The chopper flew south across New York en route to the Pennsylvania border. For the first ten minutes they flew in silence. Gant tried to find the right words to open up conversation, then finally decided just to jump right in.
"She said something that bothered you."
"She said a lot of things that bothered me," Liz replied while remaining focused forward through the rain-covered windshield.
Gant eyed her suspiciously. He knew very little about this woman, but his initial impression had been very positive; an officer of good temperament and intelligent. Yet McCaul's harmless philosophizing had elicited a reaction — a defensive reaction.
So Gant pushed, "Was it all that talk about faith? I, for one, would not put—"
"Don't try and analyze me, Major. I'm the psychiatrist here. I know the game."
"I did not realize you were a doctor."
"That's because I'm not. I'm a soldier. Like you. Everything else is just an area of specialty. You and I, we just use different weapons."
"I see. Well then, Colonel, this excursion was your idea. What kind of answers do you think we found?"
She bowed her head for a moment, closed her eyes, and then finally turned and faced him.
"I'm sorry if I'm a little rough around the edges, Major. I suppose McCaul said a lot and my mind is just trying to make sense of it. I think … I think something happened with Briggs’s experiment that is much different from a virus breaking loose or radioactive contamination."
"Such as?"
"Well, let's take a look," Thunder said, retrieving a smartphone from her pocket and firing up the Internet connection. Gant watched her use her phone, tapping letters and numbers and reading lines.
"Here it is," she finally said. "She did give us enough to Google. I've got a bunch of articles here announcing the Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility. Apparently scientists are working on a series of big lasers that use a lot of power to rip apart the fabric of space. Something about looking for ghost particles and tearing apart time and space and seeing what pours out of the fissure and finding evidence for other dimensions."
"For some reason, that makes me nervous."
She put away her phone, took a deep breath, and said, "I don't get this stuff, Major. It's way outside my pay grade. But what happened — what is still happening — at Red Rock is a lot more than some sort of explosion caused by a power overload. We keep thinking something went wrong and blew up in Briggs's face."
He caught on: "The other possibility is that his experiment went as planned. Maybe more so."
"McCaul said that Briggs was sort of digging at the floorboards of the universe. What happens when you dig at the floorboards in an apartment?"
Gant thought about that for a moment. "You end up coming through someone else’s ceiling."
11
Liz stepped from her cabin and sucked down a healthy gulp of moist, cold morning air. It sent a shiver through her lungs that spread across her body, causing everything beneath her green BDUs to tremble.
The rain from the previous day had cleared away, leaving behind row after row of rolling white clouds. Very few sunbeams managed to slip through those clouds. Fewer still penetrated the orange, red, and yellow canopy of turning leaves covering the Red Rock grounds. The smattering of thin gold beams that managed to clear all those obstacles and reach the forest floor resembled focused lasers more than natural light.
She let the flimsy wood door shut and started toward the main complex along a path that, despite the start of a new day, seemed particularly dark and lonely.
While others might find the encroachment of nature and the secluded location of the facility a welcome respite from civilization, Red Rock managed only to amplify her feeing of isolation. Four mornings ago the phone call from General Borman had felt like a get-out-of-jail card freeing her from a prison of monotony. In reality, however, it seemed she was as much a prisoner of the Hell Hole now as whatever lay locked behind the vault door.
Worse, she wondered exactly why had she been summoned to this place. Again, Borman's invitation came packaged as a second chance, an opportunity for redemption, a sign that the brass recognized a waste of talent. But now she was not so sure.
The strangeness of this place … an apparent suicide mission for the Archangel team … The Tall Company's involvement … it all added up to one big unsettled feeling, even before considering the dangerous influences emanating from beyond the containment bulkhead.
Am I here because I have firsthand experience in watching minds go from normal to crazy, or am I here because my record is tainted enough that I'll make a plausible fall-gal when the shit hits the fan?
Choosing BDUs over her dress uniform for today's attire resulted in an unexpected bonus or, perhaps, a curse: she had found a crumpled half-pack of Virginia Slims in her suitcase. At some point that pack had made its way into her pocket.
Why not, Liz? Have a smoke again. The other bad habits are all coming back. So far you've screwed around with the heads of a bunch of young soldiers and you've played fast and loose with your authority. Of course, if things hadn't gone FUBAR last time the brass probably would have been happy with your breaking the rules. This time, well, I don't think Borman is going to be thrilled with yesterday's trip.
She stopped and pulled out the cigarettes. The aroma of tobacco and nicotine dove into her like a shot of smooth whiskey, although she suspected the ghost of addiction played a greater role than her sense of smell.
One of her other senses — hearing — managed to steal away her attention. More specifically, the chop-chop-chop of helicopter rotors flying low overhead en route to a landing pad on the far side of the main building. The sound broke the spell; suddenly the cigarettes changed from enticing to a painful reminder of bad times.
She could have thrown them away, or tightened her hand into a fist to pulverize the temptation. Instead, she returned the pack to her pocket, unsure if she might need them some other day.
Captain Richard Campion stood outside the main entrance taking deep, refreshing breaths of the morning air. He found the chill bracing and it helped chase away the grogginess from a nearly sleepless night when dreams of armies trapped by an enemy's surprise maneuver kept him tossing and turning.
Not only did the brisk air shock his system awake; the myriad of scents and sounds also tantalized his nose and ears.
He envied the acute senses of the canines who sometimes served with the unit. During missions, he would oftentimes think of himself as a wolf on the hunt, tracking his prey not only through sight but through sound and smell as well.
Standing in front of the building that morning, he listened to a dozen different tunes of birdsong; he heard cracks and drips as the morning dew weighed down dying leaves to the point that some snapped and fell to Earth, where they joined growing piles of dead foliage that decayed with a heavy, sweet smell.
All those sounds and aromas were smothered by the loud chop-chop-chop of an incoming helicopter that dropped a sheet of malodorous exhaust over his morning.
The Sikorsky s-76 came in fast and then slowed just as fast before descending to the landing pad. Campion hurried over and arrived just in time to see the luxury helicopter — sporting The Tall Company's logo (a 'T' wrapped in a circle) — touch down.