There next came the sound of concrete moving, and then the grunt of human strain. The circle lifted, and like a giant stone birthday cake, the many layers of reinforced concrete, steel, and tile rose into the air — a massive two solid feet of it — and then impossibly, it was laid gently beside the hole as if it was feather light.
A figure appeared next. A wetsuit still damp with the waters of the nearby Moskva River clung to its muscular frame. Alex Hunter pulled himself out of the hole, moved quickly to the door, and carefully stole a glance through the single portal. Both guards were still at either side of the frame, the noise inside of the room contained by the soundproofed barrier.
Satisfied, Hunter crossed back to Captain Graham, strapped down on the steel table. Hunter took the wetsuit-hood from his head, and stared down, his gray-green eyes expressionless as he examined Graham’s drawn and tortured features. Moving quickly now, he drew a small box from a pouch at his belt, and unwound a wire and clip from it. This he then attached to the metal probe extending from Graham’s nostril. He waited a second or two for the readout on the small screen to calibrate the brain function of the man.
Hunter grunted, and then spoke softly, his voice carrying via the tiny device at his temporal bone behind his ear, to be relayed back to his home base.
“Brain dead. Orders?”
The response was calm and deep. “Termination.”
Alex unclipped the wires and replaced the box back into his belt pouch. Next came a syringe, which he held at Graham’s neck. He paused, looking down.
“You deserve a lot worse.” Alex stared at the man who had tried to capture and either kill or experiment on him. Captain Robert Graham’s work had saved his life, had roused him from a lifelong brain death to becoming the extraordinary being he now was. But then, when the military scientist tried to repeat the experiment, he had failed time and again. His response had been to recover Alex — by any means — and then turn him inside out to see why he was a success when hundreds of others had failed.
Alex’s eyes began to burn with fury as the memories rushed back. Graham had unleashed killers upon him — their orders to bring him in dead or alive. The final insult came when Graham had threatened his family. And now, what had Graham told the Russians? Who else now knew about him, about Aimee, and Joshua?
Alex’s teeth were bared. “You deserve this hell.” He knew the empty shell couldn’t possibly hear him, but also knew that if circumstances were different, he would have killed the man anyway. And that death might not have been so… easy.
“Your lucky day. My orders are to release you.”
He inserted the needle, injected the amber fluid, and then placed a finger on Graham’s neck, feeling his pulse quicken, flutter, and then abruptly stop as expected. The alarm that followed wasn’t.
The banshee shriek that tore through the room meant either he’d been seen, or the life-sign monitor had a fail-safe attached — it seemed they wanted Graham to keep on living in his own private hell for a long time to come.
“Shit.” Alex moved quickly to finish his job — he withdrew a small vial of greenish fluid from another pouch, carefully unscrewed the lid, and then poured the contents over Graham’s face. The flesh sizzled and started to cave-in on itself — there would be no pictures of the man left to parade on the Internet as some grisly warning to the West.
He had seconds now. Alex lifted a metal stool, stabbing it into the overhead lights, plunging the small tiled room into an eerie darkness lit only by some dotted red lights on the myriad of machines monitoring Graham’s body.
Alex looked towards the door. “Party time.” It burst open.
Doctor Dimitry Liminov pushed into the room, and immediately froze. He would have been expecting to see the prone figure of Captain Robert Graham, but instead was met by the sight of a tall figure all in black, whose eyes shone silver in the darkened room. Liminov’s mouth opened and closed for a second or two.
“Gv… gvar…” The call to the guards was barely above a whisper. Liminov sucked in a huge breath, turned, and then shouted: “GVARDIYA, GVARDIYA!’
The doors exploded open again, and Alex pushed past Liminov on his way to meet the new arrivals. As the first man entered the room, Alex grabbed him and dragged him in hard, flinging his six-foot frame up against the white tiled wall. The guard’s impact left a red streak as he slid to the ground and lay still.
The next guard had enough time to bring around his rifle stock and swipe it across Alex’s cheek; the crushing impact was brutal in the enclosed room. Before the guard could recover from sweeping his gun across the intruder’s face, Alex had delivered a flat strike across his throat to silence him. The man grabbed at his neck before he was punched once in the temple. He fell like a tree, unconscious before hitting the ground.
Liminov’s screams contained notes of rage and fear, but Alex continued to ignore him, and lifted a metal stool, breaking off one of its legs as he moved to the door. He used the length of steel to jam it through the handles, effectively locking Liminov in.
He then turned to the Russian scientist. Alex’s face showed an ugly crush-mark on his cheekbone. The flesh rippled for a moment before the wound stopped bleeding, and the bones popped back into place. The skin started to crawl closed over the trauma mark — weeks of healing in seconds.
Liminov’s face twisted in recognition. “I know who you are. You are Captain Graham’s prize lab rat, the one they call the Arcadian. You’re too late…” Liminov backed up, keeping the silver table containing the moldering pile of flesh that used to be Captain Robert Graham between himself and Alex. “He has already told us everything.”
Alex smiled without humor. “Not everything.” He moved around the table and grabbed the shrieking scientist. “You have no idea who I am.” He dragged Liminov towards the table. “And you have no idea what else is in here with me.”
Alex pulled Liminov around to force him to look at the dead American captain, pushing his head down hard.
“Now tell me how you were just following orders.” Alex’s voice was without pity. He pulled Liminov upright. “You and your president need to learn not to touch our stuff.”
“I’ll be sure to give President Volkov your message.” Liminov spat the words into Alex’s face. “And then let him know who sent it — you’ll never be able to stop looking over your shoulder. You, your family, your friends, not even your son, Joshua.”
Alex’s cold smile dropped at hearing the name. “Yes, we should all keep looking over our shoulders.” Alex suddenly twisted the man’s head until it sat backwards on his neck. “And I think he’ll get our message now.”
The door shuddered as men started to heave against it, trying to get inside the room. Alex dragged Liminov’s body up over Graham’s, and then reached into his belt pouch. There was a gas disk that he stuck to the wall, and then punched hard — a thick, green gas started to jet from its sides. The chlorine gas was a heavy, stinking gas that destroyed the respiratory system. Without at least a charcoal filter gasmask, no one would be entering the room. It also created an impenetrable fog, concealing him from the door’s glass portal.
Alex held his breath and shut his eyes, moving by memory to the hole in the floor. He eased into it, and then gently dragged the huge circular block of stone and tile back over the top and lowered it down over him, sealing the hole like a massive cork.