The Phoenix Variant: The Fifth Column 3 Read online

  Jay felt his heart double its contractions. He didn’t fancy fighting two operatives, let alone four.

  Damien swung and kicked again. This time he hit the grate hard enough to dislodge it.

  Shit, Jay thought. That could actually work.

  Damien kicked a third time. The grate bounced upward, moved halfway. Damien stopped swinging and moved for the gap. With one hand he struggled to slide it open. Jay watched from where he hung as Damien shifted it. The grate moved a fraction. Damien now hung with one hand on the dislodged grate and one on the grate he was swinging under. Above him, a narrow gap. He lifted himself through it.

  Jay moved quickly, clawed his way along the grates until he reached Damien. He hung from one hand and used the other to push Damien up. Damien was out of the tunnel. Jay moved closer, reached out and grabbed his partner’s offered hand.

  From the corner of Jay’s vision he could see movement in the tunnel. The operatives could see him now.

  ‘Quick!’ Jay breathed.

  He straightened his arms out, held his breath and climbed up through the gap. He was half out, Damien pulling on his arm. Pain arced through his shoulder, through the wound from the arrow. His grip slipped and he fell back through.

  Damien reached down, snatched him. Jay dangled inside the tunnel. He looked up, found Damien braced over the grates. Jay reached up and clamped his other hand over Damien’s arm. He wasn’t going to let go. He couldn’t.

  Damien reinforced with his other arm, legs spread between the grates. Damien pulled hard and Jay slowly rose. Just a fraction more and he could reach the grates and help haul himself out.

  His fingers reached out, brushed the grate, found a hold. Damien shifted one hand to the back of Jay’s collar. Jay didn’t care if it strangled him, he just wanted out. His head made it above the surface. He switched his grip from under to over the grate and wriggled upward.

  A cracking sound from below.

  It bounced along the tunnel, filling Jay’s ears. Something hard, heavy struck the side of his midsection, almost crushed his ribs. He pulled himself out, pressed his chest over the grate. Damien almost fell backward onto the sidewalk, but he didn’t stop pulling. Jay’s knees were up and out. He was clear. He rolled over. Away from the grates. Pain took the breath from him.

  While Damien hurriedly lowered the grate back into position, Jay noticed the city lights before them start to blink out, block by block. The darkness crept closer to them and then halted two blocks away. Just before Grand Central terminal. Everything south of Forty-Second Street was pitch black.

  Jay tried to stand but a fierce wind tore through the street, knocking him onto his back. The howl chilled him. When he could open his eyes again he noticed the sky in the distance. It was no longer black but a brooding purple. It ruptured with the occasional flash.

  Hurricane Isaias.

  Jay tried to breathe but his ribs sent fire through him with every inhalation. He looked down and realized what that cracking sound in the tunnel had been.

  He’d been shot.

  Chapter 27

  ‘Did Freeman ever give you his code?’ DC said.

  The question caught Sophia by surprise. ‘Code?’

  ‘The one Cecilia was trying to get out of you in Denver,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  DC rolled his eyes. ‘It’s just us here. I already know.’

  ‘He never actually kept the whole code,’ she said. ‘Just the chromosomal location. Unless he was stupid enough to trust you with the number.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ DC said.

  ‘It was the code for a Phoenix virus, wasn’t it?’ Sophia said.

  DC nodded.

  ‘Which one?’ she asked.

  He didn’t look at her, and instead seemed to focus on a stray newspaper.

  ‘Your one,’ he said. ‘Freeman told me it was an inherited endogenous retrovirus. Integrated into your DNA. Denton believed it was passed down from your grandfather, Yiri, and that originally it was an exogenous retrovirus of extraterrestrial nature.’ He finally looked at her. ‘Your grandfather was infected with a Phoenix virus.’

  Sophia swallowed. ‘So my special power came from an alien rock.’

  ‘The technology wasn’t up to scratch back then but Denton spent the best part of the Cold War crunching your grandfather’s DNA. Owen Freeman defected and stole the code before he could solve the puzzle. Denton had to start again. The Phoenix virus lay dormant in your mother. Again, with the technology of the time it was useless to Denton. But for some reason it sparked inside you.’

  She felt anger well inside her. ‘You kept all of this from me,’ she said.

  DC shook his head slowly. ‘Half of it I only learned in the last twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘Need to know.’

  ‘I need to know,’ she said softly, more to herself.

  ‘That’s why I’m telling you everything they’ve told me.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt that,’ she said.

  DC shot her a piercing stare. ‘You were part of Project Phoenix long before you were part of Project GATE,’ he said. ‘Denton had been sending for blood samples when you’d never even met him. He had four candidates, including you. After Project Phoenix collapsed, all four of you were inducted into Project GATE.’

  ‘But only I survived.’

  She remembered. The glass cubicles next to each other; Denton watching. The shivering, moaning. The girl collapsing, vomiting on the floor. The hot lumps across the boy’s skin. They turned black, oozed pus, blood. She remembered screaming, her hands clawing the cubicle door. The bodies of the children crumpled, soaked wine red.

  ‘You’re the lucky one,’ she whispered, reciting his words.

  ‘The Phoenix virus has a few perks too. The host is resistant to plagues, flu, other sickness, those brought on by other comet-borne viruses,’ DC said. ‘The other three test subjects died as part of the test to determine who was a real carrier. Which ones just had a special ability like every other Project GATE test subject, and who actually harbored the Phoenix virus.’

  ‘And then the real testing began,’ Sophia said.

  ‘With Dr Cecilia McLoughlin,’ he said. ‘But she only ever knew of one Phoenix. Denton never told her there were three. None of this matters now, of course. The Fifth Column has reached a consensus. Denton will need to die.’ He stood upright and pushed off the rail car. ‘That’s everything I know.’

  ‘Not quite.’ She turned to face him. ‘Why did you betray me?’

  He looked at her for a moment, a long moment. She wasn’t even sure if he would respond.

  ‘It wasn’t about you,’ he said.

  ‘Seems everything else is.’ She stepped from the rail car and stood in the center of the tracks. ‘I can’t tell you how stupid I feel, trusting you like I did.’

  DC seemed almost suspended in the darkness. He stood in silence, partly facing her yet partly not. ‘Whatever you feel, I feel worse,’ he said.

  She almost laughed, but his words carried pain. She breathed it in and it felt like her own. For an instant she felt sorry for him, but warmth washed over her. It burned her ears and fingertips. She took two long strides toward him and had to suppress the urge to hit him.

  ‘Cecilia was this close to giving me a hit of the anti-Chimera vector and you did nothing,’ she said. ‘I was seconds away from becoming a robot soldier, a psychopath just like Denton.’ The words came from her mouth in a low growl. ‘Do you know who saved me?’

  DC stared at her. He probably didn’t even know the answer.

  ‘Denton saved me!’ she yelled. ‘Fucking Denton!’ She pushed past him and paced the tracks. ‘Of all the people to stop me becoming … like that, it was him.’ She felt her cheeks burn. ‘There was a moment there where the thing I hated most in the world was you.’

  She watched the quiver on his face. She hoped it hurt. She wanted it to hurt. She wanted him to feel guilty. But he just stood there, a shadow in
the tunnel.

  ‘Say something,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t need to,’ he said, softly.

  She swallowed. He looked tired, sad. And she could feel it. It made her sick inside.

  He extended his hand. ‘You can feel it, can’t you?’

  She reached out to touch the tips of his fingers.

  ‘You’re the Detector.’

  Her phone buzzed. She dug into her pocket to fish it out.

  Got it doing back now

  The message was from N, which she figured Aviary had labeled as Nasira’s iPhone. And she guessed coming had autocorrected to doing, what with Nasira’s lack of smartphone experience.

  ‘Wait, how do I have reception?’ Sophia wondered aloud.

  DC shrugged. ‘That’s good, right?’

  Sophia attempted to reply. Copy tgat autocorrected to Copy that. She hit the send button and her message bubble appeared. She noticed the label underneath: Read 10:37pm. Good, at least she knew Nasira—or at least someone holding Nasira’s phone—had read her message.

  In response, an image popped up of the Grand Central terminal blueprints. Aviary had sent it. Sophia made it fullscreen and showed DC. The phone’s backlight almost blinded him, but he took the phone and inspected it closely.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, pinching and swiping to get his bearings. ‘Aha. I think I know where to go.’

  He handed the phone back to her.

  Another message.

  Standby movement on dining concourse

  Sophia wanted to just speak with Nasira, but it didn’t sound like she was in a position to talk. That Phoenix or DARPA mind-reading stuff would’ve been great right now. They could’ve just sent thoughts to each other. Then again, that would still be limited by range.

  She checked the operative map overlay. A dot appeared. Very close to her current location. She froze.

  DC was watching her intently. ‘What?’

  She put a finger on her lips and showed him the phone again.

  ‘One operative,’ she said in the quietest voice she could manage.

  ‘Not moving,’ he said, dropping his voice to match.

  ‘There for a reason,’ she said. ‘But what?’

  DC snatched the phone from her. ‘I think I know.’

  She watched him take the blueprint and use it as an overlay. He adjusted the size until it matched the satellite image of Grand Central, then toggled back to street view so he could see things more clearly. He zoomed in, adjusted the blueprint a fraction more and then double-tapped the operative. The phone zoomed all the way in.

  He handed her the phone. ‘That’s where Denton is,’ he said. ‘If they were hunting for us there’d be more than one. That operative is with him.’

  ‘We need to check it out,’ she said. ‘But we have to wait for Nasira and Aviary.’

  DC’s jaws set hard. ‘We really don’t have time,’ he said.

  ‘They just need to wait until it’s clear.’

  ‘There’s an entire squadron of Blue Berets between us and them,’ DC said quietly. ‘That squadron could be patrolling, it could be static, it could break into fire-teams. If we wait—’

  ‘We improve our odds,’ Sophia said.

  DC raised an eyebrow. ‘Nasira is just one more operative. And your hacker explosives friend too.’

  ‘Recon it,’ Sophia said. ‘Then we pull back and decide.’

  He nodded. ‘Assuming we have the luxury of a decision.’

  Chapter 28

  The Grand Central terminal’s sub-basement was a control center from another era. The air was warm and musty and the ceiling lights were sparse, accompanied by a sagging American flag. The walls of the long, narrow sub-basement were gilded with banks of machinery and switchboards Sophia wasn’t entirely sure still operated. DC led her through the labyrinthine space until they reached what looked like a giant metal hamster’s ball.

  ‘The old rotary converter,’ DC said. ‘Used to supply power to the trains. Hitler even targeted it once.’

  ‘Where’s this OSS base of yours?’ Sophia said.

  ‘It’s not mine,’ he said, taking a sharp left.

  She followed him through to a much narrower corridor, the ceiling crowded with a dozen pipes. Occasional lamps glowed like lone fireflies. It was warmer down here.

  ‘Why did they build this place?’ Sophia said.

  ‘Originally it was a clandestine operations center for the OSS,’ DC said. ‘After the war, things shifted a little.’

  ‘What kind of shift?’ Sophia said.

  ‘The OSS sent a special team of US soldiers to seek and capture a specific list of Nazi scientists. Chemists, biochemists with coveted achievements in particular fields. They extracted the scientists from basements, cellars, castles, byzantine caves, death row. Secreted them in the United States. In this base.’

  ‘What sort of achievements are we talking?’ Sophia said.

  DC paused at a nondescript door and held his hand out. ‘Lockpicks.’

  Didn’t he have his own?

  She took a pair of full-length lockpicks from her jeans and handed them over. He crouched in front of the door and got to work. Sophia took the opportunity to remove her jacket and stow it in her ruck.

  ‘Their speciality was human experimentation,’ DC said. ‘Conducted under the guidance of the Ahnenerbe institutes across Germany.’

  ‘Sounds like Denton’s kind of people,’ Sophia said, slipping her ruck back over her shoulders.

  ‘Well, that is where he started,’ DC said.

  ‘I’m betting he’s already—’

  DC shushed her and focused on picking the lock. She felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘If you can’t do it, just give it to me,’ she said.

  ‘Look, I’m good for something,’ DC said.

  ‘Yeah, being ambiguous,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t let anything bad happen to you, I promise,’ DC said.

  The door opened and he stepped aside.

  She stepped through, pausing with her hand out. He dropped the lockpicks in her grasp. His fingers lingered across her palm. She stepped through and down a flight of metal stairs blackened with grime. Dangling from exposed wires, light globes peppered her descent. At the bottom she powered on her torch and turned her body to let DC by. He held a finger to his lips as he brushed past. His scent offered slight comfort at this subterranean depth, ten stories below Grand Central terminal.

  The corridor was more of a tunnel, unlit and damp. Sophia followed without a word until it opened into a larger space, connecting with three other tunnels. Before them, a blast door that was retracted.

  ‘Welcome to Neverland,’ DC said, stepping into the concrete foyer. The entire base was still lit, feeding off Grand Central terminal. Or at least the power was still intact. Many of the globes and tubes had deteriorated.

  ‘So this is where they took the Nazi scientists?’ Sophia said.

  She followed him inside, checking the corners of the enormous two-level foyer. Parts of the foyer that were not concrete had peeled or fallen away, leaving rusted metal skeletons across the balconies, stairs and walls.

  ‘Most of them,’ DC said.

  She passed a long reception desk coated in a thin layer of dust and dirt. Debris crunched underfoot.

  DC paused to check the plaque at reception for directions to the different levels. He dusted it with an elbow. She knew it wouldn’t be very forthcoming but it should give them a clue at least.

  ‘What sort of human experimentation did they do for the OSS?’ Sophia said. ‘Were they programming operatives back in those days? Playing with viruses?’

  It got a small laugh out of him. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Once they had the Nazi scientists here, they brought thousands of Army-enlisted men. The men unwittingly volunteered to expose themselves to comet-borne viruses.’

  ‘I almost don’t want to ask why,’ Sophia said. ‘But I will anyway.’

  He turned to meet her gaze.

  ‘W
hy?’ she said.

  ‘Easy.’ DC started up the stairs. ‘They wanted to make Captain America.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Sophia said. Her voice bounced off the concrete walls.

  DC paused in mid-step and studied her. ‘You’re j—you don’t know,’ he said. ‘He was a new comic book superhero in the forties. They used to draw him fighting Nazis and punching Hitler.’ DC continued up the stairs. ‘He was injected with an experimental serum that imbued him with greater powers.’

  Sophia snorted. ‘Like the Chimera vector?’

  ‘Sort of,’ DC said.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?’ Sophia said, climbing the stairs after him. ‘You know, sounds like Captain America was inspired by the virus testing they did here.’

  DC waited, watching her from behind a crumbling balustrade. She almost stumbled on a step and blushed.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘The OSS did recover a serum the Nazis developed during the war.’

  ‘Denton was ranting about a Nazi serum,’ Sophia said.

  She caught up with him and continued through the upper level. The paint was peeling from the walls and some of the fluorescent tube lights dangled from one end. Sophia moved between them.

  ‘That serum kept Denton young and cunning for decades,’ DC said.

  ‘At least until he cashed in on the Chimera vector,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Yeah,’ DC said, following her. ‘The Chimera vector was … sexy in many ways.’

  She turned to find his gaze was lower than it should’ve been.

  ‘Superior,’ he said. ‘Superior in many ways.’

  It was his turn to blush.

  She continued walking, keeping her smile to herself.

  They reached a new courtyard. Vibrant green moss had bloomed out from what was once a thriving garden in the center but was now overrun by lichen. The moss spiraled around the pillars and curled over the balconies. Sophia wondered how many more decades before the entire base became a spongy emerald labyrinth.

  The ceiling above was decorated with a large circular mosaic of what Sophia assumed was the OSS emblem. A pair of metallic eagle’s wings, or paratrooper wings. The eagle’s head, however, had been replaced by a single eye. The eye was large and gaped down at them, bits of the mosaic missing from the pupil.