Liz understood.
Her job had been to filter out and send away any of the men whose minds were not completely focused; not entirely disciplined. Minds so unlike her own, minds that were not conflicted by the roles they played in the dark games of places like Red Rock.
The general — or whatever pulled the general's leash — wanted focused, disciplined minds because those types of minds could be controlled and manipulated. Minds that accepted what they saw at face value and did not question. Minds susceptible to illusion, voices, and impulses.
"Listen to me," she tried again. She kept her distance, fully aware that these men would shoot without hesitation. "You said Borman went in there. He was in full dress uniform, wasn’t he?"
The two sentries exchanged a glance.
Liz repeated, "Wasn’t he?"
It was obvious from the guards’ expression that, yes, the general had been in full dress uniform and despite their focused minds they had found such pomp unusual.
Sanchez took the opening, "Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Billy, Ted, think about it."
"Use your heads," Liz pleaded. "Good soldiers don’t just follow orders, they don’t just do what they’re told, they think. There is a line between focused and mindless, between disciplined and manipulated."
Sanchez added, "You guys have been here almost as long as I have. Do you feel it? Billy, do you feel the vibration? Do you hear the hum? Someone has turned on all the power down there. Something is going on beneath us."
"We have our orders," Billy replied.
"General Borman is being used by whatever is down there," she said but, again, kept her distance. Force would not win this battle. If it came to blows she and Sanchez would end up dead. "It has manipulated everything, all of us, for years. All getting ready for this day. Today. It’s counting on all of us to be good little robots, to not question what we’re told, what we see. But think, damn it, think! You have to think and you have to make a decision. If you make the wrong decision, we are all going to die."
The sentries kept their guns pointed in accordance with their orders.
"Think," Liz tried one last time. "Please, be soldiers, real soldiers. Not just good little robots."
35
Campion pushed through the heavy double doors with his gun ready. His eyes swept side to side in search of targets and threats. The Red Lab was quiet, no sign of movement in either the main room or the isolation chamber at the back.
As in the rest of the complex, the lights here had inexplicably come to life. A few of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling-mounted light panels had failed to work, but he could see everything — from the ancient equipment to the mattress in the corner surrounded by scraps of food and supplies to the streaks of blood on the floor
At the center of it all stood a table and something covered in a cloth. He placed the duffle bag on the floor, raised his rifle, and approached the hidden object, his laser target falling on the white sheet.
When in arm's reach, he grabbed the cover and yanked it off, revealing an old-style console radio — no, wait. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again he saw that his eyes had played a trick.
No, it was not a radio but Dr. Briggs’s experiment. A strange, square contraption at rest on a table with all sorts of protrusions and dials and buttons and wires attached to a thick conduit that ran across the floor and back into the isolation chamber, where it interfaced with additional gear.
The captain did not know how the enigmatic box did what it did, but he knew it was ground zero of Briggs's experiment, whatever that might have been. That type of understanding was not germane to his mission.
What did matter was that it was, in fact, his lucky day. Dr. Twiste’s bag with the two V.A.A.D. battery packs lay on the floor in front of the machine.
Campion did not stop to wonder why it was all so easy; he did not question why fate had seen fit to bless his mission. He accepted what his eyes saw, and his eyes saw that all the tools he needed to complete his objective were now at hand. He had the batteries, he had the V.A.A.D. main unit, he had the knowledge of how to operate it (where’d I pick that up from?), and he had the laboratory all to himself.
From somewhere far, far away came the sound of gunshots. Like everything else not associated with activating the V.A.A.D., those gunshots were unimportant to him. They might as well have been a universe away.
He knelt and set his weapon aside, certain he would face no interruptions.
Campion pulled the two metallic, brick-like batteries from the bag that had once been carried by Dr. Brandon Twiste. He then set the V.A.A.D. unit on the floor and carefully attached those batteries.
He recalled the instructions that had wormed their way into his mind. It was now time to take readings, make adjustments, and set the device to detonate.
Captain Campion was not sure what would happen after that. For some reason, that did not seem important. He cared about only one thing: follow orders and complete the mission.
And when the mission is done, Captain, use your sidearm to blow your brains out, will you?
Okay, sure.
Major Gant walked a pace behind the entity dressed in the body of Dr. Ronald Briggs. A pace behind Gant followed the thing that had once been a man named Jolly but was now a cross between guard dog and zombie, with a healthy dose of demon mixed in.
He heard, from further back, another sound. It seemed as if at least one more had joined the entourage, but kept its distance
For a moment, he thought maybe one of his men — Campion? Franco? — had picked up their trail and followed, perhaps contemplating an attack. But the sounds he heard came across less as footsteps and more as something shuffling, scurrying along.
One of the entity's warped children, no doubt, following its father at a discreet distance, always just around the last corner, as if playing a game. Maybe merely curious, possibly called by its master, but yet another obstacle to any chance of gaining his freedom and stopping Briggs.
Major Thom Gant felt certain he would soon die. He was not eager to die; that would not be the best way to characterize his state of mind. However, death would end the conflict tearing at his soul. On one side of that conflict stood the instincts programmed into his body from years of training, discipline, and following orders. The other side of that conflict rose from corners of his mind where conscience and question tried to light fires of revolt against that programming.
Alas, he knew he was not the only victim of that conflict. He had dragged Jean into his personal battle zone. She was collateral damage. She had been mutated from a happy young girl into a lonely woman who accepted loneliness with a dignified resolve.
She deserved better, and perhaps if he did die she might find something better.
The door to the vault room buzzed and opened. The sound startled General Borman’s attention away from the two soldiers who worked on the quarantine bulkhead, cutting away the metal plate Borman had welded into place the day before.
Lieutenant Colonel Liz Thunder took two tentative steps into the white room, much to the ire of the general.
"You? I gave orders that you were not permitted in here!"
She gazed around the room like a child walking through the world's grandest toy store. She stood in the most guarded and most feared room in all the world, at least as far as the Pentagon was concerned.
That, of course, begged many questions. If the government feared what lay in the levels below, why had they not sent an entire battalion of troops through the vault? Why not gas the lower levels or, at the very least, cut off the oxygen supply?