Objekt 221 Page 10

  Damon nodded. The T-rex sounded again. Followed by another. The sounds were closer, but still several hundred meters away.

  “Maybe we should go inside,” Lazlo said. “Take a look around. Let them finish their hunt before we try to walk back.”

  Miles, at a loss for words, just nodded.

  * *

  “Son of a bitch,” Calvin said.

  He had been one of the first through the door and had activated the face-plate-mounted LED flashlights that were attached at his temples. Right now, he was looking down at the floor. He could see beautiful tilework and expert craftsmanship hiding behind a thin layer of dust, dirt, and general grime. There were several spots, however, that were uncovered. There were clearly footprints all up and down this grand hallway.

  “Wow,” Cadey said.

  The six team members formed a semi-circle several meters inside the main entrance. The corridor stretched off into the distance and the section they were currently in was about four meters wide. There were a few doors that lined this area and it ultimately seemed to spill into a larger open room.

  “There’s been recent activity here,” Damon said. “Human activity.”

  He actually lifted up his boot to look at the sole.

  “The tread pattern matches,” he said, and then lowered his foot back to the floor.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Emi asked the group as a whole.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be here,” Miles said.

  As if on cue, they heard the high-pitched roar of the T-rex…that seemed to be joined by two more beasts. Heavy footfalls rattled the walls.

  “Let’s get a look at the layout of this place,” Cadey said. “We can come back properly equipped.”

  “Agreed,” Calvin said.

  * *

  Outside of the footprints that dominated the corridor, one of the first things the expedition team noticed was the slight variation in size. Everything seemed slightly larger than it should have been. It was almost as if they were operating on a 75 percent scale. The doors seemed too big. The door latches seemed too big. There were one or two benches scattered throughout the walkway—which seemed too big.

  “It just feels strange,” Damon said. “The proportions are off.”

  “A super-ancient civilization,” Hollyfeld said.

  “It’s impossible to tell how old this building is, right now, as is,” Brunarski said. “Hundreds of years? Thousands? We’re already 100 million years into Earth’s past. It’s possible that a civilization has just gone extinct.”

  “Right. I mean,” Damon said. “How long would it take for the environment to reclaim a building?”

  The team continued to walk down the hallway. There were metal letters on the floor—that had, presumably, fallen off the wall—that were similar in style to the characters on the outside of the building. It was becoming obvious that the main corridor would soon empty into a large courtyard.

  Cadey shrugged.

  “There have been several studies,” she said. “Realistically, an entire city could be reclaimed by nature in as little as 500 years. Obviously, it depends on numerous factors.”

  “Sure.” Calvin nodded. “That would be a good earmark. We don’t know what this area looked like 500 years ago. Maybe this is a solitary building. Maybe it was in the center of a metropolis.”

  “100 million plus 500 years old,” Lazlo Hollyfeld said, stepping into the courtyard at the end of the corridor. “This is the discovery of a lifetime.”

  * *

  The courtyard of the building 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.

  The team stood motionless just inside the courtyard’s grand entrance. Twelve different beams of light played all across the oversized room.

  Emi pointed to a section of the ceiling.

  “There’s some sort of nest up there,” she said.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Miles said, as if sensing some sort of danger.

  * *

  One hundred million years away, Britta Vragi sat behind her enormous desk and watched the attack of the unknown dinosaur again. They had lost several team members during that excursion. She had worked with her counterpart at the storage and operations facility to write up a narrative about their final moments. Luckily, only one of the team members, a man named Harrison, had any family that needed to be notified. Certainly, it had been a factor in hiring throughout her time with Allied Genetics.

  There was a knock on the door and it quickly opened.

  “Beale,” Britta said. “I need you to go out there and bring them back.”

  He nodded.

  “Minimal force,” she said. And he nodded again.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bring ‘em back.”

  With that, he turned and left the office. Britta, for her part, turned back to her laptop and started the gruesome footage yet again.

  * *

  The expedition team had finished exploring the large courtyard and progressed past it. The room broke into a defined V-shape and the two corridors expanded away from the huge room —one path traveling toward the east and one to the west. The team chose to venture down the west path first.

  “Is that blood?” Damon asked, pausing near a section of the hallway that seemed to contain a high level of activity. The dust and dirt was disturbed. There seemed to be bullet holes in a section of the wall. Damon had crouched down to center his flashlights on an area of the floor.

  He touched the dark brown liquid with the tips of his fingers. It was dry, but still a bit tacky. He held the fingertips up close to his face. The computer imaging system in his faceplate took several pictures and began to analyze. It would be impossible to get a full chemical analysis without a sample, but it certainly behaved like dried blood.

  Emi Tolliver bent down and ran a cotton swab across the stain, dropped the swab into a protective vinyl test tube, sealed it, and dropped it into a pocket on the side of her uniform.

  “Guys,” Cadey said. She had moved past the mess and was staring at a door 12 meters further down the corridor.

  Everyone stood and jogged down to meet her.

  The doorjamb itself was destroyed. It resembled a gaping wound in the right side of the corridor. Some sort of gate hung loosely, destroyed, away from the door’s frame.

  “Look at the splinter marks,” Cadey said, pointing at a section of the wall. “This gate was holding something in that room that didn’t appreciate it.”

  They paused as a tyrannosaur roar rattled what was left of the skylight above the courtyard. Then, there was another sound they couldn’t identify.

  “We really shouldn’t be here,” Miles said.

  The rest of the team cautiously stepped into the room. Miles and Damon were still in the corridor.

  Damon put a hand on Miles’s chest, fingers splayed, stopping his momentum.

  “What’s going on, man?” Damon said. “What do you know about this place?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You fought hard to not bring us back here, then you caved,” he said. “Now, you’ve mentioned a half-dozen times that we shouldn’t be here. You know more than you’re letting on.”

  Miles glared at his friend and slowly reached up and removed Damon’s hand from his chest.

  “We are in a hostile environment, 100 million years in the past. We are hopelessly underequipped with what sounds like a family of tyrannosaurs stalking prey a football field away from us. Yes. I think we should head back. Come back with a security force or something.”


  Damon paused, looked at his friend.

  “What kind of security force?”

  Miles didn’t have a chance to answer as there was a voice from down the hallway.

  “Exit the room, now.”

  It was Beale, weapon raised, flanked by two other O221 soldiers on either side of him. They all had weapons drawn and were slowly advancing down the hallway.

  “Mr. Lofton,” Beale said. “If you don’t mind.”

  The full expedition team had exited the destroyed room and now stood in the wide corridor facing the assault force.

  “What’s going on?” Emi asked the group in general. “Who are these guys?”

  “Objekt 221, Allied Genetics, employs a private military force,” Miles said. “It appears that we’ve overstepped our boundaries.”

  “Mr. Lofton,” Beale said again.

  Miles nodded and turned away from his researchers. He walked down the corridor and stood behind the five soldiers. Beale and his force remained in formation, standing opposite the five members of the expedition team.

  There was a high-pitched roar from outside. Closer. Followed by two others. There seemed to be three distinct T-rex adults somewhere outside. No one inside Building 5 flinched.

  “So, you’re just going to leave us here?” Calvin asked. “We’re employees of this company, too, you know?”

  Silence from Beale. It seemed like he was considering his options.

  “Nope,” he finally said. “We’re all going back together. We wanted to contain the situation on this side before you caused any irreparable harm.”

  Through this, Miles remained silent. He was scowling, but at no person in specific. For his part, Damon was glaring at his friend.

  “Let’s go,” Beale said and gestured with his black shotgun. The other four men, carrying submachine guns, stepped to the side to allow the five scientists to pass. They didn’t, however, lower their weapons.

  * *

  They walked back down the west corridor to the courtyard in a caravan. Beale and Miles were in the lead. The five researchers came next, flanked by two soldiers, and followed by two more. They walked slowly, steadily, with a purpose. They traveled back through the courtyard into the main stem of the capital Y-layout of Building 5.

  In the distance, Damon could see the main entrance and the dense foliage beyond it. Just outside the large doors were parked two vehicles. They looked like cross-over SUVs, with significant additions. Huge, run-flat tires. Flood lights. Metal bars across all the windows. Painted a deep green. They looked like up-armored military vehicles.

  Suddenly, there was a cacophony of screeches and squeals followed by thunderous footfalls. Beale raised his right hand, making a fist, signaling to the team to stop. With a huge crash, a group of Triceratops ran past, knocking into one of the vehicles and smashing it into the other. Mere seconds behind them were the three tyrannosaurs, chasing their dinner. The two vehicles, unfortunately, were trampled.

  As the footfalls faded off into the distance, the group stood motionless five meters into the facility. They could smell gasoline and various other chemicals leaking from the ruined military trucks. Even at this distance, it was an overpowering scent.

  “Ah, shit,” Beale said. He turned slightly and smiled over his shoulder. “I hope you wore your comfy shoes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Return

  BRITTA WAS no stranger to difficult managerial decisions. Early in her career, she had found it necessary to terminate an entire wing of employees. She left only the department head. Everyone else was escorted out of the building by armed security personnel. Not only was it the week before Christmas, but it was the week before a crucial experiment was due to generate the critical output. Rather than waiting to remove these workers—it was a loss prevention issue—after the research had run its course, she decided it was more important to cut this particular tumor out of the building at once.

  The division struggled, but they reloaded and completed their work admirably.

  She was, right now, having lunch with Objekt 221’s head of personnel—Marcus Osborne —in the executive cafeteria.

  “Yes,” she said, driving a forkful of peas around her plate. “I discussed the situation with Mathias earlier today.”

  “Okay, good,” Marcus said. He hadn’t touched his meal and knew he’d be snacking all day. They’d never faced an event of this magnitude before, and he was more than a little troubled. “Can I ask you something?”

  Britta nodded.

  “Why did I allow them to go back without simply containing the situation here?”

  Marcus nodded in response.

  “Yeah.” He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin, removing food that had never been there in the first place.

  “That’s a fair question,” she said, giving up and putting her fork down next to the plate. “And a good one. I’m not entirely sure. I weighed the options and felt we could control the situation better grabbing them on the other side, bringing them back, and putting them in isolation, rather than marching them through the facility in front of everyone.”

  Marcus was quiet for a moment. Pensive.

  “There’s a maintenance tunnel leading directly from the transport pad to Room 4,” he said.

  “Uh huh,” Britta said. “We can get them through without anyone even knowing.”

  Again, Marcus went silent.

  “Wouldn’t it have been…?” He leaned in closer, lowering his voice. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to have them encounter an accident on the other side?”

  “An accident of that magnitude? Our insurance rates would skyrocket.” Britta smiled. “There’s no right answer. Maybe I wanted to see if they’d uncover something we missed. Maybe I gave it a few hours to see if they’d get any more footage of our Unclassified. Honestly, I’m not sure.”

  “I suppose that’s honest,” Marcus said. “What did Mathias say?”

  Britta shrugged.

  “We emailed back and forth to plan the logistics and then he went quiet,” she said, fully giving up on her lunch plate. The waiter came past and cleared their table. Another man poured them each a cup of coffee. “I suppose I should check on that. I got the call that Lofton’s expedition team went back right after. I guess I got a bit distracted.”

  Marcus nodded and dabbed the corners of his mouth again. Again, for no reason.

  “It’s easy to do,” he said. “Beale’s back there?”

  Britta nodded.

  “Yep,” she said. “I expect him back any minute now.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said, standing up. He ran his hands down the pleats on the front of his slacks. “Call me if you need me there.”

  “Of course,” Britta said, and sipped her coffee.

  * *

  Leaving the trampled remains of their two transport vehicles stomped into the ancient Earth near the entrance of Building 5, Beale and his prisoners began the long march toward the Anvil Canyon base. They had just more than a mile to travel over relatively flat terrain. Unfortunately, they were beginning to lose the light and predators were starting to swarm the area.

  Beale was under orders to not harm the five members of the expedition team, but the five researchers were under no illusions about what they would likely face when they got back to Allied Genetics. Likely, there would be some sort of discipline—possibly termination. The worst part would be overcoming the stigma attached to being fired from a high-security organization. It might make it difficult to get another job.

  Damon, however, was crestfallen. He had known Miles for years and felt betrayed at the lack of communication. Even when Damon put the question directly to him—what do you know? —Miles had held fast to the lie.

  More than that, however, Damon was certain that this experience was going to end much worse than being fired. Termination, he thought, in a very literal sense.

  “Keep it moving,” Beale said without turning back to the line of prisoners behind him. “We’ll
have some pretty bright starlight, but when the sun goes down, we hit full dark pretty quickly. You can go night vision, but no flashlights.”

  They marched on in silence, keeping close to the tree-line, away from the dilapidated remains of the road. They were in the same formation as earlier with Beale and Miles in the lead, followed by the five researchers. They were flanked by two soldiers with the final two soldiers bringing up the rear. It was a mystery to the five team members as to why one of the soldiers had given Miles a sidearm.

  Everyone on the expedition team was quiet, contemplating what was going on, processing it in their own way. Finally, it was Calvin who spoke up. Cadey Park was walking next to him, but he could have been talking to anyone in hushed tones.

  “I’m having trouble coming to grips with what’s going on,” he said, looking forward.

  “Being led by gun-toting thugs, death-march style, to face our boss?” Cadey responded under her breath, but loud enough for Calvin to hear speaking off mic—as well as the soldier immediately to her right.

  Calvin shook his head.

  “I mean us stumbling into evidence of a super-ancient civilization,” he said. “It took me a while to get used to the idea of documenting, studying, and analyzing plants and animals from 100 million years ago. But,” he paused, “what did we just see?”

  They walked in silence.

  Damon, directly behind the two of them could hear the conversation, but chose not to add anything yet.

  “I mean,” Calvin continued, staring straight ahead, raising his hands a bit, palms-up, “it seems obvious that this planet could create life twice or even three times in its six billion year history. And, given generally the same circumstances, environment, and challenges—these different civilizations might advance in similar fashions. But did we just see clear evidence that we aren’t the first humans to live on this planet?”

  Cadey was nodding.

  “I think so, Cal,” she said. “I’m trying to think of a scenario where this building might represent something else. We are time travelers, by the very definition of our job description. Who’s to say that Building 5 isn’t an earlier attempt by O221 to build a base on this end of the time jump?”