“If any of those things are still ticking, they know we’re here now,” Layla said.
Timothy reappeared, and his voice came over the comms. “Still not detecting any exhaust plumes. But the organic signal is stronger.”
While the other divers listened and scanned their HUDs for movement, Michael moved around the corner to see the glowing red outline of a doorway inside the door.
Les handed the laser rifle back to Layla as Michael sucked water from the straw in his helmet and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. Then, taking point, he approached the opening cautiously, flitting his helmet beam across the dark lab.
Dust particles, stirred by the crashing steel door, danced like snowflakes in their headlamp beams as they entered what appeared to be an undisturbed space. Four separate rooms, all blocked off by glass walls and secure doors, made up the labs.
As they progressed deeper, Michael saw that the four sections were just half the space. Through another glass wall, he could see two more walled-off sections. In both rooms, white suits hung from hooks on the racks, and coiled red cords dangled from the ceiling.
He checked the room on his right, which contained white lab tables and several chairs. But there were no cobwebs—or evidence of any other living thing, for that matter. The high-tech lab appeared to have done exactly what it was designed to do: keep even the most microscopic particles out—or in.
The thought made him shiver as he brought up his hand and signaled the team to check out the first four sections. He went left, directing his helmet beam at the enclosed glass space filled with several dozen three-foot-tall stasis chambers.
Each of these glass cylinders contained murky green liquid. Skeletal remains rested on the bottom of one of them, but the water was too clouded for him to make out the species.
“Over here,” Michael said over the comms.
Layla and Les joined him outside the glass wall.
“Gross,” Layla said.
Les shined his beam inside. “What are those?”
“No idea,” Michael replied. “Timothy, where is that signal coming from?”
“I can’t get an exact location, but it should be somewhere inside this room.”
Michael moved to the next glass enclosure, where eight metal vats were lined up against a gray wall. The lids were closed, and thick electrical cables ran up to a bank of boxes that once fed them power.
“This must be where Dr. Julio Diaz worked,” Les said quietly.
“Maybe we’ll finally learn what that work was,” Layla replied.
Michael really didn’t give a damn what the doctor did. He just wanted to figure out what was making the signal, then find the machines so they could get the hell out of here.
He moved past several lab stations. On the long tables were microscopes, computers, and trays of vials. Several robotic machines with spiderlike arms were huddled in the corner of the room.
“Looks like an operation area,” Layla said. “Maybe they used it for experiments.”
They moved on to the final walled-off area, their headlamps shooting through the glass and illuminating a clean room where scientists had once prepped to enter the lab.
A faint clanking noise pulled Michael back the way they had come. His beam hit the opening Les had cut in the door.
“Did you hear something?” Michael asked.
Layla and Les shook their heads. He motioned for them to return to the first section of labs, where the stasis chambers were sealed off.
“See if you can hack this door,” Michael said to Les.
Les hooked up his patch cords and began the process while Michael and Layla walked around the glass walls, shining their lights into the chambers beyond. Cables ran up from the floor to the chambers they had once powered to keep the contents alive.
There were twenty chambers, all filled with the same murky fluid that kept him from seeing what else they contained. He went back to the one with the bones that could be a small human skeleton.
“A child,” he whispered.
A click sounded.
“Got it,” Les said.
The divers met Timothy outside, where his hologram spread a bright glow through the open room.
“Stay sharp,” Michael said.
They fanned out down the aisles of stasis chambers, their light beams flitting back and forth. Michael headed straight for the cylinder with the child-size remains. He used his gloved hand to wipe off the glass, but that didn’t help any.
There was only one way to see what was inside.
“Everyone out of the room,” Michael said.
“Why?” Layla asked. “What are you going to do?”
He raised his laser rifle, prompting Les to gently pull Layla away. Michael waited until they were outside the glass walls. Then, back-stepping a few feet, he aimed the laser rifle and pulled the trigger.
Glass exploded, and fluid sloshed onto the floor, pushing Michael back a few more steps. All that remained on the floor of the stasis chamber was the skeleton.
He had stepped around the puddle to examine the remains when he again heard the mysterious clanking noise. He glanced over his shoulder at Les and Layla, who both nodded. They had heard it this time.
It came again a few beats later, louder this time—a mechanical noise, not something an organic life-form would make.
“Timothy,” Michael whispered over the comm channel. “Are you picking up any exhaust plumes?”
“Negative, Commander.”
Stepping back from the bones inside the destroyed chamber, Michael walked carefully around the skirt of broken glass and green fluid.
The laser bolt had bored through another cylinder and the metal wall behind it, where a red hole glowed. He stopped a few feet away and bent down to direct his light at the opening. The beam penetrated into what appeared to be another room.
“Check this out,” Michael said. He made his way around the final two chambers and found a door he had missed earlier, hidden in the shadows in the corner, behind several other vats.
“That signature is getting stronger,” Timothy said.
Layla and Les stopped outside the new door.
“I didn’t see this earlier,” Layla said quietly.
“Me, either,” Michael replied. “Les, see if you can get it open.”
While Les again unpacked his minicomputer and patch cords, Michael moved over to the still red-hot opening in the wall and looked through it.
The helmet beam illuminated another lab, full of larger stasis chambers, but unlike the smaller ones, the liquid inside these cylinders wasn’t green, and the remains weren’t skeletal.
“Mother of God,” Michael whispered.
Inside each chamber was suspended a naked man or woman. Cords were attached to their extremities.
The door to the lab clicked, unlocked, and Les stepped away.
“What?” he asked, oblivious to what Michael was seeing through the hole.
Layla stepped up to the open doorway. “Holy wastes!” she gasped. “What in the apocalypse are those?”
Michael moved over to examine the stasis chambers inside the room. The new angle gave him a view of several bodies that didn’t appear totally human after all. Some had mechanical limbs and even heads that looked… robotic.
“Guess we finally know what Dr. Diaz was doing here,” Layla whispered.
Les stared for a moment and then shook his head. “I had a bad feeling about coming back here. Looks like I was right.”
Timothy reappeared in the entryway of the room, his glow spreading outward and illuminating more of the chambers.
“Commander, I have a theory on what we’re seeing here,” the AI said.
“What’s that?”
“Hybrids.”
“Hybrids?” Layla asked.
“Yes, and I believe most of them were still alive and hooked up to backup power before we dropped the EMP bomb.”