Sons of Abraham: Terminate (4 page)

              “The doll was from my recruit years,” Commander Bastiian Dayne announced. 

              Nathan turned to see the Commander approach from another doorway.  His tangled, long hair flowed with the breeze his movements created, sweeping the locks off his chiseled features.  The green eyes looked past him, locked upon the strange doll held within the case.  Bastiian stood next to Calloway, an inch or so taller than the I.I.U. Agent.  He wore a simple shirt, colored brown, with a lighter brown long sleeved shirt beneath.  The pants were black, with no distinguishable characteristics to them. 

              “The doll belonged to a young girl, five years of age,” he continued.  “I arrived a moment before my Commander.  I was in such a hurry to reach the call that I left my team in my dust.  It was a house on a wheat farm, miles away from the village.  We received a call that marauders had struck the farm.  As I approached, three of the barns had been lit on fire and several of the farmhands were scattered across the open field, their bodies either burned or mutilated.  I knew many of the souls that escaped those burned bodies and grew crazed with anger.  Instead of waiting for the team of Overseers, I busted through the front door of the farmhouse.  The first thing I saw was the father, his throat slit, and pools of his own blood spreading across the dining room floor.  The mother lie in the kitchen, her dress cut away from her body, the blood still staining her feminine areas.  Her eyes stared at the ceiling, locked in horror.  The sight did nothing to sooth my rage, only adding to my fire.  That’s when I noticed the back door from the kitchen was ajar.”

              Nathan remained quiet, allowing for the Commander to tell his tale.  The green eyes held firm, the daylight pouring through the picture window showing no signs of tears forming in the corners of his ducts.  His voice echoed off the walls, low and strong.

              “The scanner in my helmet led me into the woods.  Two sets of footprints were dragging something, something that kicked at the ground every six feet or more.  My pace quickened as I darted between trees, my helmet still holding the trail of the perpetrators.  The doll you see there was the next thing I saw.  It laid in the mud, just as you see it now.  The bloodstains were of her mother.  The poor child wept upon her lifeless body before the animals drug her away.  I found the poor thing’s body another half-mile into the woods, much in the same state that I’d found her mother.  I tracked the killers for miles, catching up to them just before they boarded their ship.  I raised my weapon and put them down, much the way that a farmer puts down a dog that has turned on its master.  I never saw their faces until I rolled their lifeless bodies over.  Young men, not of enough harvesting years to be alone with a spacecraft.  My blind rage set my path on revenge, with no trace of thought to my actions.   The father of the two boys shot me in the back.  One of the bullets pierced my armor, stuck halfway into my skin.  I turned to fire, but the man was only three feet from me, his rifle aimed at my face.  I stared into the round, black hole of that rifle, knowing that my life would be over in a moment.  I then realized the mistakes that I had made, knowing that my impatience had done nothing to save the family, nor change the fate of the attackers.  I closed my eyes and waited for my fate.  Luckily, the Commander had followed the trail as well and shot the father before his finger pulled the trigger.  I learned so many lessons that day.”

              “Who were they?” Nathan asked, unable to look away from the doll.  “The men you killed.”

              “Workers whom the farmer refused to hire,” Bastiian answered.  “Had the farmer hired them, their citizenship for Eden would have been approved.  The father, however, felt unease during the interview and black-flagged their application.  The three would never be allowed to apply for citizenship again.  We assumed it was an act of revenge for the denial.”

              The two men turned to one another, silently sizing the other man up in their minds.  The Commander’s story left so many questions in Nathan’s mind, questions that he felt ill towards asking.  He needed to understand how the denial of citizenship could lead to the slaughter of so many innocents, why living on Eden was deemed so vital that it warranted such a heinous act of revenge, but his instincts told him to leave the story in the past.

              “Forgive me,” Bastiian continued.  “You have traveled far, at my request no less, and I have done nothing to introduce myself.”

              “No,” Calloway replied.  “I think you’ve introduced yourself quite well.”

              Jones looked out the window of the harrier, watching the desert plains pass below.  They had journeyed for some time, seemingly crossing the entire Sahara Desert and all of the countries and states of Africa. 

              “If they buried the lab out here,” Keenan Kohl started.  “Then I understand why other historians were never able to locate the place.  None would travel through such a harsh environment.”

              “Agreed,” Vanessa Clarkston offered.  “Though I think they could have just buried the lab beneath the capital or something.  This seems like paranoia to me.”

              “Africa wasn’t the capital of the planet then,” Jones replied.  “In those days, the various countries fell under their own governments.  Keep in mind that the countries were at war with one another, all in an effort to feed their starving populations.  The scientists needed seclusion from the nightmare if they were to find the solutions to the world’s problems.  I’m guessing it was either this or some island.”

              The trio sat in silence, accompanied by three military soldiers who identified themselves as Haynes, Garner, and Sanchez.  All three were men of varying height and skin pigment.  Haynes was a native to Africa, his shaved head sweating under the intense heat of the climate.  Garner was the poster child of ‘muscle,’ sitting a foot taller than his fellow soldiers.  His black hair was trimmed short, his dark brown eyes always watching the trio of civilians.  Sanchez was short and thin, his skin a blend of his partners.  The young man was always smiling, his fingers constantly messing with the tiny black curls of hair on his head. All three wore camouflage of gray, white, and black, obviously unaware of the location they were heading.  Each carried a pistol, but with a variety of main weapons in their laps.  Sanchez held a small, sub-machine gun, with a short barrel and sites.  Haynes wielded a simple rifle, a black stock, and long sites.  Garner held his against his body, the long assault rifle with a drum feed, and foldaway stock.  The three looked prepared to go to war today.

              “We’re approaching the coordinates,” the pilot called out over the loudspeaker.

              Everyone looked out the windows of the harrier, seeing a rock formation below as the harrier slowly circled around it.  From their new view, they could see the rock was merely the end piece of a long chain, three formations twisting in a spiral with open land between them.  As the harrier descended, the sand began to move, falling into an unseen hole.  The plane followed the sand into the metallic hole, remaining level as the ship fell below the plane.  The harsh sun disappeared as the ship made for its destination inside of a vast, manmade cavern, a cylinder shaped, and metallic dwelling far below the surface of the desert.  The ship continued for nearly a minute before the wheels touched down on the floor.

              From the windows, the lights on the wings of the harrier and a faint reminisce of the sunlight above lit up the cavern as sand continued to fall all around them.   Jones could almost make out a doorway to the right of the harrier when the sky slowly started to disappear above them.  From below, they could make out the support beams of the metal structure, two rectangular shapes closing in on one another, swallowing the daylight.  The two doors collided, the locking mechanisms thundering through the empty chamber. 

              “Everyone out,” Haynes ordered, pressing the button on the panel to release the hatch.

              The three soldiers were the first to vacate the harrier, her engines still winding down.  Each activated a light on their shoulder, beams of brightness waving around through the darkness, searching for clues as where to begin.  Jones followed behind, then Keenan and Vanessa.  The tall man doubted the two experts were prepared for this adventure, but it was the lab itself that was holding his fascination.  His entire life had been spent, longing to find the very place he was now so close to.  His thoughts raced, weighing the possibilities of what he would discover within the fabled lab of the first Cybers.

              “Got it,” Sanchez called out.

              Everyone turned, seeing what Sanchez’s light had discovered.  The hallway that Jones was attempting to see when the overhead doors closed was now in full view from the shoulder light of the soldier.  The group of six approached, still allowing for the soldiers to lead the way.  The three flashlights covered the walls and floor, showing the group nothing of interest besides more of the dark metal that the structure was made of. 

              The hallway stretched on for half a mile before the scenery changed.  At the end of the half-circle shaped hall was a wall, with two doors that met in the middle.  Vanessa pushed past the soldiers, looking for some way of accessing the doorway.  There was no panel, no handles, nothing but more metal.  She turned around and threw her hands up.

              “What is this?” she asked.  “A door with no way to open it is not a door.”

              Sanchez sighed and moved around the taller woman, pulling a small pad from one of the dozen pouches in his uniform.  The device came to life as he started a program, a number pad displaying itself upon the screen.  His fingers pressed numbers in sequence though only Jones was able to memorize the code.  When he was done, he pressed the enter key and shoved the pad back into its pouch.

              The door vibrated as the locks broke free.  A cloud of dust smacked their fronts as the doors parted and dozens of lights sprang to life on the opposite side.  Sanchez offered Vanessa a raised brow and a smile before stepping through the doorway, his short machine gun held down as his boots stomped the metallic floor.

              The group followed the small man’s lead, passing through the open doorway, walking towards the lights.  The room was little more than an entrance, offering them another metallic wall with another set of doors.  This time, the door opened automatically as they approached though there were no sensors above the frame. 

              As the door split open, more lights turned on.  The room was open, perhaps fifty feet wide and thirty feet in depth.  The lights came from metal domes in the ceiling, each of them casting light down to the metal floor and desks.  Each desk was four feet in length, with a black surface.  A chair was built into each one, with a sliding and bending frame beneath that allowed for the chair to be moved without touching the floor. 

              Jones reached out and touched the surface of the first desk.  The black surface came to life with blue lights, showing the last piece of work an unknown technician was performing when the place was closed.  It was a sphere, with thousands of tiny fibers protruding from its center.

              “You go ahead,” he muttered.  “I’ll see what I can find here.”

              Jones rounded the desk, pulling the seat out from under the open space below the small table.  His tall frame sat upon the thin cushion, his eyes wide in delight as he pressed his hands to the surface, slid them away from one another, and watched the object on the screen magnify.

              “Uhm, I’m the technician,” Vanessa objected.  “Perhaps I should be the one going through the files?”

              “Do you need a reminder of your orders so early, Ms. Clarkston?” Jones said dryly, still looking down at the screen.  “I believe Wilkes was quite clear when she informed you that I am in charge here.”

              She closed her mouth and nodded to the soldiers to proceed through the room.  Her eyes looked to all the stations they passed, her mind begging her to sit down for ten minutes and explore the files that had been lost over the centuries.  An hour in this room could provide all the answers to the questions her superiors had asked during her career, and she wasn’t about to give up the possible answers simply because a government henchman ordered her to.  She would find a way back to this room.  She would sit down and search to her heart’s content.  For now, she followed the orders of the mysterious and arrogant Mr. Jones.

              The group exited the room, leaving Jones alone with the sea of knowledge before him.  He waited until the doors closed, then pulled out a thick data pad from his jacket and sat it on the desktop.  One by one, his fingers flipped through the files of the first Cybers, browsing each at a blinding speed. 

              “There you are,” he muttered.

              Project Abraham sat on the screen, with dozens of files branching out from the main.  He pulled up a list and waited for the computer to display its contents.  Names typed out across the blue screen, names that Jones hadn’t heard for ages.  He locked on the file labeled ‘Benedict’ and opened the directory.

              His brow furrowed as he scanned over the programming.  Heat formed in the back of his neck as he transferred the file to his datapad.  The panel worked quickly, transferring the data in a matter of seconds.  The empty file stared at him, urging him to continue on with his mission.  He took every file in the list, sending each to his data pad.  The screen on the desk grew empty, leaving him free to explore the remaining files.