“There are many legends surrounding Shi Huangdi,” Che Lu said. “He has been called the Yellow Emperor, among many other titles. It is said when he was born there was a great radiance in the sky, coming from the region of Ursa Major. In his biography it is written that when he met the Empress of the West in the mountains of Wangwu, they made something together.”
“A child?” Lo Fa said with a smile.
“No. Twelve large mirrors.”
Lo Fa was interested despite himself. “Who was the Empress of the West?” “I don’t know.”
“Well, what about these mirrors?”
“I also don’t know much about that,” Che Lu admitted. “In conjunction with the mirrors, there were things called tripods. These tripods pointed the mirrors to the heavens. Zao Ji wrote about the tripods of Shi Huangdi in a text I have read. There are many rumors about these tripods and mirrors in ancient texts, enough that I have to believe there is a truth underneath.
“They were supposed to be able to manipulate gravity. To emit loud noises. To look at the stars. And Shi Huangdi was supposed to be able to control the thunder. Perhaps through these devices.”
“Interesting legend,” Lo Fa said.
“You have heard of Chi Yu, have you not?” Che Lu asked.
“Who?” Lo Fa’s voice quivered slightly, and Che Lu knew he had heard of that legend. Perhaps told by his mother, to scare him into going to bed as a young boy.
“While Shi Huangdi ruled in the north, Chi Yu was the name of the ruler in the south. But Chi Yu was different. Not a man, according to legend, but a metal beast. With many arms and legs and eyes. Who could fly about the countryside.” Che Lu pointed to the mountain tomb. “The answer to many mysteries lie inside, Lo Fa.”
Lo Fa spit. “That may be, old woman. But all your legends still won’t get us inside.”
“Can you get me a radio?” Che Lu asked. “One that speaks to the satellites?” Lo Fa nodded. “I think I know where one is. It will take some time.”
“You get me a radio,” Che Lu said. “Then I can call for help.”
“Who will help us?” Lo Fa asked.
“I will ask UNAOC.”
Lo Fa laughed. “They will not try again.”
“I can only ask. If they do not give us help, then it is up to me alone.” “I will get the radio.”
“What’s the plan?”
Lisa Duncan was startled. She had not heard Mike Turcotte walk into the conference room with Yakov. She pointed for them to take seats at the table.
“I sent Major Quinn and Larry Kincaid back on the bouncer to Area 51. I contacted a friend of mine at USAMRIID — the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. She’s promised me some help. A bouncer will pick her people up and bring them to us along with some special gear. Once they get here, you go south with them and find out what exactly is going on.”
“And then?” Turcotte asked.
“We try to stop this.”
“An optimist,” Yakov said with a dry chuckle.
A madman working in a wax museum could not have produced a more gruesome scene. The bodies were twisted into grotesque shapes. Mouths were open; silent lips that would never know the passage of a final scream were pulled wide over fangs. Chests had been sliced opened, red blood frozen and caught hanging like threads of red. The eyes were the worst. Black orbs staring aimlessly out, framed in red blood like cheap eyeliner that an epileptic makeup artist had applied.
Steve Norward didn’t like dealing with frozen bodies. Not out of any sense of aesthetics, but because frozen objects had pointy parts and pointy parts make holes in gloves and flesh. And this frozen locker was hot. As hot as any place on earth. And hot plus a hole in the protective suit he wore equaled dead.
Inside his suit, Norward was a large man. He just barely made it inside the Army’s weight standards every time his annual PT test rolled around, and that was only after careful dieting and some fudging by the unit first sergeant on both the scale and height recorded. The philosophy around USAMRIID was that they weren’t going to have one of their own separated from the army just because of some stupid rules that had nothing to do with the capability to do their job.
Norward had light hair and a wide, cheerful face that belied a man who was handling dead bodies. Very carefully, he rolled a cart under one of the monkeys. He pushed a button, and the chain that had held the body lowered the carcass until its entire weight was on the cart. Carefully he unfastened the meat hook that was jammed through the monkey’s back from the chain, leaving the implement in place.
Norward slowed his breathing. His faceplate was fogging up and the air inside his suit was getting stale. He rolled the cart out of the refrigerator room and shut the large steel door behind him. Then he went down the corridor to the necropsy room, where he plugged in the air hose for his suit to a wall socket. The familiar sound of fresh air being pumped filled his ears and the mask cleared. The sound was as comforting to him as the whine of a smoothly running engine was to a pilot.
He locked the wheels on the base of the cart so it wouldn’t move. Every action was slow and deliberate.
Norward pulled extra-large surgical gloves over the space suit gloves, then glanced at the second living occupant of the room and pointed at the monkey. “On three.”
The other person had the name Laniea stenciled on the chest and a woman’s voice echoed over the radio to confirm she understood. “On three.”
“One.” Norward and Laniea each grabbed one end of the monkey. “Two. Three.” They lifted the body and placed it on an operating table, handling it as delicately as they would a bomb, which in effect it was. The monkey was dead, but there were things inside it that existed in a netherworld between life and death, waiting on other living flesh to devour just as it had devoured that of the monkey’s.
“It’ll take a couple of hours to defrost,” Norward said. “We’ll do the cutting on this one at thirteen hundred.”
“All right,” Laniea acknowledged. She was tiny inside her oversized suit.
Norward turned to the other table, where a second monkey lay. They had taken it out of the freezer the previous evening. Norward picked up a scalpel and handed it to Laniea. “Welcome to Level Four. Your first patient, Doctor.”
He couldn’t see Laniea’s face as she bent over the corpse. “Thank you, Doctor.” She pressed the blade into the monkey’s stomach and sliced. The interior cavity was full of pooled blood.
Norward watched his subordinate as she worked, making sure that she was noting all key abnormalities, although most were not hard to spot. The kidneys were totally gone. The liver was yellow, and part of it had dissolved.
He took the samples she was cutting off and placed them onto glass slides, the only glass allowed on Level 4. When she indicated, he took a pair of large clamps and cracked the monkey’s chest, holding open the rib cage for her to work.
There was a crackling noise in the air, and Laniea was startled. She froze and looked at Norward, trying to guess what the cause was. “Voice box,” he mouthed to her, looking up at the ceiling. She looked relieved. Any break in the routine was scary down here.
The speaker crackled again, and this time he recognized a woman’s voice, the commander of the USAMRIID, Colonel Carmen.
“Dan, we have a development in South America.”
A development, Norward thought, his pulse skipping a beat.
“I need you to look at something,” Carmen’s voice continued. “ASAP.”
Norward unplugged his air hose and moved to the air lock. He stepped in. His mask was fogging badly. “Got to have control,” he whispered to himself, slowing his breathing. The lock cycled and he stepped through. He ripped off his boots, then stepped into the next chamber. He pulled a chain and the suit was hosed down. He waited impatiently as the shower ran through its sequence. There was no way to make it go quicker. Not if it was going to ensure that anything that might be on his suit was gone.