One whole side of the vast semicircular room was open onto a wide tarmac area that led out to the middle of the long, brightly lit runway. Inside, two lines of black-clad figures, eight wide, stood facing the huge open doors, submachine guns set against their shoulder, pointing out into the darkness. A chill ran up Jamie’s spine when he saw them.
I’ve seen people like this before. They look like soldiers; they look like the men who-
He couldn’t let himself finish the thought. He looked away from the dark figures and saw the round crest he had seen in the white corridor, stenciled high on the huge hangar wall. The same three Latin words were stamped below it, running almost the entire length of the vast surface. LUX E TENEBRIS
Behind the rows of soldiers, dozens of white-coated men and women bustled across the vast concrete floor of the room- hangar, it’s a hangar, they don’t make rooms this big -shuttling gurneys and IV drips back and forth, shouting instructions and questions to one another. A steel shutter door slid upward to Jamie’s right, and four figures in full biochemical-hazard suits pushed a pair of metal gurneys covered in plastic oxygen tents into the hangar.
In the distance, Jamie heard the heavy thud-thud-thud of an engine.
“Incoming!” yelled one of the soldiers.
“How much time?” asked a tall, skeletally thin man who stood behind a portable computer array on a heavy steel trolley.
“Ninety seconds!”
The activity in the hangar accelerated, doctors and scientists and soldiers running in every direction, the heels of their shoes and boots drumming on the concrete floor.
A huge crash boomed out to Jamie’s left, and he jumped. A heavy metal door had thumped open, slamming against the wall with a deafening clang. Frankenstein thundered through the door, his huge head surveying the room. His eyes locked on Jamie’s; he smiled a smile with absolutely no humor in it and came toward him.
Jamie stood frozen to the spot as Frankenstein crossed the hangar in a dozen of his giant strides, grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt and lowered his enormous head down so they were face-to-face. His mouth was set in a straight line, his jaw clenched, deep breaths blasting out of cavernous nostrils and blowing the hair from Jamie’s forehead.
It’s trying hard not to kill me. Really, really hard.
Frankenstein’s wide misshapen eyes, the pupils slate gray, stared into Jamie’s. Eventually, the monster spoke. “That will be the last time you run away from me,” it said. “Do you understand?”
“I-”
“Say nothing,” Frankenstein roared. “Not a word. Nod if you understand. I don’t want to hear your excuses. Do you understand? ”
Jamie nodded, then turned his head away, tears of shame and humiliation coming to the corners of his eyes. Several of the troops and doctors had stopped what they were doing and were watching the confrontation, even as the blinding lights of a helicopter illuminated the wide landing zone beyond the hangar doors; Jamie could no more meet their stares than he could that of the giant in front of him.
Movement in the corner of the hangar caught his eye. A section of the blank concrete wall slid aside, and four black-clad figures emerged. They wore large black machine pistols on their right hips, short black tubes on their left, from which wires ran to shallow square tanks on their backs. Jamie recognized the tubes immediately- they were a smaller version of the weapon he had seen Frankenstein fire in the living room of his mother’s house.
My God, this is all really happening. I’m not going to wake up.
My mother is really gone.
The four soldiers emerging from the hidden corridor took up positions, two on either side of the door, and a figure strode quickly out of the darkness, through their guard, and headed toward the giant open side of the hangar. The newcomer was dressed in the same sleek black gear as the others, but without the deep purple visor. Jamie saw a flash of gray hair, swept back from the man’s forehead. As he strode across the concrete floor he cast his eyes quickly around the hangar, and they met Jamie’s. Surprise rippled across the man’s face. He turned to one of the soldiers, said something, then marched across the hangar toward Jamie.
“Victor!” the old man shouted, crossing the distance rapidly. Frankenstein turned around, saw him coming, and swore under his breath. Then he looked back down at Jamie, his eyes clearing, as though he had forgotten he was holding a teenage boy by the neck of his T-shirt, and swore again, loudly this time.
He’s not really angry with me. It’s something else. He looks scared.
Frankenstein released Jamie and told him to stand up straight. Jamie did so, grudgingly, as the old man arrived before them.
“Victor,” he said again. “Can you explain to me why there is a civilian teenage boy inside the most classified building in the country? I hope you can, for your sake.”
Frankenstein stood straight as a board, towering over both Jamie and the old man.
“Admiral Seward,” he said, from above their heads. “This is Jamie Carpenter. I pulled him out of his house as Alexandru Rusmanov was about to tear out his throat, sir. His mother is missing, sir. And I didn’t know where else to take him, sir.”
Seward did not appear to have heard anything after Jamie’s name. He had recoiled, visibly, when he heard it, and now he was looking at the boy with a look of complete surprise.
“Jamie Carpenter?” he said. “Your name is Jamie Carpenter?”
“Yes,” replied Jamie. He was beyond confusion now, and when Frankenstein barked at him to say sir, he added “Yes, sir” without objection.
Admiral Seward was rallying, his composure returning.
“Ordinarily, I would tell you it is a pleasure to meet you,” he said to Jamie. “But this is not an ordinary night, nor has it been an ordinary day by the sounds of it. And you…” He trailed off, then regrouped. “I would like to see you in my quarters, Mr. Carpenter, when this matter is resolved. Victor, will you escort him?”
Frankenstein agreed that he would, and then the helicopter landed outside the hangar doors, and everything started to happen very quickly.
As its rotors began to wind down, a door slid open in the sleek metal side of the chopper, and a black-clad figure jumped down onto the concrete and waved an arm, beckoning the scientists and doctors forward. As white coats rushed across the landing area, the soldier reached up into the belly of the helicopter and helped a man in a biohazard suit down to the ground. The hood of the suit had been removed, and the arm was torn open. Blood, sickeningly bright under the yellow-white lights of the helicopter, shone through the hole. The soldier threw the man’s other arm around his shoulders and half walked, half dragged him toward the hangar.
Admiral Seward strode out to meet them, his voice loud above the rapidly declining helicopter.
“Report,” he demanded.
“Sir, his pulse is weak, his leukocyte count is through the floor. Sir.”
As the soldier gave his summary, the scientists in their biohazard suits arrived beside him, pushing a stretcher. They unwound the injured man’s arm from the soldier’s shoulder and lifted him onto it.
Admiral Seward turned and watched as the scientists, almost running, wheeled the stretcher back across the hangar and through a heavy metal door marked with yellow warning triangles, then turned his attention back to the helicopter, from which more figures were emerging.
A second soldier and a woman in a biohazard suit leapt down from the chopper and pulled a plastic-covered stretcher out after them, extending its wheels and rolling it toward the hangar door. Even from his vantage point at the back of the hangar, Jamie could see that this stretcher wasn’t empty. There was a dark shape lying under the plastic, spotted with red.
“Stand aside,” Seward yelled as the stretcher approached the crowd of gawking men and women. “Clear a path, for God’s sake.”
He strode around in front of the stretcher and led it toward a pair of double doors, directly past Jamie. He stepped forward to take a look and felt his heart lurch. Lying beneath the plastic sheeting was a teenage boy, his skin pale, his breathing so shallow, it was almost nonexistent, a huge wad of bandages pushed gruesomely deep into a wide hole in his throat.
Jesus, he’s my age. What happened to him?
Then the boy was gone, rushed toward the hangar exit by running doctors. Jamie stared after the stretcher,
