They wouldn’t step foot back into the four pillars until it was much too late.
14
It had stunned Jon when he toured the four pillars. Each lab was expansive, with incredible equipment, with resources for hundreds of people working on cutting-edge science. It had been more to work with than he’d had in his entire career.
The dark lab dwarfed them all, combined.
Jon, Stone, Mel, and Andrew were met at the elevator doors by Sabrina again, wearing all black, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail.
“Welcome to the special project division,” she said, and led them into an expansive space, segmented off into dozens of labs.
“This is incredible,” said Mel. “I thought the Medical pillar was extravagant—”
“Please keep up,” said Sabrina, walking at a brisk pace. “The division is much larger, and so we have more ground to cover.” She wasn’t lying, the corridors between labs massive, the level a labyrinth, Jon already losing track of where they entered, right after they turned once, and then twice. The glass walls were tinted black, always opaque. A few of the lab doors they passed were open, but most were closed. It was so much larger than the four pillars above. Jon struggled with the scope. Jon spied a man, dressed in all black, an assault rifle slung around his back. He stood against the wall in a corridor, looking straight ahead. He wore a tactical helmet, with a clean visor over his eyes.
“How many labs are down here?” he asked.
“A few hundred,” said Sabrina. “384, counting your team.”
Something didn’t add up, and Jon quickly did the math in his head. There were no more than twenty teams in each pillar, which gave them only a maximum of eighty, maybe a hundred if he was being generous.
“How’s that possible?” asked Jon. “There weren’t that many teams to begin with.”
Sabrina glanced back at him as she walked. “No one ever said that all the special projects teams had to start in one of the four pillars. Mr. Shaw moved all of his research divisions down here prior to your arrival.”
Of course.
Sabrina looked forward again, and Jon tried to keep his thoughts on the present, not letting the realization of the size of Shaw’s ambition distract him. He could think about what it meant later. He tried to focus and absorb all the information he was given now.
He looked through the few open doors, to see if he could glean anything, but all he saw was people, equipment, and stainless steel. They turned left at a corridor juncture, but Jon looked back the other way, and saw the glass segue into blast shielding, heavy metal, or maybe some other alloy, but it was thick, impregnable, as far as Jon could tell. More armed guards there, multiple standing in a row, dressed similarly. All black, with bulky clothing. Kevlar or flak jackets, Jon imagined.
He remembered the shielding present in the energy pillar, but this looked even tougher.
What were they testing?
But they had already left it behind. Sabrina strode with confidence.
“There are lab coats waiting for each of you in your new space,” said Sabrina.
“What’s wrong with these?” asked Jon.
“Nothing,” said Sabrina. “But they don’t have the patch.”
Jon looked at a passing researcher, noticing a thick nested dark patch on his shoulder, bearing the Shaw business logo, encasing a medieval shield. Sabrina didn’t explain further, and Jon didn’t ask for more info.
“You’ll have more resources down here,” said Sabrina. Jon thought to Shaw’s promise of infinite resources prior, but he guessed it must be even more infinite down here. A cascade of promises. “And access to more powerful tech.”
“How could it more powerful than what we already had?” asked Andrew.
“I’ll leave discussion around your equipment to our division manager,” said Sabrina. “We’re almost there.”
They reached an office, but unlike the offices of the managers in the four pillars, this office was on the edge of the space, and made from the same blast shielding as Jon had seen earlier. Sabrina walked them to the door. A guard stood outside. They passed him without comment, but Jon noticed the guard’s eyes on them as they entered. A man, middle-aged, with close shorn hair, dressed in a blue shirt and slacks, stood at a standing desk, six screens open in front of him. He smiled a slim smile, polite as they approached.
“This is the division manager, Dan Sherman. Mr. Sherman, this is Dr. Jon Matthews, Dr. Frank Stone, Dr. Mel Underwood, and Dr. Andrew Simmons.”
“Nice to meet you all,” he said. “Please, come inside.”
“I’ll leave them in your hands,” said Sabrina, and she was gone without a goodbye.
There were no chairs in his office, so Jon didn’t have to worry about sitting. Sherman closed the door behind him, a thick metal panel sliding shut with a hard SHTINK with a press of a button.
Sherman walked back around to the other side of his desk, moving the octopus of screens so they could have a clear view of each other.
“Welcome to the special projects division. I’m going to call it the dark lab, because the other thing is a mouthful. You can do the same, as long as Mr. Shaw isn’t here. Shaw tells me you’re regenerating limbs?”
“Yes,” said Jon.
Sherman nodded. “Sounds good. Mr. Shaw told me he wants you working on chimps. How many do you need?”
“I don’t know,” said Jon. “We haven’t worked out our plan yet.”
“I’ll get a dozen ready, just in case,” said Sherman, matter-of-factly, and Jon’s mind boggled, but he tried not to betray his confusion.
A dozen? How many animals does Shaw have down here?
“Mr. Shaw told us we’d have additional team members?” asked Jon.
“Yes,” said Sherman. “I’ve pulled eight off of other teams through the division. Three biologists, two zoologists, two geneticists, and one surgeon, a trauma specialist. Does that sound good?”
“I—I—sure,” said Jon. “That’s more than what we need, I think.”
“Better to overextend then to understaff, I always say,” said Sherman. “If someone’s just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, I can assign them to another team.”
“Are they used to bouncing around?” asked Jon.
Sherman smiled, an actual smile this time. “They’re our mercenaries,” he said. “They go where the action is hottest. The best and brightest. You can have the highest level of confidence in them. They’ve already extensively studied your research, and should be able to adapt quickly. They’ll work hard and fast and do what you tell them to.”
They met them within ten minutes, Sherman leading them to their new lab space, extensive with a dozen workstations, its own operating theater, and walls of cages on the side of the room for holding any test subjects, before or after experimentation. Their mercenaries were already there, each sitting at their own workstation.
They gathered, each of their coats having the dark lab patch noticeable now on the shoulder.
“This is Dr. Matthews, Stone, Underwood, and Simmons. They’re the project leads. Any questions?”
There were none from the eight assembled scientists. Jon wondered how long they’d been down here. They didn’t look tired, or anxious, or even excited. They just looked bored.
“Good,” said Sherman, after being met with silence. “Doctors, the floor is yours.” Sherman left their lab without another word.
The four of them stood in front of the group, and Jon realized he should say something. He glanced at Stone and nodded to him. Stone nodded back and stepped up.
“We’ll do formal introductions as we go, but Sherman told us you know the goal. Well, I’ll formalize it now, straight from the mouth of god himself. We’re regenerating limbs. We cut off a rat’s arm yesterday, and it grew back. The next step is a chimpanzee. We want to amputate a chimp’s arm and then have it grow it back. Within an hour, and on an even shorter timeline if possible. As you imagine, this is an important project to Shaw himself, and his eyes are always on us. So be ready. Go back to what you were working on, and we’ll brief you individually as we devise our plans.”