Arcadian Genesis

‘Zezag, I will take my tea now.’ The small boy’s face half appeared from behind the door. Khamid smiled again; this time the boy’s lips curled a fraction.

His original plan had been to use his physics expertise to create some sort of dirty bomb and detonate it outside the Kremlin, or at least as close as he could get to a large military base. He was glad he hadn’t gone through with it. Time has a way of cooling hot blood. If he had killed a single innocent while blowing a hole in the corrupt beast, he would be no better than the president who ordered the release of the vacuum bombs over Katyr- Yurt. Besides, it may also have caused another crackdown on his people — they were stoic, but they couldn’t endure much more.

But what he could not do, would not do, was allow a great power to fall into the hands of people who had proved that they could not properly manage such a responsibility. Using his scientific network, he had managed to get a message to a colleague in Turkey, who had passed it on to the NATO base in Incirlik, and then on to the Pentagon.

They would help — of course they would. He wasn’t vain enough to think they valued him, but they would come for the power cell. And if the Americans turned out to be no better than the Russians? He groaned and rubbed his spine on the back of the chair, trying to relieve the itching tingle. The boy smiled a little wider at his antics. Khamid shrugged.

‘We all have to trust someone, sometime, right?’

Khamid’s small cell phone pinged quickly three times. Three: his heart pounded in his throat — they’d found him!

* * *

The night-black hunters moved silently through the village. With their single-lens night-vision goggles and exoskeletal armor, they resembled a horde of alien creatures, hunting for prey in the dark.

From time to time they stopped to listen to the instructions that flowed directly into their small earpieces, or simply to pause to examine their surroundings. Members of the Spetsnaz Vympel death squads, this group were the Wolverines — a creature from the weasel family, known for its frightening ferocity and strength. The name suited these men perfectly.

The Wolverines were the most feared of all, simply because of who led them — a brutal assassin renowned for stopping at nothing in the pursuit of his objective — Uli Borshov. The black-bearded giant stood well over six and a half feet tall, and weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. The man was a psychopath, but a useful one, let loose by the Russian Federal Security Services on jobs that needed doing by any means.

The area around the town and surrounding forest was alive with standard Russian military forces. But they would keep their distance once they realized Spetsnaz GRU were in the area. More so if it were the Vympel, rumored to think nothing of putting a bullet into the brain of any overenthusiastic soldier who got in their way.

At a signal the men darted forward another hundred feet and melted back into the shadows. Their goal was simple: find a man — just one, but one important enough to have a mission launched in person by the president.

Care had to be taken. The people of Chechnya hated everyone and everything of Russian origin, and Russia had given them good reason. As long as the mainly Muslim country was disorganized and fragmented, it was less of a threat — Russia expended significant and brutal effort keeping it that way.

The Spetsnaz sprinted another hundred feet. They didn’t know or care what the man they sought had done. The president wanted him, dead or alive. Borshov was leading the infiltration and search, and Borshov preferred him dead.

The giant pressed one large blunt finger into his ear as he listened to the updated information — an address was received. He nodded, and then changed frequencies to talk to his team.

The net pulled a little tighter as the killers closed in.

* * *

Millinov walked slowly around his two assistants. Doctors Yelena Mutko and Anatoly Lavrov were dressed in thick, polymer contamination suits. The hermetically sealed outfits were extremely tough but lightweight, and their perspex face shields gave them good, but not unrestricted vision.

They both looked pale and nervous. Good, he thought — keep them sharp. He ran his hand over Yelena’s back, feeling the huge metallic lump beneath the plasticized material. Each suit had its own oxygen supply, so they were effectively quarantined from gas, liquid splatter, radioactive dust, and even some spectrums of rays for a period of time. However, they traded mobility for safety in the cumbersome suits.

Satisfied with the seals, Millinov patted Anatoly on the shoulder, and rested his hand on the access panel that would open the outer door to the isolation chamber. Nodding at them, he pressed the recessed button. The door slid back with the small sigh of sucking air — the negative air pressure was designed to draw anything in, rather than allow anything to float out.

Yelena hugged a large glass jar to her chest and Anatoly held a pair of large forceps. Millinov rushed back to the viewing screen and watched as the inner door to the chamber opened and his two assistants stepped in. They paused. He knew what they were experiencing; it was an unsettling sight — the things now infested the inside of the chamber. Ceiling, floor, walls, the capsule — everything was covered in the mucoid blobs. Some areas of the chamber looked polished, as though they had been scoured with an industrial solvent.

Millinov spoke into the microphone: ‘Proceed.’

Anatoly looked toward the camera, his face still pale behind the visor. He nodded, a little jerkily, and then motioned with the forceps toward one of the shapeless blobs hanging from the side of the capsule. He paused again.

I know… they’re ugly, aren’t they, my friend? Millinov zoomed in on Anatoly’s selection. Up close, the things were even less appealing, if that were possible — the gray glutinous mass had a darker center, like an internal organ or central nervous system.

Anatoly lifted the forceps and Yelena held out the jar. Millinov blinked. Did the darker inner mass of the blob shift toward them? It was as if it were focusing, like an eye. Anatoly shuddered.

He glanced questioningly at Yelena, who motioned with the jar. Millinov could imagine what she was thinking: let’s get this over with, and get out of here. Anatoly reached forward with the forceps.

At that moment, the blob slid down the side of the capsule and oozed viscously to the ground. Yelena’s yecch was clearly audible through the speaker. Millinov breathed hard as he watched them crouch for a second attempt.

‘Careful.’ He licked dry lips, swallowed. Anatoly reached forward again, and this time managed to grasp the edge of the blob. It lifted easily and he maneuvered it toward Yelena’s jar.

The blob quivered slightly, but held fast. Anatoly shook the forceps as the thing clung to its metal tips. He shook harder, swearing as he tried to prise it free against the side of the jar. Instead, the blob balled up for a second before dislodging, oozing over the rim and down onto Yelena’s hand and wrist.

Smoke rose from the polymer sleeve of her suit — and then, in an instant, the blob had disappeared through a hole in the material. Yelena screamed and dropped the jar, which shattered into a thousand pieces. Anatoly tried to grab her, but she danced madly, swatting at her lower arm as if there were a swarm of wasps underneath the thick plastic.

‘It burns!’ she screamed, and fell to the ground, where her body performed a sort of convulsive dance for a few seconds. Anatoly grabbed her bicep and squeezed, perhaps to stop the thing from climbing any higher, or to try and hold her still.

He turned to the camera, yelling for Millinov to get help, but all the scientist could do was recoil in horror, too shocked to react.

The screaming and violent, spastic movements ceased abruptly and Yelena lay still. Anatoly wiped at the visor over her face, and Millinov zoomed the camera in for a close-up, but both efforts were useless. The perspex was completely clouded with perspiration, saliva and smoke. Millinov shuddered to think what the caustic blob had done to her flesh.

He pressed the comm. button. ‘Is she… dead?’

Anatoly looked up at the camera briefly, then back at Yelena. Her hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist.