A failing fluorescent tube flickered, spraying flashes of light across the surface of a cup of coffee, as its owner stirred the thick liquid and absently gazed out of the window of the café.
Colonel Christopher Martin watched as cars drifted by in the outside world and attempted to stretch the knots out of his tired neck. It had been a long night. Yet here, pouring over the personnel files of the individuals who worked at his newly assigned base, he knew the day could be even longer.
Chris was a physically imposing man, who’s twenty years of military service showed in every one of his chiselled features.
Chris began his career as a sniper; his skill with the ballistic art evident from the first time he held a rifle. Over time, his other abilities came to the fore and he found himself quickly promoted through the ranks, until finally being given his latest role as an infiltrator; a branch of forward reconnaissance whose purpose was to scout enemy fortifications and disrupt supply lines before engagements.
It was during those years, many of them spent alone in some of the worst territory on the planet that Chris’ tainted love affair with death began to dwindle.
Iraq, Palestine, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Mozambique; Chris had been to all of them. In every one, the goal of the mission had been different, but the inevitability of his task never changed.
As an infiltrator, close combat was frequently the order of the day and those encounters, as Chris wearily began to find out, had a way of degrading the soul.
Firing a shot from distance, gave kills an air of the dreamlike. He often thought it no more real than a video game, the people seen as though through a screen. Killing someone up close was different. Delivering the wretched stench of someone’s innards into the light of day may look cool in a movie, but it was a pitiable horror to witness someone beg for their life first-hand. He was sure, somewhere deep inside a small part of his humanity was lost with every life he took.
As Chris’ superiors often told him, there was no doubting he was good at his job. His problem however, was that he was increasingly sure his job was no longer good for him.
Therefore, only recently, he informed his superiors of his decision to move away from the active theatres of war and put out his feelers.
Chris was quickly rewarded with the offer of a civilian assignment. At first, the task seemed simple enough; to babysit a group of scientists working on ancient artefacts dug up from the sands of the Iraq. However, when his superiors asked him to determine if the objects could be weapons, his interest was piqued.
Reading the research overview, Chris discovered that when the artefacts were removed from the tomb in Iraq, the recovering archaeologists experienced what was later described as effects similar to radiation sickness. He now knew the injuries suffered were what originally highlighted their destructive potential to the military hierarchy.
Chris yawned, swallowing another mouthful of coffee, and turned his attention back to the stack of files on the table. After spending a few minutes re-familiarising himself with the base’s schematics, he looked down at the first bio and opened the coversheet. He should have completed this task last night, but preparations overran, as often they do, and he found himself deep in the bowels of planning until early morning. Now, sitting in this small café only a few miles from his new base, he was playing catch up.
Professor David Edwards was the lead researcher of the base and was looking after investigations into the artefact simply designated as ‘one’. His bio detailed a prestigious academic career and an equally impressive fifteen years of service to various government bodies. He had curly, greying hair and sported neat, expensive-looking glasses that showed off his stern, authoritative stare. He was listed as single, and although nearly into his sixties, the photo showed a man who did not look a day over fifty.
The next two bios were those of the researchers into artefact two, Professor Harry Linley and Doctor Frank Geffers. Their photos showed men wearing tweed jackets and woolly jumpers. If he had to guess, he would assume that leather, stitched-on patches were also to be found somewhere about their person. Nerds. Some nerds were cool, but some were not. Not wanting to tempt fate, it would be his business to attempt to have only the briefest of contact with them.
Chris’ mood picked up when he looked at the bios for artefact three’s researchers. Lieutenant Steven Golding was a distinguished military field surgeon who also held a PhD in archaeology. It was pleasing for Chris to note that there would be someone versed in military protocol when he arrived. However, it was Steven’s assistant that really caught the eye.
Doctor Louisa Marshall was an expert in radio carbon dating and forensic analysis techniques. She was the base’s medical officer, and at only twenty-eight was the youngest member of research team by some distance. She was tall, refined, and wore her hair in long, blonde curls. He smiled. He would definitely enjoy meeting her.
Chris flipped over the last bio and looked at the name on the cover, Private Justin McDonald. This was to be his assistant. He was a slip of a man, barely into his twenties. After qualifying with a first from Cambridge, he became a fast track army scientist with a speciality in computers. At nearly six two, Justin could not have weighed more than twelve stone and the bones of his face poked against his pale skin. Chris disliked raw recruits. He knew the army needed a constant influx of fresh meat, but he had spent so long alone that working with anyone filled him with dread. Hopefully, Justin would be a man who took orders well, and would kindly stay out of his way.
Chris gulped the last vestiges of his coffee and prised himself from his chair, before making his way to his car.
His newly assigned office was built in the late eighties. Most people looking at the building from the road would be unaware of the secrets that lay within its corridors, as unassuming as it was. It had four aboveground levels of labs, mostly rented out to science teams affiliated with, but not part of, the MOD. Underneath that, it had eight, belowground levels of secure projects split into four twin-level bases. His new assignment resided in the very bottom two.
Chris had seen this type of setup before. The people in the labs would be renting the building at a cheap rate from the MOD. They would be the front; the cover for what went on below. Plausible deniability was always key. If anyone asked, or even turned up at the front desk to find out what was going on, no one in the top four levels would know anything about the subterranean complex.
After only a few minutes travel, he drove down the long, arcing driveway that separated his base from the road and into its underground car park.
After waiting for the service lift to arrive and descend, he stepped out into the sterile air of his new home.
Immediately in front of him, through the base’s particle filtration barriers, an empty bank of computer consoles lit up the dank interior, but nothing else moved.
Chris checked his watch. It was half past seven. Surely the base could not be unmanned at this hour?
After passing through the filters with a familiar whoosh of air, he strode beyond the empty desk to an intersection. Peering down each dimly lit corridor, he strained to see anything. Trying to reason what was happening he walked back to the computers.
Entering his logon details into an unlocked console, Chris scanned to the security access screen and placed his request to know who was on site. A few moments later, a screen popped up telling him that the service he was attempting to access was off-line and that he should try again later. Great. He hated computers enough when they worked.
He thought for a moment and tried a different system; the security camera feeds. His screen displayed a message about partial availability due to on-going purge activity, but he ignored it and requested access to the live data.
Chris knew the base was like a noughts and crosses board, with a main meeting room in the centre square of the top level and a canteen in the same spot below. Spread around the other squares in the uppermost level, were the base’s labs and diagnostic eq
uipment. Underneath them, Gyms, sleeping areas and a large computer hall were located. From his memory of the layout, he decided as his starting point to cycle through each of the base’s labs in order before moving downstairs.
Chris did not mind the thought of the base’s personnel being in the canteen, or even the gym. What he could not tolerate was that they were down there and the front desk was unmanned. Protocol, even in a secure lab, was protocol. If he found McDonald down there, the young man would get an ear bashing he would never forget.
The computer issued a ping to state the feeds were ready, and Chris reached over and began to flip through them.
The very first video stopped him in his tracks. There, lying on the floor of lab one, was a body. A pool of blood, perhaps four feet across surrounded a man. As he used the controls to zoom in, he realised it was one of the people from the base, Doctor Frank Geffers.
Geffers’ body was slumped forward from his chair, clearly assaulted from behind as he worked. A large mush in the back of his skull, maybe six inches across, oozed blood onto the floor and a few feet from the body, a fire extinguisher lay on its side. He would not have to look far for the murder weapon.
Chris’ heart was beating fast, his senses ramping up into a state of full alert. The base was breached.
Closing the feeds and returning to the main security screen, he attempted an emergency lockdown of the base. Nothing. Infuriated, he tried again. Still nothing. What was happening to the damn computers?
Without time to find out, he reached into his pocket and retrieved his mobile phone. No signal.
As he tried to calm himself and reason what move he should make next, a series of gunshots echoed out. Whatever was going on in here, it was still in progress.
Chapter 3