Starcosmo

Chapter 9: The Escape

Location classified

Zero hour + 3 days

Subsurface depth 1.5 kilometers

Lieutenant Colonel Zachariah Raynor slowly put down his tablet.

“Escaped?”

Lieutenant Brennan stood stiffly at attention. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Sorry to report it, sir.”

Raynor was very quiet and very still. “How?”

Brennan licked his lips nervously. “Sir, the initial reports were conclusively proved by her escape. RAINBOW very definitely has psychokinetic talents. Our security apparatus was breached conclusively in every engagement.”

Raynor’s eyes narrowed. “Where is she now?”

“Unknown, sir,” Brennan said, his eyes still fixed on a point in space about a foot above Raynor’s head. “The team was under the process of prepping for tracker implantation when RAINBOW became active.”

The Lt. Colonel’s left hand was sitting on his desktop. Very slowly, it was crawling its way into a fist.

“Let me be very clear about one thing, Lieutenant,” he said, his voice full of quiet menace. “RAINBOW is not an asset we can afford to. . . lose.” He paused. “Do I make myself clear?”

Brennan’s eyes momentarily flicked to Raynor’s closed fist. “Very clear, sir,” he said. “Recovery efforts have already been launched.”

Raynor replied with a short, slow, curt nod, then tossed off a salute that signalled Brennan’s dismissal.

For his part, the scared 1st Lieutenant answered the salute, then turned on his heel and marched out of the office.  

The automatic door slid shut behind him, and the two warrant officers standing outside the room snapped to attention. Brennan sagged with slight relief, then snapped “At ease,” to the two men, and marched off down the cramped, blue-lit hallway.

Brennan shook his head. No doubt Raynor was now reading the official report submitted to him electronically. By now, he’d be realizing just how thoroughly the girl had shredded all the high-tech defenses they’d thrown at her.

What a disaster. The girl didn’t weigh more than 90 pounds, and she’d waltzed out of one of the most secret facilities in the continental United States in about eight minutes, severely wounding 20 soldiers in the process and causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage.

She was eleven. Brennan still couldn’t get over that. His department was nominally in charge of researching and developing those rare PK talents, and from his understanding, the genetic ability usually didn’t manifest itself until the mid-20s.

But one bite of the alien Shrooms, and her PK talent was several orders of magnitude greater than anything in recorded history.

Brennan’s walk had brought him to Section 4 of the base, the research arm. Behind three sets of guarded and keyed doors, scientists were working round-the-clock to uncover the secret of the Shrooms.  

Brennan approach a man he knew only as Nidal, who was team lead on the research project. Nidal was reviewing a checklist with another scientist when he approached.

“Doctor? A word with you?”

Dr. Nidal looked up, sourly, and dismissed the other man. “What can I do for your, Lieutenant?”

The pair walked over to a large glass window. Inside, a number of bunny-suited scientists were working around a low table, bathed in intense blue light.

In the middle of the table was a particularly large mushroom specimen.

Brennan gestured through the glass. “I need you to take a more active approach with this research,” he said. “Expand the human subjects pool. Get me some clear and convincing results.”

Nidal stripped off his spectacles, not without some frustration. Brennan’s requests were increasingly urgent, and increasingly unreasonable.

“As I’ve said before, Lieutenant, simply expanding the subject pool is no guarantee of a breakthrough,” he began. He’d delivered this same lecture several times over the past week. “What we’re looking for is the right quality of specimen-”

Lieutenant Brennan interrupted him, leaning in uncomfortably close. “I don’t care, Doctor,” he hissed. “I am not making a request. And I am not interested in your explanations.”

Nidal, chagrined, fell silent.

Brennan puffed out a breath and gazed through the glass. “There’s been an unexpected event,” he said. “We now know the possibilities inherent in these organisms.” Here he gestured through the glass to the mushroom. Then he turned to Nidal. “I’ll make available the highest quality specimens we can attract. There’s a detachment of Special Forces volunteers arriving in six hours. They should fit your requirements.”

Nidal was speechless. To this point, their pool of human subjects had been death row inmates and unlawful enemy combatants.

It was incredible to be given access to human subjects so quickly -- the Shrooms had been discovered a scant few days ago -- but most of these men were in some way damaged -- sickly, weak, half-crazed, or all of the above, either from their life before imprisonment or as a result of their rough handling while imprisoned.

The Program would now be able to experiment on fit, healthy, and mentally sound volunteers.

More than sound. The Special Forces group was known for selecting men of excellent genetic stock, and then refining their innate capabilities through brutal and relentless training and conditioning, of both mental and physical varieties.  

Nidal found himself stammering a response. “Uh, I see,” he said. “That, should suffice. Provided we can begin ingestion testing immediately.” Six hours. Something must have happened. Something. . . dire.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Brennan sneered, turning on his heel to leave. “And do let me know if you run into any delays.”

Nidal swallowed. “Of course, Lieutenant.”

His military liaison stalked from the room. Nidal let his gaze drift to the Shrooms in the clean room.

He didn’t like this.

* * *