“The vents.”
Now there was a further problem of going into the vents without drawing Ted Cooper’s attention.
There they hit a snag.
“Restrain him?” Olivia proposed.
Peter shook his head. “Ted is a big man.”
Nicolai said, “Drug him then.”
Peter smiled. “Yes.”
7
That night, while the soldier who hadn’t taken on the advanced stage of the disease settled in, Victor Borodin, Liam Murphy, and a reluctant Anabia Nassif forced him into the mission because he was the only one in the group who would know what to look for.
Ted Cooper snored under a heavy dose of a queer mixture of morphine and a certain other substance that Anabia had concocted.
Olivia prayed. The words tasted bland but she did anyway.
At that same moment major Juan Santiago’s talkie squeaked to life. His itch had let up. It had been replaced with a headache. He had slept fitfully and he’d dreamt bad dreams earlier on.
When his body finally won — momentarily— against the virus that was roaming and multiplying inside of him, he dropped down to a dark chasm below and knew nothing.
Until his damn talkie started talking.
Disoriented at first, looking up at the white ceiling above, it took him approximately fifteen seconds to realize he wasn’t in a home in Sao Paulo.
He thought his trained ears heard rumbling. He looked from the top of the rocket where he lay and saw that all his men were asleep. The ones who snored sang, the ones who didn’t just slept on.
There was a booted foot sprawled at the door. Santiago couldn’t see the rest of the soldier, but he knew those two had fallen asleep.
The talkie squawked again.
“Santiago!!”
“I’m here, sir.”
“I have been calling you, estupido!” the admiral barked. “Where are we with the Americans?”
“I’m keeping them locked down sir.”
“Good, are your men still alive?”
Santiago wasn’t sure about the one that was locked in the small observation room. He jumped down from the platform, groaned from the pain in his muscles. “Shit.”
He stepped forward slowly, a precaution to not agitate the mad soldier. But he was not in sight. Santiago moved closer.
BANG!
The sick soldier jumped at the glass and Santiago swore he should have shattered the glass. But it held.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelped.
“What is it, Santiago?” There was concern in the admiral’s voice. “What is the matter with you?!”
“It's not me, Admiral. It’s the sick soldier.”
“Good, stay put. I have to deal with the fleet here.”
He clicked the talkie off.
“Luigi?”
Luigi banged the glass again. His nose flared. He huffed.
The major gave up and went back to his bed of rocket. He was fast asleep even before his head hit the makeshift pillow comprising of his backpack and briefs.
That rumble again, as sleep dragged him down.
The rumble that Major Juan Santiago heard was in fact the movements of men prospecting their way through the ventilator.
Armed with pen torches and the blueprint of the facility, they made it past the hallway that led out to the U-boat pen, and that separated the crew's bunk room and the area where the rocket room was.
Victor Borodin stopped suddenly. In the air vent there was little room for sideways mobility, so the Russian stopped shuffling. Liam’s chin brushed against his boots.
Someone was talking to themselves, or so it appeared. The sound of the voice was so close that Borodin sweated even though the air in the vent was cool. The talking stopped. There was a bang, a snarl.
That must be the sick soldier, he thought.
Then he concluded that the other voice must be the major since his men hardly talked.
They shuffled on when he was certain that the quietness that came after was going to be a long one.
The game had begun. In order to meet with the fleet that has come to make sure the destroyer and her crew was well and fine, the admiral would have to follow a protocol of speed and to meet the coming destroyers at a prescribed distance.
The admiral was stalling. Leaving his present position was a predicament; one, he would have to forfeit deploying unto the Antarctic and finish his job there. And two, meeting with the fleet makes the fruition of his plan a future endeavor.
But he didn’t have the luxury of time. A lot was riding in his delay. The soldiers he sent were sick with something he didn’t understand.
And in just a few hours, things could change. The Americans could overpower the soldiers if their sickness persists. Then the admiral would have lost. Everything.
On the bright side, he could tell the fleet what was going on and let them do his job for him. It was a gamble but he was willing to play it.
So when the transmission came in asking for status, Admiral Anton Huebner replied, “Crew is well but would maintain vigilant status on account of foreign intruders on Antarctica.”
When the admiral in one of the other ships received the message, he was more confused than when he received orders to go back for Huebner’s ship.
“What’s on Antarctica?” he asked no one in particular.
Victor Borodin missed his way twice. The first time when they were almost over the edge of the target laboratory and when they were coming back.
Victor had taken a look at the blueprint and at the fork in the vent, and just lost his bearing.
Their heads were now covered with a mass of cobwebs and they were swallowing dust by morsels. Victor prayed that no one sneezed. That was exactly when the biologist Anabia Nassif got the urge.
Victor heard him sniffle and waited.
“What’s the waiting about?” Liam Murphy whispered.
“Nassif, he wants to sneeze,” he answered.
Confused, Nassif said he didn’t want to sneeze.
Borodin checked the print again and gambled. His gamble paid off. In minutes they were looking through a mesh down into the main laboratory.
But Borodin's heart sank because yes, this was the lab. And down there were test tubes, odd-looking microscopes, charts on the wall with formulas on them, cabinets full of documents.
There was also the major standing in the middle of the lab.
“What is he doing?” Nassif asked Liam Murphy.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Victor, what’s going on?”
Victor Borodin turned his head as best as he could and whispered, “There's someone down there.”
Shocked silence followed. Raw fear and uncertainty. Nassif was shaking behind Liam Murphy.
Murphy asked Borodin, “What are we going to do?”
Borodin didn’t have the answer. His eyes peered at the soldier standing in the middle of the lab. The major hadn’t moved since they arrived. Five minutes ago. Nassif's sniffling increased. It was loud, in fact, in the vents. Borodin assumed the flowing air would carry the sniffling all across the network of the ventilator.
“He’s just standing there,” Victor Borodin whispered. “He’s not moving, I don’t think he’s well.”
“Describe what you see to me,” Nassif said.
“His eyes are half-closed, he’s wavering as if he’s drunk…”
Nassif thought about this and decided that they could actually step into the lab.
“He’s sleepwalking,” Nassif said. “He can’t hear us or even see us if we are quiet.”
“Are you sure?” Borodin asked.
“One hundred percent.”