The Mars Anomaly: Hard Science Fiction by Joshua T. Calvert

Author:Joshua T. Calvert [Calvert, Joshua T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

CHRISTER

His eyes followed Wayan as she walked with one of the security guards to a phone attached to a panel on the rock face. The cables ran up toward the borehole on the surface.

Saruko pointed to the trolley. “Get in.”

“Let me guess. If I say no, then the rest of the day won’t be very pleasant for me?”

“If you say no, I’ll shoot you,” the Japanese man replied emotionlessly enough to leave Christer little doubt as to how serious he was. But he saw what might have been a micro smile – or even just the twitch of a corner of his mouth. Neither of which contributed to his sense of inner well-being.

“What if Agent Suryani set you up?”

“That’s for the board to deal with. I’m here to keep our operations running down here. They are there to make sure that no one on the surface is hindering me and my team.”

They took a seat in the cramped compartment. It was musty smelling but at least it felt pleasantly cool. Although there seemed to be no operator, the trolley started moving as if by magic and rumbled along the narrow-gauge rails into the shaft in front of them.

Christer felt the reflex to turn to Wayan, hoping that it had all been just a feint on her part, but he let it go. She had made her decision, he had seen that in her eyes. She had fooled him while he was absorbed in something that shouldn’t really exist.

The shaft in front of them was rather sparsely illuminated. After about 100 meters, the walls were no longer rocky, but lined with concrete. Numbers and letters marked regular points, and here and there were yellow-painted doors. They followed a fork to the right and descended deeper.

“Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman,” Christer murmured. “Rise and shine.”

“What are you talking about?” Saruko asked disapprovingly.

“Half-life. This must be Black Mesa.” A cold shiver ran down his spine as he thought of what had been waiting for him as a computer gamer in the fictional Black Mesa. “I don’t know whether to feel honored that they picked me specifically, or insulted that Agent Suryani isn’t doing this herself.”

“We’re all just doing our job here.”

Christer scrutinized the Japanese man and his chalky white skin. “You don’t get to the surface often, do you?”

Saruko’s hard gaze intensified and he didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought. They’re keeping some kind of secret here, and Megah Adara couldn’t have kept it secret since the eighties if they gave their local staff free rein.” Christer exhaled a long, drawn-out breath. “You were once like me, am I right? Kidnapped and forced to work here.”

The Japanese man’s silence was answer enough for him. Not only to his question, but also to many of the other speculations in his head. If this man hadn’t found a way out of here, there wasn’t one. The fact that he knew the board probably meant that he had come to terms with his fate out of necessity and made the best of it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.