Objekt 221 Read online

  And promptly got lost trying to find the staging area.

  * *

  The facemask was a shield—both in the physical resemblance to the shape and in the function of the piece itself. Damon admired it briefly before snapping it into place. There was a military-grade foam rubber seal that went around the wearer’s face. The mask itself was held in place both by calculated negative pressure and thick Velcro straps—three of them—that met in the back of the head. The air canister held 12 hours of breathable air.

  Once on and activated, the shatter-proof acrylic mask was overlaid with a pale yellow HUD that contained helpful information about the wearer’s health, the surroundings, and the rest of the team. The mask contained both a microphone and speakers and a camera that ran continuously and burst-transmitted to the main server for storage every 12 minutes.

  Everyone on the mission team was synched up through the control center and could speak to each other freely over an open channel. A single word command and password would open a secure channel to a selected team member.

  If Allied Genetics ever ran low on cash reserves, they could sell these facemasks and make a billion dollars. Several times over.

  Damon was suited up and snapped his facemask into place. He activated the oxygen canister and felt the mask suck in close to his face—a product of the negative pressure. He ran his hands down the rest of his uniform, although it was fairly mundane when compared to the futuristic facemask.

  To outward appearances, he wore a camouflaged tactical suit with heavy black boots. A careful observer, however, would notice that there was absolutely no exposed skin. Thick boots that came to mid-shin. Heavy gloves. And a balaclava that went up behind the head and disappeared beneath the thick protective acrylic of the facemask. He wore a backpack stuffed full of helpful equipment.

  There were five other members of the expedition team, all standing on the launching pad. All of the monitors against the far wall were up and running. The center console was counting down. Damon hadn’t stopped smiling in the last four hours.

  10.

  9.

  8.

  “Here we go, man,” Lofton said to Damon and, of course, the entire mission team. “This might feel a little weird the first time you go through it.”

  3.

  2.

  1.

  White.

  “Oh shit,” Damon said, and didn’t say, at the same time.

  * *

  He made it a point to stand perfectly still. Miles had told him to close his eyes before, during, and after the transition. He hadn’t told him about the ringing in his ears—the way his entire head seemed to be vibrating. The way every hair on his body seemed to be standing on end. He had started counting when he heard the end of the countdown on the launching pad in Objekt 221.

  “Warble baffle goop,” came a voice over Damon’s facemask speaker system. He shook his head, eyes still closed. “Baffle goop, ay-men.”

  He wanted to stick his fingers in his ears and try to pop the odd pressure he was feeling. Butcher had counted to 30 and was noticing that his senses were starting to return to normal.

  “Ay-man, comepin,” the voice was more insistent.

  He was starting to hear words, though, and decided to reply.

  “Miles?” he asked the team. “Mission team. This is Damon Butcher.”

  There was a popping sensation at the base of his neck and the general tingling feeling seemed to evaporate.

  “Hope-in urice.”

  On a hunch, Damon slowly opened his eyes and took in his surroundings. His world snapped into place.

  “Oh my God,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Miles said, now standing right next to him. “Welcome to O221, Cretaceous version.”

  Damon was standing in the same position he had been on the launching pad. In truth, he was still on the launching pad. At some point, he had clenched his fists. Instead of staring at a wall of television screens, he was staring at a beautiful open vista through reinforced glass.

  “Oh my God,” he said again.

  “Yeah,” Miles said again and paused. “We don’t know how it smells,” he said thoughtfully. “We think it will smell similar to our world what with the flora, fauna, wild dinosaur poop, rot, biological decay—that sort of thing. But we’re not sure. The plate does too good a job filtering all that stuff out.”

  “Plate?”

  Miles tapped the side of his facemask.

  “The mask. The faceplate,” he said. “Just a nickname.”

  Damon nodded but never took his eyes off the wilderness surrounding him. It looked nothing like the Crimea that he had stood in two minutes ago.

  He could tell almost instinctively that it was warmer. There was a glow about the plants—they glistened in the strong sunlight. And the sunlight. It was dazzling. Yet, somehow different.

  “Higher concentration of both carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere,” Miles said. “We also seem to be in the midst of an oxygenation peak. The oxygen levels are toxic for humans right now. But the plants seem to be doing great.”

  Damon continued to scan the area. Trees, plants, bushes, flowers—some he even thought he recognized. The very beginnings of lush plains grasses. There seemed to be a mist covering much of the greenery. The sky had a strange orange-ish hue. He was shaken to his core when a dinosaur thundered across his field of vision—emerging from behind a thick group of trees on his left, lumbering across the 100-meter wide field, and disappearing into another grove on the right.

  “Ahhh,” Damon exhaled. On the HUD of his plate, a frozen image of the dinosaur, deteriorated into a wireframe, back to a full image. It reduced in size and text filled the screen.

  AK1503.

  Herbivore.

  40-feet long.

  28-feet tall.

  Weight (est) 4.5 tons.

  “I, uh,” Damon said, both reading his screen and watching the live surroundings.

  “Yeah,” Miles said, chuckling. “It’s. I know. It’s a bit shocking to see them. We’re used to seeing bones in a museum or, failing that, a best-guess recreation in a movie or video game. It’s a bit different to see them take a dump right in front of you.”

  Damon was absently nodding.

  “It looked like a Spinosaurus,” Damon said. “But there was no name.”

  “Yep,” Calvin, another researcher said who had walked up to join the two on the edge of the launching pad said. He was average height, thick build, dark hair. He was one of the senior men on the team. “It’s a previously undiscovered species. Seems to be a distant relative of the Spinosaurus, or its herbivore cousin—Ouranosaurus. In the present day, they only have built a fossil record in Africa, but the time period is correct.”

  The dinosaur had been huge—similar to an elongated Tyrannosaurus rex. It had a long neck, long tail, and, across its back, was a razor-sharp sail of bone and leathery skin. Modern-day paleontologists were unsure whether this fin was used to attract mates, to aid in body temperature regulation, or a completely different purpose. Damon had a feeling that he would soon learn the reason for the spiny sail.

  Most shocking, though, had been the coloring.

  “The colors,” Damon said, playing with the settings on the side of his plate and trying to rewind the recorded footage.

  AK1503 was gorgeous.

  Rather than the drab green coloring typified by modern lizards, this creature was beautiful and shared many of the characteristics of a snake. It had a pattern of green, white, brown, and orange shapes all along its skin and down its tail.

  “We’re only here for observation,” Calvin continued after a moment. “In case you were wondering why it’s called AK1503 rather than some creative nomenclature. Observe, codify, document.”

  Miles nodded in response.

  “Exactly,” he said, and then looked around the room, trying to see it as a new employee would. “So, this is pretty much a replica of the O221 staging area and control room. On this side of the equation, how
ever, most of the computer stations are unmanned, and you can see that the wall monitors have been replaced by ultra-strength shatter-proof glass.”

  Damon was looking around the room, slowly coming out of his haze.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Plus, this facility is only a fraction of the size of our home base at Anvil Canyon. It’s this room. A couple residential quarters. What we call a ‘quicklab.’ And a general maintenance room.”

  Damon turned toward a sign above three computer stations that read “Drone Control.”

  “Drones?” he asked the team.

  Calvin nodded.

  “Dangerous weather. Mating rituals. Feeding frenzies,” he said. “Sometimes it makes more sense to film remotely than go out into the wild.”

  There was silence for a few moments.

  “Okay.” Miles smiled. “Enough foreplay. Let’s get outside.”

  * *

  On the right side of the room, on the immediate edge of the enormous viewing window, was an oversized door. Nearly six feet across and eight feet tall, it looked industrial…and totally out of place in this modern-tech environment. Heavy steel, visible pneumatic hinges, thick rubber piping to ensure an airtight seal—this door led to the airlock that led to the outdoors.

  The four researchers were milling about near the door, waiting for their mission commander—Miles Lofton—and the new recruit—Damon Butcher—to get in line and officially begin the excursion. There were two men—Calvin Brunarski, Lazlo Hollyfeld—and two women—Cadey Park, Emi Tolliver. They were all four brilliant in their fields and had 10 advanced degrees between them.

  “Okay,” Miles said, signing some documentation and placing a clipboard on a nearby workstation. “It’s go time.”

  Chapter Six

  The Other Team

  WITHOUT ALL the bells and whistles, the floorplan of Objekt 221 resembled a giant capital letter K. Originally, the straight, vertical spine of the letter would have represented two separate entrances—one at each of the extreme points of the facility. The northern entrance was recently closed off with four meters of reinforced concrete. Now there was one entrance and three spikes labeled Alpha, Beta, and R&D. The workers in these three areas weren’t forbidden to talk to each other, but everyone was cautioned to not discuss the more sensitive elements of their work.

  Britta’s office was at the intersection of the four line segments, on the second floor. Right now, she was meeting with three other department heads and trusted colleagues. Marcus Osborne was her head of personnel. Carter Wittington was her operations manager. Jason Beale was the head of Alpha Team—the military branch of Objekt 221—made up almost exclusively of retired Army Rangers. They were, all four, sitting around a small meeting table that dominated the side of her office opposite the massive desk.

  “So, NR-405G will be the final specimen on the next list,” Carter said, making a checkmark on a legal pad and then flipping closed the leather portfolio he had been making notes on. On the cover was the stylized AG logo of Allied Genetics. He clipped his pen to the outside spine of the book.

  “Got it,” Marcus said, likewise making a checkmark on his list. Open in front of him was a thick Franklin Covey planner, leather-bound and loaded with notes. “I have it starting on Wednesday.” He checked his watch. “Almost exactly 70 hours from now. Your team will be ready?”

  He looked at Beale who simply nodded. Unlike the other two men, he had squared off a beaten-up steno pad and a ballpoint pen that was missing its cap. The steno pad had certainly seen better days with notes covering each page, coffee stains dotting the notes, and half-torn pages turned this way and that.

  “Yeah,” Beale said. “We’re good with that timeframe. Standard deployment?”

  It was Carter’s turn to nod.

  “Standard 10,” he said.

  “Good,” Beale said. Like Carter, Marcus had closed his planner. Britta had no notes in front of her.

  Everyone stood to leave and Britta finally broke her silence. She had offered no input during this short planning session, but wanted to discuss something before everyone adjourned for the day.

  “We need to…” she said, and paused while the three men sat back down and got situated in their seats. “We need to discuss UC-0104,” she continued.

  “That thing that ate three of my men?” Beale asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I think we should bring one in.”

  There was silence around the short conference table. Her authority was unquestioned, and that was partly because she never gave unreasonable orders.

  “What?” Marcus was the first to hazard a response.

  Britta smiled and nodded in response, not to just Marcus but to the other two men as well.

  “I know, I know, hear me out,” she said. “An uncategorized apex predator with unmatched instincts and ferocity. Took down two highly trained, well-equipped soldiers without breaking a sweat. I think we need to study it. Could represent a huge leap forward in our research.”

  “It could also represent a huge leap forward in our mortality rate,” Beale said.

  “What about tagging one?” Marcus said, turning back a few pages in his planner. “R&D has developed a new version of Project Crimson. They’re dying to test it out.”

  Britta leaned back in her chair, thinking.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I’ll compromise for now. Let’s tag it.” She looked directly at Carter. “I need you to examine every frame of that footage and start working on a containment strategy. We’re going to eventually bring one of those in, and I want to be ready.”

  “Understood,” Carter said.

  Chapter Seven

  The Hidden Tower

  THAT THE German army constructed huge concrete towers in numerous locations around Europe was not a secret. It was hard to hide a 15-story structure with five-meter-thick walls. The secret part was that they had built four flak towers without anyone noticing.

  There were a dozen towers that were well-known across several nations—some were even being repurposed all or in part. The four, though, that were built and never in operation, mostly stood rock-solid in their original locations. Three were in various forests on very secluded, enormous private properties. The fourth rested lazily at the bottom of a waterfall. While all the Nazi flak towers were special—historically, emotionally, and architecturally—the fourth tower, known as Hochhaus, or Sky Tower, was unique.

  The construction of Hochhaus was finished just as the war ended. It was never operational. It was pristine. It was purchased by Allied Genetics in 1989.

  It was now a research facility that was well-staffed, well-funded, and doing cutting-edge genetic modification experiments. Hybrid modifications. Human modifications. Illegal modifications.

  Right now, the Wraiths were abseiling down the face of the waterfall. A stationary figure stood atop the waterfall “painting” the roof of the building with a green target. Six figures dressed all in black military clothing with advanced weaponry and futuristic tech rushed down the height of the waterfall silent and invisible.

  Flak Tower Hochhaus was under attack—and it didn’t even know it.

  * *

  Commander Alex “Beef” Scott lightly touched his throat mic.

  “Team Big. Touchdown in 5, 4, 3…” He let the cadence continue silently. Beef reached the reinforced concrete rooftop of Hochhaus, followed by the silent landing of five more men. “Touchdown.”

  The seventh man, who would only be referred to as Overwatch during this mission, powered down his hand-held unit and the green targeting laser clicked off. He packed the small unit away in the combat webbing across the front of his gear and immediately pulled a small laptop out of his black canvas bag. He flipped it open, attached some power-boosted antennas to it, and turned it on.

  Overwatch pulled one more item out of the bag and tossed it into the air. It powered up immediately and continued flying straight up into the air. It was a drone, barely larger than a man’s shoe, wi
th a camera and a strong broadcast signal.

  Once the drone reached its broadcast height, the laptop screen flickered. It was a technical enhancement—a sensor that operated in night vision and thermal vision simultaneously.

  Overwatch cracked his knuckles and reported in.

  “Team Big,” he said under his breath. “The bird is active.”

  “Understood, Overwatch,” he heard the commander’s voice in the tiny earpiece.

  * *

  Hochhaus was typical of the original flak tower commissions. It was 54 meters tall— taller than the Statue of Liberty—and had walls of reinforced concrete a fairly uniform 3.5 meters thick around the perimeter. The tower was designed to act as an air raid shelter for up to 10,000 people and had an operational defense range of 14 kilometers. Standing at the base of a waterfall, the structure was defended by a semi-circle of anti-tank measures. Where monstrous anti-aircraft guns had once stood atop the roof was a solid sheet of steel interrupted only by rebar-enforced termination grates of the air ventilation system.

  Commanded by Alex “Beef” Scott, the six-man Wraith assault force prepared to infiltrate the facility they now stood atop.

  Their orders were clear: No survivors.

  Once the seven-man advance team cleared the facility, a clean-up team would sanitize the building and remove all relevant information. Commander Scott’s involvement in the evening should last no longer than eight minutes.

  * *

  The design of the building, while innovative, was mostly borne out of the need for secrecy and protection. If it was a 15-story building, then the top three and bottom two floors stood empty.

  These empty floors were masterfully disguised to look like an ongoing construction and renovation project…but were home to numerous defensive measures including EMP charges, auto-sentries, and strange little robots that looked like self-propelled vacuum cleaners with butcher knives attached to them.

  All this, plus a host of guards. The Wraiths had received intel that 20 people would be in the building this evening. Much like the Port Radnovich facility. They had a similar plan, only compressed. They had a smaller footprint to deal with. Overwatch had a remote look at the facility through the uplink one of the members, Mack “Truck” Miller, had provided on the roof of Hochhaus. The rest of the team had prepared their ingress and waited for the signal.