The Forest by Justin Groot

Author:Justin Groot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: http://www.grabmybooks.com

Chapter Fifteen

In the morning Cooper took us to the cafeteria for breakfast, then back down to Dr. Alvarez’s lab for what I presumed to be round two of Forestology 101. This time, though, he got straight to the point.

“We’ve got a mission for you,” said Cooper.

“Course you do,” said Li.

“Out in the middle of the Pacific, there are a number of volcanoes, most of them inactive, that protrude above forest level,” said Cooper. “Since the sixties, we’ve maintained a base on one particular chain. The name of the chain is Hawaii.”

“Hawaii?” I said, rolling the word over my tongue.

“It’s Proto-Polynesian for ‘Place of the Gods,’” explained Dr. Alvarez.

“Course it is,” said Li.

“The reason we set up a research station there,” said Cooper, “is that there’s a major electromagnetic distortion a few miles off shore.”

“We’ve been conducting experiments as discreetly as possible,” said Dr. Alvarez, “but there’s only so much we can learn without sending people in.”

“So you want us to go,” I said.

“Correct,” said Cooper.

Dr. Alvarez pulled up the hologram of the alternate-Earth again. Its glittering blue oceans rotated before us.

“You two simplified things tremendously when you stumbled across those artifacts. You’re the obvious choice for the mission.”

“What do you mean, ‘you two?’” demanded Li. “What about Zip? Isn’t he invited?”

Cooper grimaced.

“Well,” he said, “that’s where the bad news comes in.”

My stomach flattened. Zip was dead, I could feel it.

“Zip’s not going on any more expeditions,” said Cooper, and I turned away, screwing my eyes closed.

“Motherfucker ,” said Li. “You let him die ?”

“What?” said Cooper. “No, he’s not dead. He’s in the hospital and looks to be making a full recovery. But they had to take his leg off.”

I remembered the foul odor that had spewed out of Zip’s wound, the way the punctured skin oozed with blood and yellow pus. No more rock climbing for him, then. Although, knowing Zip, he’d figure out a way to do it with a prosthetic. But the three of us wouldn’t be setting any expedition records together, that was for sure.

“Fuck,” said Li.

“Sorry,” said Cooper. “But we only needed two of you anyway. The third slot goes to a scientist.”

I could feel my eyelids peel wide as I gaped at him.

“No way,” I said. “That’s a suicide mission. We’re not dragging some dead weight egghead out there who’s going to get us killed.”

“They won’t be dead weight,” said Cooper.

“Like hell they won’t,” said Li, taking a seat on the stairs.

“The person we’re sending has been training for months,” said Cooper. “They might not be on the same level, but they’ll know how to look out for themselves.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why can’t you send rangers and look at the footage afterward, like you always do?”

“We don’t know what’s out there,” said Cooper, “and we don’t know if it’ll still be there when we look a second time. We might only have one shot at this.”

“It’s a suicide mission,” said Li. “You want us to plunge into God knows what kind of clusterfuck, and you want us to do it with somebody we don’t trust, somebody we can’t possibly trust.

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