Callsign: King II- Underworld

A bolt of lightning bisected the horizon right in front of him. He winced, blinded momentarily, but kept going. Another flash followed, simultaneous with the boom of thunder from the first, and in the instant where the sky lit up like daylight, he saw shapes emerging from the mist.

An unfamiliar tingle of panic rippled through Sokoloff’s body. He had squared off against some of the deadliest men on the planet, and always emerged victorious, but these animals were nothing like his human prey. Executing the contract—killing King and earning ten million dollars—suddenly didn’t seem nearly as important as just reaching the safety of the building. Of course, there was no guarantee of safety there…or anywhere.

A dark shape rose up in front of him. He ducked instinctively as the Humvee thudded into the creature, knocking it up onto the hood and against the windshield. Dazed, but probably not dead, the creature blocked his view of the road ahead. There was another thump and the right side of the truck bounced into the air as the wheels rolled over an obstacle that hadn’t been there a moment before. The jolt was enough to dislodge the creature on the hood and it rolled to the side, just as another lightning bolt stabbed out the sky.

The creatures were all around him now. Dozens ran ahead of him, seemingly oblivious to his approach. Others came up alongside and slapped at the aluminum exterior of the Humvee, as if trying to grab onto it and hold it in place. Sokoloff wiggled the steering wheel back and forth, knocking the creatures back, as he raced headlong into a hellstorm.

The muzzle flash of machine gun alerted him to the presence of soldiers guarding the facility. He hoped that they would believe him to be one of their own and use their firepower to give him cover for his mad dash; the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

As he closed the gap, he left the trailing creatures behind and came up on the vanguard. Lost in their primal rage, three of the beasts went under his tires, and then he was in the clear. A few of the soldiers waved him on frantically, little suspecting that he had already killed five of their comrades, and would kill as many more as it took to accomplish the contract. He aimed the truck for a gap between two of the parked Humvees and skidded to a halt, surrounded by a score of stridently cracking carbines and light machine guns.

As he got out, one of the riflemen scrambled up into the turret of his vehicle and got behind the machine gun mounted there. Sokoloff ignored him, and was himself ignored as the soldiers gave their full attention to the advancing threat. Sokoloff made a show of looking for a target, even as he melted back from the skirmish line. King and the others were nowhere to be seen, but the abandoned Humvee he had passed on the way in was evidence enough that his target was nearby. If King wasn’t out here, then there was only one place he could be.

The hitman took one last look around to ensure that he wasn’t being observed, and then ducked through the doorway.





33.


As the door closed, plunging them back into silence, King tried again. “Dr. Copeland, I overheard your conversation with Brainstorm. We both know that you need to shut it down, at least until you can understand these other effects. That’s all I’m asking.”

Copeland started at the mention of Brainstorm, but then sagged back into his chair. “What difference would it make now? The general is right; the soldiers will mop up those creatures and that will be the end of it.”

“And if he’s wrong?” Pierce said. “I’ve been down there, in the caves where they live. There aren’t just a few, or even a few dozen. There might be thousands of them, and your machine is calling them like a dog whistle. How long do you think those soldiers can last against an onslaught like that?”

“They only have to last eight and a half minutes,” Copeland sighed.

King leaned down to look the physicist in the eye. “That’s twice now you’ve mentioned eight minutes.”

“We don’t want to run Bluelight longer than that. With each proton annihilation, the local atmosphere heats up. If it gets hot enough, the gases in the atmosphere will spontaneously enter a state of runaway fusion. If that started, the Earth’s atmosphere would catch on fire.”

Nina was incredulous. “Oh, you have got to be kidding. It never occurred to you that this might be a bad idea?”

“The thermal effects are completely manageable. I monitor the temperature constantly throughout the process to ensure that it never goes anywhere near critical. Eight and a half minutes is the upper limit of the green zone. It’s this other thing that—”

The sudden cacophony of battle indicated to them all that someone had just entered the control room. King glanced over at the approaching soldier and wondered how the battle was going. “That other thing has taken dozens of lives. You’ve got to stop it, right now. You’ve surely got enough data to figure what it is about the process that drives these creatures nuts. Shut it down until you can come up with a fix.”