Ragnarok

FORTY-FIVE

Endgame Headquarters, White Mountains, NH

Lewis Aleman sat alone in a side office off the main corridor in Central that ran to the tram station, which would lead to another part of the base that housed a submarine dock. He had left Fogg and Pierce in the main computer control room. He needed just five minutes to himself to process what he had learned, before he reported to Deep Blue. That his boss had not reported in yet regarding his rescue attempt for King did not bode well. It meant they were still up to their necks in battle or dead.

He would have to attempt to contact them regardless. Too much had happened. Knight and Bishop were off the grid. Queen and Rook were in the same town as the source portal-a portal that had appeared regularly over the last few months, and in precisely the same location.

Aleman realized that someone had to be regulating the phenomenon. Not phenomenon, he thought. Attack.

The portals were appearing with increasing frequency around the globe and their strategy of dealing with the fallout caused by dire wolf attacks had led them nowhere. They needed to find whatever was causing the portals to appear and eliminate it. Before there wasn’t anything left of the planet. His quick research into the town of Fenris Kystby led exactly nowhere. There was no useful information about the place. It was a tiny town near the coast of northern Norway, well off the beaten track for tourists and natives alike. But the lack of any information on the Web was disturbing to Aleman. He could nearly always find something, about even the most obscure places in the world, even if it was just a farm report or a local carnival announcement. It was almost like any information about this place has been scoured away from the Web.

They knew the dire wolf was mentioned in Norse mythology. They had seen evidence that someone in Viking times had come across a dire wolf. They suspected repeated appearances of the portals in a town in Norway that no one had ever heard of. And Rook had called in earlier from the very same town and was facing mind-controlled people. Aleman didn’t know what it added up to, but he knew that the team was wasting its time in other locations. Norway is the source.

He stood from his office chair and touched the ear of his communications headset, then he voice-dialed Deep Blue. He paced back and forth across the rich blue carpet between the glass-walled air-conditioned closet of routers and servers and the desk the room held. He heard the connection go live with a tiny audible click.

“Kind of busy now, Lew. There’s shooting and running…” Deep Blue sounded out of breath. Aleman would keep the information about Bishop and Knight to himself for the moment.

“It’s going down in Norway. Norway is the source.”

“Son of a-that’s where Rook is.” Deep Blue’s voice came between heaving breaths. Aleman couldn’t hear any external sounds because of the audio dampener in Deep Blue’s helmet, but he could imagine the running and shooting, just fine. He’d experienced it during his previous years as a Delta operator before an injury sidelined him.

“Actually, it’s the same town Rook said he was in. Queen’s tracking chip show’s she’s there with him. If they’re not together, they’re close. We need to get over there. Time is running out.”

“What’s the…projection?”

“Maybe two days if the portals keep appearing at the same rate and keep growing in size. The one in Norway seems to have stabilized in size and intensity. And there’s something else. When the Norway portal has opened in the past, it hasn’t stayed on for longer than a few minutes. But it’s on now and has probably been acti-vated for close to a half an hour.”

“We’re…on our…way. Ready everyone who can fire a weapon. The whole White team. How are Bishop and Knight doing?”

“Didn’t work out.” Aleman changed the subject quickly. “I’ll take care of everything on my end. Anything else?”

“Nothing. Out.”

Aleman consoled himself that now wasn’t the time to tell Deep Blue about Bishop and Knight. Deep Blue would be checking on everything from his satellite uplink on the face display of the helmet as soon as the battle subsided enough for him to do so. He would see the complete absence of the tracking chips both Bishop and Knight unknowingly carried, with his GPS program. The man would understand the ramifications of the missing signals. They were either dead or they were trapped on the other side of the portals. Possibly both.