The Breach by Lee Patrick

Author:Lee, Patrick [Lee, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2009-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

When Travis finished reading the reports, he saw that Paige had opened a laptop. She turned it to face him.

“This is test footage of the last entity Pilgrim has,” she said. “It’s not quite unique. Four of them have come through over the years. He only has one. It’s no Whisper, but it’s powerful, in its way.”

She opened a video frame on the screen and clicked PLAY. The video showed a stark white room containing a metal cage, no larger than a single-occupant drunk tank in some backwater police station. A man in his forties, balding, entered the frame holding an orange cube maybe four inches wide. There were markings on it, symbols etched in black, but they were too far from the camera to be discernible. It didn’t matter: Travis could see that the writing was different from the strange jumble he’d read on Paige’s wall. And it sure as hell wasn’t English.

“October 4, 1986,” the balding man said. “Video demonstration of Entity Zero Two Zero Five: Ares.”

He entered the cage with the cube, closed the door and locked it from inside. Then he manipulated something on the cube, moving the symbols on its surface, arranging them. Here the camera reframed to a wider field of view, revealing a dozen people seated in chairs outside the cage, the nearest maybe ten feet away. Men and women, twenties to forties. Dressed casually. Nothing strange about them, except their anxiety. Something was about to happen, and they knew it.

The man in the cage finished whatever he was doing with the cube: the thing suddenly flared bright, throwing off the camera’s white balance and making the room appear darker. In the same instant, all but three of the seated people turned sharply, regarding the man in the cage with something like surprise.

Then, as one, they came up out of their chairs and rushed him, like baseball players charging from the dugout to beat the shit out of some opposing player. They hit the cage en masse, trying with all their force to get at the man inside. Arms reached in through the bars. Hands gripped the steel and shook it. A few of the attackers stepped back and aimed heavy kicks at the cage door’s latch. Had they reached the balding man, they would have torn his limbs from his body. There was no question of it.

By their moves, it was clear that they weren’t seeking the orange cube itself. They weren’t looking to destroy it, or even take it away; they were only reacting to the man who held it. They crouched and reached for his legs. Climbed atop the cage and plunged their arms into it, going for his head. They wanted to kill him. It was that simple.

Yet beyond the rage, their actions were surprisingly normal. Nothing about them suggested that they were controlled like mindless puppets, or even reduced to some animalistic state of mind. Not even close. They were just extremely pissed-off people focused on a target. Their minds were, if anything, clearer for the adrenaline rush.

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