MJ-12: Shadows

29

Danny Wallace was throwing clothes hastily into a duffel bag when the knock came at his door. “Commander!”

He smiled, knowing the voice. “Come on in, John.”

Major Hamilton entered and Danny’s smile vanished in the face of the man’s hurried concern. “Julia Meyer is missing.”

Danny dropped his shirt to the floor. “Come again?”

“We went to assemble Group Two, as you ordered. She’s nowhere to be found.”

Danny screwed his eyes shut and reached out with his Enhancement. There were thirteen other Variants on base he could sense. The first was just one building away — Mrs. Stevens, back puttering in her labs — and the captive Russian POSEIDON was in the main research facility under lockdown. There were supposed to be four others in each of the three training areas — but one area only had three. How?

Danny immediately hustled for the door, dragging Hamilton with him by the arm. “What about the others?”

“All accounted for, waiting in the staging area,” Hamilton said as they headed out the officers’ quarters block toward a waiting jeep. “Nobody’s seen her since lunch. Just locked down the entire base.”

“The rest of the Variants know she’s gone,” Danny said as he jumped into the passenger seat. “Or at least they have suspicions. They have to.”

Hamilton gunned the engine and took off for the training area. “How can you be sure?”

“Because they’re Variants, John.”

They spent the rest of the ride across the lakebed coordinating security efforts via radio. There were teams of at least four MPs with eyes on every critical asset there — the vortex, POSEIDON, Schreiber, Bronk and his lab, and each Variant. Searchers in Bell H-13 Sioux helicopters began an overlapping grid search of the base and surrounding mountains, while soldiers on the ground methodically fanned out around the buildings across the main base and training areas.

They arrived at Julia’s training area to find the three others on her team in the mess tent, under armed guard. There was no sign of a fourth.

“Major, if we could have the room,” Danny said, but it was more an order than a request. Hamilton motioned for the MPs to get out, leaving Danny alone with Tim, Rick, and Christina, all of whom looked scared and properly chagrined. He sat down in front of them and gave them a small smile. “All right. We have a problem. What I need to know from you is information on where she went.”

The three other Variants looked at each other pointedly until Rick finally spoke. “She didn’t tell us about any immediate plan to escape,” he said haltingly.

Danny nodded. “But she had plans,” he prompted. “You all did. You probably still do.”

Tim seemed to get his nerve up at this, looking Danny straight in the eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

“Well, the last four Variants who lived here did. They plotted and planned and eventually figured out more about this place and themselves than you four ever have. They asked the right questions of themselves, made the right choices, and proved themselves to be curious, smart, and capable. And they graduated to field operations and did well.

“But now they’re in trouble, and they need our help,” Danny continued. “We think that several of them have fallen into enemy hands. Soviet hands. And I’ve seen firsthand these Soviet Variants. They’re brutal. I know a little of what they went through to become that way, and it makes what you’ve been doing here at Area 51 look like a garden party. The Russians will study our Variants. They will use them. They’ll seek to brainwash them, and if they can’t do that, they’ll probably torture them for information and eventually kill them. Is that what you want to see happen?”

Christina narrowed her eyes at Danny. “Our Variants?”

Goddamnit! Danny hung his head for several long moments, trying to think of a way out, but ultimately his silence became his answer. “Yes,” Danny admitted. “Our Variants. American Variants. Like you. Like me. And like I’ve been saying over and over again, you will be stronger together and working with this program than you will be on your own. I know. If this program didn’t exist, they might have hunted you down and locked you away with the rest of us years ago. They might have just killed us. Instead, we have a chance to do some good and to stick up for one another.

“I’m going to head out to go get my fellow Variants,” Danny said, standing up. “And I need you with me to help your fellow Variants as well.”

One by one, the three remaining members of Group 2 looked to one another and began nodding. “All right,” Rick said. “What do you need?”

“For starters, I need Julia.”

Once again, they glanced at each other for guidance until, finally, Tim spoke up. “She knows about the vortex. That German scientist told her. I think she went to turn him loose. Him and the Russian Variant you got over there at the base.”

Danny actually staggered backward at this, words failing him and his hands instinctively reaching for a sidearm that wasn’t there — yet. “How?” he asked.

“The electrical for those null-generators you got. They were jury-rigged together pretty slapdash, frankly. Easy for me to keep the ‘on’ light working when the rest of the thing was shut off,” Tim said with an apologetic half-smile on his lean face. “I was even able to whip up a little device from old radio parts that could counteract the fields for a while. I can get it to last a good thirty minutes now.”

Danny cursed himself for thinking too much about Enhancements and simply not enough about the regular skills and ingenuity these folks brought to the table. “All right. Thank you. I mean that. Get your gear and be ready to move. I’m going to find Julia.”

The three other Variants nodded as Danny purposefully strode out of the room, only to break into a dead run for the jeep as soon as he was out of sight. “Hamilton! Back to base! NOW!” He jumped in the passenger seat and grabbed the radio, setting to a base-wide broadcast.

“Attention, attention! Lock down Area 51 completely! Seal the main hangar and all facilities. Any nonessential personnel seen outside a building will be shot. Repeat, any nonessential personnel seen outside a building will be shot.”

Then he flipped the channel to the MP band. “All security personnel, we need a room-by-room sweep of the base. Each team will need a null-generator and tranquilizer guns. And double the guard around POSEIDON and Schreiber.”

Hamilton clambered into the driver’s seat as the affirmative responses came in, and minutes later — after a wind-whipped, high-speed ride back across the lakebed — they came to a jolting stop in front of the main research hangar. “Report,” Hamilton barked at one of his junior officers, a lieutenant who seemed fresh out of officer training.

“We’re working through the area now. Administration and personnel quarters are clear — all base personnel are sheltering in place, and nobody is out of place at the moment.”

“Schreiber? POSEIDON?” Danny asked.

“Secured, sir. I think—”

The lieutenant was interrupted by the sound of tearing metal from above their heads. Danny looked up to see the sheet-metal wall of the hangar beginning to cave in, as if someone had grabbed it from the inside and pulled….

“POSEIDON is loose!” Danny yelled. “Swarm the building!”

Danny rushed inside with the rest of the security men, even though that was technically violating orders. Nobody would be standing on ceremony now. Overhead were more sounds of screeching metal; it sounded like POSEIDON was trying to rip apart the entire base. Someone offered Danny a tranquilizer pistol, which he gratefully accepted. He took a moment to concentrate, and finally sensed the two Variants he was looking for. “Second floor! Research labs! Go!”

The men rushed up the stairs, but Danny felt his perceptions shift — the two targeted Variants had just left the building through the hole they’d created, even though it was a good twelve feet off the ground. “They’re outside now! Move!”

Danny was the first out the door, and saw just what POSEIDON had been planning. The Russian, dressed in a simple olive-drab uniform, had his arms around Julia and Schreiber, one on each side, and was using his telekinetic pulling enhancement to move incredibly quickly through the base, pulling himself through the air from building to building.

“Fire!” Danny shouted, running after them. A flurry of darts launched from a dozen guns, but POSEIDON was moving too fast for them.

But he was also running out of buildings to use. Soon, they’d have to hit the ground and run — at least until he got close enough to the mountains, at which point he could pull them up faster than a jumped-up billy goat.

Danny dashed toward a jeep and hopped in the driver’s seat, slamming it into gear and tearing off even as Hamilton and two of his MPs were still climbing in. They hung on for dear life as Danny sped off toward the fugitives. They were in the desert valley now, too far from the base buildings for POSEIDON to anchor his Enhancement but still about two hundred yards away from the first foothills — close enough for him to latch onto them.

“Take aim!” Danny shouted above the wind. “If tranqs don’t work, then use firearms. Shoot to injure, not kill, if you can help it.”

POSEIDON was running full tilt now, reaching back with his Enhancement to pull both Schreiber and Julia along, as neither seemed to be as fast or enduring a runner as the MGB man. Danny floored it, quickly gaining on them.

And then the jeep began to rise.

“Shoot! Now!” Danny yelled.

But it was too late. The jeep, despite Danny’s best efforts behind the wheel, began to overturn and fly through the air as POSEIDON pulled it toward him. Hamilton was thrown from the vehicle, while Danny and the other MPs clung on to whatever they could find.

POSEIDON slammed the jeep down on the valley sands on its side, continuing to drag the vehicle toward him on the ground. Danny wanted to reach for the tranq pistol in his belt at the small of his back, but it was too much just trying to hang on to the steering wheel and brace himself inside the jeep so he wouldn’t fall out. Both MPs finally lost their grips and tumbled out, leaving only Danny in place as the jeep finally skidded to a stop in front of POSEIDON.

“You!” the Russian Variant shouted. “You I will kill with my bare hands!”

Dazed and bruised, Danny let go of the wheel, slumping out of the jeep onto the sand, then looked up to see POSEIDON, his fists balled and rage writ upon his face, about twenty yards away.

“Come and get me,” Danny whispered.

He felt the pull of POSEIDON’s ability, completely helpless as he was dragged across the desert sands, rocks battering his ribcage and sand stinging his eyes. Then he was airborne, moving faster than ever.

It was the only thing he could think of to do, and in the mere seconds he had to spare, Danny reached for the tranq pistol, pulled it, and fired it at POSEIDON’s chest at a range of about four yards.

The dart broke the Russian’s concentration, and Danny landed hard on the sand, skidding to a halt. He looked up and POSEIDON was coming for him, fists raised, but then the man staggered and fell to his knees, collapsing just inches away.

Danny heard a scream. Julia.

He slowly got to his feet, his legs almost buckling with the effort. Kurt Schreiber and Julia were nearly ten feet away — Schreiber holding a gun to the Variant’s head.

“That’s close enough, Commander,” Schreiber said. “Drop your weapon.”

Danny looked from Schreiber’s grim, determined expression to the panicked, anguished look on Julia’s face. It took a few seconds for the incongruence to register in his head, but once it did, Danny had to force himself not to smile.

Instead, he calmly reloaded the tranquilizer pistol. “You know, Doctor, I think I’m actually genuinely insulted right now,” he said.

A flash of confusion passed over Schreiber’s face, quickly replaced by anger. “I will kill her, I promise you, Commander. I will kill her and then I’ll kill you.”

Danny finished loading as Hamilton — dirty, bruised, and bleeding from a cut on his forehead — walked over, his automatic pistol pointed at Schreiber. “Drop it, Doc,” Hamilton said. “She’s a lot more valuable than you are.”

“Which is why you will call for another jeep which will take us away from here, and you will not follow,” Schreiber said, pulling Julia’s body in front of his. “I mean it. I will shoot her.”

“Not if I shoot her first, Doctor,” Danny said. He raised the tranquilizer pistol, aimed it at Julia’s heart — and squeezed the trigger.

Julia immediately turned immaterial, and the dart passed right through her, sticking into Schreiber. The scientist gasped and staggered backward as Danny threw the other object he’d been carrying right at Julia.

The active null-generator landed at her feet.

She gasped, then turned and began to run. A tranquilizer dart from one of the MPs took her down in a matter of steps.

Danny walked over to the bodies now lying on the desert floor and picked up the anti-null device next to Julia’s inert hand. It was about the size of a dime-store novel, and it looked burned out. Sorensen’s. Not a bad bit of work, really. Danny shoved the device in his pocket; he imagined Mrs. Stevens would be very interested in analyzing it.

“Get an ambulance over here, and activate more nulls just in case they wake up,” Danny told Hamilton.

“You want me to put Meyer in with the Russki until we figure out what to do?” Hamilton asked.

“Nope. I want them both doped up, nulled at all times, and ready to travel.”

“What about Schreiber?”

Danny entertained the notion of just tying him to a pole in the middle of the desert lake bed and leaving him there to die. Not a very kind idea, admittedly, but then Schreiber wasn’t exactly deserving of Danny’s good Christian charity at that moment.

“Throw him back in the brig,” he muttered. “But don’t feel you have to be nice about it.”