The Pandora Directive

Chapter Twenty-One

I stepped into the elevator and surveyed my options. There were buttons for Levels One, Two, and Three, I decided to start at the top and work my way down. I pressed the button for Level One, but nothing happened. To the side of the button panel, I noticed a blue card slot. Pulling out the blue card I’d been given with the NSA ID, I stuck it in the slot. The buttons lit up, and the elevator doors slid shut. I press the button for Level One again. This time of the elevator shuddered, then began to descend. After five or six seconds, the elevator came to a jarring stop, and the doors slid open.

A large, black number one it was painted on the wall opposite the elevator. I stepped out into a hallway and looked left, then right. The low, white fluorescent light gave the hallway the look of a morgue. There was nothing to see immediately, so I turned my left and walked down the hallway. My shoes left faint imprints in the thick layer of dust on the tile floor. My footfalls echoed all around the hallway. The mouldy smelling air felt dense, like breathing through a dust rag.

I reached the end of the hallway, where a second hallway ran perpendicular. A sign informed me that the dormitories were some way to my left, the mess hall and recreation centre to my right. I decided to look around the living quarters first.

The walls on this level were painted light purple and were completely unadorned. About thirty feet from the spot where the hallways intersected, I saw the first of a series of doors with numbers painted on them. I tested the knob on the first one, but the door was locked. I moved to the second one, which was unlocked.

I opened the door and stepped into a long, fairly narrow room. Twelve single neatly made beds stood in two parallel rows. Each one had a corresponding locker. Except for the thin layer of dust on everything, the dorm looked immaculate. I walked to the nearest locker and opened it. Inside were several changes of clothing, shoes, and toiletries. After checking several other lockers, I decided that there wasn’t much to see.

As I was about to leave, I spotted a piece of paper on one of the beds near the rear of the room. It turned out to be an unopened letter, addressed to Bryce Ellsworth. The return address was the Ellsworths off Ames, Iowa. I checked the postmark and saw that the letter had been posted on November 11th, 1996. Turning the letter over in my hand, I debated whether or not to open it. I seriously doubted that anyone was going to claim it. Besides, the statute of limitations had to have expired.

I tore open the yellowed envelope and pulled out several lined pages, a photograph, and a few newspaper clippings. The content of the letter was typical newsy, mushy, howdy-from-home stuff. I tossed it onto the bed. The photograph showed an older couple posing alongside a young couple with a baby. Fifty years had passed since this picture was taken. The older folks were undoubtedly deceased, their places taken by the young man and his wife. What had happened to the man these people had sent the letter to? Did he die here in the complex? Or did he escape and make it back to his family?

I turned my attention to the newspaper clippings, which were very well-preserved. The headline on the first trumpeted: Desert Standoff Enters Fourth Month. The story detailed how United States forces were massing on the Iraqi border. The second article’s headline read: President Dole: We’re Prepared for War. The third clipping was taken from a publication of ill-repute and blared: Military Ready to Unleash Alien Weapon! In retrospect, this article seemed to be surprisingly accurate. It referred to the Roswell crash and the recovery of a mysterious object, which the military had cleverly incorporated into a Domesday Device.

After I finished reading Corporal Ellsworth’s mail, I decided that the dormitory had nothing more to offer. I turned to the hallway and walked to a door at the end. It was labelled Restricted Access, unlike those leading to the dormitories. I tried to open it, then look for a slot where I could use one of the cards in my pocket, but no such luck. Turning back, I went on to the mess hall.

Like the dormitories, the eating area was neat, austere, and of absolutely no interest. I found the door to the kitchen and took a look around. Cupboards, cabinets, and shelves contained tons of canned goods, herds of bagged, powdered milk, an ocean of bottled mineral water, and acres of cracked wheat in barrels. At least I wouldn’t have to go hungry. Out of curiosity, I checked several freezers and a refrigerator, finding nothing more intriguing than some potentially award-winning science projects.

My next stop, the recreation area, was a gigantic hybrid, half gymnasium, half airport lounge. The amenities included three full-size pool tables, dart boards, a boxing ring, free weights, a half-court basketball floor, a handful of conversation pits, a dozen couches, and two large-screen televisions. It looked like a decent place to kill time, but I wasn’t in the market for leisure. After a short scan, I continued to search elsewhere. The hallway outside the mess hall and recreation area led to a door identical to the one I’d seen by the dormitories. Apparently, I was sealed off from the rest of Level One, at least on this side.

I walked back to the elevator, then continued on. The part of Level One I had access to was shaped like an H, with the left side containing the locations I’d searched. The right side contained a series of storage areas, with everything from gas masks to basic tools. I didn’t find anything that would help me locate the power cell.

I went back to the elevator and press the button for Level Two. Seconds later, the elevator doors opened. The facing wall was identical to the one on the upper level, except a number two was stencilled on it. I stepped out into the hall and looked around. Something different was immediately noticeable. Part of it was the thicker quality of the air and the blast holes pockmarking several spots in the floor and walls. My eyes were immediately drawn to the corpses.

Seven bodies were strewn on the floor of the hallway, the nearest one only several paces away. As I got closer, I saw the horrible, staring face of what had probably been a young man, his eyes fixed and unseeing. I bent down and took a closer look. His eyeballs were shrunken and seemed to have the texture of old rubber. His skin was chalky and wrinkled. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought his body had been mummified. The mouth was open, as if he was screaming at the moment he died.

The other corpses were all in the same condition. Two of the dead men were wearing lab coats; the others were wearing old Air Force uniforms. The sensation of being in a morgue was overwhelming. I’d never been particularly comfortable around death, but this place was far worse than a run-of-the-mill mortuary. A sense of foreboding began to seep into my bones like a humid chill.

I stepped over and around the bodies on my way down the hall. At the end, I encounter another sign. The Biology Laboratory was somewhere to the right, the Metallurgy Laboratory to my left. I looked in either direction, and then something grabbed my attention. At the end of the hallway to my left, the Restricted Access door was ajar.

There were no corpses in this section of the hall. The dead men had probably been trying to reach the elevator when they met their maker. I reach the Restricted Access door and pushed it open. The colour of the walls in this section were tan, obviously a superior shade to the light purple of the less important areas. I was in a long tunnel, with three doors on the left side and four on the right. About seventy or eighty feet away, I saw another Restricted Access door.

The first three doors on the right had nameplates affixed to the wall with the descriptions Security, Communications, and Records. The last door on that side had no nameplate. On the left were the Administration Office and the data storage room. The last door seemed to be entrance for a large room, which sported the obvious moniker of War Room. Halfway up and to the right of each door was a scanning device. It seemed like I’d need an identification badge of some sort to get into these rooms. After checking all the doors in the area and verifying that none of them would be easy to get into, I returned to the light purple area.

I had a hunch that the room I needed to get into was the Records Room. It seemed a likely place to find some kind of cataloguing system, which might give me the specific location of the power cell. I was also intrigued by the War Room, but being in the complex was starting to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. All I wanted to do was find the power cell and get the hell out of Dodge.

I needed to find an identification badge that would get me into the Records room. My first thought was to see if any of the dead men were wearing badges. None of them were. There probably weren’t many people who worked in the complex and had high-level security clearances, but there had to be one somewhere. I spent the next hour searching every nook of Level Two.

There were for work areas in all: the Biology Laboratory, the Metallurgy Laboratory, a Computer Science Lab, and a Linguistics Research Office. Identification badges were in short supply, but I did stumble across several things of interest. In the Metallurgy Lab, I found samples of a strange material resembling aluminium foil. Maybe fifty pieces of varying size were lying around the work area. I picked up one of them. It felt cold to the touch had had an odd cloth-like feel to it. I folded it and set it back on the counter. Within seconds, it unfolded into its original position with no visible crease.

On one part of the counter, a Bunsen burner was surrounded by swatches of the material. I pulled the book of matches from my pocket and held a flame up to one of the pieces. It had no effect whatsoever.

In another part of the lab, I found a box full of objects that looked like miniature I beams, about a quarter inch thick and ranging in length from half an inch to more than four feet. I couldn’t tell what they were made of, but I guessed it was some kind of plastic. I picked up one of the longer pieces. It was absolutely weightless. Closing my eyes, I couldn’t even tell that there was something in my hand. I figured material that light must be extremely fragile, so I tried to snap it in half. I couldn’t bend it even a millimetre.

In the Biology Lab, I found yet another strange material. It was black, shiny, and almost as thin as tin foil. Since it could have been a cousin to Bakelite, the material wouldn’t have appeared to be anything out of the ordinary, if it hadn’t had an unusual density and been staggeringly strong. I also recognised additional samples of the miniature I beams floating in various solutions. In every case, the object hadn’t decomposed in any way.

Looking around the Linguistics Research Office, I recalled my conversation with Malloy. I was probably standing in the very place where he did his work on the cryptic alien symbols. After some searching, I found several boxes of the I-beam structures. These, however, had symbols on them. The symbols were very small, less than a fingernail wide, and a shiny purple colour. There were many different characters, primarily consisting of geomet-ric shapes, leaf-like figures, and variations on circles. Other characters could have been Chinese in origin, to my highly untrained eye. The writing was beautiful and mesmerising. I suddenly understood Malloy’s lifelong obsession with finding the meanings behind the symbols.

Throughout my search, I felt increasingly that I was not alone. It wasn’t so much that someone was watching me as that there was another presence close by. I heard nothing, saw nothing, and couldn’t pin down any apparent reason for the feeling. I hadn’t seen any other corpses, though I tightened up every time I opened a door or turned a corner.

Only one accessible area was left to comb on Level Two: the Computer Science Lab. My first impression of the area was that it looked like a typical customer-service office, with dozens of cubicles, each containing a standard-looking, if old-fashioned, workstation. Further exploration confirmed that no identification badges were lying around.

Toward the back of the room, I saw a door cracked open a couple of inches. I walked over and tried to push it open farther, but it wouldn’t budge. Putting my eye to the opening, I was shocked by what I saw. It looked as if a battle had erupted on the other side of the door. The door connected to the Computer Science Lab with a much larger area that had blast holes everywhere. It looked as though a fire had broken out, charring sections of the walls. I couldn’t get an accurate count of the dead bodies, but there were at least two dozen. Seeing all the devastation, I decided that something must have been dislodged in the battle that prevented the door from swinging open.

I put my shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge. Then I put my eye back to the crack, and to my excitement, caught sight of an identification badge.

A corpse lay about five feet beyond the door, his back turned toward me, a plastic-encased badge clipped to the belt of his trousers. All I had to do was reach out and grab it. Of course, the body was out of reach, and the door wouldn’t open enough for me to get my arm in anyway. I leaned against the door, focused on the badge and, for several minutes, tried to figure out a solution. I considered giving up on it, but I’d already gone through the entire level and come up empty. Jury-rigging was in order.

I went to the elevator and returned to Level One. In the recreation area, I picked up a pool cue and removed a dart from the dartboard. Now that I had the two pieces of my salvaging device, I just needed to find something to hold them together. I remembered seeing the familiar silver sheen of a roll of duct tape in one of the storage rooms. God, I loved duct tape. Very few problems couldn’t be solved with duct tape and/or a coat hanger.

With the duct tape, I attached the dart firmly to the end of the pool cue. Returning to the door at the back of the Computer Science Lab, I soon pulled the identification badge through the narrow opening. Flushed with my success, I hurried back to the Restricted Area and waved the badge in front of the sensor by the door to the Records Room. With a barely audible click, the door opened.

I stepped into the room, and my expectations fell. It was much larger than I’d hoped it would be. Rows and rows of file cabinets stared back at me dauntingly. Time to smoke. I’d been hunting feverishly for several hours and suddenly realised that I needed a rest. A chair sat by a desk near the door. I collapsed into it and lit my cigarette.

After my second smoke, I decided to start looking. For three and a half hours, I went through drawers, files, and boxes, hoping to randomly stumble across a reference to the power cell and where I could find it. Then I caught a lucky break. In one drawer of a file cabinet, I caught sight of a label marked simply #186. inside the file were several photographs of the power cell. The slide I’d seen was a drawing, so I had no reference to determine how large it was. For all I knew, it could have been as big as a punchbag or as small as a fuse. In the photograph, several objects were visible in the background. The power cell looked to be no more than eighteen inches in height and as big around as a coffee mug. The file also held a number of papers, including a description submitted by whoever had originally catalogued the object. Several addenda were seemingly contributed by various researchers who had performed tests on the power cell. The last document was a receipt, indicating that the item had been placed into storage. Area G, Level 3.

Leaving everything behind but the receipt, I hurried to the elevator. I inserted the blue card one more time and pressed the button for Level Three. A warning light appeared on the LCD: Access Denied. Oh, great. The red and green cards brought the same result. It still wouldn’t let me go down. I stuck the cards back into my pocket and considered what options I had, if any. Research of Level Two hadn’t turned up any alternative routes. It was the elevator or nothing.

I thought it over. Whatever had killed the people here had either originated on Level Three or in the room behind the Computer Science Lab. I was more inclined to think that it had come from below. Malloy had said that almost everyone had been killed before the military sealed off the area. So far, I’d only seen twenty-five or thirty corpses. The base must have had several hundred people working here at the time. Where were the other bodies? They had sh to be on Level Three.

That had to be the reason why the elevator was denying me access. The first step in containment would have been to seal off the source. The security office! That’s where they would put a lock on access to Level Three.

I exited the elevator and hurried back to the door for the security office. I waved the identification badge over the sensor outside the security-office door. With a click, the door opened, and I walked in. The place was disorganised, as though a pack of four year olds had gone through it. There were no signs of laser blasts or anything similar, but the floor was littered with notebooks, computer discs, and overturned chairs. Around the perimeter were surveillance camera displays, showing literally hundreds of locations within the complex. One set was labelled Level Three. In most of the shots, I saw extensive laser damage… and bodies. Hundreds of bodies. Whatever they’d let loose here, it had definitely originated on the lower level. Right where I needed to go.

I explored the room until I found the console that regulated the elevator. It button was labelled Level Three Access. I pressed it. A message appeared on the console screen: Please enter confirmation code. Damn it. I got down on my hands and knees and started sorting through the notebooks, papers, and handbooks scattered around on the floor. After several minutes, I found a manual titled Security Protocol. I flipped it opened the table of contents. One of the chapters was titled Codes. I read through it, but no specific codes were given. The basic principle outlined in the chapter was that security should change the confirmation codes on a daily basis. As I was about to toss the hand it back on to the pile on the floor, a 3 by 5 card fell out. On it were seven or eight numbers, all but one of which were crossed out. It was worth a try.

I pushed the button, and the message appeared again on the console screen. There was a ten-key pad on the console. I punched in the numbers from the 3 by 5 cards. The message disappeared, and a button lit up.

I ran back to the elevator and stuck the blue card into the blue access slot. This time, pressing the Level Three button presented no problem. With a shudder, the elevator came to life and began to descend. I was seriously doubting whether I was up to this. Maybe the creature, or whatever it was, was dead now, but I wasn’t going to bank on it. After a wait twice as long as between Levels One and Two, the elevator came to a thumping halt. The door separated, and I stepped out into pitch darkness. My flashlight was on, but I had an overwhelming need to turn on the light. I ran the beam over the wall to the right of the elevator doors until I found a switch. As I flipped the switch, a hiccup of light flared like lightning, and then a network of dim fluorescent bulbs awoke.

I was standing on the edge of a slaughter. Dead bodies were everywhere. Seeing them on the monitors in the security office had prepared me somewhat, but I’d never been at the scene of the massacre before. The air in the room was unbearably thick. I opened my backpack, pulled out my rebreather, and strapped it on. Now I was breathing normally, though the sight of at least forty corpses had my heart racing. I checked the bodies nearest me. They were in the same condition as those I’d seen on Level Two: looking mummified, with rubbery eyes and mouths open.

The room could have been the interior of the world’s largest garage. Piles of components and shards of strange alien materials were scattered everywhere. In the very centre was what must have been the fairly intact remains of the spacecraft that had crashed at Roswell. It wasn’t entirely dismantled, and I could still see the basic shape. The ship looked to be in excellent condition, considering that it had crash-landed. It wasn’t saucer-shaped at all, but looked more like a big, metal boomerang. I took a walk around the ship, not seeing anything particularly overwhelming — except, of course, for the fact that it had come from another world.

As I looked around, I had the same sensation I always felt around snakes, except now I couldn’t see or hear it. I just knew it was there somewhere, waiting. Out of the corner of my eye, I swore I saw something move. I spun around and stared at one of the corpses. Had it twitched? I must have imagined it. God, I had the creeps.

With just a hint of panic, I picked up speed. Referring to the receipt, I quickly located the storage area where the power cell was supposedly kept. But the door to it was padlocked, and even a good-sized laser blast in the door hadn’t penetrated into the area beyond. I opened my backpack and pulled out my bolt cutters. Without much effort, I slipped through the padlock bars, pulled the padlock off, and opened the door.

Inside the room, two walls looked like big, metal library-card catalogue cabinets, each numbered individually. On a third wall was what looked like a display case — the kind you see at museums. There were several shelves behind the Plexiglas. The objects stored there ranged from bizarre to banal, but I had no inclination to examine them. I turned to the metal cabinets and followed the numbers around the room until I reached number 186. I pulled the drawer open, expecting to find nothing inside. I was wrong. There was the power cell.

Then, I heard the noise.

I extracted the power cell and walked quietly back to the storage-area door. Barely opening it, I took a peek outside. I waited for several moments before deciding I’d just been hearing things, and went through the door. I looked around, but didn’t see anything dangerous or threatening. Then I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned and focused.

One of the corpses was moving.

My first thought, as happens quite often in extreme situations, was completely irrational. I wondered how someone could have been injured and stayed here in the complex all these years without medical attention. I reconsidered and suddenly realised that I had no same explanation for the movement of the corpse. I had the power cell and that was all that really mattered. I moved toward the elevator, not caring about anything except getting above ground and going home. Suddenly, another corpse moved.

I froze. Sounds of rustling and scraping echoed softly through the dead air. I spun around. Behind me, other bodies were moving. My breathing became shallow. All around me it appeared as if an army of dead men was coming to life. Some of the bodies twitched uncontrollably. Others convulsed violently. I was in a house of horrors. I turned and ran.

Just as I reached the elevator doors a loud, low groan filled the chamber. Without thinking, I turned to see what had caused the sound. One of the corpses shook with a tremendous spasm. Transfixed, I watched as a greenish-grey mist seeped from the mouth of the dead man. I’d never seen anything like it. The mist was transparent and moved fluidly, but seemed to have too much mass to be floating in the air.

The mist rose slowly toward fluorescent lights high above the floor. The light surrounding me slowly assumed a green tent. Most of the corpses were now groaning and convulsing and emitting more greenish-grey mist from their mouths. decor is of crows grew louder and louder. The walls were now glowing green. Clouds of the greenest continue drifting toward the fluorescent lights. Despite the terror surging through me, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the scene.

With a strong effort, I turned away and press the button for the elevator. As I waited for the doors to open, I looked back. The mass ascension was slowing. Then, to my horror, the cloud began to drift toward me. The doors to the elevator opened and I quickly stepped inside. The doors slowly closed behind me.

Still holding the power cell with one hand, I fumbled through my pockets for the blue passcard. The first passcard I found was the red one. I dropped it and continued searching. Green light glowed through the cracks around the elevator doors. I found the blue passcard and inserted it, then push the button for Level One. The elevator shuddered then started to rise.

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. My heart was racing uncontrollably. The elevator vibrated comfortingly as it carried me closer to the surface. I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes. Mist was seeping in through the cracks under the elevator doors. I’d dropped the power cell and slid into the corner. I was trapped. The mist was more transparent than it had been before, as if it had stretched in order to slide under the cracks. It sparkled as it slowly rose from the floor.

I looked around the interior of the elevator wildly, desperately. I felt a tingling sensation on my face and hands, as if the muscles they were going to sleep. The elevator continued its slow, grinding ascent. My eyes began to sting. On one of the walls I spotted a small panel with the words “Emergency Only” on it. This qualified. My hands tingled painfully as I ripped the panel door off. The inside of my mouth now felt as if it were coated with sand. Inside the emergency panel was an old-fashioned telephone and a small, red fire extinguisher. I grabbed the extinguisher, pulled the pin, and pointed it at the mist, which had now almost filled the interior of the elevator. Foam spewed from the extinguisher nozzle. The light emanating from the mist dulled to grey. I continued spraying in every direction. The tingling on my hands and face began to fade. The extinguisher began to cough. It was almost empty.

The elevator lurched to a stop. The mist had vanished. The elevator doors opened as I drop extinguisher and grabbed the power cell from the floor. I ran out through the vault door into the compound and raced toward the guardhouse. The two guards started violently as I burst inside.

“Turn off the power to the underground complex!”

Todd looked like his bladder had just said sayonara. Willis looked at me stupidly.

“Now! Turn off the power!”

Grasping my message, Willis hurried off. I followed and made sure that he didn’t make any detours. Thirty seconds later, the power had been shut down. Grabbing a full-size fire extinguisher from the wall, and still clutching the power cell, I ran back through the vault door to the elevator. I waited anxiously to see if the alien mist was going to escape. After some time, I began to relax. I waited a while longer, then returned to the guardhouse. The guards look too frightened to even ask what had happened. I was still too frightened to tell them.

There was one thing I needed to say, however. “I want you to go lock that vault door, destroy the key, and then put the complex into a deep freeze. And if anyone ever comes here again, I don’t care who it is, I don’t care if it’s the damn president, and they want to go underground, you have orders direct from the NSA to blow their stupid brains out. Got it?”