Chapter 6 - THE HOUSE BENEATH THE DESERT
The mining property east of Fallon appeared abandoned from the air, which was
exactly how Helix had designed it. Rusted sheet metal peeled from the buildings.
Wind pushed dust through broken fencing. A faded warning sign leaned against a post
like something left over from another century. Yet beneath the illusion of decay,
infrared cameras detected ventilation shafts, backup generators, and a buried power
grid feeding structures that officially did not exist. By sunset, Agent Chen had
federal tactical teams staged three miles away, medical units waiting farther back,
and warrants broad enough to tear apart every locked door they found.
Eleanor studied the satellite images on a portable screen. “The main entrance will
be a decoy.”
Chen frowned.
“How sure?”
“Very.”
“You said you
never saw this site.”
“I said I
don’t remember seeing it.”
The distinction
made everyone uncomfortable.
Eleanor pointed toward an old ore elevator south of the largest building. “Helix
facilities were built around containment. We always needed a secondary route for
emergency evacuation because certain neurological compounds required hazardous
isolation. Daniel hates improvisation. If he used our old architecture, this shaft
is the real access.”
Chen considered it, then
redirected the first team.
Gideon stood beside a black government SUV wearing borrowed body armor over his
shirt. Chen had argued against bringing him until Eleanor revealed a fact none of
them liked: Daniel’s call had been routed through a dead cellular network using a
handshake protocol tied to Gideon’s phone number. Whoever ran Orpheus already knew
him. Sending him away would not remove him from danger. It would only make him
easier to isolate.
“I’m not an
agent,” Gideon reminded Chen.
“No,” she said. “So when I tell you to stay behind me, consider it a
once-in-a-lifetime privilege.”
They entered through the
ore elevator just after midnight.
The shaft descended farther than Gideon expected, carrying them beneath layers of
rock where the desert heat vanished. Cold air rose around them, sterile and dry.
When the elevator doors opened, they faced a white corridor exactly like the one
Eleanor had described during her hospital flashback.
She
stopped breathing.
Gideon touched her elbow.
“You know this place.”
“I know
the smell.”
Disinfectant. Ozone.
Plastic tubing.
A red emergency light
flashed at the far end.
Eleanor whispered,
“I was here.”
The tactical team moved first, clearing corners and doors. Most rooms were empty.
One contained medical restraints bolted to a reclining chair. Another held shelves
of unlabeled drug vials. A third had been stripped so quickly that wires still hung
from the walls.
Then they reached
the glass room.
Eleanor
froze.
Behind reinforced panels
stood six narrow beds.
Four
were empty.
Two
were occupied.
The patients
were alive.
One was a middle-aged man with graying hair and bruises around his temples. The
other was a young woman who could not have been more than twenty-five. Both stared
at the agents entering the room with blank, terrified confusion.
The young woman began whispering, “My name is Anna. My name is Anna. My name is
Anna.”
“What’s your last
name?” a medic asked.
She
started crying.
“I
don’t know.”
Eleanor
turned away.
Gideon saw
her shoulders shake.
This was not theory anymore. Not a confession spoken safely in a hospital room. This
was the physical shape of everything she had allowed to begin.
“Help them,”
she said.
The medics
moved in.
A door slammed
somewhere deeper underground.
Gunfire
erupted.
Chen’s team pushed forward. Gideon dragged Eleanor behind a concrete divider as
rounds struck the corridor wall. Two armed men retreated through a security door.
Chen shouted for the breach team.
Eleanor grabbed Gideon’s vest. “That
door seals if the alarm completes.”
A countdown appeared
on a wall display.
30.
29.
28.
“What happens
if it seals?”
“The lower wing
fills with suppressant gas.”
“Nonlethal?”
She looked
at him.
“No.”
Chen heard and shouted
for everyone to move.
Eleanor ran to a wall panel, fingers flying across an old keypad. “Daniel changed
the code.”
21.
20.
19.
“Can you
bypass it?”
“I designed
the bypass.”
“That wasn’t
my question.”
She pressed her thumb
against a biometric reader.
ACCESS
DENIED.
Eleanor
stared.
Then she laughed
once, bitterly. “Of course.”
“What?”
“He
removed me.”
14.
13.
Gideon looked through the glass room at the two patients being lifted onto
stretchers.
“There has to
be another way.”
Eleanor’s eyes moved
rapidly across the panel.
Then she ripped the plastic cover from an emergency port and shoved two fingers
inside.
Chen yelled, “What
are you doing?”
“Creating
a fault.”
Sparks
snapped.
The countdown
froze at 8.
The corridor
lights died.
For one second,
everyone stood in darkness.
Then emergency
power returned.
The security door released
with a hydraulic hiss.
Chen’s team
surged through.
Beyond it, the underground complex widened into a control center lined with computer
racks. Most screens displayed wiped drives and deletion progress. But one monitor
remained active.
Daniel’s
face appeared.
Live.
He was
somewhere else.
“Hello,
Mother.”
Eleanor stepped
toward the screen.
“You left them
here to die.”
Daniel smiled. “You say that as
though abandonment isn’t our family tradition.”
“Where
are you?”
“Closer than
you think.”
The
feed shifted.
A camera showed
the exterior desert above.
Then another showed the
safehouse they had left.
Then one showed
the Silver Ridge Diner.
Finally, a fourth showed Gideon’s motorcycle
parked at the federal staging area.
Gideon felt cold
move through him.
Daniel looked directly
into the camera.
“You still think this is about
a laboratory,” he said. “It isn’t.”
“What is
Orpheus?” Eleanor demanded.
Daniel’s
smile vanished.
“Orpheus is what happens when memory stops
belonging to the person who lived it.”
The
screen flickered.
A
file appeared.
SUBJECT
G.R.-01
Gideon
stepped closer.
His own name
opened beneath it.
GIDEON
ROURKE.
Eleanor looked at
him in horror.
“I never treated
you,” she whispered.
Gideon stared
at the screen.
A
photograph loaded.
He
recognized himself.
But the photograph
was twelve years old.
And beneath it was a
date that made no sense.
May you like
The week his
brother Owen died.
