The Prometheus Objective

9

After fishing out the keycard from the dead administrator’s pocket, and after closing those vacant, horrific eyes, Orlando scanned the pass and opened the door. He stepped out into the hallway, which was dimly lit now by weak bulbs and an intermittently spinning red alarm that fortunately had no audible accompaniment.

Where am I?

To his left there were numerous other doors, a few open, and otherwise just stretching out into the gloom. Movement down there, like something shuffling in the shadows, hugging the walls. To the right, a body with a pair of scissors in its neck, blood all over the floor and the white coat.

Was that the other guy from my room?

He headed in that direction. Screams from somewhere, muffled and lonesome. A pleading voice from behind a door up ahead.

“Make it stop, make it stop…”

Orlando peeked at the window in the first door, finding an empty room, but in the next… a woman with a shaved head, wearing just a patient smock. Indeterminate age, gaunt features, haunted eyes.

She had a crayon in her hand, red, and had apparently been using it as a lipstick and makeup applicator, giving her face a Joker-like makeover. Orlando was about to move on when he saw on the walls behind her, flickering in the overhead radiance, his name, ORLANDO, written over and over.

Her red lips parted wide, displaying crimson-stained teeth.

“Waiting for you. Waitingforyou…”

His flesh crawled, and suddenly, seemingly without even rising, she was up and at the other side of the door, face pressed to the glass. The crayon coloration smeared on the pane as she screamed, “We’re all waiting!!”

He backed away, then moved on, quickly. Flinched as he passed the next door. Something thudded hard on the other side. The shock pushed him to the opposite side of the hallway, to a larger door — and a keycard reader.

A short distance away, a plump woman in a lab coat rounded the darkened corner. She was absently pulling out her hair and mumbling to herself. She saw Orlando, then retreated into the shadows.

“Hey…” He croaked. He wanted answers, needed to know what was happening here. And where ‘here’ even was, but something (besides the flashing lights) shouted a warning.

Get somewhere safe first.

This door had no window but did have a sign: ADMINISTRATION-LEVEL 4.

Let’s hope wrist-slasher has access.

He scanned the card… and the door whisked open, admitting him to a large control center with several workstations and a whole lot of flat screen monitors. A little brighter in here, and antiseptic. The only thing out of place next to the server banks, computers and peripheral equipment was a calendar with a cuddly pair of kittens on the nearest cube wall.

Otherwise, empty.

The screens showed various levels of the facility: hallways and rooms, and larger warehouse areas, a loading bay and an outdoor driveway leading up what looked like a hillside entrance. One screen was just set on CNN.

He stepped in as the door eased shut behind him. He didn’t see the movement on the upper right monitor, where a door on the hall he had just explored opened and a blurry shape, long haired and clown-ish, slid out.

Caught up in the images on the news, he reached for a remote, pointed it at the CNN screen and increased the volume. The banner read: Dangerous visions and psychic phenomena sweep the globe.

He stared, open mouthed at the scenes of rioting, looting, of hospitals overflooding, and then watched as doctors and scientists struggled to talk coherently, at a loss to explain the mass-introduction of what seemed to be waking dreams. Hallucinations, visions, some impossibly true, others fantastic and frightening. As if the floodgates had opened and everyone’s brains were just exploding with sensory overload.

He shook his head and pulled his thoughts back. To the present, to Caleb, Phoebe… where were they? Last he knew they were fleeing the crackdown at Stargate, the roundup that led to his imprisonment and experimentation down here. To them doing god-knows-what to him.

But you know, don’t you?

He knew what they’d done to him. Knew what he’d become. An ideal candidate, they’d described him. They allowed him, in that astral-Matrix-like state, to access the prior histories, the other ‘candidates’, the other Custodians.

I was one of them…

And, he groaned, doubling over with a massive, sudden headache, I still remember.

The twins! Alaska, the journey beyond the veil, the punching through reality to the information hub, or whatever the hell that was.

He shook his head, and again looked at the screen, where they were displaying the White House on a split screen with a scene from the streets of Paris. Crowds in both views, and another voice, this time shaky and slow, as if drugged.

“…awaiting word from the President, or his aides if he’s not yet able to speak. We are hearing indications that there are some who are fighting off these symptoms through use of meditation, yoga and in some cases, medicine. Although we are not encouraging the use of drugs or alcohol, apparently many are finding solace in the blurring of consciousness, or sleep…”

Orlando muted the channel. Pulled up a chair. He had to sit, focus and meditate. Wished he had a pad of paper or his trusty graphics tablet. First though, he scanned for a communications system. A phone, anything. Found the monitor showing the hallway outside, thinking, I should have checked for the dead guy’s cell phone.

Then he saw the laptop right here, already opened and logged in.

Google phone time…

Found an outside site, remembered her cell number despite it only being on his contact/speed dial list, and phoned a friend. He hoped she’d pick up, even not recognizing the number — which she never did. It took almost a half a minute to connect, and he was surprised finally when it did.

Phoebe answered on the second ring.

“Who’s this?” Her voice, frazzled, weary and cautious.

“Honey, it’s me.”

“Oh, thank God! Do you know where you are? I’ve been remote-searching, but all I get is a view of an airport hangar, and a field and clouds and snow. I have an idea, I know it’s familiar…”

“Well, I’m in some kind of facility. Maybe underground. No windows, nothing, but…”

Xavier’s voice cracked through, and he knew was on speakerphone. “Have him look for a code number on any installation files, there’s usually something…”

“I’ll find it,” Orlando said, nodding and looking around. “All I know is some weird shit going on here, like Stranger Things experiments, but even worse.”

“Well, you’re not at the Montauk Facility,” Phoebe offered. “Cuz we just… ah… blew that up, and you’d be nuclear-fried toast right now.”

“Oh. So…” He checked the news screen again, and again — scenes of chaos coming in on smart phones and YouTube and other feeds, from all over the world. And then, a night scene where someone filmed a strange glowing light flickering in the sky like a scattered aurora.

Orlando received a flash, an insight to a question his mind just asked:

Caleb seated in a familiar exotic chair. A green tablet in its favored slot, and energy pours out from him, from the chair, and then — from monuments and exotic ancient locations around the world, pooling up against an invisible spherical barrier in the atmosphere where it forms a sort of…

“Shield?”

A sputtering silence, and then: “Yes, can you sense it?”

“Something, yeah. What the hell? Did that — was that what caused all this? Everyone’s gone gonzo-psychic? I’m watching the news.”

“Yeah.” Caleb’s voice, in a familiar tone of stunned guilt. He’s heard it before. Gone was the confidence of late. He’s been knocked down to the bottom rung, Orlando thought, starting again as if before the door to the Pharos for the first time.

This was his fault. Tricked, duped by…

It didn’t matter. Custodian, rival psychic, government spook. It was all the same.

Them and Us.

“Listen,” Phoebe called, her voice panicking. “We’re trying to fix things here, and there’s a way, we’re sure of it, but first. The twins, I can’t sense them!”

Orlando sat and leaned forward, hunched over the keyboard; he closed his eyes, trying to see his little boy and girl again. The cabin, the aurora…

“They’re alone,” he whispered. “I was with them.”

“You were?”

“In… a way. I can’t quite explain it. Wouldn’t believe me, but I was there. Astrally. Almost like what Xavier has done before.”

“Projection?” He asked.

“More than that.” Custodian, he wanted to say but didn’t want to open that can of quantum worm food just yet.

“We have to get to them!”

“I could, if I can get the hell out of here. And if there are planes up there, as you say…”

“You focus on escaping,” she ordered. “I’ll get to them. We’re here with Edgerrin. He’s got some pilots that aren’t so… affected. I’ll go.”

“Outside of Nome, Alaska. A cabin, remote, in a valley, with a…” He tried to picture it again. “Long winding road along the way to it, a cliffside where several army Humvees went over…”

“That should be enough for us to RV it. Trust me, hon, I’ll get to them. You stay safe.”

“And dear, something I need to tell you about our kids.” He took a breath, and again relived a glimpse of their golden-hued, data-centric forms in the Beyond-realm, among all those quantum bits of pure energy-information. “They’re special. I know all parents like to think that, but these kids? Holy shit, what they can do! What they know right now… They may be the key to saving this cluster-F from getting even worse.”

He checked the screen.

“If that’s even possible. Oh, and Caleb?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“While I was… projecting, I found myself… well, shit you won’t believe it. Akashic Record much?”

“You did what?”

“Yeah, I was there, at the Library of all Libraries. And man, anything and everything. Holographic card catalog system of the Gods is all I can say, I was right there before these yahoos reeled me back in and—”

But that’s when, looking at the monitor, which turned to a darkened night sky scene, Orlando saw the reflection in the glass:

His, and another’s.

The connection terminated as the laptop went flying across the room and shattered.

Orlando screamed.

The door behind him hadn’t closed fast enough, and the occupant of that first experimentation cell had freed herself and now stood, red crayon makeup and all, a horrifying joker-like smile under crazed, wildly excited eyes.

Right behind him.