Callsign: King II- Underworld

The occupant, a balding man in civilian clothes, got out and was met by a several soldiers who emerged from a central tent. Curious, in spite of the need to find concealment, King watched the brief but animated exchange between the civilian and the officer in charge. It ended when the civilian angrily got back in his vehicle and left in a cloud of dust.

King hastened back to the Humvee where Nina waited impatiently. “Well? Do you have your answers?”

King turned a switch and the Humvee’s diesel engine rumbled to life. “No, but now I know who does.”





21.


“What is that?”

Nina glanced over at King, but in the darkened interior of the Humvee she could only distinguish a vague silhouette. His hand was outstretched, pointing. “What is what?”

“Oh, sorry. There’s a bunch of buildings. Some kind of mine operation?”

She nodded. “Must be the copper mine. It closed a couple months ago. Some big multinational bought them out and shut it down. Put a lot of people out of work. It was a profitable operation, but I guess the new owner thought they could make more by closing it down to drive up copper prices.”

“I wonder if there isn’t another explanation,” King said, thoughtfully.

Nina wasn’t sure what the economic hardships of a small mine had to do with the attacks by the Mogollon Monsters. It was evident that her new investigative partner saw a connection, but he had hardly said a word to her since leaving the road surreptitiously following the vehicle he had seen leaving the military camp. Nina hadn’t actually seen the SUV; they had been driving without lights, and she had only caught a few glimpses of the other vehicle’s tail lights in the distance.

“The mine looks completely shut down,” King observed. “But it looks like our friend is going to a structure north of the processing facility. If I’m not mistaken, the lightning we saw came down near here.”

Nina did her best to follow his reasoning. “You think maybe whatever they’re doing has something to do with the attacks?”

He didn’t answer her directly. “Do you know anything about the company that bought out the mine? A name?”

“No. I’m sure they mentioned it in the news reports, but it’s been a several weeks.”

“I’ll see if I can’t find out.” A subtle glow illuminated King, the display of a cell phone that he pressed to his ear. “Call Aleman.”

She listened impatiently to half of a conversation in which King asked Aleman—whoever that was—to look up information on the copper mine.

“Bluelight Technologies,” she heard him say. “Any connection to Manifold? Right…Well, you keep digging on your end. I’m going to go in for a closer look… Roger that, King, out.”

The glow vanished, returning Nina to near-total darkness as the Humvee continued along the uneven dirt road.

“You’re military, too, aren’t you?” Nina asked after a few minutes.

“What makes you say that?”

“The way you handled that gun during the attack.Your familiarity with this Hummer. And then there’s the whole ‘Roger that, King out,’ thing just a second ago.”

“I was in the army for a while.” There was a hint of embarrassed humor in his tone. “Some things you never forget.”

Nina sensed he wouldn’t reveal anything more on that subject, so she tried a different tack. “What’s Manifold?”

She saw the shift in his silhouette as he turned to look at her for a moment, then turned his eyes forward again. “Manifold is…or was, rather…a biotech company run by a guy named Richard Ridley.”

“Biotech? So you’re going with your theory that the creatures are mutants?”

“Right now, I don’t have a theory. I’m just putting the coincidences together. Manifold is very bad news, and my job is to find them, root them out, and shut them down.”

Nina knew better than to ask who had given him that job, but there were clues aplenty in the subtext. What was even more evident was his understated dedication to that mission. It was the kind of single-mindedness that drove a lot of the believers in paranormal phenomena—drove them, and sometimes blinded them to the obvious answers. And everything else that most normal people considered important.

Still, he didn’t seem crazy.

“And Bluelight Technologies,” she continued. “That’s who owns the mine now?”

Before he could answer, a familiar humming noise signaled an incoming call on King’s phone. Nina saw the glow of the display then to her surprise, heard King say: “Ale, you’re on speaker. With me is Nina…Raglan, was it? She’s a special consultant on local affairs.”

There was a brief lag, and then a weary voice said: “I understand. Ms. Raglan, I’m Lewis Aleman.”

“Umm…hi.”

“So, Ale, what can you tell me about Bluelight Technologies?”

“Quite a lot, actually…and yet, at the same time, not much. It’s a new firm, only a few months old. Founded by one Aaron Copeland. Copeland is a physicist, Masters from MIT. Worked at CERN for a while, then about a year ago, he dropped off the radar. When he popped up again, it was at the helm of Bluelight.”