In another few minutes he was swimming beneath the dark water of the Moskva River. I love it when things go to plan, he thought.
The first underwater mine detonated fifty feet from his right. The instantaneous change in water pressure created a shock wave that pummeled his body and made his ears bleed. Alex hung, momentarily stunned, before jolting into action.
The Moskva River mines were probably strung in a cordon around the Kremlin’s underwater side — too deep to affect shipping, and probably residing near the bottom — and were remotely detonated or activated by movement. Either way, they created a deadly explosive net around the building.
Alex sensed the second mine looming before it detonated. This one was coming up fast, and was only ten feet from him. Though he spun and kicked away furiously, the proximity of the explosion was like a giant hammer compressing his body and brain.
He kicked hard, using legs and arms furiously to swim deep. He grabbed onto some debris sticking from the silted bottom, and held on. His eyes widened as he saw the circular shape slowly rising from the silt before him. The mine immediately detonated, its compression blast battering every cell in his body. His eyes closed and his breathing slowed, as his mind took him somewhere else.
Alex Hunter floated, drifting and dreaming. He was freezing, and things lunged at him from the darkness — things with gaping mouths, or horned beaks, slick tentacles, or scaled talons. Claws ripped at him, determined to tear him to shreds and devour the morsels. They scratched, bit, and stabbed at his body. He was pushed and bumped, and the horrors shredded the fabric of his garments, the same as they tore at his sanity.
He wanted it to end, wanted his peace. A tiny voice whispered to him: it only hurts for a while, and then all you’re left with is a small scar and a smile. Who said that? He remembered: his father, from so long ago that it was just a faint echo in his memory.
He then saw the boy, his son Joshua, saw his face as he waved to him while he was being carried away. Then a beautiful woman, with night-dark hair and ice-blue eyes. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. Aimee, his mind whispered. I’m so sorry.
They’re all gone. Another voice now, the sly one that tormented him. You left them.
Never, he shouted in his mental chaos.
Yes, you left them. Alone, unprotected. You were weak, selfish. They could already be dead, and you let it happen.
Never! Anger boiled up within him, making him feel hot, red hot, the air around him crackling with furious energy. There was a sharp pain in his shoulder, but when he went to bat it away, he found his arms were held tight. He floated up, not to the surface of freezing water, but to consciousness. Then he heard the voices, heard and felt the rumbling of the truck, and felt the chill against his skin.
Alex stayed motionless, just letting his senses catch up. There were Russian voices. He was stripped to the waist, his wetsuit removed, and he was tied to a wooden pallet. He opened his eyes a slit. It was near dark in the back of the truck, a single lantern swung overhead, but it was more than enough light for him to see clearly.
He heard the men around him talking about being near the Lytkarino District — he knew it — fifteen miles from the Kremlin, and now they were heading back there. He must have floated in the river for miles. He saw that the men wore police uniforms. They must have dragged him from the river.
“You feel… he’s very hot… too hot for a normal man.”
There was a hand on his chest, and then another.
“He has a fever?”
“Maybe, but now you watch,” the voice said in Russian.
Alex saw the man lift a small blade, and touch it to his shoulder. The truck hit a pothole and the blade penetrated deep. He felt the sting of the knife, and then the familiar burning sensation.
“Ach… no matter. Now, you watch,” the man said quickly to his comrade, dragging him forward.
Alex knew what they were seeing; the wound would bubble and hiss like acid, as the flesh knitted back together, his metabolism healing the cut almost immediately. A wonder to them, and probably why they were transporting him to the Kremlin, rather than simply leaving him locked in a prison cell at the local police station. He knew when he got there, he was as good as dead, or nearly dead — they’d do to him what they had done to Graham. They’d strap him down, interrogate, and torture him. But his unique metabolism would continue to regenerate him, keeping him alive, so they could question and torture him, over and over, forever.
He waited, counting the seconds. There was a third man, dozing, and another in the front cabin, driving. He needed to be silent, and needed the vehicle. He waited, counting the seconds. The pothole jerked the truck to the side and rattled its frame. The lantern arced, its light swinging away from Alex on the pallet. In the split second it took for the light to swing back, the men’s faces when suddenly illuminated again immediately twisted in shock as they found a half naked figure looming up, shredded rope dangling from each wrist.
Alex grabbed the two who had been delighting in their surgical examination of his flesh and cracked their heads together — a little too hard, as blood spurted and the skull of one depressed. He let the bodies drop, and grabbed the dozing man, and flung him from the back of the truck, his body tumbling into an overgrown ditch. If the policeman ever woke, it’d be hours before anyone found him or he could stagger back to his base.
Alex peered through the rear window panel at the driver — the older man oblivious and driving with half lidded eyes. Alex quickly moved to the rear of the truck and scaled the outside of the bouncing vehicle, clambering along the top. In the distance he could see the glow of the city coming up fast. He hurried, swinging along down with the slimmest of handholds, and then in a single motion, he ripped open the driver’s door and shoved the startled man aside. Before the driver could even speak, Alex had gripped the wheel, and took control of the gears and pedals without the machine slowing. He turned.
“убирайся!’ Alex roared.
The Russian word for get out, struck the policeman like a hammer, freezing him momentarily. Alex leaned closer and bared his teeth, and that caused the driver to burst into action. Even though the truck was doing sixty miles per hour, he spun, opened the door and leapt.
In the side view mirror, Alex saw the man land, bounce, and then lay still.
“Bet that hurt.” He grinned and then swung the wheel at a widening in the road. The truck groaned as it turned hard, and then he jammed his foot down, and accelerated back along the dark road.
Alex reached for the police radio and began moving the dial up the frequencies, searching. In another moment, he found the correct numbers. There was nothing but white noise, but he knew this was simply camouflage — there were people listening, his people.
“Arcadian, coming in.” He ground his foot down on the accelerator.
CHAPTER 2
Professor Cate Canning’s hands shook. “Okay people.” It felt like a thousand butterflies swirled in her stomach as her finger hovered over the button. “Are — we — re-aaady?”
It didn’t matter what the half dozen scientists and engineers crowded into the makeshift laboratory behind her said because she was ready, the equipment was ready, conditions were perfect, and she alone would make the final call. She was the leading evolutionary biologist in the United Kingdom, and it had taken a lifetime of research, planning, fundraising, politicking, and then bloody arm-twisting, to even get to prototype phase of the exploration of the subsurface lakes below the Antarctic ice.