“You learned what it is, didn’t you? What’s in here with us?”
“I can’t say. That’s classified.” Stark kept glancing nervously to his left. “You’ve got twenty-four hours to get a confirmed kill on this thing, or we’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”
“Drastic? You intend to burn this place down with all of us in it, don’t you?”
“I did you a favor getting that much of a delay approved. I put my neck on the line for you. You were lucky to get twenty-four hours.” Stark was turning red. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Then tell me!”
“I…” Stark glanced left again. “I can’t.”
“If you can’t, then put somebody on who can.”
“I’m the final authority on this mission.”
“Bullshit. You’re a lap dog for Special Task Force Unicorn. Put Stricken on.”
Stark blanched when he heard those words, but he tried to recover. “I’m the head of the MCB. Don’t question my authority!”
Earl’s voice turned into a low growl. The assembled Hunters all took an unconscious step away from him. “Now.”
Stark hesitated, glancing to the side one last time. He listened quietly, then, resigned, shuffled out of view without another word. A moment later he was replaced with the narrow, unnaturally pale face of Mr. Stricken, who seemed to fold his long body into the space. His odd-colored glasses hid his eyes. “Harbinger,” he greeted without emotion.
“What’ve you done to us, Stricken?”
“I merely offered you a lucrative business opportunity. I thought it was some Decision Week dreg that needed a fast cleanup. It wasn’t until a couple of hours ago that I was briefed on the particularly nasty nature of this case. If I had been aware of the threat level sooner, I would have dealt with this matter internally. If you have anyone in there who isn’t already familiar with the basic facts of that incident, send them out of the room now. They’ll thank me later.”
None of the Hunters moved.
Earl controlled his seething rage long enough to ask, “What’ve you locked in here with us?”
“Let’s see…Locked in there with you: Ick-mip guests of a non-militant persuasion, approximately one hundred and forty. Staff, one hundred and twenty-two. Monster Hunters, two hundred and fifteen from fourteen different companies. One crew of sheetrockers, some union electricians, and we’re trying to get a handle on gambling addicts that were dumb enough to be there at four A.M., but I’m estimating that around fifty, and an unknown number of co-eds and party girls who crashed Grimm Berlin’s celebration, and last but not least, one extremely dangerous science experiment.”
“Capabilities?”
“Unknown.”
“Weaknesses?”
“Unknown.”
“What do you know?”
Stricken’s smile was totally devoid of human warmth. “Most of the records pertaining to this particular experiment have been destroyed or buried deep, even by my admittedly high standards for secrecy. However, it has been brought to my attention that some of the original Decision Week scientists are still alive and may have firsthand knowledge. We are contacting them now.”
The Unicorn man was a seething bundle of lies, but that part sounded plausible. “There’s a reason you locked this place down so quick when you found out it had followed us here. There’s something else. How do you know this thing is so dangerous?”
“My first responders retrieved some physical evidence from the containment unit.”
Earl looked to me and I nodded.
Stricken’s laptop was rigged to watch the entire room. We should have known. “Pitt…I’m not surprised. So that was you in Dugway with Agent Franks.”
Denying it would only waste valuable time. “There were some tags missing from the old machine.”
Stricken chuckled. “Interesting. I was wondering who that second man in the photos was. It was hard to tell with those chemical suits on. It figures. I’ll have to have a few words with old Frankie about the necessity of maintaining security protocols.”
“You do that.” If we were lucky Franks would lose his temper and beat Stricken to death, hopefully before he got to me for inadvertently ratting him out.
“My team did recover some items. One of the others had a project identification number. Setting internal matters aside for now, and getting back to your original question, we were able to track the identifiers back to one of the most exciting and secretive weapons projects in history. I’m assuming you already knew that, though. Of course you do, because Agent Franks couldn’t keep his big fat stupid mouth shut. Interesting fact, did you know that they ranked all of the World-War-II-era experimental weapons systems on a scale from one to ten, with one being the least, and ten being the most potentially destructive and disruptive to society?” Stricken waited.
“Werewolves were a two,” Earl whispered.
“To put the projects in perspective, the atomic bomb, which, as you are well aware, was the final choice of which avenue to pursue, began at an estimated number four and ended up as a number five. Anything over that was considered unreasonably dangerous. Of the supernatural options that were explored at Los Alamos, the plan to bomb Germany with a zombie virus was a steady number eight. Zombifying Japan was only a seven, but that’s because it was an island and zombies can’t swim for shit. Anything dealing with the Old Ones was considered too dangerous to contemplate unleashing without significant backlash, and got an automatic ten.”
“Get to the point,” Earl said.
“As new projects were introduced or more was learned about their potential, the projects were moved up or down on the sliding scale. This particular project began as a lowly number two, but after one single field trial was moved to a thirteen. We’re talking about the judgment of men who thought enslaving demons was simply another way to expand the scientific frontier, yet something about this particular project scared them shitless. Luckily, this was not one of the projects that got loose during Decision Week. They destroyed the records and the evidence was buried, until now.”
“Why didn’t they just kill it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t have the technology. Who knows? If I find out, I’ll let you in on the secret. In the meantime, as for your request to let the innocent bystanders out, I have to deny that request. The phenomenon has some incorporeal nature, otherwise it wouldn’t have been able to follow Hugo Schneider back to Las Vegas. For all we know, it’s inside one of you.”
The Hunters all shared an uneasy glance. It was certainly possible, but who? “You know anything else?”
“I know you’re probably fucked, but you’ll go down fighting. That should buy my organization time to learn more. My superiors have granted me some leeway. If you can’t provide me a permanent solution by this time tomorrow morning, we’ll raze the casino to the ground and salt the earth. If we think it might escape, that timeline will speed up rather dramatically. My number-one mission parameter is to maintain secrecy at all costs. My secondary parameter is to protect the city and as much of the population as possible. They go hand in hand. The higher the body count, the harder it’ll be for Agent Stark and his remarkable PR department to make this all neatly go away. Let’s make the best of our brief time together. Anything else?”
“I’ve got manpower but we don’t have much in the way of equipment. How about you send your robot back over with a trailer of ammunition and medical supplies.”
“Harbinger, Harbinger, Harbinger…” Stricken’s laugh was cold. “Come on, buddy. I’m going to give the order to burn you out of there tomorrow morning. I know how you people think. The last thing I want to do is arm you better! Put yourself in my shoes. I’m under no delusions that you’re going to find a way to beat this thing when the best minds of the greatest generation couldn’t. But we’re in Vegas, so I’m in a gambling mood. I’ll put a little on my long shot, i.e., you, but I’ve got to hedge my bets. If that’s all, I’ve got work to do.”
“And Heather’s team? Did they really disappear, or were you using her to motivate me to do your dirty work?”
Stricken stroked his chin thoughtfully with his eerily long fingers. “I told the truth that time. There’s still no sign of them. She’s MIA.”
Earl hung his head for a very long time. The Hunters were so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. “Stricken?”
“Yes, Harbinger?”
“This isn’t over between me and you.”
“I would expect nothing less. I’ll be in touch.” The screen went black.