Kraken Rising: Alex Hunter 6 Read online

  There next came the sound of concrete moving, and then the grunt of human strain. The circle lifted, and like a giant stone birthday cake, the many layers of reinforced concrete, steel, and tile rose into the air – a massive two solid feet of it – and then impossibly, it was laid gently beside the hole as if it was feather light.

  A figure appeared next. A wetsuit still damp with the waters of the nearby Moskva River clung to its muscular frame. Alex Hunter pulled himself out of the hole, moved quickly to the door, and carefully stole a glance through the single portal. Both guards were still at either side of the frame, the noise inside of the room contained by the soundproofed barrier.

  Satisfied, Hunter crossed back to Captain Graham, strapped down on the steel table. Hunter took the wetsuit-hood from his head, and stared down, his gray-green eyes expressionless as he examined Graham’s drawn and tortured features. Moving quickly now, he drew a small box from a pouch at his belt, and unwound a wire and clip from it. This he then attached to the metal probe extending from Graham’s nostril. He waited a second or two for the readout on the small screen to calibrate the brain function of the man.

  Hunter grunted, and then spoke softly, his voice carrying via the tiny device at his temporal bone behind his ear, to be relayed back to his home base.

  “Brain dead. Orders?”

  The response was calm and deep. “Termination.”

  Alex unclipped the wires and replaced the box back into his belt pouch. Next came a syringe, which he held at Graham’s neck. He paused, looking down.

  “You deserve a lot worse.” Alex stared at the man who had tried to capture and either kill or experiment on him. Captain Robert Graham’s work had saved his life, had roused him from a lifelong brain death to becoming the extraordinary being he now was. But then, when the military scientist tried to repeat the experiment, he had failed time and again. His response had been to recover Alex – by any means – and then turn him inside out to see why he was a success when hundreds of others had failed.

  Alex’s eyes began to burn with fury as the memories rushed back. Graham had unleashed killers upon him – their orders to bring him in dead or alive. The final insult came when Graham had threatened his family. And now, what had Graham told the Russians? Who else now knew about him, about Aimee, and Joshua?

  Alex’s teeth were bared. “You deserve this hell.” He knew the empty shell couldn’t possibly hear him, but also knew that if circumstances were different, he would have killed the man anyway. And that death might not have been so … easy.

  “Your lucky day. My orders are to release you.”

  He inserted the needle, injected the amber fluid, and then placed a finger on Graham’s neck, feeling his pulse quicken, flutter, and then abruptly stop as expected. The alarm that followed wasn’t.

  The banshee shriek that tore through the room meant either he’d been seen, or the life-sign monitor had a fail-safe attached – it seemed they wanted Graham to keep on living in his own private hell for a long time to come.

  “Shit.” Alex moved quickly to finish his job – he withdrew a small vial of greenish fluid from another pouch, carefully unscrewed the lid, and then poured the contents over Graham’s face. The flesh sizzled and started to cave-in on itself – there would be no pictures of the man left to parade on the Internet as some grisly warning to the West.

  He had seconds now. Alex lifted a metal stool, stabbing it into the overhead lights, plunging the small tiled room into an eerie darkness lit only by some dotted red lights on the myriad of machines monitoring Graham’s body.

  Alex looked towards the door. “Party time.” It burst open.

  Doctor Dimitry Liminov pushed into the room, and immediately froze. He would have been expecting to see the prone figure of Captain Robert Graham, but instead was met by the sight of a tall figure all in black, whose eyes shone silver in the darkened room. Liminov’s mouth opened and closed for a second or two.

  “Gv … gvar …” The call to the guards was barely above a whisper. Liminov sucked in a huge breath, turned, and then shouted: “GVARDIYA, GVARDIYA!’

  The doors exploded open again, and Alex pushed past Liminov on his way to meet the new arrivals. As the first man entered the room, Alex grabbed him and dragged him in hard, flinging his six-foot frame up against the white tiled wall. The guard’s impact left a red streak as he slid to the ground and lay still.

  The next guard had enough time to bring around his rifle stock and swipe it across Alex’s cheek; the crushing impact was brutal in the enclosed room. Before the guard could recover from sweeping his gun across the intruder’s face, Alex had delivered a flat strike across his throat to silence him. The man grabbed at his neck before he was punched once in the temple. He fell like a tree, unconscious before hitting the ground.

  Liminov’s screams contained notes of rage and fear, but Alex continued to ignore him, and lifted a metal stool, breaking off one of its legs as he moved to the door. He used the length of steel to jam it through the handles, effectively locking Liminov in.

  He then turned to the Russian scientist. Alex’s face showed an ugly crush-mark on his cheekbone. The flesh rippled for a moment before the wound stopped bleeding, and the bones popped back into place. The skin started to crawl closed over the trauma mark – weeks of healing in seconds.

  Liminov’s face twisted in recognition. “I know who you are. You are Captain Graham’s prize lab rat, the one they call the Arcadian. You’re too late …” Liminov backed up, keeping the silver table containing the moldering pile of flesh that used to be Captain Robert Graham between himself and Alex. “He has already told us everything.”

  Alex smiled without humor. “Not everything.” He moved around the table and grabbed the shrieking scientist. “You have no idea who I am.” He dragged Liminov towards the table. “And you have no idea what else is in here with me.”

  Alex pulled Liminov around to force him to look at the dead American captain, pushing his head down hard.

  “Now tell me how you were just following orders.” Alex’s voice was without pity. He pulled Liminov upright. “You and your president need to learn not to touch our stuff.”

  “I’ll be sure to give President Volkov your message.” Liminov spat the words into Alex’s face. “And then let him know who sent it – you’ll never be able to stop looking over your shoulder. You, your family, your friends, not even your son, Joshua.”

  Alex’s cold smile dropped at hearing the name. “Yes, we should all keep looking over our shoulders.” Alex suddenly twisted the man’s head until it sat backwards on his neck. “And I think he’ll get our message now.”

  The door shuddered as men started to heave against it, trying to get inside the room. Alex dragged Liminov’s body up over Graham’s, and then reached into his belt pouch. There was a gas disk that he stuck to the wall, and then punched hard – a thick, green gas started to jet from its sides. The chlorine gas was a heavy, stinking gas that destroyed the respiratory system. Without at least a charcoal filter gasmask, no one would be entering the room. It also created an impenetrable fog, concealing him from the door’s glass portal.

  Alex held his breath and shut his eyes, moving by memory to the hole in the floor. He eased into it, and then gently dragged the huge circular block of stone and tile back over the top and lowered it down over him, sealing the hole like a massive cork.

  In another few minutes he was swimming beneath the dark water of the Moskva River. I love it when things go to plan, he thought.

  The first underwater mine detonated fifty feet from his right. The instantaneous change in water pressure created a shock wave that pummeled his body and made his ears bleed. Alex hung, momentarily stunned, before jolting into action.

  The Moskva River mines were probably strung in a cordon around the Kremlin’s underwater side – too deep to affect shipping, and probably residing near the bottom – and were remotely detonated or activated by movement. Either way, they created a deadly explosive net arou
nd the building.

  Alex sensed the second mine looming before it detonated. This one was coming up fast, and was only ten feet from him. Though he spun and kicked away furiously, the proximity of the explosion was like a giant hammer compressing his body and brain.

  He kicked hard, using legs and arms furiously to swim deep. He grabbed onto some debris sticking from the silted bottom, and held on. His eyes widened as he saw the circular shape slowly rising from the silt before him. The mine immediately detonated, its compression blast battering every cell in his body. His eyes closed and his breathing slowed, as his mind took him somewhere else.

  *

  Alex Hunter floated, drifting and dreaming. He was freezing, and things lunged at him from the darkness – things with gaping mouths, or horned beaks, slick tentacles, or scaled talons. Claws ripped at him, determined to tear him to shreds and devour the morsels. They scratched, bit, and stabbed at his body. He was pushed and bumped, and the horrors shredded the fabric of his garments, the same as they tore at his sanity.

  He wanted it to end, wanted his peace. A tiny voice whispered to him: it only hurts for a while, and then all you’re left with is a small scar and a smile. Who said that? He remembered: his father, from so long ago that it was just a faint echo in his memory.

  He then saw the boy, his son Joshua, saw his face as he waved to him while he was being carried away. Then a beautiful woman, with night-dark hair and ice-blue eyes. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. Aimee, his mind whispered. I’m so sorry.

  They’re all gone. Another voice now, the sly one that tormented him. You left them.

  Never, he shouted in his mental chaos.

  Yes, you left them. Alone, unprotected. You were weak, selfish. They could already be dead, and you let it happen.

  Never! Anger boiled up within him, making him feel hot, red hot, the air around him crackling with furious energy. There was a sharp pain in his shoulder, but when he went to bat it away, he found his arms were held tight. He floated up, not to the surface of freezing water, but to consciousness. Then he heard the voices, heard and felt the rumbling of the truck, and felt the chill against his skin.

  Alex stayed motionless, just letting his senses catch up. There were Russian voices. He was stripped to the waist, his wetsuit removed, and he was tied to a wooden pallet. He opened his eyes a slit. It was near dark in the back of the truck, a single lantern swung overhead, but it was more than enough light for him to see clearly.

  He heard the men around him talking about being near the Lytkarino District – he knew it – fifteen miles from the Kremlin, and now they were heading back there. He must have floated in the river for miles. He saw that the men wore police uniforms. They must have dragged him from the river.

  “You feel … he’s very hot … too hot for a normal man.”

  There was a hand on his chest, and then another.

  “He has a fever?”

  “Maybe, but now you watch,” the voice said in Russian.

  Alex saw the man lift a small blade, and touch it to his shoulder. The truck hit a pothole and the blade penetrated deep. He felt the sting of the knife, and then the familiar burning sensation.

  “Ach … no matter. Now, you watch,” the man said quickly to his comrade, dragging him forward.

  Alex knew what they were seeing; the wound would bubble and hiss like acid, as the flesh knitted back together, his metabolism healing the cut almost immediately. A wonder to them, and probably why they were transporting him to the Kremlin, rather than simply leaving him locked in a prison cell at the local police station. He knew when he got there, he was as good as dead, or nearly dead – they’d do to him what they had done to Graham. They’d strap him down, interrogate, and torture him. But his unique metabolism would continue to regenerate him, keeping him alive, so they could question and torture him, over and over, forever.

  He waited, counting the seconds. There was a third man, dozing, and another in the front cabin, driving. He needed to be silent, and needed the vehicle. He waited, counting the seconds. The pothole jerked the truck to the side and rattled its frame. The lantern arced, its light swinging away from Alex on the pallet. In the split second it took for the light to swing back, the men’s faces when suddenly illuminated again immediately twisted in shock as they found a half naked figure looming up, shredded rope dangling from each wrist.

  Alex grabbed the two who had been delighting in their surgical examination of his flesh and cracked their heads together – a little too hard, as blood spurted and the skull of one depressed. He let the bodies drop, and grabbed the dozing man, and flung him from the back of the truck, his body tumbling into an overgrown ditch. If the policeman ever woke, it’d be hours before anyone found him or he could stagger back to his base.

  Alex peered through the rear window panel at the driver – the older man oblivious and driving with half lidded eyes. Alex quickly moved to the rear of the truck and scaled the outside of the bouncing vehicle, clambering along the top. In the distance he could see the glow of the city coming up fast. He hurried, swinging along down with the slimmest of handholds, and then in a single motion, he ripped open the driver’s door and shoved the startled man aside. Before the driver could even speak, Alex had gripped the wheel, and took control of the gears and pedals without the machine slowing. He turned.

  “убирайся!’ Alex roared.

  The Russian word for get out, struck the policeman like a hammer, freezing him momentarily. Alex leaned closer and bared his teeth, and that caused the driver to burst into action. Even though the truck was doing sixty miles per hour, he spun, opened the door and leapt.

  In the side view mirror, Alex saw the man land, bounce, and then lay still.

  “Bet that hurt.” He grinned and then swung the wheel at a widening in the road. The truck groaned as it turned hard, and then he jammed his foot down, and accelerated back along the dark road.

  Alex reached for the police radio and began moving the dial up the frequencies, searching. In another moment, he found the correct numbers. There was nothing but white noise, but he knew this was simply camouflage – there were people listening, his people.

  “Arcadian, coming in.” He ground his foot down on the accelerator.

  CHAPTER 2

  Project Ellsworth – English Antarctic Research Project

  Professor Cate Canning’s hands shook. “Okay people.” It felt like a thousand butterflies swirled in her stomach as her finger hovered over the button. “Are – we – re-aaady?”

  It didn’t matter what the half dozen scientists and engineers crowded into the makeshift laboratory behind her said because she was ready, the equipment was ready, conditions were perfect, and she alone would make the final call. She was the leading evolutionary biologist in the United Kingdom, and it had taken a lifetime of research, planning, fundraising, politicking, and then bloody arm-twisting, to even get to prototype phase of the exploration of the subsurface lakes below the Antarctic ice.

  It had been tough – there was international pressure to ban all human activity on the southern ice sheets ever since the huge, unexplained algal blooms had been seen off the coast in March. So far, the total scientific ban had been kept in check with the counter argument that the blooms were strange but a common occurrence – one theory was that there was warm water welling up from a deep fracture somewhere – and that warm water conjecture made Cate even more curious, and determined.

  And then, just when the road seemed to be getting ever steeper, a bluebird of good fortune had landed on her shoulder. Just months ago, NASA reported that the Hubble Space Telescope had picked up water vapor plumes emanating from Europa, one of the tiny moons of Saturn. Up until that point, the astral body, first discovered in 1610, was of little interest to anyone other than Galileo and a few dozen astronomers. The tiny ball was comprised of silicate rock with an iron core, and an outer covering of solid ice – interesting, but unimportant. But with the water plumes there came proof of liquid belo
w that frozen coating. And where there was water, there was life.

  Mankind would send eyes to Europa in a mission due to launch in 2022. Suddenly, the race was on to see what was under the astral body’s ice. The eyes they would send would not be human, but needed to be able to see below the ice, from below the ice … exactly what Cate was working on. Suddenly people wanted in, and Cate had sewn up a funding deal with an American research company, called GBR. They’d fully funded Cate’s project for the next decade, with her having full autonomy – it was almost too good to be true.

  Cate stared at the stratigraphic mapping screen before her. Of the 400 lakes below the Antarctic ice, the newly discovered Lake Ellsworth was one of the largest and deepest. It would prove the perfect test bed. Cate had seized their chance, and now they were here, at the point of launch.

  “Are we ready?” she repeated.

  This time, shouted assent from the assembled team.

  Cate exhaled slowly, absorbing the moment. The Ellsworth project was a test run for navigating the hidden oceans of Europa. But it was more than that – the subsurface lake had not been disturbed for many millions of years; it would be a window into the Earth’s prehistoric past. Cate bet there was life down there, and more than anything, she wanted proof of life.

  Cate smiled, and then pressed the launch button, wishing she could go with it.

  “Good luck, Flip. Go fetch,” she whispered and sat back to wait, and watch.

  *

  The miniature probe, nicknamed Flipper, and with a picture of the famous aquatic mammal painted on its side, was only six feet in length. It was packed with instrumentation, had a heat source at one end, and also ended in a rotating diamond-tipped drill. It would melt its way through the dark ice, cut its way through the granite crust, and then drop into the liquid it found below. There, its tanks would fill, giving it neutral buoyancy and allowing it to hover midwater, slowly rotating, and capturing streaming and still images until its batteries were exhausted.