“Let’s assume I’m here for a good reason,” she said. “We don’t have much time, so listen up. The varcolac is here.”
Sean had personal experience with the varcolac. He had been only five years old when it had kidnapped him, along with their mother and sisters, but she was sure he remembered the experience. He had almost died.
“How do you know?” Sean whispered.
“For one thing, the soldiers pouring into the building have no eyes.”
He cringed. It was like a childhood nightmare come to life. Just as quickly, however, the hard look of an elite marine returned.
The marine who had originally found them, apparently the team leader, asked, “Kelley, what’s this about?”
Alex explained as best she could in a few terse sentences.
“It doesn’t change anything,” he said. “We do the job, we get out.”
Alex indicated her team. “Let us stay close,” she said. “When you’re done, we can teleport you out of here.”
The team leader looked like he was going to object, but then he shook his head. “Fine. We don’t have time to argue.” He eyed the wall. “This looks load bearing.” He slapped an explosive onto it and twisted something on its surface. It stuck fast and emitted a tiny whine.
“This way,” he said. Alex followed him, trusting the rest of her team to do the same. “Kelley, is this floor cleared?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Sean said.
“Okay. Johnny is dead. Wilson and Cash are holding the stairs. The first floor is overrun. We need to get down to the cellar.
They reached the stairs. Two Marines were holding position there, one behind the other, shooting at any Turkish soldier that turned the corner. The bullets passed right through the Turks, impacting the floor on the other side of them, yet they showed no inclination to climb the stairs.
“Why won’t they die, sergeant?” one of them called back, his voice stressed.
“Do you have any spare magazines?” Alex asked.
Sean gave her an odd look, but handed one over. Alex thumbed a bullet out of the top, and then waited for another Turkish soldier to come into view at the bottom of the stairs. As soon as it did, she teleported the bullet into its brain. Its head exploded, raining blood and gray matter all over the floor. Its body fell and didn’t get up.
“You did that with the Higgs projector?” Sean asked.
“Newer version. I can copy it for you, but not here.”
“Hand over your spares to Sean’s sister and her unit, then follow me,” the team leader said, apparently taking the oddness of the situation in stride.
Wilson, Cash, and Sean all handed over fresh magazines to Alex and her teammates. The team leader charged down the stairs, shouting incoherently, and his men followed him. “Come on!” Alex said.
They hit the first floor on the heels of the Special Ops crew. The puppet soldiers advanced, blasting them with pulses of energy. The Higgs projectors protected them, shielding them with flashes of blinding light.
One at a time, Alex put bullets into the soldiers’ heads. It was gruesome, horrible work, spattering all of them with gore, but it was better than dying. “Downstairs!” Sean shouted. “This way!”
They descended into the cellar, a long concrete stairwell three times as deep as any normal basement. When they reached the bottom, they entered a room as large as any gymnasium. The linear accelerator was there, a fat, steel cylinder that spanned the length of the room, connected to a host of machines and computers via a tangle of wires. The cylinder was the vacuum chamber through which the particles flew. At the far end, a giant Van de Graaff generator hummed in its own, larger compartment. A dozen scientists in white lab coats attended the machines.
And there was Jean. Alex didn’t wait to see what she would do. She dropped a bullet into her hand and teleported it into Jean’s head.
Or at least she tried. The bullet didn’t move. Alex tried to send it into the Van de Graaff generator instead, but it sat resolutely in her palm. This wasn’t good. She tried teleporting a few feet to her left, but once again, nothing happened. Afraid, she yanked the projector itself out of her pocket. It sat inert, dead, the tiny lights on its surface gone dark.
“Easy to do, once you think about it,” Jean said pleasantly. “A Higgs projector is just solid state electronics, a computer operating a program. It has electrical circuits to fry, just like anything else. A focused EMP will do it. Just a tiny one, right in your pocket.” She snapped her fingers. “Easy. The power of the quantum world is still there, of course. Only you can’t access it.”
The door to the stairway behind them slammed shut. “Why are you doing this?” Alex asked. “The varcolac doesn’t care about helping the Turks.”
“No, you’re right about that. I’m afraid it’s not going to help anyone but me.”
“But you’re human,” Alex said. “Why would you want to throw in with this alien creature? Do you really want to be the only person left in the universe? To have all that blood on your hands? You might live forever, sure, but will that really be worth it?”
Jean’s face grew hard. “What did humanity ever do for me? Took my daughter from me. Put me in a cage. Took my life, the few decades that I have allotted to me, and forced me to spend them shut up in a box. Do you know what that does to a person? Watching my precious time tick away, wasted? I have a mind with the imagination to create worlds, and humanity put me in a cage.” Sean reached for a grenade, but she flung it away from him with a gesture. “The varcolac, as you call it, won’t put me in any kind of cage at all. It will give me the universe.”
“What about the billions of people who don’t even know you? They didn’t lock you in a cage. And what about your husband and daughter? Have you even seen them since you escaped? Would you kill them with all the rest?”
Jean’s smile never wavered. “Humanity took my years away,” she said. “Now I am taking theirs.”
“You’re crazy,” Tequila said. “You’re completely out of your mind. You think this will make you happy?”
“This conversation bores me,” Jean said. “It’s time for you to die.” She turned away and snapped her fingers. Tequila’s mouth opened in shock. Her chest made a small popping noise, and she rocked back. She looked at Alex and tried to speak, but a trickle of blood dribbled out of her mouth. Her head lolled to one side, and she collapsed to the floor.
“Tequila!” Alex rushed to her side. Her friend was motionless, her eyes rolled back. She had no pulse.
Alex looked back up at Jean. “I will kill you,” she said, her voice wrenched out through the tears that closed her throat. “I will destroy you.”
“Really,” Jean said. “I’m impressed you located me so quickly, but come now. I have you thoroughly beaten. Now go home before I kill you all.” She smiled. “Oh that’s right, no Higgs projector. You can’t go home, can you? Too bad for you, I suppose.” She snapped her fingers again, and the marine team leader staggered back. He fell to the floor and died, just like Tequila.
Alex screamed in frustration. She cast about for anything she could throw, anything she could use at all to try to hurt this woman. “And where’s the varcolac now?” she shouted. “Are you so certain you can trust it? Or is it just using you to get its way? What if, when all the rest of humanity is dead, it just discards you, too?”
Jean laughed. “You don’t understand, do you? I am the varcolac. Do you think humanity is the first race it has assimilated? It barely understood humanity before, but now, with its mind entwined with mine, it understands everything.” Another snap of her fingers, and Cash and Wilson collapsed as well. Rod turned and ran for the doors to the stairway. He reached them and yanked on them as hard as he could, but they didn’t open. Jean snapped her fingers, and he fell where he stood. Alex, Sean, and Lisa were the only ones left. Sean stepped in front of them, shielding them with his body, as if that would do any good.