.
For an instant, Stamper just stared, frozen with shock and horror.
It was terrifying, the way it came at them with single-minded, predatory hunger. It ate up everything in its path with a rushing, hissing, sucking noise. Stamper had no idea water could make that kind of a sound. And it was a horrible color, a slippery reddish black, with spumes of blood-colored froth throwing off a misty spindrift. Its violence was appalling. Things bobbed in the water, chairs and lab tables and instruments and computers and other matter he did not care to look at. The smell filled his nostrils: a chill, salty, coppery odor that—with its promise of great inky depths—was somehow even more frightening than sight alone…
…And then the spell was broken and he was scrambling backward, falling over himself and the rest of the team, slipping and cursing and staggering in a mad rush to gain the stairwell and escape the horror rushing up behind them.
His radio was squawking but he paid no attention. There was a sharp clang directly behind as one of the rescue crew slammed and dogged the hatch leading to the rear hallway. Stamper didn’t even bother to look around. They could shut half a dozen hatches if they wanted to; in the end it would make no difference. Because now it was all too clear to him there was no way in hell that the breach was going to be sealed—or that deck 8 was ever going to be secured.
52
Crane ran down the corridors of deck 6 as quickly as he dared. At each intersection, he slowed; once past it, he broke into a jog again. The halls were quiet: he encountered a maintenance worker trundling a cart, two scientists murmuring to each other in low tones. Whatever loud noise had shaken the Facility so severely just minutes before seemed to be causing little alarm. The warning sirens had been silenced, and there was no anxiety in the faces he passed.
Ahead lay the cul-de-sac that housed the Maritime Applied Physics lab. He paused outside the door, glanced back down the corridor: still deserted. The lab itself seemed silent. He opened the door and quickly slid inside.
Hui Ping was standing beside the lab table. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I was sure something happened to you. And then that explosion just now…”
“I’m sorry, Hui, I was held up. How’s it been here?”
“Quiet. Until a minute ago.” She gave him a mirthless smile. “Actually, the time wasn’t really wasted. While waiting, I think I deciphered that first signal, the one coming from beneath the Moho. And when you see—”
“There’s no time for that. We’ve got to get out of here, and fast. The security cameras will have picked me up by now.”
“Security cameras? What’s happened?”
“Korolis has happened. He’s taken command of the Facility.”
“What about Spartan?”
“God only knows what’s happened to him. It gets worse: Korolis is insisting the digging proceed on schedule. He seems obsessed with it, even manned Marble Three himself. I think the illness is beginning to affect him, too. When I tried to stop him, he had me arrested.”
“What?”
“I managed to get away before I was thrown in the brig. But we have to get to deck twelve. I’ve mobilized some of the top scientists—they’re gathering in the conference center there. I intend to explain everything to them: the dig, Asher’s discoveries, Korolis—everything. We have to get word up to the surface, get the attention of people who can put a stop to all this madness—”
Suddenly, he stopped. “Oh, shit.” His shoulders slumped.
She looked at him in mute inquiry.
“The Barrier,” he explained.
In his haste, he’d forgotten about the checkpoint between the secure and nonsecure zones. The guards were probably still on the lookout for Ping—and they’d sure as hell be looking for him.
“Damn it!” He turned, slamming a fist against the lab table in frustration. “We’ll never get past the Barrier.”
He turned back to look at Ping. What he saw startled him. The computer scientist had gone a little pale. Surely, she hadn’t forgotten about the Barrier as well…had she?
“What is it?” he asked.
When she replied it was in a very small voice. “There’s another way. One possible way. An emergency exit hatch on deck two.”
“Emergency exit? From the Facility?” Suddenly, Crane remembered the rungs he’d seen, bolted to the outer hull of the Facility, as he’d climbed the catwalk on his way to meet the Tub.
“Is it guarded?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s a one-way hatch—you can’t get back in, so there’s no security issues with avoiding the Barrier. Not that many people know about it. The only reason that I do is because it’s located in the maintenance spaces just below my lab.”
He paused only another second. “Let’s go.”
Crane followed Ping as she began retracing the route they’d taken from her lab earlier in the day. Was it really only seven hours before? he reflected bitterly. In terms of everything they’d discovered since—and what had gone down within the Facility—it seemed ages.
Gaining the stairwell, they descended quietly and cautiously, pausing before each landing to make sure they remained alone and unobserved. They passed deck 3, the clang of pans from the Bottom kitchen clearly audible, and descended one more level. Hui put her hand on the exit bar, took a deep breath, then pushed it open.
Crane peered out. Ahead lay a short corridor that ended in a T. Between them and the junction was a group of men in lab coats, standing in the doorway of an office labeled SEDIMENTATION AND STRATIGRAPHY. At the sound of the stairwell door opening, they glanced over, expressions curious.
Crane sensed Ping hesitating. “Go on,” he said in a low voice. “Just walk past them.”
Ping stepped into the corridor. Crane followed as casually as he could, nodding to the group as he passed by. The faces weren’t familiar, and he hoped none of them had been in the Drilling Complex when he’d been put under arrest. He had to force himself not to look back over his shoulder. But there was no clatter of feet, no shouted demands for them to stop.
At the intersection, Ping turned left, passing a series of small labs and offices. Then she stopped abruptly.
“What is it?” Crane asked.
Wordlessly, she pointed. About ten yards ahead, a security camera was fastened to the ceiling.
“Is there another way around?” he asked.
“Very circuitous. And we’d probably pass other cameras, anyway.”
He thought for a moment. “Is it far?”
“Just around the next corner.”
“Okay, then. Quick as you can.”
They trotted ahead, keeping their heads down as they passed the camera. Ping turned another corner, stopped outside a gray door. She pulled it open and they ducked inside.
Crane found himself in an equipment storeroom; tools and light machinery sat on deep metal shelves that rose from floor to ceiling. Ping led the way to the rear, where there was a heavy unmarked hatchway.
“Help me undog this,” she said.
With effort, they pushed the four heavy drop bolts out of the way, then opened the hatch. Beyond was a small, dim space, lit only by a caged red bulb. There was another hatch here: round, much smaller and heavier, with a servo-controlled opening mechanism. WARNING, read a sign above it. EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. NO REENTRY AT THIS LEVEL.
Crane put his hand against the hatch. It felt cold and damp. From beyond it came a faint roaring sound he couldn’t quite identify.
Behind him, Ping was breathing rapidly. He turned toward her. “Are you ready?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“You have to. This is the only chance we have of getting past the Barrier. You’ve got a better chance on deck twelve, among scientists, far from the classified sector. Stay down here, and it’s o
nly a matter of time until Korolis’s goons find you and lock you up.”
She steadied herself. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Once she pulled the hatch closed behind them, Crane undogged the exit portal, and then—putting his hands on a spoked wheel at its center—turned it counterclockwise. One revolution; two; then, with a chuff of air, it sprang free in his hands.
There was a small control box beside the hatch, housing a single red button marked ENGAGE. Crane glanced at Ping, who nodded. He pressed the button and the servos stirred to life, pulling the hatch inward toward them.
The roaring sound suddenly increased an order of magnitude. A sharp smell of brine and bilge wafted in on a chill breeze.
Beyond—in the strange twilight of the interior of the dome—lay a narrow platform, no more than four feet square. Quickly, Crane backed himself onto it, helping Ping out after him. Satisfied she was safely on the platform, he turned around.
And froze in shock and disbelief.
53
“We’re six minutes out from the interface, sir.”
“Thank you, Dr. Rafferty.” Commander Korolis shifted on the small pilot’s seat, nodding his satisfaction. He glanced approvingly at the dive engineer. The man was not only extremely loyal to him but also was one of the top military scientists on the Facility, a physicist by training. Handpicked by him and 100 percent dependable. Only the best talent was good enough for this particular dive.
Descent number 241 was well under way, and there would be no screw-ups this time.
Korolis glanced over the controls once again. He’d run them in the simulator a dozen times, and in any case they weren’t all that different from those of a submarine. There would be no surprises.
As he looked at the gauges he felt a spike of pain at his temples. He winced: had he thought of it, he’d have taken a handful of Tylenol before boarding. He straightened, forcing the pain away: no headache was going to detract from this moment.