MJ-12: Shadows

35

Maggie watched as her fellow Variants took off at a dead run. She wasn’t sure what the broadcast was all about, but she had an idea — and it wasn’t good.

“Get ready to take off once they’re on board!” she shouted over the din of the rotor. “I think we’re in for it.”

“Odna minuta, tridtsat’ sekund i podscheta golosov.”

“Danny! What is that?”

Danny poked his head out of the helicopter door. “Ninety seconds. Get in here and put a gun to Boris’s head. Now!”

Maggie switched places with Danny, marching up to the cockpit and putting the barrel of her rifle right against Illyanov’s temple. “When I give the all clear, you get us out of here as fast as you can, you read me?”

The recently elderly Russian just looked at her sadly. “I don’t want to die either.”

The helicopter jostled as the rest of the team piled aboard. Faintly, she could hear the loudspeaker again.

“Go! Now!”

Boris needed no encouragement, pulling up on the controls and sending the helicopter into the air with a lurch, heading straight away from the bomb. It didn’t seem nearly fast enough.

Maggie went back to check on the others. Yamato was sweating profusely and barely conscious, while the others looked a lot worse for wear.

“Cal, we got wounded,” Maggie said, kneeling beside him. “Can you help?”

He nodded, trying to catch his breath. “Null-generators,” he gasped.

Maggie reached over to the hull of the helicopter and flipped a switch. She felt her emotional senses immediately snap back into action.

“Maggie! No!” Danny cried out. But it was too late.

The side door of the helicopter crumpled and flew across the compartment, barely missing Danny as it slammed into the wall.

POSEIDON and Julia Meyer were still aboard, and Maggie had just let them loose.

Immediately, Maggie latched onto the emotions of the two Variants, but they almost immediately disappeared out of range. POSEIDON flew out the open hatch, likely connecting with the ground using his telekinetic pull, while Julia just sank right through the floor of the helicopter, leaving her bindings and clothes behind.

“Shit!” Maggie yelled, then wheeled around and flipped the switch back once again.

But Boris Illyanov was gone, the pilot’s seat empty.

A shot rang out inside the cabin.

Maggie turned once more to find Frank Lodge with a rifle in his hand — and Boris Illyanov on the floor in front of him.

Ekaterina screamed, as only a terrified little girl could.

Danny pushed past Maggie and headed for the cockpit. “We got thirty seconds.” He settled into the pilot’s seat and pushed the ’copter forward as much as he could. “Everybody brace!”

Maggie hunkered down onto the floor — they had stripped out the seats of the helicopter — and pulled the Russian girl close. It was the only thing she could think to do.

Julia Meyer sank deep into the earth from her fall, and had to claw her way up, finally reaching the steppe and gasping for air. About fifty meters away, she could see the Variant they called POSEIDON shaking loose from his shackles.

She didn’t know why the Americans were so keen to leave, and didn’t really care. The scary woman, Maggie, had slipped up — and both she and POSEIDON had been ready to take advantage. They were free, and that was the most important part.

“Desyat’.”

The loudspeaker was faint — they were a good kilometer from the tower that had interested the Americans so much. Julia didn’t understand Russian.

“Devyat’.”

POSEIDON had stopped and was staring at the tower now.

“Vosem’.”

Suddenly, the Russian began frantically pulling at the remaining bonds around his legs.

“Sem’.”

He was shouting something at her now, but she had no idea what he was saying. He seemed pretty agitated.

“Shest’.”

Finally, he seemed to give up and started flying through the air toward her, using his Enhancement.

“Pyat’.”

He landed next to her and grabbed her arm. A split second later, they were airborne.

“Chetyre.”

“What is it? What are you doing?” Julia demanded in English.

“Tri.”

They crashed to the earth some fifty yards away. Julia felt a bolt of pain in her arm — it felt broken.

“Dva.”

“Damn it! What are you doing?” she said, this time in German.

“Odin.”

They were airborne once more, the Russian nearly pulling her arm out of her socket, causing her to scream.

But the sound never made it out before they were swallowed in light and heat. And then they were gone.

Danny pulled up higher as the sky went bright yellow all around him, then just as quickly darkened. He knew the shock wave would come at any —

The helicopter surged forward and pitched hard, spinning round like a top. Danny jerked back on the controls, hoping that they’d at least stay airborne. He could feel the temperature around him rising quickly, even as the air suddenly became impossibly dry and harsh.

And then everything went black.

What the hell?

Danny tried to move, but there was nothing to move. He tried to speak, then scream, but he had no mouth, no voice. Nothing.

Jesus. I just died.

There was a white light ahead, swirling in the darkness, growing brighter. Maybe that was the tunnel of light he’d heard about in church. His first thought was to go toward it, but as much as he willed himself to move, he was still formless.

Instead, the light started to come to him. As did… voices.

So many voices. As if the entire world was trying to whisper to him at once.

Danny looked into the light as it neared, and saw it for what it was — the vortex. But now, he could see forms in the formlessness, swirling bodies of some kind inside it.

Bodies.

That’s what they were. Bodies. People. Inside the vortex.

The voices grew more intense. They were talking, not whispering. Some were shouting. More and more of them, all at once.

They were angry. If Danny could’ve pressed his hands to his ears to keep them out, he would’ve. But there were so many that it probably wouldn’t have mattered.

The vortex washed over him, and Danny prepared himself for the intense pain he’d felt when he reached out to touch it back at Area 51. But there was nothing.

Instead, he was on a rolling plain, something like the steppe that had been under him a moment earlier. But this was pure white, and the sky was gray. And there were… shadows… on the plain. Dark shadows in the shape of people.

In that moment, Danny knew. He knew and he was horrified.

Then the shadows rose up from the plain and began hurtling toward him. Hundreds, thousands… millions.

And then all was black again.

Frank saw Danny go limp just as the ’copter began bucking, and knew something had going terribly, horribly wrong. He let go of the straps he’d been clinging to and found himself flying toward the cockpit — as planned, but it was a helluva way to go. He slammed into the back of the copilot’s seat and reached for the now-gyrating stick, grabbing it and yanking it upward in an attempt to steady things out.

Didn’t work. They were spinning well out of control.

“Anybody ever fly a helicopter?” Frank muttered as he managed to squeeze himself into the seat.

Full speed on your tail rotor, ease back on your main rotor speed. Level off — going higher isn’t going to help you, came the voice of Lt. Reginald Cooper, U.S. Army Air Corps — who had never, to Frank’s knowledge, ever flown a helicopter. But it was better than nothing — at least someone was talking to him.

Doing as instructed, Frank managed to wrestle the bird back into control — just as a second shockwave hit, sending debris surging around the aircraft.

Just put her down. If you’re not dead now, you’ll probably survive.

“Probably?” Frank yelled.

Just do it.

Frank eased the aircraft lower. He could barely see the ground with all the crap flying around him but caught enough of a look to pull up hard and land with slightly less force than an actual crash. He cut the engines immediately and reached over to check Danny’s pulse on his neck — his heart was beating incredibly fast.

“Well?” Frank asked, but none of the voices replied. Something new.

Frank turned to check on his passengers. Maggie and Sorensen were shaken but generally OK. Cal had seen better days. Yamato, though — he didn’t have long.

And then there was Ekaterina, who shoved Maggie aside with enough force to send her flying into a wall. And that was when Frank realized that the null-generators were down altogether — that was why the voices were still in his head. The radiation from the blast must’ve knocked them out of commission.

Frank grabbed a rifle from the floor and leveled it at the kid — but she already had Cal in a headlock and seemed quite furious enough to snap the man’s neck.

“Ekaterina, I am sorry about your brother, I truly am,” Frank said in Russian, training the rifle at the girl’s head. “But killing someone else will not bring him back.”

“I should kill all of you!” she cried out. “You are all dogs! You could’ve been champions of the people, and you selfishly chose yourselves instead!”

Frank lowered the gun slightly. “Ekaterina… where is Lavrentiy Beria now?”

“How should I know?” she answered petulantly.

“Exactly. Because instead of coming for you, he left you and your brother behind. He left you where he had set off an atomic bomb. He left you to die.”

“Liar!”

Frank shrugged. “Then where is he? All his talk of ‘Empowered unity,’ and where was he when you needed him most? We were supposed to be rare, gifted people, people to be saved and nurtured so they could lead. But he sacrificed you. You and Boris. He left you there.”

“No!” Ekaterina’s face was an anguished mask now, and tears were sliding down her cheeks.

“He didn’t know you and Boris would be on board our helicopter. He didn’t know if you’d escape. And he didn’t care. He could’ve waited to detonate the bomb, and he didn’t.”

Ekaterina began crying in earnest, choking back sobs and loosening her grip on Cal, who gently moved her arms from his neck — then took her into his own arms.

“Um, Cal, you know… you could be… ” Frank said as he lowered his weapon, hoping he’d get the hint.

He did, but he wasn’t going to play it that way. “Ekaterina, honey, I need to go save this young man over here, OK? Just give me a minute here and let me help him. He’s one of us, and he needs me right now.”

Frank translated, and Ekaterina nodded slightly. Cal then leaned over to touch Rick Yamato on the leg. Almost immediately, Cal’s hair began to grow gray, then white. His skin began to sag, and his muscles became ropy. Yamato, meanwhile, began to breathe easier.

“Cal?”

“Boy was close,” Cal said, speaking in the dry, cracked voice of an old man. “Should pull through. But I’m done for a while, Frank. Need to rest.”

Frank nodded, then turned back to Ekaterina. “We do take care of each other, Ekaterina,” Frank said in Russian. “And we would take care of you. But if you want to get out here, or somewhere else in Kazakhstan, I will let you go.”

The girl’s eyes widened, and she seemed to think about things for several long moments. Ultimately, she simply leaned back against the bulkhead of the ’copter and closed her eyes.

Frank turned to Maggie. “Help me with Danny. Let’s get out of here.”