The Phoenix Variant: The Fifth Column 3 Read online

  She led Nasira to the edge of town, occasionally passing other residents who stared at Nasira. She gave them an awkward nod, which they returned with enthusiastic waves and gleaming smiles.

  They soon reached the outskirts of the village. Nasira could see the snow continue for a distance before breaking. It made way for the sharp tips of the mountains that surrounded them. Lucia indicated southwest, where the trail would take her back to the path she knew, under the mountains.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nasira said.

  ‘You came a long way,’ Lucia said. ‘For that one story.’

  Nasira pulled the hood over her head to keep her ears warm. ‘It was an important story.’

  ‘And I’m glad you could tell it.’

  Nasira nodded and started towards the trail. She stopped. She couldn’t just leave it like that. Lucia was already walking back to the village.

  ‘Wait,’ Nasira said.

  She walked back to Lucia. Her mind fumbled for the words. She didn’t know how to start this part of the story. Maybe there wasn’t a way to start it.

  ‘Your brother. And your sister-in-law,’ Nasira said. ‘Lucia’s parents.’

  ‘Yes,’ the older Lucia said.

  ‘You told me you knew how they passed away,’ Nasira said.

  Lucia nodded. ‘Their store was robbed. They died from gunshot wounds.’

  ‘The … As children we were programmed,’ Nasira said.

  She was doing it now. There was no turning back.

  ‘The first operation is to … We … They’re taught … fooled into thinking someone is a terrorist. Or some sort of bad guy, you know.’

  Lucia watched her, silent. Nasira could tell her mind was working, decoding Nasira’s words quickly.

  ‘The first operation … it was to kill … it was meant to complete your programming. If you were successful, there was no doubt.’

  Tears were running down Lucia’s cheeks. She saw it coming.

  Nasira couldn’t stop now. She had to go through. She had to see this out. ‘Our first operation was to kill our own parents.’

  Lucia’s mouth was open. She tried to scream but no sound came. Nasira moved for her but Lucia flinched, stepped back. She hunched over, gasping.

  ‘But it wasn’t her,’ Nasira said. ‘Lucia didn’t do that. The people who programmed her did that.’

  Lucia straightened up, eyes glassy and cheeks flushed. She said nothing. Just stared through Nasira.

  ‘Did you kill your own parents?’ Lucia said.

  ‘No,’ Nasira said.

  ‘Why not?’ Lucia said. Her words struck Nasira with venom. ‘Were you too good for that?’

  Nasira swallowed. ‘I was an orphan,’ she said. ‘I was given a different assignment.’

  Lucia glared at her. ‘Go.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nasira said.

  ‘Just go.’

  Nasira felt the sting of tears in her own eyes. She turned, her hood up, and walked for the trail. Her legs seemed unwilling to walk anywhere. Not now, not after that. She didn’t want to go anywhere. But she certainly didn’t want to stay there a moment longer.

  She found the trail, a meticulous row of stone steps that led as far down the mountain face as she could see. She blinked and wiped her face, clearing the older Lucia and the village from her mind. She was finished now and she could return to Sophia.

  She wished she had her wooden staffs to take the pressure off her legs but she’d left them behind when Lucia had rescued her. It took her an hour to make it to the bottom of the stone steps and into the foothills.

  And that’s when she heard it.

  Yelling in the distance.

  It sounded like someone shouting a warning, or giving orders. And, more interesting still, it sounded American.

  The noise had come from the west, farther along the mountainside. She could see the ground drop off sharply ahead. Well, she couldn’t see it at all, but she knew the contours now.

  Ordinarily she would have circled around the voices and continued on her way, but she was curious. She decided it was best to identify the speaker, make sure they were just mountain climbers and that no one was in any danger and then move on quietly.

  She moved quickly through the snow, each step squeaking. She carefully stepped towards the sharp drop, planning to negotiate her way around it, but she stopped in her tracks when she caught sight of what was far below.

  It was a temporary camp, and it looked new.

  But this was no ordinary camp. Nasira couldn’t help but notice the security perimeter. She dropped to her stomach, removed her ruck and searched for her binos. She wriggled forward, slowly, until she had just enough space to get a visual. With the magnification of the binos she was able to identify a silver half-pipe shelter that wrapped around a dome-shaped structure. It looked like a donut. The half-pipe was large enough to drive a tractor through, and the dome tent was the size of an Olympic swimming pool. But what lay inside, Nasira did not know.

  The perimeter of the base was fringed with coils of razor wire, except for one entrance. And she could already make out three pairs of soldiers in white camouflage. Their attention was focused on the entrance. They watched people in white, baggy uniforms walk out of the base. On closer inspection, Nasira realized they were wearing contamination suits with hoods and visors removed. Some of them carried crates, others shiny black bags.

  The soldiers in white carried M4 carbines. There had been no effort to camouflage the carbines for the snow, although it did make her wonder if there were surveillance and sniper teams in the forest or higher on the mountain.

  Yeah, time to get the fuck out of here.

  But the core of the base drew her. She didn’t know how to describe what it was doing, but it riveted her attention. It burned.

  Her fingers started to shake. She balled them into fists.

  What the hell was happening?

  She calmed herself. Thought it through. Tried to figure out the many possible explanations for this base. But her mind wandered to the rear of the perimeter. A part of her had already planned a way inside.

  Hypothetically, of course.

  If she were to go in, there was a door at the rear of the half-pipe. Her hand touched the belt around her waist. The knife wasn’t the only thing she carried. She had lockpicks too, and a door like that would only take a minute, maybe two.

  Without patrolling sentries, it could be done with minimal risk. The soldiers at the front seemed fixed in position. But inside the base was high risk. She had no idea what was in there. The chances of being seen once she was inside increased from ten percent to fuck off don’t even think about it percent.

  It was a real stupid idea.

  And she was already moving. Behind the ridge line, out of view. Through a finger of forest. Her breathing quickened as she padded through the snow. She knew the fall of the land before she placed each step, so she never tripped or misjudged the depth of the snowfall.

  That’s coming in handy, she thought.

  And then she was there. At the rear of the base.

  No sentries.

  Just the razor wire and a large empty space between the wire and the base. She fished for her multitool from her ruck and snipped through with just four cuts. She held her boot over the final coil before it could retract along the fence. She knew she couldn’t leave sign of her entry. If they found the village they might interrogate Lucia. She didn’t want that.

  She stepped through the gap in the razor wire and unthreaded paracord from one of her boots. She used the paracord to draw the wire back together. So close that it looked intact from a distance.

  Her boot was tight enough that she could still walk on it, but she moved carefully through the deeper patches of snow, trying not to accidentally lodge it and have to make the rest of her trip with a missing boot.

  With no sign of sentries on either side of the base’s rear, she moved in a direct line for the door. If there was a surveillance or sniper team watching from abov
e there weren’t too many places for them to position themselves. She’d checked as she moved into position. But if they found a position to surveil then she was about to get sprung. And she had only her knife. So a confrontation with any carbine-wielding sentries was not high on her to-do list.

  She reached the door and, mouth open, listened for a moment. There was no point scrambling to get inside from a sniper. If there was one, she’d be dead by now. And rushing this was not a great idea. When she was satisfied she couldn’t hear anything in her vicinity, she inserted her rake lockpick—the one with three triangular bumps—and used her other lockpick’s end, which doubled as a torque wrench.

  She started raking and in two strokes she’d seated most of the pins. She used the rake lockpick to feel out each pin, slowly working her way from the end towards the front of the lock, testing each pin and lightly guiding it out of the shaft. With each seated pin, she felt the lock turn just a fraction more.

  Footsteps.

  Squeaky footsteps.

  They were coming from around the donut curve of the base. The stride was purposeful but not too purposeful. They weren’t looking for someone, but they did seem to be patrolling. Well, one of them was. She couldn’t hear a second set of boots in the snow. Any moment now, the sentry would see her and have enough distance between them to drop her where she stood, or capture her. Either wasn’t ideal.

  She worked hard on the second last pin. It felt seated but the door was still locked. She could move away from the sentry, work her way around the base. But she would soon run into another sentry. It was open ground out here in the snow.

  Her only way out was through.

  Last pin.

  The footsteps squeaked closer.

  Nasira’s eyes were on the edge of the base. Her fingers worked independently of her vision. She tried to listen to the pins, to hear the last pin seat. To hear the click as the lock turned.

  She heard the sentry sniff with a runny nose.

  Her hands were shaking.

  Not now, she thought, not fucking now.

  She almost lost grip on the rake lockpick. The footsteps were very close now. The sentry was one, maybe two steps away. adrenalin iced through her.

  Click.

  The lock turned.

  She palmed the lockpicks, stepped inside and looked down to notice she was missing a boot. She spotted the boot in the snow behind her. She opened the door, just wide enough to reach out, and plucked the boot. She pulled the door back in quickly, then slowing as the door reached the frame and—painfully slowly—closing the door with the handle turned. She released the handle last, very slowly.

  Then she held her breath.

  The footsteps moved towards the door.

  She reached for her knife, positioned herself beside the door. There was no one around her, no one to see her. She didn’t move.

  The footsteps continued past.

  She waited a moment and then exhaled.

  The half-pipe tent was surprisingly bare, lined with white vinyl and two continuous strips of fluorescent lights. It was like a fridge in there. Microwave-shaped heaters were suspended from various points in the ceiling, but they weren’t turned on. She exhaled again and saw her breath curl in the air.

  Along the sides of the half-pipe she could see tiny rectangular windows. She kept under them as she moved through. One side allowed her to look out into the snow, and she didn’t want to be spotted by a wayward sentry. The inside looked in to the dome-shaped center.

  Nasira moved to the first window and peered through. It was eerily lit by purple light, and only in certain places. The rest of the dome was bathed in darkness. She could make out a smaller dome inside. It looked like a semi-transparent bubble; the colors of its contents were blurred and smeared. Outside the bubble there were banks of equipment and what looked like a row of study workstations, self-contained like cubicles.

  But it was the bubble that drew her attention. It seemed to almost agitate its surroundings.

  Her breath fogged the window. She wiped it away with her sleeve. She knew she had to get inside. But through the clean window she noticed someone in a white NBC suit. It was a one-piece body suit with matching white boots and gloves. The person was unarmed and looked to be a civilian contractor, not one of the sentries from outside.

  Nasira moved deeper into the half pipe and found a door that connected to the inner dome. That was where she wanted to go. She took care to open the door slowly, listening for sound. There was an in-between chamber and a door that connected to the inner dome. She opened it slowly as well.

  She set foot in the inner dome. She relied only on her lack of movement to avoid detection. There wasn’t much cover she could use to cross from there to the bubble in the center. The inner dome, like the half-pipe, lacked cameras. The base must be extremely temporary, she figured, if there were no cameras.

  She spotted the white-suited civilian behind the workstation cubicles, bent over to collect something at his feet. She checked the edges of the inner dome and was pleased to find no one else lurking. She breathed in slowly and exhaled halfway.

  Then she moved. Quickly.

  For the other side of the cubicles. This close to the bubble, she could almost feel it humming. From her end of the cubicles she listened to the footsteps of the civilian. His boots squeaked on the vinyl floor. He moved away from the bubble to the edge of the inner circle. As he did so, she carefully moved around the cubicles, keeping them between her and the civilian. She heard him open a door and move through into another portion of half-pipe. He’d left the dome. She was clear for now.

  Turning to face the cubicles, she realized they weren’t cubicles at all. They were square containment cells. In the cell before her, a crumpled human body in a powder blue hospital gown. Spidery blue veins worked along his neck. His eyes were a dull white, pupils wide. Blood had dried across the Plexiglas wall in mid-drip, leaving long crimson fingers.

  In the cell adjacent, a second human body in a gown lay in the fetal position. Thin arms curled over knees. Underneath, a pool of dark deoxygenated blood. Nasira stepped back from the row of five cells, struggling to draw breath. She could see a third body, limbs mottled in purple bruises. A fourth, the same. But the body at the end was different.

  Nasira pushed herself closer, to the fifth cell. To the body that sat upright, hands clasped in her lap. Although just as dead as the other poor fuckers, she seemed less distressed. There was no blood. No mottled skin. No sign of illness. Sitting in her hospital gown, she looked perfectly healthy.

  New footsteps.

  From Nasira’s right. She was completely exposed. She darted past the cells and took a position on the end, hidden from the footsteps as they approached the cells. These footsteps sounded slightly different, but only slightly. The civilians were wearing boots so it was hard to tell them apart. And the echo through the inner dome made it tricky to pinpoint the location of the boots as they moved around. Nasira drew her knife and kept it below her waist.

  The bubble in the center drew her focus. She had to blot it out with her mind and focus on the ground, on the contours of the earth. She could see its magnetic field slide away from her. Although see wasn’t the right word. She just knew it was there.

  The person—civilian or sentry—fizzled into her awareness. He was behind her, near the other end of the containment cells. She turned to the containment cells and noticed a certain distortion in the wall of the cell. But it wasn’t the cell at all. It was through the cell. The person on the other side. And through the indistinct shape, she knew he was carrying a long weapon, a carbine. He was definitely a sentry.

  And he was moving towards her.

  She circled around the back of the containment cells, each step carefully placed with the outside of her feet first, then the inside. It helped her avoid stepping on things that might make an unexpected sound, like the empty blister pack in front of her, discarded after someone finished their medication. She stepped off the blister pack witho
ut applying any weight and continued until she was on the other side of the dome from the sentry. And completely exposed to the dome’s main entrance.

  The sentry continued along the containment cells, perhaps inspecting them as he went. She wondered whether he was as disturbed as she was, or interested, or perhaps didn’t give a shit either way. That was the worst of the three, she decided.

  He seemed to spend some time in that position before continuing on. She could feel his movements. They were indistinct—she had a general idea of his position and his movement, and she could almost see him move across the ground behind her.

  He emerged at the end, where Nasira had been hiding only moments ago. She matched his movements, placing herself at the other end of the cells. She caught sight of his back. She watched him continue in the same direction with a degree of purpose and increased speed. He moved for the very doors she’d come through.

  Nasira didn’t move from the end of the containment cells. She kept herself low to make herself smaller and waited for the door to close behind the sentry. Then she made her move.

  She moved for the bubble and reached an open zipper. She was closer to the source now. And it made her hands shake. Pressure welled inside her head. It spread to her body and buzzed across her. She clenched her teeth and stepped through the open zipper.

  Inside, another much smaller bubble, only this was sealed up tight. It was completely transparent, unlike the other bubble, and she could see everything inside.

  Rubble. Just rubble in a bubble.

  But there was something about the rubble. It shimmered, looked like honeycomb had fused with liquid silver. It seemed to pulse around her. She recalled the meteor that passed overhead the night before.

  ‘Just a big chunk of rock.’ She shrugged to herself. ‘And RDX explosives in a ring around—’ Nasira paused in mid-step. ‘Oh shit.’

  Inside the smaller bubble she noticed a rectangular timer with a display.

  00:00:41.

  Nasira sheathed her knife and rolled her eyes. ‘Great.’

  She stepped from the bubble and broke into a run. There was no one in the inner dome to see her escape. They had the good sense to escape already. She moved for the same doors she’d come through, hoping that sentry hadn’t lingered. And if he had, she gripped her knife.