“Cowboy to Bug, do you copy?” I said it again and again. Static. Maybe a fragment of a word. Nothing I could understand. Just in case it was my gear I had Top and Bunny call in. Same thing. And we couldn’t hear each other on the team channel. We stood for a moment in silent frustration.
Top said, “Interference? Iron in the mountains could be eating the signal.”
“What’s the play?”
“Take some pictures and then we’ll leave it alone,” I said. “We have bigger fish to fry.”
“Like finding out why everybody lost their damn minds,” said Top. “And whether we’re at war with Russia and China. Little stuff like that.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Little stuff like that. Kind of interested to know where the hell Erskine and the rest of the Gateway geeks are.”
“Kind of thinking they’re somewhere with their throats cut,” said Top.
“Maybe. But there were our own people mixed in with the Chinese and Russians. I’m actually not leaning toward this being an invasion. More like a shared problem.”
He nodded, looking unhappy. “Some kind of bioweapon that messes with people’s heads?”
“Or something,” I said, nodding.
“Sheee-eeee-eeee-it,” he said, dragging it all the way out.
“Okay,” said Bunny, “but what do we want to do about the city? Are we going into it?”
“Not unless we have to,” I said. “Let’s document this machine, then find the Gateway team.”
“When we do,” said Top, “I’m going to be okay with beating some answers out of someone. I’m going to go ugly on them and make it hurt.”
“Hooah,” said Bunny.
“I’m in,” I agreed.
We each took out small but powerful ultra-high-res cameras and began documenting everything. The machine, the city, everything.
As he worked, Bunny very quietly said, “Do not let my calm, cool exterior fool you gentlemen. I am a really short step away from freaking the fuck out.”
Top was leaning in to take flash pictures of the interior of the big machine. “Hell, Farm Boy, don’t go thinking you hold the patent on being sphincter-clenching scared. I would give your left nut to be ten thousand miles away from right here.”
“Is ten thousand miles really far enough?” mused Bunny.
The cameras went flash-flash-flash. Water dripped behind us, somewhere in the city. And several times I heard the soft, shuffling feet of heavy and awkward bodies. I couldn’t see more of the penguins, but we could smell them. Bunny kept throwing uneasy glances over his shoulder. His face and shirt were still stained with his blood. It’s always hard to keep your best game face bolted on when you’ve already been hurt by something this strange. It didn’t help that our intel didn’t match the situation on the ground. Or that we had no way to get fresh orders. Normally I don’t mind operating without a leash, but this was beyond me.
It was beyond anything I could have imagined. The plots of nine hundred science fiction movies began rumbling through my head. Bunch of guys trapped in a remote place with inexplicable weirdness. Some unseen force picking everyone off one at a time. Those things never end well.
Top pointed into the opening of the machine. There was a tunnel that ran backward into shadows. “Looks like this thing curves down. There’s something just over the edge but I can’t get a shot. Think it’s safe to stand up on the edge to get a better—?”
Before he could finish, the machine suddenly pulsed. No other word for it. There was a sound like the electrical kick of a starter. A growl that was cut off almost at once. And for a split second the first dozen rings of the tunnel flashed as LED lights hidden in the recesses throbbed once.
Then… again.
A third time. Each time there was that chunk sound, as of a giant engine trying to start and failing.
If that’s what it was.
“Damn it, Farm Boy,” bellowed Top, “what did you touch?”
But Bunny was standing on the far side, twenty feet back from the mouth of the tunnel, camera raised to take a wide-angle picture. “I didn’t touch anything.”
The lights and sound pulsed once more and then paused. That’s how it felt. A pause. The activity did not feel as if it actually stopped. There was a feeling of awful anticipation as the whole cavern suddenly fell silent. Bunny hurried over and we stood there, staring down into the tunnel of darkness.
“What the hell—?” began Bunny, and then his words were also cut short as a thousand lights suddenly flared on with a brilliance so intense that it was like being stabbed through the brain. It was an almost physical blow and we all cried out and staggered back. As we stumbled, we all tried to turn and run.
But we weren’t fast enough.
Out of the depths of that black throat came a massive exhalation of foul air that struck us with hurricane force, plucked us off our feet, and hurled us up the slope. That air was thick and humid and smelled of rotting meat. It exhaled at us as if the tunnel was the throat of some great carnivore. We were big men carrying heavy equipment, but in that belch of black wind we were nothing and it vomited us from the entrance. We hit hard on the stone ramp and rolled a dozen feet. I tried not to breathe in that foul wind, but the impact knocked the air out of my lungs and I gulped in a breath through sheer reflex. It was horrible. It was the worst smell, the worst taste I’ve ever experienced, and as soon as I stopped sliding I rolled over, tore the balaclava away from my mouth just in time, and vomited. I could hear Top and Bunny retching, too. The whole world seemed to swirl around me and my stomach heaved again. And again. Even when my stomach was empty I could not get that terrible taste of rotting meat out of my mouth.
The machine pulsed once more, and light flooded the cavern, bleaching out all colors, casting everything into sharp lines of black and white. The light was so monstrously intense it felt like I was being burned by it.
Then…
Nothing.
The light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The pulsing machine noise stopped and there was some indefinable quality to the silence that let me know that whatever this was… had stopped.
Our flashlights and BAMS units and everything else, every piece of equipment we owned, went dead.
We damn near went dead, too. I slumped down, feeling spent and sick and weak. Feeling swatted flat. Feeling like nothing at all. Bunny groaned and flopped over on his back. Top was on hands and knees, head hung, lips slack and wet, eyes bugged and staring.
I turned my head…
… and…
… looked at myself.
No, it wasn’t a reflection.
I was on hands and knees looking at my body, my face, my own eyes staring back at me with total shock. The other me flinched back away.
“Wh-what — what the fuck…?” I said.
Or, he said with my mouth and my voice.
I — the other me — was still on hands and knees. I raised one hand and reached out toward him. Toward me.
There isn’t a way to say this because there wasn’t any way to be this. My brain felt different. There were other thoughts in there that weren’t my thoughts.
I saw Lydia Ruiz, one of the most senior members of Echo Team, there. Laughing. Wearing only bra and panties as she walked across the bedroom floor toward the bathroom.
Only it wasn’t my bedroom. I’ve seen Lydia in her underwear before. I’ve seen her naked once when we all had to strip out of contaminated clothes. But not like this. She was in frilly underclothes, not the plainer stuff she wore when going to war. She was singing along with a Bruno Mars song, translating it into Spanish as she sang. Then she unhooked her bra and hung it over the doorknob as she entered the bathroom and leaned in to turn on the tap.