Objekt 221 Read online




  OBJEKT 221

  Steve Metcalf

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2019 by Steve Metcalf

  Also By Steve Metcalf

  RESET: A Videogame Anecdote

  Sketch

  The Beast of Trash Island

  King Paranormal Investigations Series

  Coldwater

  The Hidden Riches of Lord Granite

  Paradox Iron

  Collections

  The Event: The Chicago Rust Yards

  The Event: Iron Bay

  The Event: Precision Robotics

  Chapter One

  The Final Specimen

  IT SOUNDED like the end of the world. Heavy, thick drops of rain fell in sheets across the landscape, pummeling trees and flattening grass. The air—filled with a palpable dewy sweetness only an hour before—hung as fatly as a gloomy fog as far as the eye could see. Blinding lightning and screaming thunder shook the building to its core.

  Jason Beale looked up at the faint line of dust that fell from the ceiling. He could still feel the reverberations of the last blast of thunder as it rattled its way through the building. The sky, black with clouds, had sucked all light out of the building. He reached up and clicked a button on the side of his protective acrylic facemask. He immediately saw the world in night vision—a high-contrast green glow. The corridor lit up in front of him. He turned to look at the rest of the group.

  “NVG,” he called out over the faceplate’s microphone. “Let’s keep this shit-show moving.”

  Nothing had gone right for the advance team all day. From Jacobi clipping a boulder when taking a corner too fast in one of the military-grade LSVs—Light Strike Vehicles—to an equipment failure while trying to catch a bonus specimen on the list, to this ungodly thunderstorm they were now wading through. But they persisted. All 10 men—a combination of field scientists and retired Army Rangers—were crowding through the large corridor at the back of the main floor of Building 5. Beale was in charge of this force as he started counting off names and pointing. Two soldiers per scientist except for Beale’s own group.

  They had run down the list that intelligence had prepared. As of today’s hunting migratory patterns, they were likely to find a specimen in Building 5.

  “Roscoe. Halverson. Tenna. You’re with me.” He stood off to one side. “We go north. Smith. Wilson. Jacobi. You’re east. The rest of you take the west branch. We only need one more NR-401G for the lab. Any other specimens can be subdued or eliminated.” He hefted the shoulder strap of his Mossberg 500 shotgun—the Persuader—off his right arm. “Quiet if possible.” He grinned. “Loud if not.”

  “Hoorah,” the other five soldiers called back as the three teams split apart.

  * *

  “Do you know the history of that bit of military slang?” Halverson asked. He was dressed in similar camouflage to the two soldiers in his group, but he held a motion detector in one hand and a waterproof computer tablet in the other.

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  Beale was the point man of the group, his shotgun held at eye level. Just behind him were the two scientists, Halverson and Tenna. They were both carrying sophisticated tracking equipment. Tenna had what looked like an electronic checklist blinking away, clipped to his utility belt. They all wore the futuristic-looking acrylic faceplate which had a small soda-can-sized air canister attached to the underside.

  Roscoe, a tall man of 25, brought up the rear. He was carrying a Belgian-made FN FAL battle rifle. Many on the team preferred this weapon, or its British variant. He held the rifle in the same manner as Beale held the shotgun but was sweeping his eyesight back and forth in the middle distance of the huge corridor. Roscoe was on high alert, unblinking and staring into the green gloom.

  “Radio operators in World War II,” continued Halverson without taking his eyes off the motion detector, “shortened the response Heard Understood Acknowledged to HUA. When spoken, it sounded like hooah.”

  “Fascinating,” Beale said, checking his watch. “Six more hours of air.”

  “Oh, that’s not all,” Halverson said. “Airborne Rangers adopted the acronym into one of their own. HOOA. Hooah. Head Out Of Ass.”

  “Shocking,” Beale said.

  “It caught on from there,” Halverson said.

  There was no additional response from Beale as they reached the first doorway on the left. The doorways were larger than expected and it always gave Beale pause. He wasn’t paid to break down the mysterious findings of the advance team—it was his job to deliver them home safe and secure. Right now, he had a bad feeling about Building 5.

  “Entering courtyard,” Beale said into his faceplate mic to the entire team.

  * *

  “Entering courtyard,” came Beale’s voice over Smith’s earpiece. He and Jacobi were escorting their assigned scientist—Wilson—through the east branch of the main corridor. Wilson was carrying a thermal imager while the two soldiers carried weapons—FN FALs to match Roscoe. On his back, Jacobi carried a large, collapsible trap. It would expand to a six by six cube that could be slightly modified to reduce the dimensions as the combination of high-tensile steel and PVC piping was designed to telescope in on itself.

  “Copy that,” Smith responded. “Leapfrogging rooms along the east hall. Stand by.”

  * *

  There was no update from Harrison, Baker, and Leafly in the west corridor.

  * *

  The courtyard of Building 5 was immense. It seemed like a multi-purpose room with a stage on one side, a set of stone bleachers on the other, and numerous structures that defied definition. The room was dominated by a series of sculptures along the north wall. The largest one, nearly filling the space from stone floor to curved ceiling, was a tree that was carved to resemble a woman. Her features were blurred and out of proportion. She looked like the 3D representation of an impressionist’s painting. All the right pieces were in all the right places but the proportions seemed somehow…wrong.

  Beale entered the room first, the big Mossberg held at the ready. Roscoe kept the two scientists in the corridor for a moment. He was swinging his battle rifle first down one path followed by the other. For his part, Halverson held a motion detector through the doorway into the courtyard. It was picking up Beale and nothing else.

  While there was only one effective entrance into the room, there were dozens of places to hide. Beale was clearing as many of them as possible and finally motioned for the rest of the team to come into the giant 100 meter by 100 meter room.

  Halverson, gently sweeping the motion detector back and forth, walked into the room. As he aimed the unit at the far right corner of the courtyard, he caught a small blip of activity and then nothing. The screen faded back to its default light purple.

  “There was, uh,” the researcher said, sweeping the small black box back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse of what had triggered the electronic response. “There was some movement over there.”

  Beale turned to look at Halverson, who indicated the corner of the room.

  “NVG off,” Beale said and clicked on a powerful flashlight attached to the side of his shotgun. The strong beam penetrated the gloomy darkness caused by the thick clouds outside. He slowly swept the beam around the area Halverson had indicated. It was a tangle of branches of varying thickness. It looked like a nest. Ten meters above ground.

  “What the—?”

  And then it jumped.

  * *

  Blood.

  In the west corridor, the three team members had been literally torn to shreds. The screen of a motion detector was covered in gore, but the warning klaxons were still audible. Suddenly, however, the insistent beeping halted.

  Whatever had killed these men had slithered out of range of t
he tiny machine.

  * *

  Smith cleared room number four along the east corridor. He and his team were making quick work of their section of Building 5. Unfortunately, they were having no luck finding the specimen that had led them here.

  He activated the advance team’s chat by simply speaking.

  “Beale, come in.”

  He heard static and then a clipped reply.

  “Stand by,” Beale said over the radio.

  His voice was calm and cool, but there was something behind it. Something screaming. And then gunfire.

  The three men ran down the corridor to the Y-junction that would lead them to the courtyard.

  * *

  Specimen NR-401G dropped from its nest and landed gracefully in front of the team. It immediately skittered to the right and tried to find an exit.

  While muted in the night vision filter, the team knew that this specimen was colored a deep brown with dark green stripes. In the natural light, amplified by Beale’s flashlight, they could see it a bit more clearly. It was nearly three feet tall and had a tail that seemed too short—just over a foot and a half long—that started the entire width of its body and quickly tapered to a sharp point. No one had yet observed NR-401G using its tail as a weapon, but it seemed more an obvious use than one of balance. The specimen had a long snout full of razor-sharp teeth and what looked like a Mohawk of thick brown bristles from between his eyes halfway down his long neck.

  “Stand by,” Beale said into his faceplate.

  With a quick look left and right, the specimen lunged at Beale who fired his shotgun into the ground to halt the giant lizard’s approach. Halverson yelped. Roscoe muscled around the scientist and hurled the protective cage toward the beast.

  Four things seemed to happen all at once. First, Roscoe hit the red button on the small black remote attached to the combat webbing across his chest. Second, now activated, a blue laser beam shot out of the control surface of the containment pod as it hurled toward the specimen. Third, the specimen halted, frightened by the gunfire. It had no frame of reference for weaponry, but the sound was scary enough. Fourth, the containment field automatically expanded along its telescoping pipes and fully engulfed NR-401G. It slowly clacked back into place coming to rest on the floor of the courtyard.

  Five seconds from start to finish.

  It took 20 more seconds for Smith and his team to arrive at the courtyard. By then, NR-401G was sedated after receiving a carefully dosed vapor from Halverson.

  “You got him?” Smith asked, holstering his sidearm.

  “Yeah.” Beale nodded and pointed to the nest up in the corner of the room.

  “Shit,” Smith said. “When did they start doing that?”

  Beale shrugged.

  “Not sure,” he said. “Gonna have to remember that one, though.” He turned to the three scientists—Halverson, Tenna, and Wilson—who were standing around the collapsible containment box. NR-401G seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Occasionally, its tail would thump against the reinforced PVC. “Send it home.”

  Halverson nodded and hit a few buttons on the rear control surface of the unit. Outside, a red light started blinking on one of the LSVs. Inside Building 5, dozens of bearings snapped into place on the bottom of the containment unit and the whole thing started sliding through the courtyard along its mapped path back to the waiting vehicle.

  Led by Beale, everyone reached up and snapped their masks back into night-vision mode.

  “Anything else?” he asked the group. He gave the question a few seconds of silent response. “Okay. You three,” he said, nodding to the three researchers who still huddled together as the containment pod left the room, turned right, and headed down the hallway. “Go with the specimen. Get it secured in an LSV. And you get locked down also. We don’t want any more surprises. Jacobi, you’re with them.”

  “Hoorah.”

  “Roscoe, Smith,” Beale continued. “You’re with me. We’re going to locate Harrison’s team and evac double-quick. This building has some bad mojo right now.”

  * *

  The team of Army Rangers made it back to the Y-junction and turned left to follow the path laid out in Harrison’s original orders. Both the soldiers and the scientists were maintaining radio silence with only Roscoe trying to raise the west team every 30 seconds or so.

  They slowed at the top of the corridor. Each of the three soldiers had activated NVG with a detailed HUD (heads-up display) overlay. They were getting real-time readings of their environment. Temperature. Distance measured by their reticule. It was a line of data along the right side of their vision.

  “Harrison, Baker, come in,” Roscoe said quietly. The high-tuned microphone in the faceplate could easily pick up his whisper and transmit it over the HD radio signal. There was no answer.

  Smith hefted his left arm. Like all of the soldiers, he had what amounted to a laptop computer strapped to his forearm. Roughly the size of a large smartphone, the unit was the epitome of military strategy. He hit a command and the screen came to life. It was both a motion sensor and an overlay of their current location. It was reading the two missing soldiers’ units. They were further down the hallway. Not moving.

  “I don’t like this,” Smith said.

  Beale nodded.

  “Move out,” he said.

  They had negotiated just more than half of the west corridor and Beale, in the lead, stopped. He held up his right hand in a fist as a wordless signal to the two men behind him to halt. All three took a knee, battle rifles up, eyes forward. Three meters ahead, there was a huge pool of blood, some weapons, a couple pieces of equipment.

  And some limbs.

  Even worse than that was how the smear trailed off to the right into an open doorway on the north side of the corridor. All three men were stone quiet. Beale crouch-walked to the leading edge of the door. He was careful not to step on the gloved hand that rested on the grime-covered floor.

  When he reached the door, he stopped and slowly reached his left hand around to a pocket at his lower back. He pulled out a small rubber ball and gently rolled it around the frame and into the room. The rubber surface of the ball was nearly completely silent and Beale only rolled it far enough to clear the door frame. The ball stopped automatically and started sending a signal back to the three men in the hallway.

  On their visors, it resembled a picture-in-picture screen. It was a fairly standard room type on floor one of Building 5. It was about eight meters square with no windows and no furniture. The camera in the small ball’s sensor had centered on an object moving, only slightly in the far corner of the room. It was completely in the shadows.

  “What the fuck,” Roscoe whispered.

  Either by hearing this utterance or sensing the three men in the corridor 10 meters away, the creature turned.

  “Oh shit,” Smith whispered.

  They were looking at an uncategorized apex predator. The word “UNCLASSIFIED” was blinking on their faceplate HUD screens with numbers and data flashing all around the image perimeter. Soon, the word was replaced by the text UC-0104 as the shared computer started building a file on the as-yet unstudied dinosaur.

  It was nearly 10 feet tall and had to stoop slightly to stand in the room. It stood on its hind legs and had a thick tail curled around its feet. Massive cords of muscle were clearly visible beneath a spiny, reptilian skin. Twin rows of spikes ran the length of its back and tapered to blend in with the base of the tail.

  Two of its four arms were holding the lifeless corpse of what was left of the researcher Leafly. Ragged bits of flesh fell from its powerful jaws. It stopped chewing as it turned its head toward the door.

  “Barrier,” Beale called out as he tossed a flash-bang into the room. He could hear the pop as the tiny canister exploded and the creature roared in anger as it was temporarily blinded. Smith pulled a metal bar out of a thigh pocket and jammed one side into the door frame. He pressed a button and the metal bar instantly expanded to cover the width o
f the door and then upward as it climbed to the top of the frame. It was instantly attaching itself to the frame with an industrial strength adhesive as Smith and Roscoe were hitting each side of the barrier with nail guns that shot long, spiked projectiles. The door was completely barricaded in 10 seconds. Twelve seconds after Beale had thrown the flash-bang, the barrier shuddered as the creature rammed it with incredible force.

  “Gotta go,” Beale said.

  The three men turned and ran, double-quick, down the corridor to meet up with the scientists and the waiting evac vehicles.

  Chapter Two

  The Recruit

  HER DESK was enormous. The office could have been considered larger-than-average, but the desk as a singular object in the room was simply massive. It was well known around the complex and often commented-on. Not to her face, of course—even though, she probably wouldn’t have minded so much.

  The desk, they said, had to be fabricated and constructed inside the room because every piece of it was too large to fit through the door.

  The desk, they said, required additional concrete and steel girders beneath it so the entire unit didn’t collapse the floor.

  The desk, they said, weighed 5,000 pounds.

  The desk, they said, was responsible for the deaths of 12 men.

  Most of the rumors, of course, were perpetuated by the desk’s owner—Britta Vragi.

  As the operational director of the facility, Objekt 221, Britta worked hard to maintain a professional distance from everyone but her immediate subordinates. She couldn’t fraternize with those on her level because there was no one on her level. There were two people above her and a dozen department heads below her.

  She was 51 years old and a military veteran. She served in the infantry and her call sign was Mountain. Standing 6’2” and weighing in just over 200 pounds, she was a solid piece of anger that no one wanted to face off against. Now, significantly past her prime, she has lost some of her muscle tone but retained all of the fiery ambition. Britta was built of the sturdiest Nordic stock—her name literally meant “Strength” —and commanded a room with a rare combination of size and intelligence.