Hero Born: Project Solaris Page 9

  "Is there any evidence of these older cultures?" Jillian asked.

  "Some," Smith said, leaning back against his desk. "There's a lot of evidence that the Sphinx is many thousands of years older than we assume. It suffered what appear to be millennia of water erosion, which would only have been possible in the Pleistocene--the last ice age. There's also Gobekli Tepe, in modern-day Turkey. The ruins are several thousand years older than either Egypt or Sumer, but are of a size and complexity we'd have assumed impossible in a pre-agrarian society."

  "That's fascinating," I said, and meant it. I wasn't sure how that related to Usir, or Mohn Corp, but I felt certain there was a connection I was missing.

  "How's this for a potential plot?" Smith asked, giving a smile. "All three cultures really are descended from a greater culture, your Atlantis. There really was a catastrophe that wiped out this culture, leaving nothing but a few clues scattered over the world. Whatever catastrophe occurred before is cyclic somehow, which is supported in all three mythologies. It's coming again, and your heroes are trying to learn the truth so they can prevent it."

  The room dimmed, and I staggered. Jillian's arms settled around my waist, keeping me from falling. Images burst into my mind, somehow familiar, though I was positive it was the first time I was seeing them. The sun, with tendrils of fire bursting from the surface. A jet black pyramid bursting from the water near the Golden Gate Bridge. A platform made of black stone, with a golden disk in the center. That last was the most powerful, and I sensed a deep connection with the platform.

  "I think I need to sit down," I murmured, allowing Jillian to guide me to one of the seats in the first row.

  "I'll get you a glass of water," Professor Smith said. He hurried from the room.

  "David, what happened?" Jillian whispered, squeezing my hand as she eyed me intently.

  "I don't know. Everything got really fuzzy, and I guess I had some sort of vision. It's the first time it's happened," I said. My head was starting to clear, and color was returning to the world.

  "Oh my god," Jillian said, eyes widening. "David, you're a precog, like your mother. She used to have visions. I never saw one in person, but she used to tell people that they knocked her on her ass. What did you see?"

  "I don't really know. The sun. A black pyramid. They were familiar." It took me a moment to realize why. I met Jillian's gaze. "I know where I've seen them. They were both in Mom's sketchbook, back in her apartment."

  Chapter 19- Decisions

  Kali was gracious enough to let me use her laptop, a sleek, silver netbook that complemented her college student look. She'd gone for coffee and I'd spent nearly an hour browsing, but wasn't really sure what I was looking for.

  Mohn Corp was funding excavations all over the world. Hateya had said there were glyphs showing the grey men in the hills above Tuolumne. Those glyphs suggested the grey men had been here for centuries, maybe longer. There was a connection there, but damned if I saw what it was. Then there was the pyramid from my vision. Was that what Mohn Corp was looking for? If so, why?

  "Any luck?" Jillian asked, leaning against my back as she stared over my shoulder at the screen. The sudden intimacy was distracting, but in a very good way.

  "Nothing yet. I'm going to try something stupid." I glanced up at her, but her expression was neutral.

  "Something stupid, and probably desperate. Sounds right up our alley. What do you have in mind?" Jillian asked.

  "I'm going to hack into Mohn Corp," I said, turning back to the laptop. "I'm beginning to understand how my powers work, and the internet is basically one giant extra appendage. I can parse data packets in my head, and that makes gliding past security insanely easy."

  "What if they track the fact that you're hacking them?" Jillian asked, tone dubious. "If you do this, then we should move hotels right after."

  "We can do that, though I'll take precautions. It's easy enough to spoof an IP address. I can make them think we're in Singapore, or Madrid, or anywhere, really." I wasn't much of a hacker, so there were probably a dozen things I wasn't thinking of. "Your concern is legitimate, though. Kali should be back soon. We'll leave when I'm finished."

  "Go for it," Jillian said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. She returned to the bed, pulling a pillow to her chest. "I'm here if you need me, but I don't want to bother you while you're doing this. I'll keep watch I guess."

  I nodded absently, already focused on the computer. I rested both hands on the keyboard, staring intently at the machine. I could feel the signals leaving the machine. They drifted downstairs to the router, where they joined the little pulses of light broadcasting through CAT-5 cable all over the world.

  I browsed to the Mohn website, and forced my way into the server running it. A little snooping revealed an intranet, but getting inside required a VPN connection. Virtual Private Networks are very, very difficult to spoof, which is why most corporations use them to transfer sensitive data.

  Having the ability to write code in my head on the fly gave me a totally unfair advantage. I spoofed Mohn's VPN, then walked right into their network with full permissions. That gave me access to all the data they had online, which proved to be considerable.

  I dumped the most promising folders onto Kali's machine, but paused mid-search when I saw a reference to Object 3. It was in a report that had been scanned in from an original document, and the document was dated from 1977. I paused and started reading adjacent files.

  The most interesting one contained a series of photos. They showed a large platform, maybe twenty-five feet across. The picture was grainy, but the material was mostly black stone--the same black stone I'd seen in the grey men's ship. The center of the platform was a golden disk, which perfectly matched the devices they carried. I went cold. It was the same platform from my vision.

  "Jillian," I said, still focusing on the network. "I think Object 3 is a grey man device of some kind. It looks like Mohn discovered it in the 70s."

  "How did Mohn get it?" she asked, moving to stand behind me again.

  "Their files don't say, but they do mention it being moved to their San Francisco facility. Apparently it's stored on Level 4, somewhere under the main building."

  "Can you show me a picture?" she asked. I dutifully called up the image on the screen. She studied it for a long moment. "Can you zoom in on the two men standing behind the platform?"

  I did so, the photo becoming more grainy as we focused on the small part containing the two men.

  "Is that--? David, that's Usir," she said, stabbing a finger at the screen.

  "It can't be. That guy has to be pushing ninety. Usir's only sixty-five or so." I shook my head.

  "Look at the cane," she said, pointing at the object in his right hand. "It's the same one I saw in his office. Plus his face is the same, plus a few wrinkles. He's older in this photo, but that's definitely the same guy."

  "So what, he's getting younger?" I asked, more than a little sarcastically.

  "You're right, that would be crazy," Jillian shot back, just as sarcastically. "That would be crazy, like you having visions of the future, or me walking through walls."

  "Touché," I said, conceding the point. I focused on the image, zooming out a little. "So maybe he is getting younger. That raises a whole lot more questions. Who or what is he? And what is that platform?"

  "You're sure that's Object 3?" Jillian asked.

  "That's what it's labeled in their system, but there isn't much more than the name, and a few tests. Let me see what else I can find," I said, returning my attention to Mohn's system. I delved a little deeper, dumping another directory onto Kali's laptop. "It looks like it uses power somehow, a lot of power."

  The door to the room opened, and Kali entered. She was cradling a cup of coffee in one hand, and used the other to shut the door. "Hey, team. What are you up to?"

  "We're looking at a photo of Object 3," Jillian supplied.

  Kali moved to stand behind me, leaning down to study the screen. "That's Object
3?"

  "Yeah." I shifted in the chair to face her. "You sound surprised."

  "I've seen it before. In the grey man ship when I was taken." Kali said, moving to sit on the bed. She'd gone pale, and was quiet for a long moment before she continued. "I was drifting through a forest of obelisks, and passed by a clearing. There was a bright flash of light, and three grey men appeared on a platform just like that."

  I turned back to the system, diving back into the directory where I'd found the pictures. There was a video file, which I pulled onto Kali's desktop. It took a moment to download, and I double clicked it the second it was finished.

  The movie player sprang to life, showing a forty second video. A woman in her mid-twenties stood atop Object-3, and she was smiling at the camera. She cleared her throat, then spoke. "My name is Melinda Waters, and this is test number one. I'm going to attempt to use Object-3, which we believe to be a teleportation device. We've wired it into the pre-existing architecture here at the San Francisco facility, which should allow us to power the device. Wish me luck."

  The woman's smile faded, and she closed her eyes. A high pitched ringing began, and the screen was blotted out with intense white light. When the light faded Melinda was gone, the platform empty. The video ended two seconds later. We were all silent for a moment after that. It was a lot to take in.

  "Kali, I had my first vision today." I broke the silence. "I saw that platform. I also saw a black pyramid in San Francisco Bay. Jillian says that my mother has the same power, and thinks that my vision is one of the future."

  "That's. That's, wow," Kali said, biting her lip. "If it really is the future, and there is a pyramid under the bay, then that would mean Mohn has been digging in the wrong place."

  "Maybe. They might know about the pyramid; in fact, they probably do." Jillian started to pace, her voice rising as she got more excited. "If there's a pyramid, an alien pyramid, under three hundred feet of water, then how would you reach it? You can't just set up drilling equipment. There'd be too much scrutiny."

  "...Unless you could teleport inside," I said, suddenly understanding. "What if Object 3 is how they plan to get inside this pyramid?"

  "Assuming our theory is correct, what do we do about it?" Kali asked. She crossed her arms, watching us intently.

  "If we want more answers, we need access to Object 3. We have to break into Mohn Corp," I said, knowing it sounded like a terrible plan.

  "You know I'm the conservative one, but I don't think we have any other choice," Jillian began, giving me a sober look. "Breaking in is a bad idea, but we're desperate. If we're going to do this we need a real plan, though. Usir has had almost fifty years to set all this up, maybe more if he goes back further than the picture you found. He has company money, the best tech, and access to super-powered agents. So how are we doing this?"

  I considered the question for a long minute. Thankfully I had a lot of experience planning ops like this. Granted those ops had all been planned while playing Shadowrun with my gaming group on the odd Saturday night, but it was as close as we were going to get. "Let's start with what we know. We need to get through the front door and down the elevator to level four. The best time to do that will be after hours, since presumably at least some of the personnel will have gone home.

  "I can neutralize security cameras, and Jillian can get us through the walls," I continued. "Once we hit the elevator I can prevent it from logging the trip, so, other than the doors opening, there will be no record of our presence."

  "That works for security records, but they also have supers," Kali pointed out.

  "Jillian can make us invisible. That should keep us safe from supers," I countered. "It's not a perfect solution, but it's the best we've got."

  "You're assuming they don't have some sort of ability to detect us anyway," Jillian said, shaking her head. "It's risky. They could have a super than can use echolocation, or one that can sense minds. A telepath like that guy Dick. We have no way of knowing what they can counter with, and if they detect us it's going to mean a fight. We'll be outnumbered by people with abilities we don't understand, while they'll know exactly what we're capable of."

  "They know what you and David are capable of, but they don't know anything about me," Kali pointed out. "If it comes to a fight I can give them something to think about."

  Jillian gave Kali a hard look. "If we're doing this then we need to be ready to fight. I know none of us has ever killed someone, but if we get into a fight they're not going to hold back. We can't afford to either."

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," I said. I knew she was right, but Kali was even younger than I was. She shouldn't be forced to fight for her life.

  "We can't count on that," Jillian shot back, shifting her attention to me. "You know I was in Kajukenbo for most of my childhood. The first thing Sifu taught us was that if you're going to fight, you'd better be ready to kill. Otherwise don't get into a fight in the first place. Kaliska, if you're going with us, you aim to kill, am I clear? Otherwise you're staying behind." Jillian looked back at Kali, who'd gone pale.

  "I'll aim to kill," Kali finally said. She set her jaw and met Jillian's stare. "The grey men have declared war, and, like it or not, I'm going to have to fight."

  I was enormously proud of her, and I hoped I could show that kind of resolve it if it came down to a fight.

  Chapter 20- Atonement

  There was one more thing I wanted to do before we launched our raid against Mohn Corp. I knew our plan was suicidal, and I might not get another chance. I'd been putting it off since I first realized the grey men were real.

  I needed to apologize.

  I plucked the memory crystal from the table, slipping quietly out the door onto the balcony. I glanced behind me to make sure both Jillian and Kali were asleep, then closed the door and headed downstairs to the first level. Our van was still parked in the lot, and I quietly pulled back the door. I climbed inside, pulling it shut behind me. It made more noise than I'd like, but with the cars still threading down Mendocino I doubted it would wake the girls.

  Once I was settled, I set the crystal on the seat next to me, and touched it. It flared to life, and my mother's spectral green form appeared on the seat next to me. She looked around briefly, sizing up the inside of the van. "We're alone. Is there something you didn't want to discuss with Jillian and Kali?"

  "A few things, actually," I said. Proceeding was harder that I'd thought it would be. I shifted on the seat's noisy leather, trying to get comfortable. "Mom, I wanted to start by saying I'm sorry. I mean, I know you aren't actually my mom, but we're about to do something that might get us all killed. You're as close as I'm likely to get."

  "Oh, David," Mom said, extending a ghostly hand. It brushed my chin, though I didn't feel anything. "It isn't your fault. I don't blame you for not wanting to believe the grey men were real. You did what you needed to, to protect your sanity and your life. I never wanted you to be an outcast like me, and I was happy you found a life away from Tuolumne, even if I did miss you."

  "I still have to apologize, Mom." I cleared my throat, blinking back tears. "You were right all along, and I never believed you. I thought you were crazy, and I wanted to get as far from you as possible. I'm sorry, Mom. You needed me, and I wasn't there. And now you're...you might be...dead."

  "That's possible but, David, I want you to remember something. This crystal was created only a day before you found it. That means everything I was, up until the moment I created it, is captured here." She gave me the warmest smile I'd ever seen, one that carried me all the way back to the safety of childhood. "I forgive you, David, and I love you more than anything. I'm proud of you--not just what you've done, but what you're doing now. You're picking up the cause I started."

  A single tear slid down my cheek, and I smiled weakly at her, unable to continue.

  "Now, what is it exactly that you're going to do that you think might get you killed? I already disapprove." Her expression was all mock disapproval
, but a smile lurked near the edges.

  "We're going to break into Mohn Corp. We think we know what Object 3 is, and where it might lead. It's a teleporter, one that might take us into a pyramid under the bay," I explained.

  "I think you're on the right track," she replied, pursing her lips. "I've had visions of that pyramid, and of others. If you can use Object 3 to get inside, you might finally get the answers I was seeking. But be careful, David. You need to survive this. The resistance needs you. The grey men are powerful, but they've unwittingly given us the tools to resist them. It's time to fight back, and that fight needs a leader. They need you, David."

  She was right. I clenched my fist around the memory crystal. "I won't let you down again, Mom. This time I'm in it for keeps."

  Chapter 21- Object 3

  "I can't believe we're doing this," Jillian muttered. She stared up at the massive Mohn skyscraper from our hiding place in the alley. The smell of Pad Thai and curry drifted out of the restaurant kitchen next to us. The interior of the Mohn building wasn't well-lit, but they'd left enough lights on that night-owl employees could still find their way to the elevators.

  Kali stood next to Jillian, rubbing the arms of her thin North Face jacket as her teeth chattered. She'd covered her face with a black ski mask, but I could still read the resolve in her eyes.

  "We could back out," I said, adjusting the nylon balaclava I'd picked up on the way back to San Francisco. I felt like an extra playing Terrorist Number Five in a Bruce Willis flick. "Of course, if we do that we don't find answers, and we have no way of stopping the grey men when they take us again."