There came a knock at the door. “Mr. Carroll?”
“Yeah.”
“Bed check.”
“Who’re you, the hall monitor?”
“Just doing my job, Mr. Carroll.”
“Okay, let me get some sleep, then. I’m not going anywhere.”
As he spoke, he reached up and slid one of the big ceiling tiles out of place, Then he raised himself by gripping a girder with his fingers. The air in the attic was choking, full of dust and insulation, and the pulsing of an unusually complex ventilation system that, judging from all the electronically controlled flues, was capable of being sealed in an instant. Shades of the biological-warfare days.
Above the layers of insulation and massive equipment, a thick cable harness ran from one end of the building to the other.
Moving quickly, he found a supporting beam and climbed along it to the rear of the structure, knowing that a man of his weight would cause sounds below in this otherwise lightly framed building.
He reached the metal vent, which was two feet by two feet in size, as he had observed from outside the building. Feeling its edges, he determined that it wasn’t wired, and was screwed into the building’s frame with standard construction screws, which he removed with his pocketknife.
Behind him, there was the breath of a whisper.
“Guard came to my door,” Flynn said.
“How deep is their security going to be?”
“On the way in, I identified a motion-sensor grid, but we can avoid it.”
As he was working, he realized that he could see his shadow. Immediately, he dropped down, pulling Mac with him. He watched the beam of a flashlight play along the girders.
The light continued to explore the space for a time. Finally, there came the faint scrape of a hatch closing. Still, Flynn and Mac didn’t move. Flynn waited a full minute, but nothing else happened.
He pulled out the vent and looked down at the drop.
Immediately below the vent was a window, the one at the end of the second-floor corridor. The sill was about an inch deep, just enough to enable a jumper to balance, assuming that he would be able to cling to the inch-deep upper ledge.
“Mac, what I’m going to do is lever myself out until I’m hanging from my forearms—then you’re going to climb down my back. You got that?”
“What about you?”
“I can take the fall.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s just a guess. Now, move.”
Mac was lithe and as strong as twisted wire. Flynn felt him slide quickly across his back, then overhand himself until he was dangling from Flynn’s ankles. Then he let go, landing silently and efficiently.
Flynn lowered himself until his arms were stretched and his feet were about eight inches above the sill below. He dropped.
As his feet contacted the sill, he thrust his fingers hard against the upper window frame and pressed his body into the window itself. He was still in control of the descent, so he immediately dropped down, letting his feet slip off the sill and cutting the speed of his fall as much as he could by grabbing it as it passed eye level.
He hit the ground jarringly hard, rolled, then got to his feet and moved at once away from the building. A moment later, Mac followed him.
Darkness didn’t matter to security in places like this, not anymore. Security would certainly be able to see them, so speed was essential.
As they moved off, lights began turning on all over the building, including outside lights—bright ones, many of them.
Staying low and close to the miserable little shrubs that stood around the building, Flynn ran. Mac followed.
They blended with the shadows and were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THEY HAD reached the shell road that led to the biology labs, and were trotting down it when Flynn heard the whine of electric vehicles. They darted off the road and into the scrub, but there was little cover. Anybody with infrared look-ahead or a starlight scope would spot them instantly, and Deer Island security would undoubtedly have both.
“Why are they doing this?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“Flat on the ground, flat as you can be.”
Lying very still, protected by a slight indentation in the ground, they heard a sound nearby, a low grunting and snuffling.
“Russian boar?” Mac whispered. They were all over Texas.
“Not up here. Probably a feral—”
There was a sudden burst of very weird, very complex chattering.
An instant later, the lights of three electric carts flooded the area.
“Shit,” Mac whispered.
Their motors screaming, the carts shot straight at them—and flew over the indentation, missing Flynn and Mac by so little that they were washed in heat.
The moment they passed, Flynn leaped to his feet. In the glaring lights of the fast-moving carts, he glimpsed what may have been a running figure, pale and humped.
Mac said, “Did you see that?”
“Barely.”
“Muscular rear legs, short forelegs, hairless, with a long, whipping tail.”
Mac’s eyes were truly amazing. “Anything else?” Flynn asked him.
“That’s not enough?”
“What about the face?”
“Not human at all. One of them looked back. The eyes were powdery green. They were rounded. Maybe a new form of alien.”
“That’s all we need.”
Now that it was clear they weren’t the objects of the hunt, Flynn and Mac went back to the road and headed toward the floodlights that surrounded the Biology section. They were still half a mile away, and as they approached it, Flynn left the road again. They proceeded into a slightly higher area, where they had a broader view of the facility.
Flynn could see that the fence was covered both by cameras and motion sensors. He said, “We’re going to walk up to the front door and just knock. But first take a good look—what do you see?”
“Tracks in the sand inside the compound. Boots, also dog prints.”
“What kind of dog?”
“Long, thin print.” He glanced at Flynn.
“Which is why covert penetration won’t work. Come on.”
The road was set deeper, and when they were on it, they could see only the roofs of the facility floating above the glare of the lights.
As they moved closer, Flynn said, “We have somebody behind us, about sixty feet. Closing.”
Mac began to walk faster.
“No, stay cool.” In one smooth movement, he drew his gun and whirled, landing in a crouch with his legs spread. Standing there frozen with fear, hands raised, and eyes practically bulging out of his head, was Evans.
“Mr. Evans, out for an evening stroll?” Flynn made the gun disappear.
“Gentlemen, may I approach?”
Flynn nodded.
“I’m here on behalf of your boss. She’s urging you not to go in there, and we concur.”
“She saw us from satellite?”
“Yes.”
He looked up and waved. The starry night looked back.
“We need to do this,” he said.
“We don’t control that facility.”
“Who does?”
“That’s unclear.”
“I was down there a few months ago.”
“I know it.”
“Who controlled it then?”
“We thought we did. We were working there. Dr. Miller worked on you.”
“Come down with us,” Flynn said. “Maybe you can help us get in.”
Evans shook his head—a short, sharp, decisive movement. There was no way he was going a step closer to that gate.
Flynn began walking. Mac hesitated, then caught up with him. “How dangerous is this?”
“We need to try.”
The gate was locked with a padlock on a hardened steel frame. The lock had no key and no combination.
Flynn
called to Evans, who was still standing back in the road. “How does this work?”
“We can’t open it.”
Flynn said to Mac, “What we’re looking at here is an alien facility. I wonder if it has embassy status.”
“Okay, good. An alien facility that’s locked and doesn’t have a doorbell. So let’s just move on.”
“Mac, you have the vision of a buzzard. You need the vision of an eagle.” He did a quick draw and replace. “Whoever’s on the other side of that fence did this for me. I think it’s at least worth asking if they could help you.”
“Why don’t you go in there and get your eyes fixed up?”
“Come on, you start way further up on the bar. My vision is normal.”
Evans had left the area. The night wind rustled in the saw grass; a riot of stars looked down. On the distant horizon, a light rose and was gone—a car, perhaps, safe on a mainland road.
“Flynn, the only reason I’m still standing here is that I’m afraid to go back to the main building alone.”
“Makes sense.”
“If aliens killed Miller and took this place over, why in holy hell do you think they’ll help us?”
“Because that’s not what happened.”
“Sure plays out that way in my book.”
“Miller was working here with a human crew. I remember the place, and there were no aliens involved—not in what he was doing. The technology was alien, though, that’s for sure. Miller was killed and probably so were a lot of other people who were working in there. By Morris. No question in my mind.”
“So why are we here, if it’s abandoned?”
“It isn’t. The grays are in there.”
“The ones on kids’ lunchboxes?”
“You read up on the grays, you will find that they’re quite real, they’re very advanced, and they take a serious interest in Earth. I’m hoping they’re mad as hell about what’s happening, and they’ll give us a lot more help than Aeon can. Basically, I’m hoping they have cops, too.”
The wind rose again, scudding through the grass, moaning in the eaves of the old building.
“There’s nothing out here but us and these floodlights, under which we are fools to be standing.” He stopped, then held his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the floods. “Oh, shit.” He pointed.
Just visible around the corner of the far end of the building was a figure. It came all the way around the corner. It had a black dog on a lead. This animal had a broad head, very unlike the dogs Mac had inherited from Morris. It was huge, and as black as night.
The two of them came closer, the man striding, the dog rippling with muscle and tension, its eyes never leaving them.
“Christ,” Mac said under his breath. “See that?”
“What?”
“That guy’s got seams, man. That’s a—a—holy God, Flynn, it’s the dog! The guy is just—look at him! The dog’s running the show.”
It wasn’t a man. It wasn’t biological at all. As it approached, Flynn could hear the hum and whine of motors. The dog, though, watched them with an intensity you see only in animal faces: the calm, cruel care of the predator.
The two of them came to the gate. They stopped. The artificial man stood motionless. The dog drew closer to the fence. It inhaled deeply of their scents, its nose pressed hard against the cyclone fencing. Flynn reached his hand out and felt the cool night air being sucked past his skin.
The dog backed up.
Flynn knew why the artificial man had been built—so that nothing would appear unusual from satellite.
The dog stared at the lock, which moved, clanking faintly as it did so. Without the slightest click, it opened and then slipped off the hasp. It turned again and locked itself. The gate was now open.
“Why don’t they just send somebody real out here?”
“The grays are extremely secretive.”
“Flynn, are these the same grays you see painted on kids’ lunchboxes and those crazy books? Because that’s bull crap. I don’t care what Caruthers says.”
“I’ve never seen one in person, but yeah.”
“I’m not buying in to this, and I’m not going in there, either.”
“Fine.” Flynn opened the gate and stepped into the compound. The surface was the same as the surrounding landscape. The lights seemed even brighter, now that they were focused on the area.
The compound consisted of three buildings. The more imposing one, which wasn’t saying much, was the only one lit up from inside. The other buildings’ windows were dark.
“I’m going in,” Flynn said.
“Been nice knowing you, pal.”
With the dog shadowing him by inches, Flynn crossed the twelve-foot strip of land. “Either you come or you don’t.”
The main door was glass that had been painted black. This operation was being run on the cheap—or just made to look that way.
As he approached, he heard an elaborate series of clicks the complex locking system opened itself.
“Mac, you coming?”
“I can’t walk, man. I didn’t know I could be this scared.”
“You want to be carried?”
“Screw it.” Mac came up beside him. “This feels like the gate of hell or something. It’s radiating menace like heat.”
“I know it, and I don’t understand it, either.” He put his hand on the stainless-steel grip in the center of the glass door. “Just let’s push through it.”
Beside him, the dog made a faint sound, a growl. Flynn wondered again what he and Mac had seen out there in the scrub. Was it yet another species of alien? Security had been chasing it, or perhaps herding it, obviously keeping it away from the other facilities on the island. But why was that necessary?
“Man, I can’t handle this.”
“Nobody can.” He pulled the door open. He heard a hiss and a faint pop as the air pressure equalized. The place was not quite airlocked, but tight-sealed like the house Oltisis had inhabited in Chicago.
“Look,” Mac said.
He was staring at the door of the nearest office. Beside it was a nameplate, MITCHELL, T. TRAFFIC COORDINATOR. Above the English-language strip were three more tags, all in different and entirely unrecognizable lettering. The door itself looked like something that belonged in a submarine—steel painted high-gloss gray, with hinges and a lip designed to withstand significant pressure from this direction.
“So there are three species besides us working in this facility. Plus, the hall can be pressure controlled.”
“Is Aeon represented?”
“I don’t think so.” He gestured toward the door’s multilingual nameplates. “None of that looks like their alphabet.”
“Here comes trouble.”
A man in a white medical coat was walking toward them, coming down the long hall. As he came closer and his face became clearer, for once even Flynn Carroll was surprised. This couldn’t be another trick of Morris’s, surely. But then what in hell was really going on here? As the man drew closer yet, and his identity became undeniable, Flynn just let his mind blank. His right arm was ready to move at lightning speed.
“Hi, Flynn. We were expecting you a little later. I’m afraid I’ve lost some money in the office pool. You’ve done very well to get here this fast.”
Standing before him was a man he now recognized as an old friend and comrade in arms, Dr. Dan Miller.
“Dan, you look a hell of a lot better than you did in that bog.”
Miller smiled softly. “We had to strip me out of my former life. Evie’ll be okay, though. She has—”
“The sheriff, I know. Who died in your place, Doctor?”
“A long story.”
“If Morris didn’t do it, why would he think it’s you?”
“He did it, and we hope he was deceived.”
Flynn didn’t inquire any further. He decided to assume that no crime had been committed and leave it at that. He was just incredibly glad to see Dan here.
 
; “So this is Friend Eddie,” Dr. Miller continued.
“I’m Mac Terrell.”
“Oh, the black sheep. Looks like we got Flynn’s thinking a little bit off. I expected the other cop.”
“Mac’s the one with the skill we need,” Flynn said. “I brought the right person.”
“And what skill would that be?”
“He’s got incredible vision. I want you to make it miraculous.”
“May I know why?”
“We have a disk to shoot down.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It isn’t.”
“Exactly how do you plan to go about it?”
No reason to take a risk here. Strict information control was called for. “I don’t think you’d be need-to-know on that.”
He shook his head. “As you wish.”
Mac said, “If there’s all these alien species here, why won’t any of them just shoot Morris’s disk out of the sky?”
“Good question,” Flynn said.
Dan Miller said, “We’re going to have to go down into the red zone, guys. Mr. Terrell, you need to understand just how radically different this is going to be. We will not see aliens as you understand them, but we will see machines that are so advanced, they might as well be alive. Extremely advanced and far more intelligent than any human being. You will feel the power of their minds all around you. You will experience profound fear.”
“I’ve noticed that already.”
“A little of it. There’s a generator outside that cues brains to feel danger and fear. It keeps animals and people well away from the facility. What goes on down below will be much more disturbing.”
They reached the elevator’s large black door, reminiscent of the brutal barriers that sealed a supermax.
“Okay, through that door we’re going to be in a species-neutral atmosphere. There’s less carbon dioxide in it than we have, a little more oxygen, and a cluster of rare gases. We can breathe it, but it smells a bit odd and it will affect your sense of taste. It’s been designed so a maximum number of different species can use it.”
At a wave of Miller’s hand, the door opened to the complex interior, all of it strikingly familiar to Flynn, from the shimmering, powdery silver light to the blurred shapes and odd, twisted angles of the many different machines. In one direction, there was a pathway to what looked like infinity, in another, a black, twisted knot that was hard to look at without getting a headache. Stretching ahead was a catwalk over the main machine floor. There were three sets of rails at different levels—one in the right position for human hands. The catwalk hung ten feet above the floor of the facility. Below, there was a series of what appeared to be windows on the floor, each one a soft square of equal size. Some were gleaming black, others gray and filled with shadows. Two looked out on vivid scenes. One displayed a rose granite building, with long rows of black windows. The other revealed a path in a rich jungle scene. There were huge trees covered with long green strands like hair. Leafy shrubs crowded the jungle floor. A well-worn path led off into the distance.