CTHULHU RELOADED

The Collected Harrison Peel Stories

Volume 1

David Conyers

“Conyers is like some impossibly perfect distillation of Lovecraft, Fleming, Barker and Ludlum. There’s an awful logic to his terror and action.” — PETER CLINES

“David Conyers, I have to say, is my favorite mythos author. He does what would have made Lovecraft weep with joy.” — CJ HENDERSON

“Every bit as disquieting as anything found in the oeuvre of Lovecraft.” — BLACK STATIC

“I started reading a few pages… and it grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. A fast-paced read with a great plot and some DAMN scary Shoggoths!” — LOVECRAFT EZINE

“When it comes to eldritch espionage action, nobody does it better.” — CODY GOODFELLOW

“The versatile David Conyers greatly impresses. He is gifted with much imagination, the knack for intriguing plot, suspenseful pacing, and compelling characters. I suspect the man can do it all, and will.” — JEFFREY THOMAS

“David Conyers is like the physicist who is all too happy to remind us that the solid world is only an illusion. Time and again, Conyers rips open the universe for us, to show us how empty it is, and how dark.” — D.L. SNELL

“There are a very few authors still living today that I can point to and honestly say that they have inspired me. David Conyers has.” — BRIAN M. SAMMONS, editor of WORLD WAR CTHULHU

“David Conyers is the reigning king of the Cthulhu Mythos Down Under. With Conyers at the helm, you won’t be disappointed by your journey.” — HORRORSCOPE

“David Conyers is a rising star... So good are the scenarios he dreams up that I'm beginning to wonder if he is really a time traveler from the future.” — SF CROWSNEST

“David Conyers spawns with frightening ability scenes that could fuel the most terrifying of nightmares.” — DARK WOLF FANTASY REVIEWS

Cthulhu Reloaded © 2021 David Conyers

First published worldwide 2021.

All Rights Reserved All characters, events, companies and organizations portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or companies or organizations, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express permission of the author.

CTHULHU RELOADED

“Introduction” © 2014, Peter Clines “Forward” © 2021, David Conyers “Made of Meat” (2005), Temple of Dagon.com, © 2005, David Conyers.

“Driven Underground” (2013), The Impossible Object, © 2013, David Conyers.

“Impossible Object” (2005), Dreaming in R’lyeh #3, Night Platform Press, USA, © 2005, David Conyers.

“False Containment” (2005), Horrors Beyond, Elder Signs Press, USA, © 2005, David Conyers.

“Tears in Yellow” (2021), Cthulhu Reloaded, USA, © 2021, David Conyers.

“The Weaponized Puzzle” (2013), The Weaponized Puzzle, USA, © 2013, David Conyers.

“Weapon Grade” (2007), The Spiraling Worm, Chaosium Inc, USA, © 2007, David Conyers.

“The Elder Codex” (2014), The Elder Codex, © 2014, David Conyers.

The character Harrison Peel, © 2005, 2021 David Conyers. The character John Dixon, © 2007 John Sunseri. The character Emerson Ash, © 2014 David Kernot. The character Jordan, © 2006 Brian M Sammons. The character Joan de Molina © 2015 CJ Henderson. The character Rudolph Pearson © 2005 William Jones.

Special thanks to Dori Barrett, David Anderson, Brian M. Sammons, David Kernot, William Jones, C.J. Henderson, John Goodrich, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Angela Challis, Mike Davis, Glynn Owen Barrass, Jeffrey Thomas, Paul Mudie, Cody Goodfellow, George Anderson, Frank Ludlow, Bob Neilson, John Kenny, Konstantine Paradis, Peter Rawlik and Peter Clines.

All reprinted stories revised and expanded in this edition.

Cover Image © 2016 Can Stock Photo / grandfailure

CONTENTS

Introduction | Peter Clines

Forward | David Conyers

Made of Meat

Driven Underground

Impossible Object

False Containment

Tears in Yellow

The Weaponized Puzzle

Weapon Grade

The Elder Codex

Copyright

About the Author

A Rambling Introduction, of Sorts…

Peter Clines

Can I be brutally honest right up front?

I’m not a huge fan of Lovecraft stories.

While I’m sure that statement has a few of you up in arms (and our esteemed host, David Conyers, wondering why the hell he asked me to write this introduction), I hope you’ll bear with me for a few more paragraphs and let me explain.

I’m a big believer in something writer/director Shane Black once said. To paraphrase, plot is what happens outside your characters, story is what happens inside your characters. I’ve always felt that dear Howard wrote phenomenal plots — the exterior events — but was a bit lacking when it came to the folks who experienced those plots. His characters just seem a bit flat and interchangeable most of the time, because they’re really not there to do anything except advance the plot. Honestly, how many Lovecraft characters can you name who aren’t mentioned in their respective story title?

Granted, this kind of makes sense with the type of stories he told. His characters were gnats caught up in events and existences beyond their comprehension, struggling against vast entities that defied description. It’s often been pointed out that the humans just don’t matter in Lovecraft stories, and I think that’s true on several levels. Most of his characters are just there to have their lives ended if they’re lucky, their lives ruined and minds shattered if they’re not. They’re hopeless people in a hopeless cosmos, and they tend to be a bit bland and shallow because of this.

Personally, as a reader and a writer, I find this a bit frustrating. Why would I want to root for a hero who I know is going to lose? Oh, sure, we can argue about art and realism for hours, but at the end of the day I’m trying to have a good time and identify on some level with a fictional character while I follow their adventures. And I don’t want to identify with someone who ends up in an asylum wearing a diaper because they’ve looked into the face of a vast intelligence which forced them to confront the utter meaninglessness of all existence.

It’s the same reason I’ve never been a huge fan of Ju-On horror or torture porn films. In both of these genres, setting foot in the old house (so to speak) is a death sentence. Even if you get away, the evil just comes after you and drags you back. There is no escape. None. There’s some amazingly creepy stuff out there with some terrifying-yet-fantastic visuals, but at the end of the day I can’t really get into a story where the protagonist never had the slightest chance of surviving.

Again, as a reader and a writer... what’s the point of that?

Which brings us to Major Harrison Peel, Australian Army Intelligence.

Peel is our Agent J or Agent Myers. Even our Harry Potter, if you like. He’s the person who stumbles across this vast layer of reality which has been kept secret from the public and finds himself oddly suited to it. In the defense of his country and our world, Peel has dealt with non-Euclidian geometry, Old Ones, time paradoxes, Shoggoths (sooooo many Shoggoths), and much more.

And he’s survived. He doesn’t end up curled in a ball or drooling in the corner. He faces the endless horrors of a Lovecraftian universe one after another and he survives. He observes. He learns and plans. A lot of the time he escapes by the skin of his teeth. Every now and then, he gets in a few good punches back.

One might be tempted to say he wins now and then. Oh, not without a few scars. He’s no Superman. Hell, he’s not even Batman. Peel has more than his fair share of injuries — physical, mental, and spiritual — that he carries through this series. But it’s not stretching things too much to say Peel wins.

That’s the kind of person I want to read about and identify with.

So, stop wasting time reading the introduction. It’s far too long, anyway. Turn the page and discover the awful legacy scattered across our world by its original residents.

And if it gets too freaky at points, don’t worry.

Harrison Peel’s got your back.

Forward

David Conyers

The publication of my first Cthulhu Mythos tales featuring my protagonist, Major Harrison Peel, was in 2005, and they were “Impossible Object”, “False Containment” and “Made of Meat”.

That was a long time ago now.

Back in 2005 I had no plan to write a series with this character, but the stories resonated with fans of weird Lovecraftian fiction, and soon I was being asked to write more in the series. John Sunseri and I teamed up to write the anthology collection, The Spiraling Worm with his own hero, Jack Dixon, aiding Peel in their missions and later Cody Goodfellow published my chapbook The Eye of Infinity, both featuring Harrison Peel. From there I teamed up with other established and up-and-coming weird fiction authors including Brian M. Sammons, CJ Henderson, David Kernot and John Goodrich to write more Harrison Peel tales, many of which included those authors’ own protagonists who appeared in other stories within the shared universe of the Cthulhu Mythos. Brian M Sammons and I also edited Cthulhu Unbound 3, which featured Harrison Peel going up against Cthulhu himself and introducing the world to the enigmatic soldier Jordan. The ‘Peelverse’ (as some readers have called it) grew quickly and organically.

In 2013, with the growing popularity of self-publishing, I collated many of my Peel stories into five collections and released them on Amazon as e-books. I had a plan for where I would take the series and mapped out many more Harrison Peel stories to write.

Concurrently I was writing books for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game from Chaosium, editing various horror fiction, science fiction and Lovecraftian anthologies, and had taken on an editor role with Albedo One magazine. I’d even started work on a gaming supplement for role-players interested in exploring Peel’s version of the Cthulhu Mythos.

And then I burned out…

Around 2015 I just couldn’t write anymore Cthulhu Mythos fiction, or horror fiction for that matter. Every time I went back and looked over my Peel tales to try again, all I saw was a mess with noticeable inconsistencies between stories and a confused background I was failing to build across the connected narrative. So, I gave up, and moved into contemporary thriller fiction, and now write in that genre under a pseudonym. I left my weird fiction life behind.

But the Harrison Peel tales always nagged at me. I felt I had never properly completed this series, and if I added four original stories, namely “Tears in Yellow” (a King in Yellow story), “The Gravity Museum” (a Shoggoth story), “Mouth of Jupiter” (a Fungi from Yuggoth story) and “Invisible Demons” co-written with Brian M. Sammons (a Cthulhu story), I felt Peel’s adventures could reach a natural conclusion. In 2020 I set about writing those tales and going back to all the old stories and editing them, which I did. The result is this three-book collection, Cthulhu Reloaded, Cthulhu Resurgent and Cthulhu Remorseless — the complete Harrison Peel series (except I should note my science fiction collection Nanofabrica includes a cameo appearance of Peel in the far future, “Playgrounds of Angolaland”). I also worked with Brian M. Sammons to release his complete collection of Jordan stories which works well as a companion to the Peel series, Cthulhu Repossessed.

I also compiled Cthulhu Unmasked, another companion collection to Peel with the best of my other Cthulhu Mythos fiction and horror fiction, with some of the characters from the Peelverse appearing in those stories. It also includes a detailed background on The Mask Messenger, a mythos tome of my own making not unlike Lovecraft’s Necronomicon that often features in the Peelverse.

I still have a fondness for my Harrison Peel stories, but going back and revisiting them showed me how much my writing has improved since 2005. In this trilogy of volumes, I have reworked every story to varying degrees with changes for consistency, improving grammar and style, some reordering of tales, altering or swapping out some characters for better continuity between overarching plot lines, and inserting additional background information for clarity. If official versions of the Peel stories are what you want, consider this collection the last word on the matter.

However, old stories are still mostly as I first wrote them. Read “Impossible Object” compared to “Tears in Yellow” and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean about how I have improved.

What I enjoyed the most coming back to these stories is how my original ideas for Peel have held up today. I set out to write not horror but science fiction in a Lovecraft setting, and I am much more influenced by Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Shadow Out of Time” than I am “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Dreams in the Witch House”. Mixing theoretical physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, higher-dimensional mathematics and cosmology into a Lovecraftian setting brought me many hours of writing pleasure, and it is these elements that readers have most often responded to.

I hope you enjoy the complete Harrison Peel tales, and I’m glad I can finally bring them to you in their entirety.

Will I write more Cthulhu Mythos science fiction? I guess that depends on you. The brave new world of self-publishing is well established now and the norm, but indie authors as we are called, rely of greater interaction with authors. That ultimately comes down to reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Simply put, the more reviews an author receives on these platforms, the more likely other readers will buy, read, enjoy and review the book in turn. The author realizes the book is popular and provides them with an income, and so will write more.

If you do want more Harrison Peel, please review this book on Amazon or Goodreads, and let me know. Help me get the word out there that not all Lovecraft fiction is supernatural, and not all heroes who take on the Great Old Ones go mad at their first sighting of an alien monster they don’t understand.

The universe we live in, both real and imagined, is a vast and mysterious place, and the cosmic horrors lurking out there in the deepest, darkest corners of our galaxy, and the next… and the next… well, true cosmic horrors might exist out there somewhere, and might just be worth exploring.

David Conyers Adelaide, 2021

Made of Meat

Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia, June 2005

“You’ll be there won’t you… brrrszzt… ready to save me?”

The Cambodian officer’s voice sounded distorted. Major Harrison Peel wondered if this was because of the poor transmission echoing through the short-range radio.

The British spy, James Figgs, leaned on the jeep next to Peel, his legs wet and filthy to the knees where his tropical boots had splashed the jungle mud. He just shrugged to say, how the hell should I know?

Peel spoke into the radio void, aware that anyone could listen, but doing so anyway because he had no choice. “We’ll be there, Deka, at the rendezvous just as we said we would.” That was as much as he would say. Peel would not broadcast again where their rendezvous was, not over an open channel. He had to assume the crazed man remembered. “You still there, Lieutenant? You read me?”

“Sure,” the crackling voice spluttered, “but you’ve… grrzztt… saved me?”

“You brought the package?” Figgs interrupted.

More crackle. Interference which had nothing to do with the jungle canopy or the bats soaring through the late afternoon skies. He suspected this was the Royal Cambodian Army’s attempts at radio jamming.

“Yeah… grrzztt… got your… brrrszzt… package.”

“Good. Then we’ll see you soon, Lieutenant.”

Peel cut the connection. He couldn’t see the enemy, but that didn’t mean they were alone in the jungle. His earlier eavesdropping on the local military channels had confirmed that the Royal Cambodian Army also hunted Deka. They were out there, prowling the jungle with a mission to capture and interrogate the running soldier. Whatever secret Deka carried, Peel knew the Cambodians would kill to protect it. There was no comfort in waiting, exposed in the dappled foliage, knowing that even now they might be in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle.

Peel checked his Mark 3 9mm automatic. He’d cleaned and oiled it only last night, but re-examined it again because he expected to use it. Damn his superiors back in Canberra, denying him permission to bring heavy armaments on such a delicate extraction. London had also restricted Figgs’ capabilities, although their agent seemed better informed.

“You’ve never dealt with the Tcho-Tcho, have you Peel?”

“I read your report.” Peel was about to say his assignment to South East Asia was to teach the Malaysians counter-terrorism strategies, and so knew the lay of the land as the Brit did. Then he remembered Figgs’ specialty was South East Asia, and he’d been here for decades, so Peel’s claim would be false. Figgs knew all about the Tcho-Tcho from first-hand experience, a Montagnard hill tribe who filed their teeth, raped their own women and practiced unusual and painful body mutilations.

“Yeah, reading is one thing, Peel. But you don’t become a soldier by reading books, just as you don’t get to know the Tcho-Tcho until you have to negotiate with the sick bastards face to face.” He held up his .357 Magnum to show how this was best achieved.

In his heart, Peel knew the MI6 officer was right. During the Vietnam War, the CIA had trained the Tcho-Tcho as mercenaries. For all their efforts and good intentions, the Tcho-Tcho proved to be sadistic. They also practiced the worst of all social crimes, cannibalism, eating their own people and American soldiers as often as they’d turn a knife and fork upon the enemy. No wonder the Americans ditched them as soon as this little-known quirk went public.

That was the past. In today’s world where everyone feared terrorism, the US and the U.K. had forged new allegiances from old enemies. The Tcho-Tcho were back in favor now that they had a biological weapon to sell to both Peel’s and Figgs’ respective governments. Peel had felt sick in the stomach when he saw a photograph of the volunteer doctor in the report, and the thing growing on him… Deka said it was the milk of Shub-Niggurath — whatever that meant.

“You think it was a good idea, sending Deka into the Tcho-Tcho camp?” Peel asked to fill the silence. “He’s Khmer. The Tcho-Tcho… they would never trust him.”

The Brit shrugged. “Well, it’s too late, and he’s away from them now.”

The Australian soldier glanced at his wristwatch.

“Relax, Peel. In an hour this will all be over and then you and I can go back to drinking beer in Singapore.”

A noise of crushing branches startled them.

Both men turned towards the dark trees and drew their weapons. Peel spied movement in the jungle, a man sprinting, alerting all to his approach. They suspected Deka, but neither Peel nor Figgs would take any chances, and so hid behind the trunks of palms. A mile down the road there were rice fields and Buddhist temples, where normal Cambodians lived and worked their daily routines. Here in the thick tropical forests where everything was closed in and dark, Peel felt vulnerable. This was Tcho-Tcho territory.

Both men had been in the business of spying long enough to know when to hold their fire, so as Deka stepped out onto the muddy road, they holstered their weapons.

“You took your time…” Figgs said as his voice faltered. His eyes had just seen the same shape Peel had, and his mind had problems describing it.

Peel couldn’t draw his eyes away. He’d read classified files on Deka, and had met the man once, three weeks ago at that bar in a Singapore. Back then Deka had been laughing and joking about Australian backpacker girls and how friendly they were. Today he was almost white, and so he should be. It would be scary enough to be a defecting lieutenant fleeing the Royal Cambodian Army, but he was also fleeing the murderous Tcho-Tcho. Deka’s price for a new life in London was the secret of the Tcho-Tcho’s new biological weaponry, grown in the hills. MI6 had asked him to bring a sample, but neither Figgs nor Peel had expected Deka to infect himself to smuggle it out.

“What is it?” Deka asked.

Peel and Figgs were nothing but wide eyes and open mouths.

“What are you looking at?”

Figgs pointed first at the man’s left arm.

Lieutenant Deka had been carrying a plastic bag, the kind supplied by supermarkets the world over, with a sample of whatever bioweapon the Tcho-Tcho were cultivating. Black, ropy vines — they looked more like the tentacles of a squid — had grown out of the bag and wrapped themselves around Deka’s arm. Many of the tendrils had burrowed into his flesh. Around these wounds, his skin had deformed into lumps with the texture of porridge. Some of those lumps had broken open, infected sores from which more tentacles grew. They were seeking more of the human body to infest.

Deka noticed his infection and screamed.

This surprised neither Peel nor Figgs. Peel felt sick, smelled the putrid scent oozing from the infections, fearful that the smell itself might be enough to affect him, even at a distance.

“You’ve got to save me!” Deka pleaded, holding his arm as far away from his body as possible, as if this would help him. “You promised that you would.”

It was only Figgs who had the nerve to answer. “Relax, Deka, that’s what we said we’d do. Didn’t we?”

“Get rid of it, get rid of it now!” His cursing switched to Cambodian slang which Peel could not understand, followed by another bellowed cry that would carry far, alerting their enemies.

“Relax man. We can’t help you until you relax. Walk with me to the jeep.” Figgs spoke without sweating or trembling, surprising Peel that he could, confronted by this alien horror. “We’ve got an antidote back there. That will fix you up in no time.”

For a second Deka looked grateful, believing that they might save him from whatever alien monstrosity had hold of him.

Peel didn’t believe a word of it, so didn’t flinch when Figgs put two bullets in the back of Lieutenant Deka’s head. The noise was loud, but no louder than the silenced screams. Figgs must have figured that if the Royal Cambodian Army had been watching, they would have shown themselves by now. It seemed he figured right.

Peel sighed. With unblinking eyes, he gazed upon the fallen man. So this was the biological weapon they were here to collect. Now that he’d seen the weapon in action, he wanted no part of it. The officer’s shattered skull, the blood and dispersed gray matter that had once been a brain, didn’t even register with Peel. It was the infected hand, still twitching, still crawling through the mud, exploring its surroundings by touch alone, that left him sick to his core.

Figgs laughed. “I told you, Peel. You don’t know the Tcho-Tcho until you have to deal with them face to face. You, you just got the next best thing.”

The British agent wasted no time returning to their vehicle, opened the trunk and removed a canister of liquid nitrogen. He poured the frozen contents over the still twitching arm. It took several minutes for the alien growth to cease groping. Figgs seemed more concerned about not getting any on his feet.

“There are two insulated metal boxes in the back, Peel — biohazard samplers. You want to go get them?”

Peel did not question what he was being asked to do. By the time he found the boxes, Figgs had slipped on thick gloves to insulate against frostbite. With a bolt cutter, he snipped two of the rigid tentacles and two of Deka’s infected fingers. He then used the cutters as prongs to place two of each portion into separate samplers. Insulation would keep them frozen, at least for two hours. Long enough to get them secured in the diplomatic bags out of this country.

“One for Australia, and one for Queen and Country.”

It seemed the mission was successful, so why did Peel feel cold inside?

“You should thank me Peel, that we even let you in on this little operation.”

“Really, Figgs? You believe our respective governments will know what to do with these?” Peel knew without reason or logic that the samples were still dangerous despite their frozen condition. He’d already seen what they had done to Deka. Wasn’t that warning enough?

“What they always do, Peel. Send them to laboratories on some remote island that the public can’t reach, or deep inside an old disused coalmine, locked up for decades. To study, to understand, and to determine how our respective governments can transform alien life into a weapon.”

“Alien, biological weapons?”

“Don’t balk, Peel, and don’t pretend that our governments are any nicer than the Tcho-Tcho. We just have the decency to get licenses and legislation first before we pull our dirty tricks.”

Peel said nothing. He wanted to walk away and deny his involvement, but the mess required cleaning.

He found the jeep’s spare jerry can, poured the contents over the corpse. It was still bleeding black tar instead of blood and smelled like an old tannery.

“I wouldn’t bother. It’s not like that stuff doesn’t grow everywhere in the jungle.”

Peel didn’t care. He needed to purify himself as much as he needed to abolish this contagion. When he splashed the last of the industrial hydrocarbons he said, “You ready to leave?”

Figgs nodded.

Minutes later as the Englishman pounded their vehicle down the muddy road, Peel seated next to him turned and aimed his Mark 3 handgun at the corpse, firing and igniting it into a gigantic fireball.

Neither spoke until they were back amongst the rice fields and temples, where peasant farmers tended their crops and these sights brought comfort in their familiarity. Out here, it would be difficult for the RCA to assassinate them and take the alien bioweapon for themselves. But why would they bother? If Figgs spoke the truth, there were plenty more samples of the Tcho-Tcho bio-weaponry back there waiting for the picking, enough for everybody.

“You didn’t come for Deka, did you? That was never your plan?”

“No, Peel, I did not.”

“Who do you work for? Exactly?”

“The same people you now work for. Welcome to the inner circle.”

Peel snorted a laugh. “We promised Deka that we’d save him.”

Figgs laughed harder. “But we saved him Peel. Ask yourself, would you want to go on living with something like that growing inside you?”

Peel didn’t respond. He knew the answer.

——

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, One Month Later

Peel watched as seagulls picked at the discarded food littered on the North Sydney beach. Cold today, no one had ventured onto the sand, leaving the scavenging sea birds with few choices. What meager shreds they scrounged were old and stale, just like the wearied man in a wheelchair who watched them.

The man’s mind seemed lost in the rhythms of the pounding waves, and so he didn’t notice Peel observing him, the only other man on the beach this cold winter’s day.

“You like the ocean, Mr. Grogan?” asked Major Peel as he stepped close. Peel had worn his officer’s uniform out of respect, complemented by a shaved face and scalp. Now he regretted his choice, for the cool salty breeze chilled his scalp.

“Call me a bloody sergeant, will you? Nobody else does these days, and I miss it.” He threw bread to the squabbling gulls.

Peel wondered if Grogan ever missed walking along the beach. But this was a stupid question. Grogan would miss many things. Anyone with both legs amputated above the knees would.

“And to answer your question, young man: no. I used to, when I didn’t see seagulls with sharp teeth attacking me.”

“Sharp teeth?”

He shrugged. “Oh yeah, they say it is all in my mind. But I’ve been on so much medication for so long — twenty different pills five times a day — I just don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“I don’t see sharp teeth, if that helps.”

Grogan nodded. “Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. Still, they say I’m calmer than I used to be. I suppose it keeps everyone happy.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, war sucks.”

Peel pulled up a deck chair and sat next to him. “My name is Major Harrison Peel, here on an assignment. I represent the Department of Defence. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?”

“You already have.” The old man threw more bread. A fight broke as the scavenging birds exploded in a fury of white flapping feathers.

Determined, Peel placed his briefcase on the table. He wanted to show Grogan the file he’d brought from the archives, but the wild and whistling Pacific winds prevented that. He couldn’t risk the papers blowing into the ocean, or worse, down the street where a civilian might find them.

“You’re with the Intelligence Corps, aren’t you?”

Peel smiled, “Yes.”

“The Vietnam War’s over, Major, it finished thirty years ago. What else do you spooks still think I’ve got to tell?”

Cocking an eyebrow, Peel said, “Sure, the Vietnam War is over.” He paused, gazing at the stumps wrapped in a blanket, and wondered if the Sergeant still felt the cold in imagined toes. “It’s the other war I’m talking about.”

Grogan looked at Peel for the first time. “Which war would that be?”

“Cambodia, Eastern Highlands, August Eighteen 1968?”

Grogan looked away, his pale liver-spotted skin losing more color. “Oh, that war.”

“You know what I mean then, don’t you?”

Grogan attempted to lure a seagull closer, holding out a strip of bread in his bony fingers. “They never come too close, Major, no matter how many times I tell them I’m safe, that I won’t hurt them. But they stay away because they know I could turn on them at any moment, slaughter them. It would be so easy to wring their scrawny little necks and not care about it afterwards. You know what I’m saying?”

Peel nodded.

“When I first saw you, Major, I thought you differed from the other soldiers who occasionally visit me. Those men come to reminisce. You don’t reminisce. You only say what you have to say, because there is no solace in saying more. You know, like I know.”

It took Peel a moment to answer. “What makes you say that?”

“It’s that look in your eyes, like you understand everything I’ve said and don’t dismiss me as an insane crank. Plus, you’re scared, like me. Not scared of something you can see, like the scared you get facing the end of a gun barrel in an enemy combatant’s hand. That’s an easy scared, you can understand that. No, you fear what you don’t know, what you can’t see. You’re scared like these seagulls.”

It was Peel’s turn to shudder. “Well, Sergeant, I’ve only just returned from Southeast Asia myself. A new threat. I know you’ve heard of the Tcho-Tcho?”

Grogan said nothing, but Peel sensed the old man understood well enough.

“What about Shub-Niggurath?”

Grogan nodded. “Okay, but don’t rattle on so much. Just speaking their names can be dangerous enough.”

Peel leaned forward, looked into Grogan’s yellowed eyes. “You know why I came here today, Sergeant?”

“I haven’t got the foggiest.”

“You do. I’d like you to tell me what happened, all those years ago.”

The sergeant shuddered, “Why?”

“Because they’re back, Grogan. The Tcho-Tcho, and we know you saw something that day. Something that didn’t make it into the American’s report.”

Grogan stifled a sob, hid his face in his hands.

“They know we’re hunting them,” explained Peel. “Trouble is, they know all our intelligence and we don’t know how. They’re learning our language and our codes at phenomenal speeds, and they’re uncanny at guessing our movements and tactics. I think you know why this is happening. I think you can assist. Help me stop more good Aussie men dying at their hands.”

The sergeant spat yellow phlegm. A seagull investigated, decided not to eat it.

“You’ve read the report then,” said the old man, “the one I’m sure you’ve got in that briefcase.” He stifled another sob. “So why should I relive that experience again? It was horrible enough recounting it the first time, and the second, and third, knowing that no one believed me, anyway.”

Peel leaned forward. “Because you’re not the report, Sergeant Grogan; you were there. Just like I’m there now, and I want the best bloody intelligence you can give me. Otherwise, one day soon we could end up as bunk mates in this old home, and I don’t want that.”

The sergeant took a moment to chew his lips. “It’s back, you say?”

“It, Grogan?”

At last, the old man held Peel’s stare. “You really want to know?”

Peel said nothing. He’d already answered that question a half dozen times.

The seagulls had also decided. They didn’t wish to be a part of this revelation and had already flown off.

——

Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia, August 1968

CODE-89 EYES ONLY

INTERNAL REPORT, COPY 3 OF 5

10 July 2005

SUBJECT: Statement by Sergeant (Retired) James Donald Grogan, as recorded by Major Harrison Peel, CODE-89 CLEARANCE DELTA (author not aware of clearance at time of writing), on the 8th July 2005.

Transcript from the Audio Recording

Addendum to the 1968 Report

I was with the Australian Army posted to Vietnam, assigned to a ‘special’ outfit and flown into Saigon in 1968. Our base was Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy Province. Three months we waited for action, bored but also dreading the time when we would have to fight. We’d all too often witnessed the victims of landmines and bullet wounds. We’d seen amputees and burned soldiers, and that was enough to scare even the most hardened of us. But our role here was inevitable, for we were soldiers here to fight, and we saw our first and only action on the 18th August 1968.

Although we didn’t know it, our mission was top secret, one the Yanks had pulled together. They used us as diversionary troops while their Marines completed the real mission, or so we thought. They helicoptered us into Cambodia two years before we were officially at war with that country. Not that we could tell the difference between Khmer Rouge and the Vietcong, they were all Charlie to us. We were there to kill, and that seemed a simple enough mission for us.

The mission was a disaster right from the start. But it wasn’t the VC or the Khmer this time. That day Charlie was Tcho-Tcho. Savage little cannibals who did worse things than shoot you or take your legs off with a tripwire tied to a claymore mine.

They knew we were coming, those Tcho bastards. They were waiting for us; ambushed us while we were wading ass-deep in a bloody rice field. Well, everything was very bloody a short time later. They massacred us as quickly as it would take you to piss your pants when you’re terrified.

When the shooting ended, I really had pissed my pants. I came to thinking I should be dead, but I wasn’t. I remember something hitting me in the head, but to this day don’t know what. But whatever knocked me out cold, it saved my life. Unconscious to the Tcho, I was just another dead body. I was half submerged in the muddy water, buried under three fallen mates, all bloody, broken and smelling of guts and shit. But my mates were true to their word — even though they were dead — for they hid me from the Tcho soldiers. I was lucky all right, I thought, but I also knew a poor bugger like me; his luck never lasts.

Somehow, I had sense enough not to move, still amazed that I’d survived, and terrified that I might not get out alive and in one piece.

Then I heard them, the Tcho-Tcho, whispering in their strange chattering high-pitched voices. Naturally, I didn’t understand what they were saying. And then I heard this strong American accent. I looked, stupidly moved my head, but thankfully no one saw. There was one of the Tcho-Tchos, speaking the Texan drawl! Black leathery skin, a loincloth and an M16 slung over his shoulder thanks to Uncle Sam. He looked odd, like a man in a dream, him talking like a Yank and looking like that. Imagine if you heard President Nixon’s voice coming out of Marilyn Monroe’s mouth.

The Tcho officer was telling someone to get up. I risked moving my head again, this time slowly until I saw young Corporal Stewart Monk, lying in the mud where he’d fallen. Another Tcho soldier, directed by his command officer, was prodding Monk with a machete. Monk sobbed, and I knew why. You might think he was lucky to be alive, but he probably didn’t think so. And neither did I. We’d all heard tales of what the Vietcong did to prisoners, but we all knew what the Tcho did was far worse.

Tortures included staking you in the mud then placing yellow snails on your bare flesh, specially bred to eat away your skin while laying eggs in your wounds. Other tricks; they’d hang you up from your feet then cut away bits of your flesh, one piece at a time, slowly eating these bits while you were still alive. Eating you in front of you and laughing. No one ever hoped to get taken prisoner by the Tcho-Tcho.

Anyway, they pulled Monk to his feet, bound his wrists in wire until they bled, and pushed him on, forcing him to march with them.

The whole time I just lay there. If I moved, they’d see that I was no corpse, and I’d be their prisoner too, good to no one and even more shit scared than I was now. But lying there wasn’t easy. I kept catching glimpses of the other Tcho soldiers cutting off the hands, arms, feet and legs of my fellow soldiers, taking the meat as food. It was all I could do not to scream and run, hoping that they would not cut from me, hoping that my dead mates were more than enough.

I don’t know how long I lay like this, hours probably, but it felt like days, and the weight of the corpses on top of me grew heavy. Thank god the Tcho bastards eventually left without touching me. I risked sitting up.

The battlefield was the worst kind of carnage. The smell was putrid, one I can’t even describe even though I’ve smelled it in my head every day since. Muddy waters washed with so much red it was the only color I could see. Bodies were everywhere, and only a few fallen Tcho-Tcho amongst their number. They had taken all our guns and ammunition, except one automatic I found still gripped in the hands of my lieutenant, half his face missing where machinegun fire had torn apart his skull. He didn’t need it now.

Not knowing where I was, or how to get out (I still didn’t know I was in Cambodia) I followed the Tcho soldiers, discrete like, to see if I could save Monk, and if I couldn’t, at least put him out of his misery before they tortured him.

Trailing them was a breeze. I was without a pack, so marching was easy now, and it was a simple exercise to remain unheard. They chattered and talked so much in their high-pitched voices I could have followed them in the dark. But I don’t think they expected anyone to follow them, not this far into their own territory.

But as I followed, I became more and more uncomfortable, and I didn’t know why. There were no rice fields out here, no pig farms, and no Buddhist shrines or those primitive villages you normally see in the Golden Triangle. Perhaps it was that yellow snail the size of a dinner plate I almost stepped on that first unsettled me, or the roots of a tree that I swore shrank away as I approached. I swear at one point an eye opened in one overhanging branch. It took me a while, but I eventually realized this was no jungle that I’d ever seen or read about, with its black sticky ichors all over my boots. I should have run, and if I had, I’d still have legs today, I’m sure. But you stick with your mates, look after them, whatever happens, and that’s what I did.

Finally, the trail ended, and I saw the scariest slight I’ll ever see. This was a Tcho-Tcho village, but the huts and campfires didn’t scare me. It was what they built the village around that did, a huge, pulsating tree.

The stench hit me first, horrific, like those rafflesia flowers that smell like rotting meat to attract flies, but so much worse, and sweet. The tree, well it wouldn’t fit in one of those Yankee air hangars, it was so huge. Its branches were white and stringy, reminding me of body parts preserved too long in jars of formaldehyde. Its highest branches hung over the Tcho village like some kind of roof, and it was dripping black syrup that burned like acid wherever it splashed. The Tcho seemed to know how to avoid this and didn’t seem to mind the obvious danger. This tree wasn’t natural, could never be. I was understanding all those mutations in all those animals and plants I’d been witnessing.

I should have run, like I said. But somehow the monstrosity drew me in. I saw Monk then, on his knees with an M16 at his head. The Tcho officer who’d spoken English was talking to him again, all American-like, telling him he’d be one with Shub-Niggurath soon, the Mother of Speaking Children. That it wouldn’t matter that he refused to talk, or couldn’t remember details beyond his name, rank and serial number.

I thought about shooting Monk and then legging it. Trouble was, I was too far distant to mark him with my pistol. If I got any closer, I’d be spotted, and I couldn’t risk that. So, I waited, biding my time.

I didn’t have to wait long. Descending from the white canopy was what I can only describe as a gigantic tadpole with its tail fused to the canopy. The tip was a milky translucent skin over a black core. It fell upon Monk, absorbing him, eating him I thought. I think it was at this moment that I vomited.

When I looked back, the tadpole shape hadn’t killed Monk, as I hoped it would do my job for me. Instead, I saw Monk inside it now, thrashing and fighting, unable to escape his translucent prison. He was in agony; I was sure of that, as the pod raised itself back into the canopy.

But if you think things couldn’t get any worse, well they did. The milky prison seemed to squeeze itself, and white droplets fell from the tadpole onto the English-speaking Tcho, now standing directly underneath. And then that same Tcho started talking Aussie-like, telling all his tribesmen of our attack plan as if they were Monk’s words he was using, revealing our mission objectives, names and ranks of our unit, who our commanding officers were, everything. I even heard my name, rank and serial number.

It was that moment that I ran. Not because I witnessed how the Tcho-Tcho were learning about us, not because I’d just seen poor Monk consumed by this monstrous tree, but because I’d just noticed that Monk wasn’t the only prisoner in a pod. I’d looked up between the branches in the canopy and I saw them all, hundreds of the milky cells, and most of them encasing struggling humans.

I ran for as long as I can remember, then nothing. Somehow, I’d ended up in a US MASH camp. The field surgeons told me I’d got an infection in my feet and I’d tried to amputate them myself, but had passed out from blood loss. The infection had ‘mutated’ my flesh, and he had to amputate them. All I could think about was how lucky it was that I wasn’t poor old Monk. Lucky that I’d only lost two legs.

Only later, when the doctors eased back on my drugs and the depression set in, American Military Intelligence officers found me. But they didn’t ask a lot of questions as I expected, they only wanted to know one thing: where was the Tcho’s tree? Apparently, their troops had failed to find it, their target, while we Aussies had been nothing more than a diversion.

I’m fairly certain they bombed the tree later, napalm or fuel air explosives, probably. I don’t think they wanted me to have come out of there alive either and able to talk, because that afternoon I spotted a body bag with my name on it! Luckily, an Australian journalist in the camp at the time interviewed me. The next day my name and my story were in the newspaper. They had to release me — if they didn’t want an international incident on their hands.

It was only after they discharged me, I discovered my country had given up finding me, for the Yanks had reported me missing in action, probably dead. I think those boys in Military Intelligence would have liked it to stay that way.

After that they flew me home I and ended up here, in this home for disabled veterans. No good to anyone. I’ve never left this place since, not once. Don’t want to, because I know what lies out there.

The nurses are nice when they’ve got time for you. Now all I do is feed the seagulls, do the crossword in the newspaper, watch game shows and wait to die, hoping that my fears won’t join me when they finally lay me in the grave.

Hoping that one day my delusions will end, and I stop seeing seagulls with sharp teeth.

Hoping that nothing will ever grow from the stumps of my legs.

END REPORT

——

Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia, 2005

Peel and Figgs marched into the Eastern Highlands for five days. They kept themselves hidden, and their journey had not been without risk. Mosquitoes attacked, sweat chaffed, and howling monkeys announced the two men’s invading presence everywhere they turned. But these distractions were nothing. This was enemy territory. Soon the jungle turned infected, and Peel knew they had to complete a textbook mission and return unscathed, or they wouldn’t return at all. They were on a mission because the intelligence recovered from the old man in Sydney checked out.

Should any enemy operatives capture them, their cover was they were tourists, with nothing identifying them as agents of the Australia or British governments.

Despite their arsenal of weapons, they weren’t here to kill anyone, just laser-sight a target so a cluster of missiles fired from a nearby British Navy Merlin K3 helicopter, flown in low from a secret location in Vietnam, could hit their target.

The Tcho-Tcho controlled this jungle. This was their land. Peel and Figgs avoided the Montagnard villages, knowing that many would betray them to the Tcho-Tcho cannibals, because they feared the repercussions if they did not. They slept in trees during the night, ate only their issued rations, left no litter, and proceeded slowly.

They found the alien tree after five days of searching.

Figgs wanted a closer look. Peel said no. He’d read all the reports, including those from as far back as 1968, plus American Intel files that had come his way via various global contacts. He reminded Figgs that the biological weapon Deka secured originated from the same tree.

When the valley shuddered, as if the tree had shaken itself like a wet dog thrashing its coat, they knew they were close enough. It would be suicide to get closer.

“Are you sighted?” Figgs asked.

Peel nodded, shuddered now that they’d seen the whole jungle come alive and move, not like a plant in a powerful wind, but like a wild angry animal.

Target sighted, Figgs called in the missile strike. The exorbitant bribes paid to the Cambodian government not to report this military action undertaken on a terrorist heartland had been far more expensive than the cost of the missile.

Only when the jungle was a burning inferno did the two men return to Laos, thankful that no one had seen them. Thankful that they had neither fallen prey to the Tcho-Tcho nor contracted the alien infection.

——

The membrane split, milky liquid gushed, and the naked shape of an ill-formed man spewed into green pools of fetid rice fields. He breathed, sucked air into lungs that had known only viscous liquids for so long. Arms and legs again under his own control, he stood, witnessed the surrounding carnage, and dripped milky black fluids from his sheen.

The air was alive with heat and flames. Smoke made breathing difficult. When he could smell again, he scented charred Tcho-Tcho.

More explosions, more flame. He fled into the jungle, away from the destruction.

He wasn’t the only survivor of this carnage. Other prisoners dropped from the canopy, expulsed from their fallen pseudopods as they shattered on the black earth. Flames consumed some prisoners. Others were so ill-formed they could no longer walk, because they barely resembled human beings. A few mustered their strength and ran for their lives.

He sprinted for hours, perhaps days. At some point, when he was no longer hidden under a green canopy, he stood on the edge of a remote Montagnard village. The barefooted dirty children shied away, mangy dogs slinked from him, and old men pretended he was invisible. None dared look him in the eye. When he spoke, they pretended not to understand, despite the dozens of languages he barked from his mouth.

He walked through the village unmolested, up a muddy road, realized that he was still nude and that he didn’t care. He felt powerful, as if he could smite anyone. Once made of meat, he was something different altogether. Something more durable. Something far more ancient.

He did not understand where he would go, why his feet kept walking even when he didn’t want to.

Then the answer came in the form of a diminutive stranger.

This old wizened dwarf stepped into his path and refused to move. No one had done that before. None had challenged him. Intrigued, the naked man would hear the dwarf’s offer before destroying him.

The dwarf’s skin was black, lined like old parchment. His legs nothing more than bony twigs, and his sharpened teeth were stained red. He wore a faded Nike jacket and a loincloth. In one hand he carried a staff with a wooden knot at the head, the sign of a Tcho-Tcho priest.

“Welcome Mother of the Speaking Children,” spoke the shaman. “You have saved us once again.”

The dwarf spoke Tcho-Tcho tongue, and the naked man knew his comprehension should have surprised him.

Bowing, the shaman led him off the road, down a trail to a field of coriander, and stood him next to a gigantic tree on the edge of a dense rainforest. A few minutes passed without either man speaking until the naked man realized he could no longer move his legs.

He stood like that for many days, growing and changing, becoming more rigid with each passing minute.

But he was never alone. The Tcho-Tcho young and old alike came to him. They watched him grow, sang songs to him of the Plateau of Leng from where their people had originated, and worshipped him as they should.

In a few years his branches were tall, and his roots went deep. Pseudopods developed fast, and soon he would be ready to absorb more of his former kind, again stealing, sharing and imparting stolen knowledge to his devoted flock.

He forgot that once he had been Corporal Monk. Not that it mattered. Humans were nothing. Yet everything about Monk would live on, forever, inside the ever-growing tree.

He was as old as the universe itself.

Driven Underground

Soldiers of the 12th/16th Hunter River Lancers laughed and joked as the sun set over the desolation of the Great Sandy Desert. Major Harrison Peel wondered why.

Twenty-five men passing time until they received further orders. It was no fun here where it was hot enough to cook eggs on the bonnets of their three Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles. Nothing grew here either. Not even spinifex grass or mulga scrub, and the air was too dry even for flies. Life seemed too absent to be real.

At least, thought Peel, searching for a positive angle to focus on, the approaching night would bring some relief from the dry heat.

Peel was their commanding officer. It was he who had ordered the soldiers to drive south for five days across the desert with no mission objectives he could impart, because he didn’t have one. Their commencement point was RAAF Base Curtin on the far north Western Australia coast, where he had flown into the day before from Cambodia, provided with nothing more than new security codes and a destination.

He had known none of the men beforehand. There was no earned rapport, so he spent time with each man and woman during their journey. The drive had been less than five hundred kilometers, but it had used all their fuel and most of their water to reach this point. Now they were as remote as it was possible to be in mainland Australia — waiting for further orders and supplies.

Lieutenant Donna Shelby approached and snapped off a salute which Peel reciprocated. She was young, straight from completing her qualifications at the Royal Military College of Duntroon. She’d kept her inky hair tied back and neat the entire trip, as per regulation. Not a single strand escaped.

Peel wondered how she was coping. Despite her nerdy glasses and slight awkwardness, she was attractive, so the men gave her their constant attention.

“Major, permission to speak?”

“Granted.”

She walked close to Peel, lowered her voice because sound traveled in the desert. “Sir, what are we doing here?”

“Following orders. We drive to these coordinates and await further instructions.”

“Why send a major, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?”

He minded her asking. She was inexperienced; not sensing the opportune moment when to ask questions and when not to. But how would she learn if he didn’t educate her? Was that not the role of senior officers?

“Oh, I see,” she spoke when a thought struck and before he could respond. “You’re with the Intelligence Corps.”

“Is that a question?”

“No, sir.” She stood to attention. “I’m sorry, sir. I won’t bother you further.” She snapped off a salute, ready to turn and walk from Peel when he dismissed her, but he did not.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What did you specialize in at Duntroon?”

“Languages and political science. I speak fluent Mandarin.”

Peel didn’t say a word, waiting for her to connect the dots herself. He spoke Spanish, Arabic, some French and smatterings of African languages to a reasonable level of fluency. Multilingual skills and an inquisitive mind had been his route from Infantry to Intelligence, achieved during his first overseas deployment in Somalia while he had been a lieutenant and about her age.

“You mean I’m being tested, for my capacity to join the Intelligence Corps?”

“Let’s wait a see. Just keep your wits about you. Pay attention. Look for patterns, anomalies. That kind of thing.”

“Yes, sir.” She couldn’t help but smile, “Thank you, sir.”

They heard the approaching helicopter before they spotted the Army CH-47 Chinook, flying low from the north as the sky faded from bright blue to deep reds, oranges and purples.

“Looks like we’re about to learn more, Lieutenant. Sergeant Benton?” Peel called to the senior non-commissioned officer in their deployment team.

“Major,” the sunburnt, gray-haired man snapped off a quick salute.

“Ready the men.”

“Yes, sir.”

By the time the resupply helicopter landed in the lifeless dust, the soldiers of the 12/16 HRL were ready for mobilization. Soldiers offloaded fuel, batteries, ammunition, food and water and packed it all into the Bushmasters. Peel noticed their extra supplies, enough provisions for a two-week reconnaissance. Then he identified a Major General. It was Peel’s turn to snap off a salute.

“Sir.”

“Major. Walk with me a moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

Peel followed the older man, recognized him as Major General Gerald Hyatt, a decorated war hero from East Timor’s recent transition from Indonesian to independent rule. Hyatt had led several efforts by the Australian Army to minimize conflict and combat with the departing Indonesian military. When skirmishes had occurred, he ensured they conducted responses as covert operations and guerrilla warfare, and remained out of the press.

Once far from the busy soldiers, the Major General stopped in his tracks and so did Peel.

“Your efforts in Southeast Asia did not go unnoticed, Peel.”

Peel grimaced as he remembered the undulating, amphibian office-block size shape that thrashed and squirmed under the jungle canopy, before a missile he had guided via laser targeting had destroyed it. It was a monster from another dimension; a horror that had mutated, mutilated and murdered the Cambodian Hill Tribes across hundreds of miles of jungle and for several centuries. Despite its fiery destruction, Peel wasn’t certain that they had destroyed it, but he was in no hurry to return to learn the truth.

“Cambodia was a test, Major. You passed. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your Code-89 cleared now.”

“Code-89?”

“Used only by Five Eyes; US, UK, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian intelligence communities. It means you’ve seen an ESB and lived to tell the tale and deemed mentally and physically capable of dealing with more of their kind.”

“An ESB?”

“Extraterrestrial Sentient Being, horrors that the public doesn’t want to and doesn’t need to know about. Now that you have Code-89 clearance, you’ve just joined an exclusive and secretive club whose mission it is to halt these ESBs from destroying the world wherever and whenever they appear.”

Peel didn’t know what to say, remembering that the British spy James Figgs had said something similar to him not that long ago. Then he understood why he was in the desert, in such a remote location. “You’ve discovered an ESB out here, sir?”

The Major General smiled. “Quick on the uptake Peel, I knew you were the right choice for this mission. But it’s not an ESB we’ve discovered. Rather, the ruins of an ancient alien city.”

“City?”

“Underground and extensive. If the geologists are correct, aliens inhabited it from a period between fifty million and a billion years.”

“Sir…” Numbers like millions and billions confused him. He couldn’t imagine them in visual conceptualizations, like trying to measure the distances between stars in millimeters or counting the number of atoms in an ocean. “Sir, are you sure?”

“Nothing is certain. We’re gathering intelligence.” Hyatt cleared his throat. “That’s where you come in. We’ve excavated several entrances and conducted some initial explorations. The interior is an ancient ruin and constructed from rock. Sediments, stalactites and stalagmites have buried much. The network of tunnels down there is, however, far-reaching, hundreds of kilometers in fact — at least that is what radar is telling us. We figure the ESBs who built it were rather large, because you can drive a truck down there.”

Peel shuddered, understood why he had led three Bushmasters and the soldiers this deep into the desert, and their excessive quantities of supplies.

“You want me to lead this team inside, discover just how deep the city goes?”

Major General Hyatt grinned as he nodded. “Yes, Major, I do.”

“How far have we explored already?”

The senior officer was silent for a moment, then said, “Not far, but keep this to yourself; we’re hoping you’ll lead the first team that goes in deep and comes out alive again.”

——

Peel stared into the dark artificial cavern. There was no mistaking the angular, engineered edges, and octagonal paving as the common architectural style. At six meters across and about the same distance in height, he understood how the Major General had conceived driving in. Greater distances covered in shorter times than by marching. He noticed the cameras and audio equipment being fixed to their vehicles so it would record everything.

“We sent in the Special Air Service Regiment, three separate surveillance and reconnaissance teams,” explained Hyatt. “All three marched in and none have returned. We were in radio communication with them for a while, but when they got too deep…” He let the obvious conclusion trail into nothing.

“Sir?”

Finding his energy, biting down on his frustration at losing outstanding women and men, Hyatt spoke up. “We’ve got good intel on this ESB site that you’ll need, from the Americans if you believe it. We know the city in some esoteric and intelligence circles as Pnakotus, and the aliens who built it as Yithians, or the Great Race. Aliens we like to call the Architects.”

“The ESBs?”

Hyatt nodded. “Pnakotus, AKA the City of Archives was first discovered by an American psychologist in the 1920s, but he went mad and disappeared inside and was never seen again. Later a university expedition from Boston came searching for it, with not much luck. During the Second World War, a group of soldiers tried to destroy it. It was only the latter records that gave us any idea where it was. We’ve been searching for it since—”

“Since… when, if I can ask?”

Hyatt scratched his head. He looked nervous. Peel had never seen an officer more senior than him become this unsettled about anything.

“The Americans have their own ESB ruins in Antarctica, which they read us in on during the 1990s, but they’ve been down there crawling all over it for longer than that.”

“They won’t let us into Antarctica, to share the intel?”

Hyatt nodded. “Now that we have an ESB ruin of our own, that’s about to change.”

“Do the American’s know about this site?”

“Not yet, and we need to keep it this way, for now. That’s why I need to you go in, find out what you can before the Americans learn of this place. Map as much of it as possible, and for god’s sake, find us some artifacts, technological if possible, that we can pull apart. We need leverage with our cousins and alien tech will do that.”

It didn’t concern Hyatt that he might send Peel, Shelby, and twenty-four more soldiers to their death. Peel remembered again the horror of Cambodia. It wasn’t difficult imagining worse monstrosities lurking in the cool, gloomy tunnels gapping before him. Perhaps that was the alien technology the Major General had in mind.

Hyatt handed Peel a data CD. “This is your full briefing. It will only activate by 1800 hours tomorrow. Your access codes are the ones provided to you at RAAF Curtin.”

Peel took the CD. He didn’t need to ask why it was time coded. He could only access it when they were deep underground, with no chance of the information contained within being leaked to the rest of the world.

“When do we leave?”

“Immediately.”

——

Once driven underground, the tunnel retained its width and for the most part the levels were flat, on stone older than the epoch that saw the rise of Earth’s complex life forms to the diversity of life in the modern world. Within a hundred meters everything was pitch black. Only headlights and their chest mounted L-shaped flashlights provided illumination. The stone was as equally cool in all directions, as were the layers of limestone, stalactites and stalagmites that covered much of the hexagonal structures. Infrared and light intensifier sensors became useless.

Peel kept expecting stairs, but they were absent. Only ramps no less than five meters across and of slight gradients became the norm. They mostly led downwards.

He quickly imagined tentacled slugs the size of brontosauruses sliming through these ancient corridors, snacking on anything that crossed its path by sucking food into its multiple mouths with vacuum cleaner like appendages. He cursed Hyatt for assigning him a Code-89 clearance.

In no time the soldiers began to grumble. They too came to realize that this was no ordinary surveillance and reconnaissance mission. When they were five hundred meters deep and no change in the scenery became apparent, he halted the Bushmasters, ordered everyone out of the vehicles to secure the area then briefed them. None were Code-89 cleared, but he had no choice but to tell them the truth, as much as he knew it.

“You’ve seen the evidence. The ceilings are too wide. The details too precise. The engineering is impossible by our earthly standards. The Australian Defence Force is of the belief these ruins are not of human origin.”

He expected jibs and questioning of his authority. Instead, he sensed fear and uncertainty. These were soldiers and they weren’t supposed to react like that. But how were they supposed to react? He didn’t know how to respond himself. This experience was alien to him too.

“Are there any questions?”

Corporal Dale Milchin raised an arm. “Sir, what is our objective?”

“Explore, map and recover any artifacts we find.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes!” Peel snapped. He was about to say, ‘and stay alive,’ but stopped himself. He didn’t want to worry the men unnecessarily with what really amounted to nothing more than speculation. When there was no response from the men he asked, “Any more questions?”

They were silent.

Before he dismissed them, he added, “Be careful. We don’t know what to expect here. Observe everything. Nothing here will be as you think it should be.”

“Sir?”

“Yes Corporal Federico?”

“Are we the first in?”

Peel took a deep breath before he answered, realizing that he hadn’t been properly briefed and was not able to access the CD yet. He looked at his watch. It was 2315 hours. All of tomorrow still waited before he could access the files. He considered if Hyatt expected them to return in one piece, that perhaps this was a mission based on hope more than anything else. This was indeed foreign territory, in more ways than one.

“That’s classified, Corporal.”

——

Dale Milchin was the first to disappear.

He had been leading point, walking ahead of the Bushmasters the next morning in search of unstable ground, unseen pits, or traps the Architects might have left behind. One minute, Milchin had been a few dozen meters in the lead. Then there was a wind, and then he vanished.

Peel halted the three Bushmasters and ordered everyone to clamber out except the drivers and machine-gunners. “Team One, secure the area,” he fired off his orders. “Teams Two and Three, split into small groups and search branch corridors for Milchin. Don’t go beyond radio contact and don’t get lost.”

The men grumbled, but they went about their duties like professionals. Peel sensed they based their complaints more on fear than anything else. Part of that fear would be because it seemed so easy to get lost down here, never seen or heard from again. They would also wonder if aliens lived down here too.

When everyone was going about their duties, Peel looked at his watch and cursed. It was 1020 hours. Just under eight hours remained until he could review the contents of the CD. They were three kilometers in now, too deep to contact the surface. They should have laid a communications wire as they traveled. There hadn’t been time for tactical planning, and now they were paying for stupid oversights.

Grabbing a tool kit, Peel took a screwdriver to one of the forward mounted cameras, only to discover reinforced steel casing welded into place with no screw heads to unlatch secured it. He cursed their tamper proofing. If they all died, records of what killed them might survive. Such planning might suit Hyatt, but Peel thought it more prudent that he see the recordings now, and identify the cause of Milchin’s disappearance before whatever existed down here took another soldier the same way.

“I noticed that earlier, sir,” Donna Shelby spoke from behind him. “The Major General doesn’t want us to see what we record.”

Peel didn’t like her negative tone, but let it slide. He was as frustrated with Hyatt as she was. He forced the screwdriver into a joint but there was no budging the recorder without destroying it. Giving up, Peel stood and looked to the Lieutenant. “Anyone reported back yet?”

“We’re getting reports from all teams these tunnels extend in all direction without end, even downwards.”

“So, if we’ve lost Dale Milchin, he could walk away from us even now, become lost down here forever?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

Peel shook his head. He should call the men back, before someone else vanished, but they had to make a decent effort in finding a MIA team mate.

“Sir, what is this place?”

Peel raised an eyebrow at her uncertain tone. He studied Shelby’s quizzical expression, a mixture of anger and fear, the same expression worn by all the soldiers. This tomb of a city was dead, none of them should fear it, but something about the city that he could not describe worried them all.

“What do you think it is?”

“An alien city?” she said so sounding like she was embarrassed to voice her thoughts.

Peel laughed, scratched at his shaved head. It was an alien city, and yet when they voiced the words, it did sound ridiculous. He hoped Shelby would laugh with him, but she did not.

“You’ve seen this kind of thing before, haven’t you sir?”

“…brrzt… Major, Cannington here, sir.”

A crackling came over the radio, saving Peel from reliving recent traumatic memories witnessed in Cambodia

“Peel here. What’s news, Private Cannington?”

“We’ve found Milchin, sir.”

“How is he?”

A long moment passed and Private Mike Cannington said nothing.

“Private?”

“…brrzt… We’re fairly certain he’s dead, sir.”

——

There was no life left in Corporal Milchin, his corpse wedged in an uneven crack between a wall slab and a ceiling slab, each of which had to weigh in at five hundred tons or more. More bones than not had been broken and snapped, while blood dribbled from multiple wounds and fractures where skeletal shards had torn through skin. Peel didn’t understand why Mike Cannington thought Milchin was alive. What disturbed Peel more than the wounds was that Milchin’s body lay wedged twelve meters above them, and a hundred meters from where he had disappeared.

“How the hell did he get up there?” asked Cannington to no one in particular.

No one answered.

Peel had an inclination to what might have occurred, but he didn’t want to voice it. Something big and alien had taken Milchin, and his mind’s eye image of a vacuuming dinosaur-sized slug returned. He was understanding why the three SASR teams never returned.

“Get him down from there and bag him. We’ll collect him on the way out.”

“How do we get him down, sir?” asked Private Cannington who couldn’t be older than twenty and wasn’t proficient in using his own initiative yet, much to Peel’s frustration.

“Grappling guns. They were in the inventory from the Chinook, remember?”

——

The grumbling worsened. The soldiers voiced their disapproval of his leadership loud enough so Peel overheard, but soft enough to not appear as a direct challenge to his senior rank.

To keep their minds and bodies occupied, Peel ordered them to make camp and secure the area. With no link to the Major General or anyone on the surface, because they were too deep underground now, Peel became the top body in the chain of command. When a couple of men gave attitude, he ordered them to unpack all their supplies, re-inventory all their possessions, and repack again, a pointless task that would keep them busy for hours. For the rest of the team, he had them position the Bushmasters in a triangle with their mounted 7.62mm machine guns, and Javelin and M3 Carl Gustav weapon systems posts to cover all angles of enemy approach. The Javelin and M3s used high-explosive and illumination rounds, for killing and seeing. Those soldiers not on first watch duty slept, including Peel. He kept his Steyr combat rifle close at hand and his Mark 3 9mm handgun in its holster chambered and ready.

When he woke six hours later, he checked on the soldiers. There had been no further significant incidents, and they had completed the inventory and repacking to a level of precision far greater than Peel had expected. He thanked the men and women for their efforts.

“Sir?” asked Private Cannington who had been the first to question Peel yesterday and was now at least trying to make amends.

“Yes, Private.”

“There were several powerful gusts of wind last night.”

“What was the damage?”

“Nothing, sir, we heard them in the distant corridors.”

Peel considered this information. “Anything else?”

The young man swallowed. “We heard what we thought sounded like large rocks moving down in those corridors.”

Now that was of interest. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Well, sir, we weren’t certain what we heard.”

Cannington was barely holding it together, and Peel wondered what it would take to send him unraveling. Milchin’s death had been unnatural and disturbing, and now they were hearing large rocks moving in the deeper tunnels. Nothing made sense, and there was no enemy down here they could understand to pin it on.

“Anything else, Private?”

“What are we doing here, sir?”

“Exploration, surveillance, information gathering.”

It was not the answer Cannington wanted, but it was all Peel would share for the moment.

“Have you slept Private?”

“No sir.”

“Do so. Everything is easier with sleep, including your attitude.”

When Cannington departed to find his bunk, Peel checked his watch. It was 1742 hours. In twenty minutes, he could access Hyatt’s file. In the meantime, he looked for Shelby, finding the lieutenant sifting through shards of sedimentary rock.

“What are you looking for?”

She stood, saluted.

“At ease, soldier.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m looking for fossils.”

“Fossils?”

“This city is ancient. Have you noticed nothing has lived here for a long time, for millions of years? Like the dinosaurs, the only records will be in the rock.”

Peel nodded. Shelby was showing initiative, displaying her inquisitiveness, and was making connections while hunting for clues. Like him, she was trying to understand the bigger picture. He was certain now Hyatt had assigned her to this mission to test her capacity in a Code-89 operation, but he wasn’t so sure the non-officer contingent had gone through as rigorous a vetting process.

“Have you found anything?”

She held out a shard. Peel identified the imprint of claws, talons like on a bird of prey, only much larger than anything living today.

“My mum is a geologist. I’m no expert, but she taught me a thing or two when we joined her on her many field-trips as a child. I’m pretty sure this is a fossil of an Utahraptor.”

Peel presumed that was some kind of dinosaur. “And how long ago did they live?”

“A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty million years past, but we have only found their fossils in western United States, hence their name.”

“So what’s an Utahraptor doing here, in Australia?”

Shelby shrugged. “A pet? A zoo specimen? I don’t know Major.” She threw the fossil back into the pile as if it were worth nothing. “What really interests me is something different.”

“And what is that?”

Shelby shuddered. “Sir, have you noticed the many broken stalactites, yet an absence of thick dust layers? And the complete absence of any life anywhere, not even fungus or insects?”

“I have,” Peel said remembering the lack of life on the surface, which had struck him as odd. “It’s like something washed through here, not that long ago, and cleaned everything out.”

“I agree, about fifty years ago, maybe less.”

“Water?”

She shook her head. “Water promotes life. If it washed through, I’m sure we’d be finding signs of algae at least. Even dead algae. Even pools of water.”

“What could clean so? Acid?” He tried to imagine how much acid that would involve, but couldn’t.

“Sir, I don’t know.”

The ground trembled. They heard a distant rumbling, like rock collapsing, or being moved around, like there were gigantic bulldozers and mining equipment down here with them.

Peel and Shelby readied their combat rifles and sprinted towards the noise, their visibility limited to their L-shaped flashlight attachments. They were not the only soldiers running toward the billowing dust emerging from the corridor Corporal Rossi and Lance Corporal Prinz had taken. Soon Peel and the Lieutenant came up against a collapsed slab. A hundred tons of rock or more had fallen, or had glided into place, blocking the path.

The moving rock might have crushed the men or trapped them behind it. Either way, there was no means possible to reach them…

Or was there? Peel split the remaining men into two groups, one to work their way round from the right, then the other from the left, each hoping to find an alternative route to the trapped soldiers.

Fifteen minutes later when another tunnel collapsed, Peel called all his men back. He did a head count, followed by a roll call just to be sure. They had lost eight men, going from twenty-five to seventeen in less than twenty-four hours.

“Something doesn’t want us to go that way,” jested Private Ben Seacombe, but there was no humor in his words.

“Show a little respect, Private!” countered Sergeant Jeff Benton. “They’re family we’ve just lost. Our family, the 12/16 HRL.”

Peel noticed the slight tremor in Benton’s hands. He wondered if anyone else did too.

When Peel looked up, he saw all eyes on him. His men needed a voice of authority, and reason. That responsibility lay with him.

“Regroup. Private Seacombe is onto something. We should no longer try moving in that direction.”

“Sir,” asked Private Cannington. “You think there are enemy combatants down here with us? We need to know what they are capable of.”

“I don’t know what’s down here with us, Private. I do know we are regrouping. All teams return to the Bushmasters and begin protective duties. We do that until we’ve got some idea of what’s going on.”

“How, sir, do we do that?”

Peel didn’t like Cannington’s negative attitude. He had to squash it. He could do so by being harsh, or he could offer them the truth. The latter seemed the best option given recent developments. “I have intelligence from the surface. I’m going to analyze it before we take further action.” He explained that it had been time coded.

“And the lost men,” Cannington said. “Peter Rossi, Erik Prinz, the rest?”

The Sergeant eyeballed Cannington and shouted in the private’s face. “They’re dead soldier, every last one of them. The sooner you accept it, the easier it will be on all of us.”

——

1800 hours had come and gone. Peel wasted no further time loading the CD onto his field laptop and accessed its contents with his new security codes. He soon discovered more information about the City of Archives and the Architects than he had dared to imagine.

The CD included 3-D models of the various levels compiled to varying levels of detail, from sophisticated computer-generated mapping undertaken by the SASR before they vanished, to sketch lines provided by the World War Two and earlier explorers. To Peel’s surprise, his team had already moved deeper into the ruins than these recordings provided.

There was information on the Architects too, a race of inverted cone-shaped aliens larger than any living terrestrial beast, with four limbs rising from the central cone; one producing a head, another was a combination vocal and feeding appendage, and two that were claw-like weapons. The images reminded Peel of a cross between a slug and a sea anemone.

As to the city, reports from the Boston and the World War Two expeditions described room after room featuring ancient technology, such as metal dirigibles and cars the size of aircraft carriers, vast libraries stacked with books of every kind imaginable and many other recording devices, machinery, computer equivalents, art, museums of Earth’s preserved flora and fauna, vast domes lit by bright ‘humming’ colors, and cavern pits containing, or restraining, other unfriendly alien ‘visitors’. But nothing he learned seemed able to help them.

Four hours later, when Peel had digested as much of the CD’s contents as he was able, he checked on his men, ensured their camp was secure, and advised them they would move out in the morning.

“What did you learn from the Intel, Major?” insisted Cannington.

“The Architects are all dead.”

“What killed them, sir?”

What killed them was still down here with them, Peel knew that much.

“No one knows, Private.”

——

The next day they followed the path Milchin had led them down before his gruesome death, only to discover that within a few hundred meters, huge fallen boulders blocked the road ahead. Peel examined the rubble and found fresh scratches in the rock.

“I told you I heard rumblings yesterday, sir,” Private Cannington called from the back. “We should turn back now, while we can. Before more of us die or become lost down here.”

“Cannington!” screamed Sergeant Benton. “Latrine duty tonight for back-answering the CO.”

“But—”

“But no ‘buts’ Private. Latrine duty for the rest of the trip.”

Cannington was about to say more, but the beetroot red fury expressed on the sergeant’s face warned that this was a bad idea. Benton then turned to Peel and snapped off a salute. “What are the Major’s orders, sir?”

Peel looked at the rubble. He knew no force that could move so much material in such a short time frame, but something down here had done just that. “We turn around, find another path.”

Within a few minutes, they discovered another route wide enough to drive the Bushmasters into that led in the same general direction.

After six hours of slow and steady driving, Peel halted the convoy. Nothing had attacked them. There had been no mysterious winds. There had been no rubble blocking their path for them to move either, when there should have been random obstruction laid down many times over.

Stepping onto the worn stone, Peel took his Steyr rifle with its loaded grenade launcher attachment and investigated the tunnels along the route they were following. There was rubble off the road, some of it extensive and of recently broken stalactites and stalagmites. He shone his chest mounted light into the darkness of one tunnel. The hairs on his neck raised as he pondered just how far the city must descend, how dark and silent it was, and how ancient. Yet his instincts told him they were not alone, that a monster or monsters hunted them. If the creature could command winds powerful enough to transport Corporal Milchin so far and so high from where it had taken him, and collapse tunnels and move rubble to force them along a single path, then what else was it or they capable of?

He walked a little further into the tunnel their unseen assailants expected them to follow, and stared into the pervasive darkness and silence. He knew all eyes from Lieutenant Shelby to the lowest private were staring at him. After walking fifty meters, he stopped, crouched and shone his light. As he suspected, there was further fresh scarring in the stone, of rocks cutting against other rock. He shined his light ahead. The same scratch marks extended as far as he could see.

Peel turned and marched back to the Bushmasters. He desired nothing more than to return to the surface, as Cannington had suggested, but was fearful of what the unknown creature or creatures hiding down here might do to them if they changed course. Peel had enough blood on his hands already to risk that option.

“What are you thinking, Major?” asked Shelby when they were driving again and she could ask her question in private.

“That we are being herded.”

Shelby paled, and she didn’t argue that he might be incorrect. He’d hoped that she had. “If that is true, Major, we should turn back.”

“We should, but we can’t.”

“Can’t?”

He nodded. “We’re already inside the trap. All we can do now is hope we can avoid its snare and walk out alive.”

——

After twenty-one kilometers clicked by on the odometer, and Peel’s rough calculations pinpointed them six hundred meters below the surface, they came upon their first illuminated cavern. The first sign that artifacts left behind by the Architects had survived.

The domed chamber three hundred meters across shone with a soft red light. In the center was the only object, a smaller dome of metal that resembled a gigantic latch overlaid with complex machinery. The tech was beyond any known human engineering ability, and the light seemed to have no source.

After halting the Bushmasters, Peel sent in three teams minus the drivers and turret gunners to recon the dome. After five minutes, they had nothing to report other than the latch, and eight exits, including the one they had entered by. All paths in and out were large enough to drive their trucks through.

“Stop the engines,” Peel ordered, and the drivers obeyed. Then they all heard the low rumble which Peel had sensed before. Static electricity built on every surface. Hair stood on end. Mild shocks became commonplace. What kind of power source could keep this chamber illuminated for millions of years?

“What is this chamber for?” asked Cannington. “I don’t like it.”

“Quiet down, Private,” snapped Peel, expecting their voices to echo, but they didn’t. He recalled the descriptions of similar chambers on the CD report, but there had been nothing of what their purpose might be. “Sergeant, what have you learned about the ‘latch’?”

“We think we can open it, sir,” said Sergeant Benton. “There seems to be some kind of release mechanism attached.”

“But it’s locked, right, Sergeant?”

Benton nodded, but before he could respond, Shelby interrupted. “I don’t think we should open it, sir.”

Peel nodded. “And I agree with you, Lieutenant.”

“So what do we do, sir?” Shelby asked.

Peel looked at the lieutenant and his men. They were all tired and afraid. The buried necropolis was weird and uncertain territory, and the bizarre deaths of their peers were taking its toll. Now they had discovered an artifact, they had achieved their mission and could now technically return and report back to General Hyatt. Peel wanted nothing more than to lead them out the way they had come, but that option seemed fraught with danger.

“Very good, everyone. We’ve achieved what the chain of command sent us to accomplish. Now we go home.”

The soldiers cheered.

“Sergeant Benton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Use the radar. Work out which one of these exits leads up and out the fastest.”

“Sir? What about going back the way we came?”

Peel didn’t want to voice his fear that they had been herded and to turn back now might alert the alien predators that the humans were onto them. But he didn’t know how else to explain his intention to continue onwards.

It was Lieutenant Shelby who answered for him. “The Major and I didn’t want to say, but there was a tunnel collapse behind us.”

“You’re joking?” shouted Cannington. “We would have noticed.”

She eyeballed the Private. “We’re not joking, Cannington, and you’ll address the CO as Major, or sir.”

The Private snapped off a demurred, “Yes, ma’am.”

Peel cleared his throat, grateful that Shelby had thought ahead and had his back. He would thank her later. “I wish to escape this tomb as much as the rest of you. To do that, we need the fastest route to the surface. So everyone get to work and tell me how we achieve that.”

The first team entered the exit opposite the one they had entered through. When they had traversed a hundred meters, a breeze picked up, then grew into a powerful wind. Soon Peel had to lean into it to stay on his feet.

Before the gusts knocked him over, Peel gripped the nearest Bushmaster.

Four of his men catapulted out of the corridor like missiles to splat across the back wall of the red dome as fleshy pancakes. The radar and other equipment they’d taken with them also imploded on impact.

In response to the sudden attack, several soldiers inside the chamber fired the Javelins, F88 Austeyr assault rifles and 84mm M3 Carl Gustav high explosive rounds, while the turret gunners let loose with the Bushmaster mounted 7.62mm machine guns. The noise of exploding ordinances within a confined chamber soon deafened Peel to all other sounds. Cannington and several other soldiers screamed in unison to their shooting. No one seemed to have any idea what they were firing at.

“Hold your fire!” barked Peel.

No one heard him, or they chose not to.

What he didn’t expect was for the high explosive rounds to come shooting back into the dome before they had detonated.

One round hit a Bushmaster, disintegrating it with a fiery roar that incinerated the men inside, and sent its burning chassis shooting backward to collide with the third Bushmaster, toppling it over. It had only been luck that had seen Peel hold on to the only undamaged vehicle now in their contingent.

A second unexploded 84mm shell also flew back at them, hit another group of soldiers which included Cannington and Seacombe, and exploded, decimating them all.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” Peel screamed until his throat was hoarse. He tried firing his Mark 3 automatic into the air to draw attention, but it jammed.

Shelby ran for cover, danced like a crazy puppet against the winds, only to have a powerful gust lift her and rattle her in mid-air, before sucking her into one of the random corridors.

“STAND YOUR GROUND!” Peel yelled again over the wind and the screams of his men, who kept firing rounds and grenades into the dark corridors. Those bullets came flying back, strafing the men with their own ammunition.

Wind could not be that powerful.

Then the firing stopped, but only because there were no more weapons to fire.

And then the wind stopped too.

“Report in.”

Nothing but static filled his radio. Nothing but the hum of the dome and the crackle of burning flesh sounded in the vast and empty chamber.

“Report in!”

Peel dropped his useless pistol and readied his Steyr as he checked the two damaged Bushmasters. He counted four charred and broken bodies, and what he suspected to be two more dead soldiers, but with their blackened husks fused into the gutted vehicle, he couldn’t tell how many corpses were in there.

Sergeant Benton lived, but he wouldn’t for much longer, pinned under the second Bushmaster. The lower half of him crushed, he bled from multiple gapping wounds. He laughed when he saw Peel, coughed up blood. “End of the line, Major.” He spat out a couple of teeth. “This is exactly where they want us.”

Peel rushed to Benton, lifted the Sergeant’s head supporting it because he had nothing to lean against, offered what little comfort he could against the man’s pinned position. “You’re wrong, Sergeant. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

Benton laughed again, producing more blood. “You weren’t firing your weapon, were you?”

At first the question confused Peel. When he didn’t answer, Benton talked, although with more difficulty now because he was losing blood fast now judging by the pool of thick red liquid beneath him.

“I saw the lieutenant. She was okay. She wasn’t shooting either.”

Peel didn’t have the heart to tell the dying man that Shelby was dead, sucked into a tunnel and likely smashed to a bloody pulp.

“They need one of us alive…” He shuddered. “That one person is you…”

The sergeant slumped as his eyes rolled into his sockets. Then he stopped breathing. A minute after, his pulse halted forever.

Peel checked the rest of the team. No soldiers survived, or whatever attacked them had taken their bodies to wedge into other cracks deep inside this supposedly dead city. He found no signs of Shelby anywhere.

With nothing more he could do Peel examined the latch. The device appeared both simple and convoluted. If he turned the switch, he presumed the series of gears, pistons and pipes would open a greater latch. He wondered why the creatures who had attacked them had not opened the latches.

When Peel crouched to examine the switch, he understood why, for an invisible field surrounded the contraption. He could put his hand inside, where the air within was still. When he tried blowing into it, he could feel no breath on his hand.

The monsters had brought Peel and his team here, to open this latch. But why?

“I won’t do it!” he yelled into the chamber. “I’d rather die, like everyone else.”

As if in answer, the winds picked up. He expected a gale force to lift him up and crush him against a wall, but it never did.

“Kill me. I won’t help you.”

A human wearing a disruptive pattern desert uniform flew into the dome, carried by the wind and held in suspension above the red metal dome. It was Donna Shelby, and she turned end over end. Her uniform was torn in many places and so was her flesh, for mists of red flicked in the artificial wind like a fine spray. Then Shelby ceased spinning and floated before Peel. The wind kept her elevated, arms spread wide like a mock imitation of Christ on the cross.

She whispered, “Open… the latch… Major.”

“Why?”

“They are… also afraid…”

Peel realized what bothered him about this dead city, and that was an absence of life, anywhere. Some entity had moved through here and removed or obliterated all organisms. He doubted it was the creatures that attacked them, because their offensive capabilities seemed more localized and ethereal.

Or perhaps the creatures who attacked them lived under the latch, and the only means they had to interact with the world up here was with their power to generate strong winds.

Peel turned the switch, figuring he had nothing to lose at this point.

The latch burst open as a powerful hurricane sent Peel tumbling backwards. Shelby dropped with him, caught in the same back blast, and hit the far wall.

Vague shapes, like fat bloated tumors or polyps pockmarked with black oily eyes, dozens of gapping mouths and rings of squirming tentacles — shapes he could barely see because of their translucent skin — erupted from the pit. They were ghostly, each larger than a Bushmaster. Freed, they smashed against the roof of the dome, again and again, bringing down showers of rocks. Soon cracks appeared, and then the entire structure groaned.

Peel ran to the unconscious Shelby, lifted her over his shoulders and sprinted down the nearest tunnel.

Behind him, the dome gave way, and the tunnel collapsed. Then the floor collapsed from the weight of the rubble now crashing down on it, fell into a deeper pit where the flying polyp-like entities had originated. The monsters ignored the falling rubble as they pummeled a path to the surface. Soon sunlight shone down as the roof opened wide.

Checking on the unconscious Shelby to ensure her safety for the moment, Peel stood on the ledge where there had once been a tunnel to witness the spectacle. Skyward, he could barely see the hundreds of polyp-like creatures disappearing into the sky, but he saw enough to know that they were racing into space and making their escape.

But what were they escaping from?

Looking into the far depths hundreds of meters beneath him now, he identified a large metallic vehicle the size of an aircraft carrier, but with a smooth, reflective surface and shaped like a bullet or a dirigible, with many port holes, balconies and railings. The chamber it floated in resembled an air hanger.

Then, standing on several of the balconies or peering through portholes, were several of the inverted cone-shaped creatures with their four branching appendages. Not one of them moved, like they had frozen in time. Then Peel understood this is what he was seeing. The rubble that had fallen from the decimated flying-polyp prisons should have crushed these creatures and their vessel. Instead, it was falling around them, bouncing off an invisible bubble of stasis that protected the Architects and their bizarre giant-torpedo shaped mode of transport.

And then the silvery vessel vanished, like it had never existed.

One instance, it was there. The next, it was not.

In a daze, Peel lifted his radio to his mouth, called for support, and to his surprise, he received a response. When he saw an Army Chinook in the sky fifty minutes later, Peel fired a flare.

——

Once in the sky and heading north, Peel stared out across the red dust of the arid Australian interior. He was heading home today, but soon he would be back. The Australian Armed Forces would explore the Architect’s ruined city for decades to come, and Peel was part of that effort now.

“You found nothing?” Hyatt asked for the tenth time. “Nothing at all?”

Peel had described the empty tunnels, and the wind monsters he had released, which were likely halfway across the Solar System by now, but of the Yithian time vessel he had said nothing. He could not be certain he had imagined it, but more than that, he felt convinced the Yithians were long gone and offered nothing for Hyatt but false hope.

“What I’m more concerned about, sir, is that something recently cleaned the city. Those creatures that flew into space, I think they did so to flee something they feared down there. Something that planned on ‘cleaning’ them too.”

Hyatt nodded. “Well, you provided us with an easier route inside, even if you didn’t bring back any alien tech.”

Peel nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“You weren’t the only team we sent in, by the way.”

Peel raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know that, sir.”

“Although no one got as deep as you did, Major, one of my other teams found something of interest.”

“Something?” Peel dreaded to know what.

The Major General smiled. “We don’t know what it is yet, but the science team already has a name for it. They are calling it the Impossible Object.”

Impossible Object

Between the four walls, the floor and the ceiling of the Containment Room was the catapult chair, a metal desk, and upon that desk, the Impossible Object.

Millicent French was the latest researcher to ‘share time’ with the Impossible Object. For twenty minutes they had each done nothing, except she had sweated every second she and the Object spent together.

The catapult chair she had strapped into was custom made, with a safety harness pinning her to its frame. Spring loaded, it would propel her through a reinforced steel door in under a second should she release either of the red panic buttons which were pressed into her right and left hands. The design was a fail-safe mechanism should the Impossible Object cause her to fall unconscious.

The chair was one of many precautions built into the room. A barrier could drop from the ceiling, separating her from the Object with a hundred millimeters of steel plating should she request it. Oxygen masks hung above her head should breathable air suddenly vanish. The two-way radio communicator with a direct link to the Control Room was another small comfort. Precautions, however, had saved only a few of the researchers whom the Object had not favored.

So why was she here, alone in the Containment Room with the strangest, most alien object ever discovered on the face of the Earth? She had asked herself that question many times in the last twenty minutes, to fight off her fear. But she knew why: she was here because she was a scientist, a quantum physicist, and those of her profession were by nature curious. She desired to understand its truths.

Twenty-one minutes clicked by.

Millicent watched intensely, studied it with a fortitude she had never experienced at any other time in her life. Anticipation grew, waiting for it to do something, anything.

Twenty-two minutes.

The Impossible Object was an artifact that no one could explain, that sometimes taught the secrets of the universe, and other times gruesomely murdered or eradicated researchers from the fabric of the universe itself. She hoped for the former, but who wouldn’t.

Her hands remained on the red buttons. All she had to do was lift them, and then she would escape the Object’s eerie influence. If she did, she would lose today’s opportunity to learn wondrous secrets of the universe, and she’d have to wait another two weeks before she could again return to ‘shared time’.

Twenty-three minutes.

Millicent knew the Object’s history, understood that nobody could really comprehend it. It terrified or ‘changed’ some researchers who survived studying it, and yet it was much more likely to offer secrets of the universe. Its powers drew some researchers to it like a drug, and so they returned to examine it, as she did, knowing that it addicted her with its presence and potential to gift knowledge, even though it terrified her.

Twenty-four minutes.

No one at the remote research station deep in outback of Western Australia really understood anything about the Object or why it was here. That was why the Australian Defence Force’s research team assigned to the project had recruited her. She was one of many scientists in a long line of over-zealous researchers hired to offer fresh opinions and their expertise in another minuscule hope of understanding the Object’s confounding mysteries.

So what did they know?

Not much.

Perhaps most confounding was their inability to define the Object. Not by size, dimension, shape, color, texture, weight, atomic composition, translucence, reflective index, volume, gravitational properties, radioactivity, or by any other known measure. No one in the research team could accurately predict the time they had it in their possession, or how long it had remained buried in the alien city recently unearthed in the Great Sandy Desert. From findings gleamed from old books and Aboriginal lore, the city soon became known as Pnakotus, the City of Archives.

No one could confidently state where they had found the Object — not exactly — nor could they count how many Impossible Objects they actually possessed, for many researchers claimed to see several Objects whenever they gazed upon it, or an absence of anything.

They could define nothing.

The bright red illuminated bars of the digital wall clock behind the Impossible Object continually clicked over, reporting that she had been alone with the alien artifact for twenty-five minutes now. That was a record. Normally the Object, or the person observing it, would have done ‘something’ or had ‘something’ bizarre done to them by now.

Was it taunting her? Like many on the team, she believed the Object was sentient. Was it assessing her intellectual ability to understand a gift it was considering bestowing?

Everyone saw the Object differently. To her it was a cube, hovering approximately thirty centimeters above the exact midpoint of the metal table. All six-sides of the mirrored cube she could see at once, as if she was simultaneously gazing at it from behind, above, below and to the front. This four-dimensional vision was comprehensible to her while she watched, and strangely made sense, but if she later tried to recreate this vision in words or diagrams, well, that would be impossible.

Other researchers had reported spheres that vibrated, or humming fields reminiscent of an electrical storm. Others encountered wormholes that opened time-space portals to alien worlds, providing visions which regularly left observers shivering and demented from fear. Some saw themselves in terrifying predicaments, such as their incarceration in a prison with other… ‘things’ — which survivors refused to describe. A few saw nothing, as if the Object were a blind spot before their eyes, not unlike the unseen world behind a person’s head.

Twenty-six minutes.

Cameras and audio devices failed to record the Impossible Object, produced only static, or left similar blind spots over or around the point where the Object should be. It was as if the fabric of space-time curved too tightly around it.

Twenty-seven minutes.

Theoretical scientists on the team questioned if in fact they really had discovered anything in the first place, and they had mathematical proofs stating clearly that they had not.

Imaginary or real, the Object had provided tantalizing clues into the true nature of this and other parallel universes.

Last week an excited chemist had departed the containment room with a series of equations embedded in his mind, comprehensively describing exotic materials and the properties of magnetic fields that would revolutionize humanity’s understanding of antimatter containment and its use.

A month earlier, an astrophysicist consulting the Object could plausibly explain the properties of dark energy. Nobody had liked the implications of his answer, the astrophysicist especially, for shortly afterwards he contracted a nervous twitch and then ceased to speak or write again.

Many like her left the Object with nothing, but there had been a few who were really unlucky. Two months ago, they found a researcher dead inside the containment room filling the floor, resembling what was best described as a fleshy beanbag. Later x-rays showed that all his bones had vanished.

In another incident a woman began perceiving time in reverse, became younger, always talking backwards and forgetting things rather than learning, and so in time they committed her to the project’s already overcrowded ‘casualty ward’.

Another had gravity reversed for him, and now had to spend the rest of his life indoors, living on the ceiling.

Mostly, when bad luck struck, researchers simply vanished. Many speculated the Object transported them into other universes — dimensions that their research was now predicting existed in vast numbers. This had left a few scientists proposing that the Impossible Object might have made many more researchers vanish, but because the Object also erased the histories of these individuals from existence as well, no one knew about it.

They had mathematical proofs for this conundrum.

Twenty-eight minutes.

The time was ironic, because this was Millicent’s twenty-eighth ‘face-time’ with the Object. Like each previous encounter, she had perceived nothing other than its unusual four-dimensional structure. Conversely, she had never carried the will to remain with the Object as long as she had today. Time, she hoped, would make all the difference.

And then ‘something’ shifted.

Nothing that the normal human senses could detect, nothing that she could see or hear, or feel or smell or taste, but ‘something’ about reality was most definitely different.

Her mind opened then, or the Object opened it for her, and when it happened her frontal lobe almost melted from the shock.

It was a voice, not inside her head but everywhere, and not with words or letters, but as ‘something else’ explicit from a dimension she could not perceive. The voice described to her in every minuscule detail possible and right down to the atomic level about everything that had ever occurred to every cell in her body. This was all learned in under a second, imparted to her as a gift from an entity known as the Many-Thing, or so the voice explained.

When her brain filled to the bursting point, Millicent felt the blood leaking out of her ears, mouth and eyes. She was told that her role as an information consumer-gatherer had ended. It did not need to teach her further knowledge.

The Object fragmented, forming tiny hexagonal solids that emitted a bright, red lattice-shaped beam, not unlike a spider’s web, filling the space of the Containment Room.

Before her the table fell apart, cut into hexagonal pieces the size of dice, ringing hard as they hit the floor. Her chair fragmented in exactly the same pattern, as did her hands, her arms and soon her entire body was nothing more than pieces of flesh cut into bloody shapes of identical size, dimension and volume.

Her last thought — as her brain dismembered into tiny pieces — was that, like a black hole, that no one could perceive the Impossible Object, but the effects it imparted on this universe were all too clear.

Twenty-nine minutes.

——

Weather patterns changed the desert, thought Major Harrison Peel as he stared out across the desolate landscape. There was nothing in this corner of central Western Australia but red sands, burning blue skies and a sun like an orange hole of hot plasma ready to ignite the sky.

Only one year past, spinifex grass, gum trees and scrub bush had overgrown this remote corner of the Great Sandy Desert. There had even been kangaroos, goannas and emus feasting on the termites and lizards, and hardy grass. Today the landscape was nothing more than a dusty desolation of gravel and reddish dunes, for vegetation refused to grow and animals no longer ventured too close. Those same shifting dunes had produced a startling discovery, an alien city.

Peel had been amongst the first teams to explore the Pnakotus’s interior. They had learned its age was over seven hundred and fifty million years, older than terrestrial life before it evolved beyond soft-bodied ocean dwellers. The Australian Defence Force had quickly mobilized and established a highly classified military camp, to unearth potential technological riches left behind by the advanced alien race that had presumably thrived here. They had a name for their operations too, PROJECT RED SHIFT. The problem was, they had found nothing of value, except for one bizarre Object…

While considering all this, Major Harrison Peel drove his camouflaged Land Rover to another excavated entrance leading into the seemingly endless underground city. He wore his disruptive pattern desert uniform and carried his holstered military issued, self-loading 9mm Mark 3 pistol. Everything about him was military and in contrast to Winston Jones, the civilian structural engineer on the team with his dirty civilian khaki overalls. The engineer waited by the entrance, as agreed.

“Major,” the engineer nodded his head. Jones was a nervous man, but he hadn’t always been. The project had hired him because of his competence at constructing major structures the world over: bridges, tunnels, dams, pipelines and ports. He’d delivered many of those structures in the most challenging locations on earth, such as the Indonesian jungles, the deserts of Saudi Arabia and the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He had managed projects valued in the realm of hundreds of millions of dollars, and it took fortitude to deliver that kinds of infrastructure in a fixed time frame and a constrained budget. Jones knew structures, but the city had destroyed his confidence. He had no idea how the aliens that lived here had constructed it or why it still stood after all the many eons of time that had passed.

“You’ve got something to show me?”

Jones nodded.

Peel hated time in the city. The interior made his skin crawl and his back tingle, as if he were always being watched by the ghosts the city must have surely left behind. He’d traveled deep inside these ruins, and what he had discovered had killed all but one of the soldiers under his command and chilled him to his bones.

The engineer grimaced, turned and entered the tunnel, marked with the prominent sign Entrance: Complex H43: No Vehicle Access.

Peel climbed out of his vehicle.

After walking a hundred meters, the interior became cold compared to the forty-degree Celsius heat outside, relief from constant sweat and body odor.

It was easy to see that this ruin was ancient, for gigantic stalactites and stalagmites had formed over almost everything once carved or laid down by alien tentacles, manipulators and claws of the Architects, or Yithians as the scientists also called them.

“So this is where they found the Object?” Peel asked when Winston halted. There was nothing unusual about this section of corridor compared to any of the other many tagged complexes which Commando Regiment soldiers had already explored and deemed ‘safe’. No one had seen the monsters he’d seen, which had fled into the outer reaches of time and space because they were ‘scared’ of something else in the City. Peel could only conclude those monsters feared the Object. He didn’t blame them if they did.

Winston Jones’ skin had toughened from many years working too many civil construction projects under the harsh antipodean sun, but today he was pale and clammy. Too many months underground, too many days listening to every drip of cold water forming on the stalactites above, noises that left them all questioning if maybe the Architects were still around, watching.

“I…”

“Take your time.”

The engineer nodded. He lit a cigarette so his hands would stop shaking. Peel didn’t remember Jones smoking when he had first come to PROJECT RED SHIFT. Technically, Jones was contaminating the site, but Peel would allow this discretion to cope with the situation’s enormity. Peel drank five cups of coffee a day for much the same reason. To show respect, when Jones finished his smoke, he placed the butt in his pocket.

“Right here,” pointed the engineer, but even then, he seemed uncertain. “I think it was here. Wouldn’t have noticed, except one geologist working with me at the time pointed out a metal box he thought one of his work crews had left behind, but when I looked all I saw was a green bulbous stone.”

“You each saw it differently?”

Jones nodded. “It was only when we picked it up that we realized we were looking at the same thing.”

Peel nodded. In the six months since the ADF began investigating the city, the Impossible Object had been the only item of any value anyone had uncovered. It was as if ‘something’ had crawled through all the halls and rooms and eradicated every other artifact the Architects had ever created. But why that had happened was another mystery.

“Our researchers say the same thing,” said Peel. “That the Object never looks the same to anyone.”

Jones wiped his eye. “I heard we lost Millicent today?”

So that was what was on the engineer’s mind. Peel should have guessed. He didn’t know if Millicent and Jones were close, and didn’t want to ask. They could have been — many people here forged relationships of convenience, someone to share the night with so the fear wouldn’t hurt that came from being alone.

Casualties were a fact of life on this project, but that didn’t make their impact any less devastating. Peel had to remind himself that not everyone here was a war veteran, hardened to death and destruction like him. Not many here had fought cosmic horrors and lived to tell the tale either.

“Yes, we did.”

“How — how did she die?” he almost choked on his words.

Everyone always wanted to know the details, but Peel could never see how they were relevant, not to a structural engineer like Jones, not even for him. Her end was bizarre and messy. That knowledge was horror enough. “Not well, Winston.”

“What—?”

Peel didn’t want to talk about this. It was hard enough for him to hold it together, let alone be responsible for the mental wellbeing of others. That was why they had psychologists assigned to their team. “Show me again where you found the Object?”

The two men crouched, stared at the unassuming floor. Peel was here because he needed to determine if the Object was as easy to miss as the engineer claimed. If so, what else might be right under their very eyes, other Objects they were powerless to perceive, unless looked upon twice?

“You think this city is dead, or not?” Peel asked Jones, as if it were the most casual of remarks. He had seen the polyp-like monsters in his first descent into the city, but they were long gone, and they had encountered nothing since.

The mere question seemed to be enough to scare Jones like it had scared Peel, for the man’s eyes became white around the edges and he sweated. Conversely, he also seemed relieved, thankful perhaps that someone else might be ready to validate his abstract fears.

“You think so, don’t you?”

“I was thinking I was the only one.”

“Only one?”

“I see ‘things.’ Well, not really see, but there are noises… Well, not noises—”

“Feelings?”

“Yeah, feelings.” Winston relaxed a little now that Peel seemed to understand. “But not like actual feelings either, not like feeling sad, or happy, or tired, or hungry. It’s more like a feeling that you are changing, on a molecular level or something. As if every molecule in your body is being replaced by another identical molecule, so you’re still yourself, but you’re not, if you know what I mean? It’s like you aren’t part of this world anymore, although you should be, but can’t be… I’m not making any sense!”

“You think so?” Peel asked. Since his arrival at the city after his journey deep underground in these corridors, the ADF had promoted him to ‘head of security’. Peel had access to most of the staff’s psychological reports. If Jones and Millicent had been close, he’d missed that. Updated on a weekly basis as part of the contingency planning, these reports combated the high rates of nervous breakdown, suicides, accidents and fatal occurrences associated with their research. Jones wasn’t the only one who’d reported experiencing odd sensations in and around the city. This troubled Peel for more reasons than he would say.

He wished they just bulldozed in all the entranceways, walked away and forgot that the city ever existed…

“What does the Major General have to say about all this?” Jones asked hopefully.

“Major General Hyatt?” Peel cringed when he thought about his superior officer, and what Hyatt might make of today’s investigations: nothing good. “Like everyone, he has his opinions, and it’s not my place to talk on his behalf.”

“Then what are you saying, sir?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

But in his silence Peel was saying much. Even if the words remained unspoken, he was wearing his fear plainly for everyone on the project to see. Peel believed the Object was a trap, laid by the Architects for the humans to find. Perhaps there were still other traps hidden within the labyrinthine halls, pieces of a puzzle which when the pesky human monkeys put them together, created an even bigger trap. Hence the necessity for his regular visits into the underground world, to understand the trap before they walked into it.

All the existing evidence suggested Pnakotus had been dead for at least fifty million years, so Peel’s superiors regularly dismissed his concerns, but each day more and more people working directly within the city or on the Object were believing Peel might just be onto something.

He wondered if the molecules in his body were changing too.

——

Peel woke drenched in his bunk, shivering from the icy and salty water adhering to his skin.

Five men, all identical, stood at the end of his bed, all dressed in identical wetsuits of Russian manufacture and soaked in water. Each held a Russian made AN-94 assault rifle.

“It’s the infinite replicator, Peel,” said the middle figure in an American Midwestern accent. “Everything is so fucking crazy.”

Peel blinked, not sure what he was seeing. Then one man threw Peel a pistol, a 9mm Glock semi-automatic handgun. “This is yours. Don’t lose it again.”

The men vanished, one by one, like soap bubbles popping out of existence.

The pistol in Peel’s hand vanished too.

Peel climbed out from under his soaked sheets and sat on the end of his bunk. He was freezing. He couldn’t stop shaking. In the shower block he drenched himself in hot water until his body temperature stabilized.

As he toweled himself off, Peel remembered this wasn’t the first time he’d encountered the strange Russian-American man. They’d ‘shared time’ once or twice every year for the last ten years. He’d never understood these dreams, but now he considered a connection between the man and the Impossible Object. Perhaps a researcher erased not only from the universe, but from history as well.

He remembered his Mark 3 seizing up on him when he was deep under Pnakotus and wondered if it was time to change his sidearm.

When Peel returned to his bunkroom, he found a fully loaded AN-94 on the floor, dropped by one of his visitors.

Picking it up. It felt real. It was solid with cold metal.

Then it too disappeared in a pop like an exploding soap bubble.

He decided not to mention the incident to anyone.

——

Major General Gerald Hyatt always drove fast, even inside the confines of the camp. To slow, he applied excessive pressure on the Army Mercedes-Benz G-Class’s brakes, in this moment to pull up alongside Peel. Hyatt didn’t ask but told Peel to get in, then took off at breakneck speed.

Behind the wheel the Major General was a madman possessed, as if his mind were on too many other issues to focus on safe driving, the wind whipping through his close-cut white hair. When he walked, he applied the same rapid pace — just not as dangerous.

Peel wanted to tell Hyatt to slow down, but decided against it. Reprimands awaited anyone who disobeyed the Major General. Conversely, Peel wasn’t complaining about a lift. In this heat it was a long walk between his bunkroom and the office, in a transportable administration hut on the opposite side of the camp from the laboratory complex where the Impossible Object waited in the Containment Room. Distance mattered, even if distance was only physiological.

“Wanted to ask you a question, Major,” yelled the Major General in clipped phrases over the rumble of the engine and the sand blowing around them. He looked to Peel and not at the dirt road as they took a corner under heavy acceleration. “Wanted to know your opinions on the Americans.”

“Not sure what you mean, sir?”

“Your opinions, Peel, your thoughts about our Yankee friends?”

“They’re our allies, sir.”

“Yes, that’s the answer a corporal would give me, even an answer a lieutenant or one of my crusty sergeants would offer. But let me let you in on a little secret Peel; when I know how someone is going to answer a question, I don’t ask. So, no bullshit and tell me what you really think.”

It frustrated Peel that more times than not, he could not read his bulldog superior, but in this case, he could see where this line of questioning was leading. The Major General was referring to Peel’s previous liaison with US military intelligence back when his enemies were human terrorists. Time spent with their allies assisting in strategies for identifying and predicting the terror tactics of subversive organizations in Africa. While he had found Americans to be personable and likeable, they always wanted to take charge, and always knew better than anyone else.

“I think they’re interested in maintaining their own affairs, sir.”

“That all?”

“I don’t think we should trust them. If you’re still considering briefing them on the city and the Object. They’ll just take over and sideline us.”

Hyatt chuckled. “Well, a group of their experts, military and civilian, are flying in tomorrow. But don’t worry, our intelligence boys have cleared every one of them.”

Peel didn’t want to feel disappointed, but he was, and it probably showed in his expression. The city was dangerous. It was unknown and required securing before they could safely allow in any visitors. Until now, it had remained a secret even from their most trusted allies, but in less than twenty-four hours the camp would double in number with these Northern Hemispheric visitors.

“I understand your concerns, Major, but you have to admit we’re getting nowhere with our research.”

“Sir, if I may, why did you ask my opinion when you’ve already made your decision?”

“I wanted to see if I could rely on you, Peel.”

Peel watched the Major General, knowing that his superior had no intention of clarifying that last statement. He remembered the conversation they had just before Peel led one of the first semi-successful expeditions into the underground interior. “You mean they found out about this place on their own, don’t you, sir? As part of the Code-89 agreements, aren’t we obliged to tell them about the City of Archives, anyway?”

The older man laughed, exactly as he had all those years ago when the Prime Minister congratulated him on national television for his efforts in East Timor, during the troubled country’s independence from Indonesian rule. Peel had never been sure if Hyatt had been laughing with the interviewer to look trustworthy and open for the benefit of his hopeful political career, or laughing at the Australian public because of his ‘rumored’ terror tactics forced upon the Timorese people which the press had never exposed. Here was the same laugh, bellowed from a middle-aged man who was a national hero.

“I see there is no fooling you, Peel, but then we don’t pay you to be a ‘yes’ man.” He turned the wheel sharply, narrowly missing a Bushmaster reversing out of a workshop. “Yeah, the bloody Yanks found out, through their spy satellites, or so they tell us. But only when they discover our secret do they bother to share. They’ve negotiated limited access to their own alien city in Antarctica. They want to see if we have similar aliens here as they have down there. Preliminary comparisons suggest not.”

Peel had often wondered if their find was unique, particularly after his experiences in Cambodia. “So they only share with us when they think we might have something to offer in return?”

“Don’t get cynical on me, Major. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Yes, sir,” he answered dryly.

“You should know, I’ve read your mission reports during your time in Africa. I know how you feel about the American ‘intelligence gathering approach’, so consider this a warning. I’m expecting you to cooperate with our friends, regardless of your opinions, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They are sending a Colonel from the Pentagon to run the show.” He hit the brakes, and they halted as red dust settled on the jeep, their clothes, and Peel’s paperwork. He looked up to see that the General had delivered him to the laboratories fifteen minutes ahead of his scheduled meeting.

Outside the science building, a dozen young technicians on a lunch break kicked a soccer ball lazily. It was too hot out here to do anything with any effort, but everyone had their methods to relieve the monotony of remote outback living, or perhaps as a distraction from just how scary the Impossible Object was.

“You hear what I’m saying, son?”

“Yes sir, understood.”

“Pass the information onto Doctor Romanov, and Lieutenant Shelby. Warn them on what to expect.”

“Yes, sir.”

Peel climbed out. The Major General drove fast in search of his next underling to bully, leaving Peel to cough in a billowing cloud of red dust.

——

Doctor Julie Romanov scribed frantic mathematical sums on the blackboard. An equation formulating in her mind might prove a property of the Impossible Object…

She knew her approach was old-fashioned, especially in today’s world of laptops, the Internet, I-pads and voice recognition. But to her the blackboard was simplicity in its monochromatic dictation, and simplicity was what she sought from the volumes of equations that led everywhere and concluded nothing.

This was not strictly true. Even with the minute amount of data her team had gleaned from the Impossible Object, she’d proven the existence of parallel universes and formulated models predicting alternate structures for subatomic particles as they passed through an Einstein-Rosen wormhole. She also solved equations explaining the behavior of a new type of matter with properties previously believed impossible in their universe, matter that created its own brand of life in the structures of quantum foam. Life that could exist in two-or three-time dimensions simultaneously, with incredible powers of regeneration.

Occasionally this knowledge overwhelmed her. She would spend hours curled in the corner, crying to herself. Her burden was that the findings she had already made would win her the Nobel Prize for Physics a hundred times over, if they ever allowed her to publish her results. Conversely, with all this data, no one on her team had any idea where to begin in truly understanding what this all meant. Every time she thought she understood something, it terrified her, and she’d go searching for a corner.

Once upon a time Romanov had been a respected teacher at the prestigious University of Sydney. She lectured on mathematics and dabbled in astrophysics. Although most of her students seemed dim to her, she appreciated on an academic level that they were intelligent young people, and found pleasure in imparting her knowledge into their open, fertile minds to digest. University life comprised writing papers, marking assignments and preparing lectures. She didn’t mind all that, at least not in hindsight, and wished she could return to her former life, a simpler existence than grappling with the many conundrums facing her with the Impossible Object, and the city that had spawned it.

The city was part of the problem.

The Australian Defence Force had only explored and mapped a few hundred square kilometers of the City of Archives so far, but that was enough to put their findings into perspective; they’d barely scratched the surface. There was no knowing how far the stone complexes extended beyond what they had already unearthed.

Ore samples drilled by geological teams verified that the city reached depths over ten kilometers, right to where rock verged on magma. Exploration teams lead by Commando Regiment soldiers had descended to depths greater than the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, only to find room after empty room. Some of these chambers — after months of dedicated research and analysis — proved to be libraries. But from within, they never found a single volume of works stacked on any of the aliens’ equivalent to shelves. Only Major Peel claimed to have witnessed aliens, but he also claimed those monsters had fled to the gulfs of space. She wasn’t sure if he had imagined it all.

Most disappointing of all, there were no signs of the Yithians’, or Architects’ language found anywhere.

Only the Impossible Object remained, and Julie couldn’t help feeling that it was the connection to the thorough cleaning of the City.

The Impossible Object was the only tangible proof that the Architect or Yithian civilization had built artifacts with anything but stone. Yet no matter how many times she attempted to understand the bizarre, godlike being, through mathematical equations or theoretical sciences, her conclusions always stated clearly that it did not and could not exist. Not now, and not ever.

Then, as she considered this paradox, another revelation hit Julie.

She ceased her scribbles.

What if it were not the Impossible Object that did not exist, but everything else in the surrounding universe? Could she prove that, and therefore by reverse logic, prove its existence?

It was an idea, and that was enough.

So she wiped the board clean and started over.

——

Lieutenant Donna Shelby ran into Peel’s office, out of breath, snapped off a quick salute, then blurted, “Sir, Doctor Romanov disappeared.”

Peel looked at his aide. Normally Shelby was more composed, hardened like him to the anomalies that were now abnormally a part of their everyday routines. She had traveled deep underground with him, the only other survivor of an expedition which had confirmed the city was empty, and that the former inhabitants had fled through space and time, fearful of an unseen force that lurked everywhere but was never seen.

Shelby’s glasses didn’t sit right on her face. Strands of her dark hair had come loose from her normally immaculately pinned hair. She looked to him for a decision.

“Vanished, you mean?”

Shelby nodded. Although she hid it well, Peel could see that the news upset the Lieutenant, as if it was her fault that their top researcher no longer existed except as a memory.

“You were under explicit orders that Romanov was not to be anywhere near the Object.”

“She wasn’t anywhere near it, sir. Not even in the same building.”

Correct answer.

Peel stood and gazed out through the small window, with an unobstructed view across the sand to the crumbling spires of the alien world hidden under tarpaulins. There was talk of burying them again, and he thought it was a good idea. Every day he hated being near the ancient city and the laboratories that contained the Impossible Object. The latter caused all the strife and misery here, and now its list of casualties included their chief scientist. There would be an investigation, and if Peel didn’t conduct his work as per regulations, there would be reprimands.

“Well, what happened?”

The officer hesitated.

“I’m not blaming you, lieutenant. How can I blame anyone?”

Shelby was about to speak when she lost her courage, so Peel eyeballed her. He wanted people under him who were confident and proactive, but the Object seemed to make everyone want to duck for cover all the time. As the only other survivor from their expedition underground, he needed her at his side because she understood the horrors they had encountered. He would not let her fail because she lost her nerves.

“Donna, what happened?”

His use of her first name seemed to calm her, as if they were friends. In some ways they were. A relationship forged from the experiences they shared that no one else could understand. “Doctor Romanov vanished from her office, sir. Security cameras saw her go in and recorded her at work. Then the cameras went down. A technical fault, but we all know what that means.”

“And suddenly she was no longer there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve searched the camp? The city?”

“Yes sir, as much as is possible. But we didn’t need to. There was no way she could have come out of her office without someone noticing her unless—”

“—unless she simply vanished.” Peel finished for her. It should have worried him that this was now a regular occurrence. “Like the others?”

“Yes, sir, exactly like the others. We still can’t get anything to record in the room.”

This last statement caught Peel’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“Cameras are working fine, sir, but they refuse to record more than just static.”

Peel felt his stomach knot and the room shrink away from him. An anomaly this serious had never occurred beyond the Containment Room. Romanov’s office held nothing remotely alien in it, because his security team purged all the researchers’ offices of anything collected from the city. And yet, the Object had influenced Romanov from a distance. Effect without cause.

If Romanov had vanished like the others, then the evidence pointed towards a new danger, a new and undefined threat. Perhaps a second Impossible Object, one that had made its way inside the base unnoticed. If so, how would they even recognize it for what it was?

He remembered the five identical Russian-American men in wetsuits in his room. Was that not the same thing?

“Follow me, Lieutenant.”

Together they marched through the corridors of the prefabricated military compound, Shelby running occasionally to keep up with Peel’s frantic pace, across the dusty fields to the Science Building, arriving in minutes at the scene of the crime.

The specialist forensic team was already undertaking its standard tests; counting the composition of elements and compounds in the atmosphere, checking for abnormal radiation levels, measuring the intensity of light and searching for microscopic organisms on every exposed surface. Digital cameras tried to record the room, but their monitors only showed static as Shelby had reported. Most of the researchers wore hazard suits, but many more had their headpieces removed, knowing that these suits had saved no one yet. They marked most surfaces with green stickers, with official project signage declaring them as ‘safe to handle.’

Fighting against his agitation, Peel pushed his way inside. All he saw was a normal office, and that scared him.

“What was she doing?” he barked.

“Working at the blackboard, sir, scribbling equations.”

This was as good a place as any to start, so Peel approached it. The blackboard appeared normal, full of mathematical formulae regarding hyper-dimensional physics that Peel had no chance of understanding. He asked a forensic officer if they had put the surface of the board through the usual tests. The officer pointed to a green sticker stating that they had, and so Peel felt comfortable enough stepping closer for a better look. He even risked touching it, and nothing untoward unsettled his mind or shattered the cosmic forces that held his body stable.

Peel tried to apply logic. If Romanov was working here, then the threat lay here. Did not quantum mechanics repeatedly profess that observers are an important component to cause and effect in the universe? He recognized lines of calculus, and a few references to new mathematical theories that circulated in a memo last week. But that didn’t mean he understood any of it. Line by line it was all a foreign language, all of it except for the QED signature at the end.

QED.

Quite Enough Done.

Romanov had solved this equation, resolved another puzzle. She had understood something that no other human had ever understood.

Then just as quickly, with an unwanted realization that terrified Peel, he saw the equations differently, as if they were in themselves a spreading disease. A virus once contained within a test tube had now spilled, infecting first those who came into its proximity, and then spreading further on the back of carriers that now moved out across the world. The Object no longer required its physical presence to vanish or change people, or to drive them into psychotic insanity, for the knowledge that it had previously imparted had mutated. The virus had shifted.

Without a second’s thought, he scrubbed the board clean.

Immediately the cameras in the room began recording. Monitors lit up with images of him and others in the room, going about their peculiar business.

The room had fallen silent. Everyone including Shelby had stopped what they were doing and were now staring at him.

Peel huffed, stormed from the office. He owed none of them an explanation.

Hyatt would reprimand him, but at least he might have saved some lives.

——

Sunset over desert sands was the only time the outback appeared beautiful to Peel. When he clocked off for the day, he often walked out into the night, remembered again that in the real world, he was on assignment in Botswana, training local soldiers on simple martial skills, such as the many techniques for interrogating enemy combatants, hand signals for communication during covert operations, and how to kill a man silently. Such thoughts gave him hope that one day he might return to normal military life, and that they might allow him to forget all of this. Not that anything could be normal after his experiences these last six months.

The Americans were close. In the sky he could already see their Boeing Globemaster C-17, direct from Maryland via Hawaii with a hundred or more scientists, government officials, NSA agents and military advisers ready to tell the Australians how they should now run their own operation. True, his people had no idea what they were doing here, but would their allies know any better? He had heard nothing good about the American’s operations in Antarctica.

He tried to remember why Major General Hyatt had given him a Code-89 clearance and brought him to Pnakotus. Tried to remember why he had believed he had done the right thing with the blackboard, even though the Major General had threatened him with disciplinary action after they understood Peel had erased Romanov’s mathematical discovery. Peel was a leading expert in terrorism and, despite the horrors he had encountered in Cambodia, was not an expert in xenobiology. It had been his role for most of the last ten years to out-think the enemy, to predict when, where and how they would strike, to contain them before any damage occurred.

He’d successfully infiltrated and eliminated over a dozen major terrorist cells operating in Africa, successes the public would never hear about because he’d stopped them long before they started. He knew he was good at what he did, or what he used to do, and he had the evidence to prove it. So why had they brought him here?

There were no terrorists in the city, not even alien terrorists. At least not aliens who’d show themselves, and those that he had briefly encountered underground had fled the planet. They were as fearful here as he was.

But a bomb didn’t need a living entity to perform its final devastating act, for timers could be automatic.

Both the Australian and United States military personnel saw a weapon in the Impossible Object, one they hoped to harness so they could dominate the world, and perhaps even the galaxy. Their imagination probably stretched that far. The scientists saw it differently; it was their holy grail, the ultimate key opening the doors leading to the secrets of the universe. But Peel saw it differently again, not as a hope or a gift like everyone else did, for all he could see was a trap.

So he went back to basic principles, to his field of expertise, because ultimately, he was here because of those skills. When a terrorist strikes, he or she aims to achieve the maximum devastation with the minimal resources. In today’s world, a suicide bomber in the Middle East could only make international headlines when he or she killed many people, preferably women and children, civilian rather than military targets. Otherwise, their efforts simply became a wasted, pointless, and unreported exercise.

Peel had never looked upon the Impossible Object. He hadn’t read the collected study notes produced by the scientists, compiled in the file directory everyone was now referring to as the Yithian Calculations. He never desired to do so either, fearful of what might happen to him if he did. But he was sure that if he entered the Containment Room, he’d see a ticking bomb, because that was what it was to him.

If so, when would it explode? If it was a trap, was it not drawing them to it right now, allowing them to become comfortable, so it could take them unaware, just like the modus operandi of the world’s most elusive terrorist organizations?

In the skies the C-17 was descending, undercarriage lowered, ready for landing. Within minutes, PROJECT RED SHIFT would swarm with a mass of fresh faces and unfamiliar accents.

It was only then, seeing the aircraft and what it stood for, that his thoughts coalesced, and with it an unfathomable sense of dread.

——

Peel sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him. In the red sand ergs, it was hard work, his pace slowed even for a soldier with his fitness as his feet disappeared amongst the mountains of tiny grains. Ahead the runway was lit, and so too was the control tower directing the plane towards a safe landing.

Once beyond the dune he ran to the Major General, who was waiting by his G-Wagon wearing another supercilious smile that was a common signature of his personality. Happy at last that the Americans were finally here, if for no other reason than for them to become someone else to blame in the future when more people continued to die, disappear or go mad while vainly attempting to understand what would always be alien to them. Not that it mattered anymore, not with what Peel had just surmised. He broke across the floodlit tarmac and ran in a direct path at his commanding officer.

“Major General!” he yelled like the madmen he was afraid of becoming, “you’ve got to turn them back!”

Hyatt, now spotting Peel, barked orders at his men, demanding action. In response, one of the young soldiers intercepted Peel, raised his Steyr combat weapon ready to fire. Experience counted for more than youthful energy, and so Peel easily broke the boy’s wrist as efficiently as he transferred the weapon to his own hands. “Send them back, General, or you’ll get us all killed.”

The remaining soldiers pointed ten combat weapons at him. If Peel said the wrong thing, or threatened harm, the Major General would not hesitate to shoot him down where he stood. Peel dropped the weapon, knowing that maintaining the Major General’s attention was all that was important right now.

It had all come back to him in the sand dunes; his training, his study, his experience. All gleamed from the cold, hard face of dirty warfare. A terrorist waits, readying himself for the right time when he can create the most devastating effect with minimal effort. A smarter terrorist doesn’t even walk into an enemy’s nest. He draws his victims to him, and he makes them feel comfortable. He lets them come to their own conclusion that it’s in their best interest to be there. Anywhere in the world, all terrorists operated the same way. So why, then, would an alien race behave any differently?

“Tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you, Major.”

“The Object, the Impossible Object, it’s a trap, sir, sent to us by whoever built the city.” He pointed to the aircraft, “They’re drawing us in, making us interested, and when we get too close…” He let the thought trail away, thankfully aware that the soldiers, ready to take his life, were now understanding what he was saying. “When that plane lands, Major General, we’ll drastically increase the population of this base. If the Object is sentient, and so far, what little we know about it suggests that it is, then if it’s going to strike it’s going to do so when it can eliminate the maximum number of targets. So isn’t now the perfect time?”

The Major General said nothing.

No one said anything.

They were all trying to understand what he said, and for the first time, he saw soldiers assigned to the project going into shock. Perhaps it was the virus spreading, or perhaps it was just the failing human condition. The Major General, his mind suddenly overwhelmed by what the Impossible Object could do, knew he was powerless to act against it, however it might choose to respond now, and so did nothing.

The soldiers remained steady with their combat weapons, offering Peel no opportunity to save his own life by fleeing.

Too late. The C-17 was already slowing for its approach.

He looked back at the laboratory complex.

It was in there — the Impossible Object — not far at all, sensing everything, including the events unfolding outside.

Any second now it could obliterate them all…

Any second now…

False Containment

Thursday, April 5, Rio Napa, Oriente Province, Ecuador

The Amazonian waters flowed so fast that the dugout canoe appeared to be slipping on a steep slope of water. Nicola Mulvaney felt sick because of this illusion, from the imbalance between her eardrums and her eyes. At the motor, the Indian pilot didn’t seem to notice. Neither did her Amazonian guide, Lucho Alfaro. She watched the Ecuadorian man heartily eating a lunch of rice stained red, wrapped in banana leaves with his fingers. She’d turned down her portion. Perhaps if they stopped on a sandbank, her appetite might return. But if they stopped, they might not find what she suspected lay hidden in the jungle. Again, she checked her Geiger counter, using the intensity measure to gauge the distance. It crackled ever so faintly.

“How much further?” she asked in Spanish.

“A few more minutes,” Lucho’s smile was of red stained teeth, prompting the illusion that his lips bled. She looked away instinctively, because she’d seen similar smiles from the victims of radiation poisoning.

She gazed back at the trees, as high as apartment buildings. Competing for sunlight, they grew right to the water’s edge. The thick foliage and oppressive humidity hinted that the jungle really could swallow anything and everything. Yet despite the rainforest’s immense size, these men had located her missing canisters.

“Look ahead, Senorita,” exclaimed Lucho.

Nicola saw fruit-eating fish floating belly up by the hundreds. She cringed as she analyzed the water again. Toxicity and radioactivity pushed at the limits of her personal standards of safety. But she still had to get close enough to confirm the source, find out if this discovery was the same as the others. And with that thought, she laughed. She was an FBI Special Agent, tasked on this assignment in identifying the location of missing nuclear waste before drug cartels or terrorists found it. Never in her life did she expect to find radioactive isotopes out here, in a pristine virgin rainforest.

Guided to a sandbank, the Indian pilot secured the canoe to an overhanging branch. Lucho translated. The guide would wait as long as it took. Lucho then smiled, knowing that the Indian had no comprehension of the silent killer in the air. Today, time would be nobody’s friend.

On solid ground, Lucho strolled into the jungle as if he was a natural entity of this green world. His gumboots were the only part of him that looked out of place, as if human feet would never cope in the constant wet. Nicola wore the same, found them awkward while burdened with the equipment she must carry. “How long did you say it’s been here?” she asked, hoping to project a sense of professional dignity.

“A long time; my father told me stories as a boy.”

“Really?” She didn’t believe him.

A machete cut the way. The humidity wore them down. Twenty minutes brought them to what should have been a fresh mountain stream amongst thick green foliage. Instead, the sight that greeted them was shriveled and dead. Decay had set in decades ago, she had been told, and now saw, leaving nothing but a stagnant festering pool and black sick mud.

The centerpiece — the cause — was a mountain of trash. Spilled drums half-full with toxic radioactive waste. The other half had flown away long ago. Even today punctures still seeped an oily substance into the stream.

Nicola wasted no time fitting her respirator mask and goggles. She didn’t want to ingest any of the radioactive particles potentially floating in the air. With her Geiger counter switched on, the crackling started and with greater intensity. A few hours here were all she could afford, if she wanted to wait that long. She didn’t.

“How long has all this been here?”

“About fifty years.”

Nicola scoffed and marked the GPS location of the site. With her digital camera she snapped several photographs, and only then noticed the drums carried US Army insignia and a consignment date from this year. She collected photographs of these too. It was only when she inadvertently snapped a WGI consignment tag did she smile for the first time today.

WGI, Westmorton Global Industries Limited, was the international corporation that was her arch-nemesis. Several months ago, WGI had opened a new waste treatment plant in Nevada. The CEO, Brad Westmorton, had publicly claimed his corporation could safely dispose of all wastes, including high grade nuclear waste, with no toxic byproducts. He branded it Zero Waste Technology. She of course had never believed a word of it. Knew his claims were impossible. Knew it could only spell trouble.

Later her suspicions were further aroused when she discovered that the Pentagon and the White House had an interest in WGI’s new technology and quickly classifying the Nevada facility and the project as Top Secret. Then access to the plant, previously stonewalled, became a restricted facility to almost every other US and international authority, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After months of investigation, here in the Amazon of all places, she’d finally uncovered proof that WGI was telling the world an enormous lie. Zero waste for Nevada perhaps, but not for the rest of the world.

Once her camera memory was full, she turned to walk away.

“Senorita, what you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“But those are American flags on those metal drums.”

“What American flags?” she said, feigning ignorance, walking back the way they had come. But her words were a lie. The Pentagon would send in Marines or the Navy to collect and contain the waste. They couldn’t allow any other power, state or otherwise, to lay their hands on it and produce dirty bombs.

She felt sorry for Lucho and his people. She knew the United States had enough problems controlling misplaced nuclear waste materializing inside its own borders, and might not get here before the radiation did its damage on the local people.

Yet finds like these were not all that uncommon, anywhere. Uncle Sam’s rubbish had been materializing all over the world long before Alexander the Great decided he would be the first among many and the conqueror of the world.

That was, if archaeological sites were now being interpreted correctly.

——

Sunday, April 15, Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia, Australia

Major Harrison Peel waited for the American Airforce C-17 to land, and then for the world to end.

Instead, he felt the ground shift under his feet and the sky to lighten dramatically.

The City of the Great Race of Yith — Pnakotus — had similarly vanished, as had the Australian Defence Force base built up around it.

It was early morning. The desert had changed little, but the position of the sun had, coloring the skies in pinks, purples and reds. He considered if he had just shifted through time. He might have shifted into a parallel universe for all he knew.

He wondered where he was now.

An Australian Army Bushmaster drove in from the horizon. It took twenty minutes to reach Peel, and it stopped only a few meters in front of him. Two officers clambered out of the vehicle. He recognized both of them.

“Major General Hyatt. Lieutenant Shelby.” Peel snapped off a salute.

“It’s Lieutenant General now, Peel, and Donna Shelby here is a Major.”

Peel looked at his two colleagues again. Seen up close, they both looked older. About ten years older.

“What happened?” Peel asked, disorientated.

“You vanished,” answered the attractive but nerdy Major Shelby, who was little more than a raw recruit when Peel had last known her. She would be in her early thirties now. “You disappeared for seven years.”

“We thought you were dead, that the Impossible Object had claimed you too.”

Peel spun in a circle. He couldn’t believe what had happened to him. Only moments before in his timeline, he had been battling with the Major General — no Lieutenant General — insisting that the C-17 not land. So much had changed.

“The Impossible Object?” he asked.

“Not long after you disappeared, it taught us how to build a wormhole. Then it vanished.”

“And the Americans have been using the technology in secret for years now,” Donna Shelby added, “as have we.”

“And the City? Pnakotus?”

“We searched, and we searched, but we found nothing more inside.”

“What day is it? What year?”

They told him. He had lost seven years.

“And how did you know to find me here? I mean, this is the desert. This is the middle of nowhere.” He was rambling. He felt utterly disorientated.

Shelby came to Peel’s side, offered him a supporting arm. “You’re in shock.”

“How did you find me?”

“You phoned me, two days ago.”

“What? When?”

“Two days ago. Don’t you remember? You told me exactly where and when we were to find you, and then where to send you next.”

——

Monday, April 16, WGI Offices, New York, United States

Special Agent Curtis Fulton enjoyed being the boss, and doubly so today. This particular day was special because he was in charge of a team of fine Defense Intelligence Agency criminal investigator agents, prepped to make an important arrest. Sure, he’d taken down Russian and Chinese spies in his day, but never did he think he’d have the fortune of arresting one of America’s corporate highfliers.

Outside of his work, Fulton had a wife who hadn’t talked to him in months, a daughter with anorexia in rehab, and a son who was a boy-toy for a woman twice his age. His job with the DIA was the only part of his life he felt proud of, and he wasn’t about to give that up. If he played his cards right, today just might be his day. As far as he knew, no one had ever handcuffed the Chief Executive Officer of a company as large as WGI. He was going to make history.

His team threatened the building’s security with legal speak, ignored reception and were downright rude to the personal assistant. Then they barged into the CEO’s office. The first thing Fulton noticed was that the spacious interior commanded excessive wealth. He expected this, but not the magnificent view of Central Park in the spring, a desk carved of the finest oak, high-backed chairs fashioned from the softest leather, and several Impressionist paintings centered on walls that the public would never see.

“Mr. Bradley Westmorton, you are under arrest for contravention of the Environmental Protection Act—”

He didn’t get to finish.

The man in the CEO’s desk wasn’t Westmorton. In his place sat a muscular red haired military officer, a US Army General, with deep cold eyes and a motionless complexion, comfortable in the high-backed chair. His fingers formed a cage and tapped silently to an unheard rhythm. Most unsettling, the stranger remained unfazed by the many side arms pointed at his head.

Fulton found it hard to read this man, and not just because the sun silhouetted his features rather efficiently. Around him, fellow DIA agents were as perplexed as he, all waiting to see how their boss would rectify this now bungled arrest. With a deep sigh, Fulton knew that if he didn’t salvage an outcome from the situation, his career was as good as over.

“You are Special Agent Curtis Fulton of the DIA,” the military man stated.

“Who the hell are you?” Fulton shouted back.

“My name is General Byrd Coaldale, and I am authorized to tell you I’m with the National Security Council. It is my purpose here today to represent the President of the United States. He commanded me to give you this copy of a letter he signed several months ago.” Ever so calmly, the shadowy man pointed to a single piece of paper on the oak desk between them. The paper bore a White House letterhead signed by the most powerful man in the world.

“It’s a pardon, right?” Fulton couldn’t believe it, “for Westmorton himself?”

Coaldale nodded. “And I have to warn you, Mr. Westmorton is a valued friend of the President. We are working with him on a Top Secret project, classified well above any authority held by you or your team. That is all I am authorized to say.”

“This is a load of shit.” Fulton’s face flushed with anger. “Nuclear and toxic waste are being dumped all over the world. Waste we commissioned WGI to dispose of in a safe and non-toxic manner, and then they failed to do so. And now you’re telling me I can’t touch Westmorton despite all the evidence that says we should lock him away forever?”

The man stood. He straightened his crisp uniform, cracked his neck with a flick of his head, and smiled with a lipless mouth. “That’s precisely what I’m telling you, Agent Fulton. Now, if you will excuse me.”

No one stopped him as he confidently exited the office, although Fulton wanted to put a bullet in the smug prick’s leg, just to show him that no one was untouchable.

“What are you all looking at?” he yelled at his officers, slack-jawed, watching a stranger get one better of their boss. “All of you; return to the Field Office right now.”

Smarting, Fulton grabbed the Presidential letter as they departed. Even seeing it up close, held in his own hands, he still couldn’t believe it. So the President and the Pentagon were covering up WGI’s activities in the desert. He’d uncovered rumors that WGI’s new technology was being tested for potential application as a new and devastating weapon. Fulton couldn’t imagine what. But it couldn’t be any worse than what was out of the bag already. Could it? The only thing he knew for sure was that he was going to find out.

As he stormed from the corporate mega-complex, a single thought filled Fulton’s mind. No one breaks the law, not even the leader of the free world.

Justice would be done.

——

Monday, April 16, MacDonnell Ranges, Northern Territory, Australia

The Australian Army Blackhawk helicopter unsettled the red dust as it touched down in the outback. The landing point was between two remote mountain ranges far into the hot interior. In his new Disruptive Pattern Desert Print uniform, Major Peel stepped out of the helicopter, head down to avoid the lethal blades flicking the hot air, slicing the sunlight like a strobe light.

He surveyed the terrain of palms amongst gum trees. The vegetation appeared out of place so far from the coast, but they had to be natural since the palms were thriving everywhere. Then Peel understood why he looked, and why he asked himself such questions; he was recording the lay of the land as his special military training had taught. It was instinctive.

Away from the deafening noise, eight archaeologists waited in shorts, t-shirts and sandals. Their skin was like parchment worn away by the harsh sun. Large bellies suggested they enjoyed a few too many beers each night, and the dirt on their skin and clothes told of the need for a bath.

“Mr. Peel, glad you could make it.”

“Major. The name is Major Peel,” he responded curtly, a shock reaction from losing seven years of his life in the flash of an instant.

“Oh, right you are then, Major.” The chief archaeologist stressed the title. “Professor Laurie James is my name, from the University of Adelaide, actually.”

Peel said nothing, not caring about such details. He couldn’t get the time shift out of his mind, the seven years of human history he had missed, and he still tried to comprehend why the Impossible Object had vanished rather than destroy the universe as it had seemed set out to do.

“You’ve got something to show me?”

Laurie wiped his hands on red-stained shorts, uncomfortable now, probably unaccustomed to such abrupt responses. The Major wanted to care, but right now it was too difficult for him to do so.

“Well, yes Major, but I really don’t know where to begin.”

“You’re an archaeologist, right?”

“Um, well, yes.”

“And I’m guessing you’re in this hellhole because you’ve been unearthing some ancient Aboriginal burial site?”

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I’m just guessing.” Peel didn’t need a response. He knew he was right. Then he asked himself why he was so angry, when it should have been obvious. He wasn’t angry at these academics.

Behind him, the helicopter blades slowed. He told the pilot and crew to wait as long as it took. Without its overwhelming noise, conversation became easier, yet no one was talking. Peel looked at each one of them; eight men and women, and they all appeared to be in a state of shock. Peel wondered why he hadn’t noticed their stunned stares before. With his training as an Intelligence Corps officer, that should have been one of the first things he noticed.

“I think you better show me what you’ve found.”

They led him past their camp of four-wheel drives, tents, a marquee and three grunting camels. Beyond, inside a gap between the rising red cliffs, the dipping sun cast deep shadows. When Peel stepped up to this crevasse, the archaeologists let him be the one to go first. They knew something he didn’t.

Checking that his new Glock 9mm pistol remained holstered over his left hip, Peel scoffed and vanished into the shadows. Despite the overhanging rock, the jagged openings above shone blue, providing plenty of light to show the way. After a few dozen meters, the gap led into a roughly circular cave. Peel was in awe of the site.

On the rock walls, Aboriginal paintings were of many hands, and of men and animals displaying internal organs and enlarged sexual members. He’d seen his fair share of indigenous art in his time, but each depiction here disturbed Peel. He couldn’t say why exactly, except that their stylized forms appeared warped and mutated, twisting the anatomies beyond any natural angle. Then he noticed that all their eyes looked down on the sandy earth, toward the center where perhaps three dozen Aboriginal skeletons lay on top of each other, suggesting a mass grave.

The archaeologists had been busy. String lines, tags and measuring sticks gave coordinates for every bone, numbered in the thousands. But what would a military man — whose specialty was anti-terrorism, military intelligence, and Code-89 extraterrestrial sentient being intrusions — need to learn from any of this?

“What am I looking at?” Peel asked Laurie, now standing at his side.

“Look again, Major, look at the bones.”

He did what he was told, and at last saw the truth. Understanding now, Peel gulped, sucked in the hot air. The bones weren’t individual; skulls had merged, femurs had split into y-shaped abnormalities, arms ended in three or more hands, and ribs had over-inflated into cages the size of oil barrels.

“We dated this burial at about two hundred years. The dryness here preserved them that long, and the angle of the overhang ensured that almost no rain fell on those rare occasions that a storm passed through, so there is very little decay. But those aren’t Aboriginals; you see a Caucasian male, an Asian female, a Caucasian female, African male, but mostly though they are Caucasian men.”

Peel felt his own mouth twist unnaturally, sensing now the source of unease that these archaeologists had lived with for several weeks now. “How can you tell?”

“Well, there are tests we can run, but more compelling are the ID badges, plastic watch bands, mobile phones, and radiation danger warning tags.”

“What?” scoffed Peel again, not believing a word of it. “You found those in there?”

He looked back at the pit, and remembered he wasn’t seeing several dozen human bodies, but one giant organism.

“We also found coyote and badger skeletons, Joshua trees—”

“You mean from the California deserts?”

“Yes, none of it makes any sense, does it?” He ran out of words.

Peel turned his back on the thing. If he was going to understand, comprehend this anomaly, he couldn’t do so while it transfixed him. So Hyatt and Shelby had sent him here with a purpose after all, and at last that purpose had revealed itself. This was an alien enigma that needed investigating, and perhaps it held a connection to the Impossible Object project, as Hyatt had surmised. Sure, Peel had the skills and the experience to undertake this investigation, but why fly him a thousand kilometers when there were plenty more of his colleagues who had the time, skills and resources to better understand, and who had been around for the last seven years on planet Earth?

So he asked, “Why me?”

“Oh,” said Laurie, at last relaxing back into his casual self. “I’m certain that has to do with the Polaroid photograph we found. You want to see?”

——

Wednesday, May 30, WGI Nevada Facility, Sarcobatus Flat, Nevada

“Shit! What was that?”

Bruce Ringwood rubbed his eyes. He was afraid to open them to learn the intense flash of light had been powerful enough to blind them all.

His eyes tightly shut, Ringwood recalled the events of those last few seconds before the flash. One thing was certain; the dazzling light had originated from the machine, escaping from the ‘Trash Wormhole’ or ‘Westmorton’s Portal’ as his team of researchers and engineers had dubbed it. Today they had just disposed of eighteen tons of encased plutonium paid for by a Washington State nuclear power plant, and that eradication had proceeded without a hitch. But there had never been flashes before, which was worrying.

Now faced with the realization he might be blind, Ringwood considered just how stupid they had all been. No one in WGI had seriously contemplated what might wait on the other side of the wormhole. Their calculated guesses suggested that the gravitational field inside was powerful enough to crush rocks into dust, so they assumed nothing could come through from the other side. But they hadn’t proved that the gravitational forces were that high. Theirs was just an educated guess. No one had considered for a moment that if aliens lived on the other side, might they disapprove of all the garbage forced upon their world?

Now something had come the other way and entered their universe.

“What are you doing?” Clara Arevalo’s voice revealed a nervous edge, louder and clearer in his ears than he’d ever heard her before. “Are you okay?”

Arevalo was the most gifted theoretical physicist on his team. He admired her so he wanted to answer out of respect, but he couldn’t make his lips move.

“You were standing very close, Bruce. Real close.”

“Was I?”

“Do they hurt? Can you open your eyes?”

He did, immediately surprised that he could see. Then surprised a second time by what he could see: everything.

The laboratory and the field-generating torus containing the wormhole was just as it had been a few moments ago, but he could see all of it at once! From all sides, behind every corner, and as if he were floating in the sky above, looking down. Details flooded his senses. He saw between every folded wire and into every microchip.

Worried and excited both, his vastly expanded senses drew him everywhere, into every drawer of every desk and under every tray or piece of paper scrawled with thousands of calculations. Simultaneously, he could read all the words on all the pages of their manuals and field notes, race through the ancient texts provided by the Australians entitled the Yithian Calculations. It was this alien text which had taught them how to build this machine and, reading it, only now did Ringwood understand the multitudes of information within that they’d all failed to comprehend.

But it was Clara Arevalo who surprised him the most. Although he saw her clearly in her lab coat and wire-frame glasses, he could also perceive all her body’s skin and inside her flesh where every muscle, nerve, and bone were visible from all angles. Her veins were the most disturbing, pushing blood to every corner of her body. Her heart pumped wildly, like an animal trapped in a fight-or-flight dilemma.

“What’s up, Bruce? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He couldn’t resist, he just reached out and touched her heart.

And he could hear her screaming long before she had opened her mouth, because he’d perceived that long before it happened too.

——

Wednesday, May 30, DIA Field Office, Los Angeles, California

“Where did you find him?” Special Agent Fulton asked as he marched past the messenger rookie. He expected the younger man to continue with his verbal report while together they descended into the basement where they detained the suspects. Despite recent setbacks, Fulton felt slightly better this morning, because he’d just heard that the team had arrested a high-ranking foreign spy. Fulton would not miss this interrogation opportunity because a rookie dallied as he finished his monologue.

“Sir, we observed him outside the WGI headquarters, staking it out. He was a professional too, almost slipped through our net.”

“Saudi? Israeli?”

The officer shook his head.

“Iraqi? Russian?”

“Would you believe Australian, sir?”

Fulton slowed, but only for a second, “An ally, well I’ll be damned.” He pulled at his collar and the dark necktie that strangled his throat. The necktie his wife loved, and he hated. Still, it made him look every part the cold government man, just the edge he required to squeeze this son-of-a-bitch for everything he knew. “What’s his cover identity?”

“Sir, his own people deny that they had anything to do with his entry into the US. They say he’s operating on his own, which means they’ve hung him out to dry.”

“Or they’re stalling. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Together they entered the observation room outside the cell. A team of analysts recorded the suspect’s every glance and gesture, studied him through the one-way mirrored glass. They’d been sweating him for several hours now.

“Sir, before you go in, I think you should look at this. We found it among his possessions.”

Fulton snatched the Polaroid photograph. No one used Polaroids anymore, not with digital cameras. When he saw the picture, he didn’t even realize that the shock of it caused him to stop marching altogether.

He had never been so stunned in his entire life.

——

Wednesday, May 30, WGI Nevada Facility, Sarcobatus Flat, Nevada

“What are you doing to me? My god your hand, my hand! My body!”

And then she screamed.

“Be silent!”

Ringwood tingled as Arevalo’s body slipped into his. The sensation was paradoxically enjoyable, yet also utterly alien. It was like pleasurable stimulation of an erogenous zone, but a zone that existed outside of his body! Even then, as he thought about it, such words did not describe the full spectrum of all the sensations assaulting his body. Horror or terror were not among the feelings he experienced, but these weren’t pleasant feelings either.

As their flesh merged, his wrinkling skin tightened under her taut olive tan. And they shared. Their arms and legs fused, dispersed, and transformed in and out of each other. He felt organs intertwine, become one as their sexuality grew into neither and both. The melding of their brains was the strangest; her mind in his and his in hers, until they really were a composite of two souls in one. No lovers could ever be this close.

Witnessing the transformation, the other scientists could do little but scream, faint, or run for their lives. But what none of them realized was that no matter which way they turned the Ringwood-Arevalo Thing could see all of them. And it would see where they would run to long before they did. Beyond the constraints of time and space, it understood the future and the past. So it let them run, let them believe they had escaped. It could see through walls, see where they would go. Even better, it could step through the wall as if it didn’t exist.

This WGI facility was a false containment, as if it and the facility were behaving as quantum particles. But the Ringwood-Arevalo Thing was much more than the building; it was a creature of higher dimensions, one of the many horrors beyond. In a single moment, stalking from both the past and the future, the two-thing consumed electrical engineer Jana Woo, and became three.

“Ah, the taste!” exclaimed what remained of the Ringwood’s mind, and flowed into Woo’s cerebrum.

——

Wednesday, May 30, Sheraton Hotel, Phoenix, Arizona

Nicola took the stairwell, descended into the underground car park. She’d long guessed that if someone was setting her up, they would watch for her in the elevators and not the stairs. When she reached the right floor, she saw no one and sighed with relief.

Like all parking garages the world over it was all concrete, oil-stained and dark. Thankfully, many hotel guests were coming and going, leaving a conference. Their conversations and beeping electronic car locks concealed her presence. With what confidence she could muster, she sought the BMW, identifying the license plate that she’d committed to memory, and climbed into the passenger seat. Her contact waited behind the wheel.

“Jenny Kessler, what a pleasant surprise,” said Nicola. As much as she despised dealing with the world’s corporate elite, Jenny Kessler, Operations Manager of WGI’s Research and Development division, was her best lead inside the questionable corporation she so desperately wanted to bring down. Despite the butterflies in her stomach, Nicola clenched her teeth and settled in.

“If I’m seen with you,” explained the middle-aged woman, “I’ll lose my job.”

In her time, Dr. Kessler had been a world-renowned engineer who’d won many awards. But not anymore; Kessler had sold out to fat paychecks and corporate prestige. Nicola had been milking their relationship for what it was worth, but she could only squeeze a little at a time. She didn’t want Kessler to feel threatened and then run.

But today the tables had turned. Kessler had requested a secret meeting to hand over important and incriminating documents. Who could turn down such an offer?

Nicola straightened her posture before she said, “You’re with me now.”

“Exactly, and I hate that.” She locked the doors, twisted the stereo knob, increasing the volume. “I only talk to you Nicola, because I’m a concerned citizen like most decent people.”

Nicola did her best to sound sincere. “I’m here to help, Jenny.”

“Can you? Do you know what a space-time wormhole is, an Einstein-Rosen Bridge?”

Nicola knew enough about nuclear physics and quantum mechanics to have an inkling of what Kessler was talking about, but really it all sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. So she said nothing.

“I didn’t think so. But let me tell you, young lady, a wormhole is exactly what Westmorton has built himself in the middle of the Nevada desert.”

Nicola shrugged, which only made Kessler angrier.

“I see you still don’t get it. What I’m talking about, dear, is a gateway to another dimension.”

“This is a joke, right?” Nicola didn’t believe any of this, didn’t want to. When Kessler didn’t respond, Nicola was certain she was the butt of a joke. If she went to the press with this crazy story, she’d immediately lose any credibility that she had, and so would the FBI. She had to hand it to her foe; this was the most novel means of eradicating a nosy government official yet. This left her only with the option of stepping out, walking away.

“Wait,” Kessler had her by the arm, pulling her back. She passed over a file, which Nicola opened. Inside were many engineering drawings and technical manuals. In a few minutes she interpreted that they concerned a doughnut shaped device. She knew enough science to realize it was a particle accelerator, or something very similar. If the associated energy equations were correct, the device was generating enough power to fuel a small star.

“You take that to the press, your government. Hell, maybe even another government if you have to. These documents prove that Westmorton can do what I just said.”

“Why are you giving them to me?”

Her grin was malicious. “We know all about you, Ms. Mulvaney, and your recent expeditions across the globe. You want to know where all that toxic waste comes from. I know you’ve correctly deduced that it’s the waste WGI has been purchasing of late, but what you can’t figure out is how it is finding its way into so many strange places, and has materialized so far into the past. Waste wiped out an executive meeting in Hong Kong last week when a ton of irradiated fuels materialized in their boardroom.”

“But—”

“This tells you how all that garbage got out there. All of it! Now go.”

Kessler pushed the FBI Special Agent out of the car and then locked the door. Nicola had wanted to ask more, much more, and now she’d missed her chance. Considering the older woman’s desperate state, they’d probably never talk again. Still, the WGI documents were firmly in her hands. They had to count for something.

She watched as the car drove toward the exit. When it reached the boom gates, she heard a popping noise, three distinct sounds like an engine backfiring. Curious, Nicola looked back and saw the cashier at the gate dash from his post, vanishing into the stairwell. It took a few moments to realize that Kessler’s BMW wasn’t moving.

Screaming erupted from a passerby who glanced inside the car. Nicola guessed why. She should run now so no one would remember her. But morbid curiosity pulled her toward the car like iron drawn to a magnet.

She only covered half the distance before she saw what remained of Kessler’s face: red, meaty, with too much blood.

Mind made up, Nicola didn’t stop. She just kept walking.

——

Wednesday, May 30, FBI Field Office, Los Angeles, California

Fulton stormed into the interrogation room. He threw the disturbing Polaroid on the table where his suspect could see it. They’d been sweating the Australian long enough, so hopefully he was ready to talk. More time would have been better, but he couldn’t wait much longer. He needed to know how Peel possessed this picture of both of them, standing side by side, when they’d never met.

“Recognize this?”

Peel nodded.

“My name is Special Agent Curtis Fulton, of the DIA. I know you are Major Harrison Peel of the Australian Army Intelligence Corps. I know that as a spy your entry into the United States was unsanctioned and against all the treaties that our two countries have signed. What I don’t understand,” Fulton pointed to the photograph, “is this.”

Peel locked eyes with his captor, “You know what, Special Agent Fulton, neither do I. Not fully.”

Fulton felt hot under the collar. “Do I know you?”

“I doubt it. I’m very good at remembering names and faces, and I’m pretty sure we’ve never met.”

Fulton rubbed his chin while he contemplated what to say next, because Fulton was also skilled at remembering names and faces, and didn’t recall ever meeting Peel. Obviously, they had, because here was the photograph to prove it, but for the life of him Fulton could not remember where or when this happened. It looked too recent to have been so easily forgotten.

“It’s an interesting picture though,” Peel responded casually. “Look at what I’m wearing, and what you’re wearing. It’s exactly what we’ve chosen to wear today.”

Fulton looked again. His surprise that Peel was correct brought wide eyes. “Is this some kind of scam?”

“I’ll bet you whatever you want that if you get one of your mates to find a camera — not a digital camera mind you — and take a picture of the two of us standing side by side, we’ll have an exact match in that photo. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying that any analysis you care to make will show that the two photographs are identical, except one is several hundred years older than the other, because this one I found preserved in an archaeological site in Australia. What do you say?”

“I’d say you’re a nut-case,” To calm his mind, he sat for a few moments. He should make Peel wait. Fulton would insist he wait all day if he could, but unfortunately the recent tragic development changed all that. Time was not something that favored him anymore. He called an underling on his cellular, requesting a man to bring him one of the office’s old Polaroid cameras. “Let’s just say I’ll humor you, Peel.”

“Okay,” Peel leaned forward. “While we wait, how about I humor you too?”

“Be my guest.”

“I’d say you’ve been watching WGI for some time now, because you know they’re up to something suspicious. You’re not sure what, but you suspect it has something to do with their new waste plant in Sarcobatus Flat. You’re worried that the NCS, the Pentagon, and even your own people in the DIA are deliberately keeping you out of the loop on what’s really going on there, and you’re not sure why. Worst of all, in a few moments you’re going to find out that some kind of disaster is about to occur at the Nevada Facility, and that because of fate, you’re the only one who can stop it. Actually, a correction there, you and I are the only ones who can stop it.”

Fulton’s face felt hot. “And I’d say you’re talking a lot of bullshit, Peel.” His words lacked conviction, because he didn’t sense that Peel was talking a lot of bullshit. It troubled him that the Australian was actually making sense.

“I’ll prove it to you if you like.”

Fulton frowned. “And how would you do that?”

“Call this number,” Peel recited a cellular phone number. “It’s in Thailand, so it might take a moment or two to get through. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

“All right, Peel. I’ll call the number, just to keep humoring you.” Fulton exited, leaving Peel to contemplate his predicament alone.

Back in the observation room, Fulton’s colleagues gave him strange looks, as if to say they didn’t understand either. Fulton only shrugged. The Australian operative had unnerved Fulton, not because he was resisting all attempts to make him talk, but because he read Fulton’s situation so well.

It was as if Peel had a window into the future. It just wasn’t possible for him to know that there had been an explosion at the WGI Facility, as the DIA had arrested him and held him in solitary confinement before that had happened. And then there was the photograph, even more troubling, since Fulton knew they had never met before. And yet there they were, both of them wearing the same clothes as they wore today.

He dialed the number as soon as one of his men confirmed that it was Thailand.

“Hello?”

The voice sounded familiar, very familiar.

“Who am I speaking to?”

“Ah, Agent Fulton. You haven’t guessed already? My name is Major Harrison Peel.”

——

Thursday, May 31, Capital News America Studios, Las Vegas, Nevada

“This is Lisa Knight of Capital News America, broadcasting live from the studio where we’ve just received an unconfirmed report that WGI’s waste treatment plant in Nevada has fallen victim to what might be an act of terrorism. Eye-witnesses report the plant and associated research laboratories are on fire after a series of blasts. They report several dozen people dead, with many more injured. Exact numbers are unknown. Mike Daggett, our correspondent at the scene, has further updates. Mike, are you there?”

“Yes, Lisa.”

“Mike, what can you tell us about the explosion? Was it a terrorist attack?”

“Well Lisa, a terrorist attack was the first speculation, but now WGI and the Pentagon are both stating that this is an industrial accident.”

“Does this accident have anything to do with the controversial Zero Waste Technology in operations at the Sarcobatus Flat Facility?”

“Yes. Well, no… Although official word has been forthcoming from the Pentagon or WGI, it seems likely that there is a connection.”

“Our thoughts here as well, Mike. Wait, we’re just getting some aerial footage. Disturbing images, reminiscent of the Chernobyl disaster in ‘86. It looks like half of one structure has totally collapsed, and there are people who… Wait, I’m losing the picture.”

“We have heard that the Army is currently investigating the site, causalities and—”

“Mike, are you there? You are breaking up.”

“Yes… We… More bodies…”

“Mike?”

——

Thursday, May 31, Downtown, Phoenix, Arizona

Men in black suits and pointed guns hoisted Nicola into the black sedan before she could react. Inside, one man with a shaved head and casual attire sat without moving. He gave her a faint smile. Outside, the senior of the two black-suits waved along concerned pedestrians with the authority of his government badge. When that agent joined them, she realized they trapped her between their two solid bodies.

As the sedan sped off, the black-suited agent brought Kessler’s files into view. He wasn’t good looking like the bald man and his behavior was gruff and agitated, reminding her of an old flag left to tatter in the wind for too many years. The bald man with the piercing eyes was the opposite; calm and still.

“G’day, Nicola,” he spoke as if they’d always known each other. “Sorry about this, but I had to prove a point to my colleague here.”

The car turned a corner, smoothly entered the streaming traffic. The bald man with the Australian accent advised Nicola to put on her seatbelt. She did, thankful that they had not cuffed her.

“I’m not your colleague, Peel,” said the man in the black suit. He opened the files, looked at the technical drawings and noted the WGI approval stamps.

Nicola had studied the manual and drawings through the night. She failed to comprehend what they meant, but comprehended enough to understand that Kessler might just have been telling the truth. And if the report’s summary findings weren’t a joke, this was a design based on alien technology discovered by a joint American-Australian operation in Australia’s Great Sandy Desert seven years ago.

“Did you know that we have pinpointed you at the scene of a crime, a murder to be more specific? No? We also believe that garage was the place where you illegally gained access to these files.”

Nicola didn’t know what to say or do. Didn’t know if she should even try to run. “That death had nothing to do with me. Plus, I’m a Federal law enforcement agent, and my investigation is none of your business.”

“But you know what I’m talking about.”

“Who are you people?”

“I’m Special Agent Curtis Fulton, DIA, and this is Harrison Peel from Australia, joining me under no official capacity, but helping with our inquiries. So Nicola, I’ll ask again, how did you come across these classified documents?”

She looked at Peel, who was glancing behind them. Did he expect a tail? “Confidential informants leaked it to me. I’ve broken no laws.”

“Really? I can think of several.”

“How did you know I had those documents, Agent Fulton? I haven’t told a soul.”

Peel laughed, more gently than she expected. “That’s easy, Ms. Mulvaney, you’re the one who told me.”

“What? When?”

“Oh, only last week.”

——

Thursday, May 31, WGI Limited Nevada Facility, Sarcobatus Flat, Nevada

The Many-Thing grew ever larger, expanding at an exponential rate, shifting and reshaping. Always, it was forming in and out of the past and from the future, melding with the unseen dimensions. But in the human visible realm, the US Army soldiers firing artillery that was vainly attempting to eradicate its existence could not know that the Many-Thing perceived effect before cause. It could move outside of the path of destruction before injuries ever occurred… mostly. There was much artillery firing at its mass. But it was growing faster than they could harm it. And it could jam their radio signals if it chose to; playing havoc with their communications, scrambling their commands.

From its many mouths, it laughed.

As the Many-Thing grew, it also absorbed greater knowledge. Now that it had demolished the laboratories and surrounding buildings, it rolled into the deserts. Initially, it was a life-form fashioned only from humans by the hundreds, but now it had an unbroken wilderness of organic material to absorb: coyotes, wolves, scorpions, ants, cactuses, lizards, ironwoods and cat-claws. It had performed a similar cleaning on this planet billions of years ago on its timeline in the Yithian City of Archives, a mere six decades past on the linear universal timeline of this world. Time-traveling Yithians had stopped it before it had consumed the planet, but not today. Today the Yithian’s could not see it, for the Many-Thing had tricked the humans and the Yithians by arriving through a wormhole outside of the constraints of time and space.

Today it could feed quickly. It was a rolling mound of organic matter the size of an apartment building, and growth was all that mattered now. The myriad visages on the Many-Thing snarled, hissed, clicked, cried and begged.

For a fleeting moment, Ringwood rediscovered who he was, who he had been and all that he ever was. There, inside the mass of the Many-Thing, all was clear. Too clear. He understood the true depths of the monstrous things they had done as one entity, not only here but on the alien world from where it had originated. On that world it had destroyed another settlement of the Great Race of Yith, before that species could flee through space and time to new bodies on a new world.

Together with the Many-Thing’s multiple minds, Ringwood also knew it remained trapped, still contained within the wormhole. It would have to grow much larger before it could break free from the mother world and create a new home here.

To answer its insatiable hunger, a fresh squad of US Marines offered themselves for absorption. When it took them, they had no time to scream. When they become part of the one, they had no time to recall who they once were. They taught the Many-Thing what other kinds of weapons that these humans might use.

“Soon,” they spoke amongst themselves, “very soon.”

——

Thursday, May 31, Nevada-Arizona State Border

The DIA jet flew fast and high in the desert sky. The outside air chopping against the portholes reminded the passengers of their speed, and that theirs was a priority flight path. Fulton yanked his tie free from his neck and tossed it to the floor. Anger burned inside him. He knew his wife was ignoring his calls. The clothes he wore were the same as yesterday’s; he hadn’t changed, he reeked, and he had not slept in that time either.

Behind him, Nicola helped Peel into a radiation suit, showing him how to be safe. She seemed taken by him, and although Peel was better at concealing his emotional state, he reciprocated the interest. Fulton hated that they were calm when he was frantic. But they knew they were going to survive, while for him the uncertainty of his immediate future could only plague his already troubled mind. He should get into his radiation suit as well, but the two identical Polaroid photographs in his hand still disturbed him far more than they should. One was less than twenty-four hours old; the other, if Peel was telling the truth, was two hundred years in the waiting. Apart from their age, every possible scientific test known to man had shown that both photographs were identical.

“Go over it again, Peel,” he almost yelled. “Convince me one more time.”

The tanned Australian officer gave him another of his grins, cold yet strangely comforting. “The three of us get in close, disable Westmorton’s portal and close the gateway. I need Nicola because she’s had time to study the gateway’s designs and believes she can pinpoint its weakness. I need to be there to deploy the heavy weaponry, because I have training in their operation. Once we destroy the gateway, the link connecting the alien entity to its own world will be severed, and it will die.”

“And you know all this because a Major Harrison Peel from the future told you what to do?”

“Look, mate, I know it sounds strange, that’s why I flew to Thailand first, to meet me first hand. And I was as freaked out as you, at first. But we have to do this, the three of us.”

Behind him, the pretty woman nodded. Fulton hated that they shared a silent understanding he could not fathom, or perhaps it was because their natural respect for each other reminded him of what he and his wife once had, decades ago.

“Then why do you need me?”

Peel stopped, looked the DIA agent in the eye. When he spoke, he spoke from the heart. “I truly don’t know.”

“Your future self said I had to be there, right?”

Peel nodded.

“But I’m not getting out safely, am I Peel? We all know that we go through that wormhole thing, you learned that much.” Fulton knew he sounded nervous, but he felt much worse. He felt terrified.

“Look, Curtis, this is going to be the easiest mission of your life, and you know why? Because we already know that we’re going to succeed.”

“We know you survive! We don’t know about me though.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Curtis. We’ve only got my word. But you know something else, I know when I’m lying, and I’m not lying about this. I could see it in my eyes.”

“So where am I then? She’s in Russia, you’re in Asia. Where am I?”

“We don’t know; somewhere in the future, perhaps. What we know is that all the disposed garbage isn’t all accounted for yet.”

“That’s right,” Nicola interrupted. She wore her radiation suit too, now that they were only minutes away from their destination. “Forty-nine percent of the garbage materializing across the globe showed up in the last few years. Only a couple of finds, like the find I made in the Amazon or the one from which Harrison took the Polaroid picture, are really old.”

Fulton marveled at how quickly she had accepted all these strange turns of events since they’d picked her up in Phoenix. But he also knew that her telephone call to herself in Moscow made her into a believer faster than anything else could, something he desperately needed. There was no other Special Agent Curtis Fulton on the planet. No one to assure him he’d be safe.

“What about the other forty-nine percent?”

Nicola smiled gently. “My educated guess is most of that will turn up in the next few years, after we close off the wormhole. So the worse-case scenario, you miss a year or two of your life.”

Peel grinned. “It happened to me.”

Fulton pulled at his hair. “This is crazy.”

Frustrated with the conversation, Peel marched up to Fulton, forcing him to look at the Polaroid photos he held in his hand. “You know that’s coming back, Curtis, so hang onto it and you’ll come back with it too.”

“Yeah, two hundred years in the past!” He’d had enough. He stormed out, locking himself in the cramped bathroom. With the door shut behind him, he smashed the mirror with his fist, cursing. Despite what Peel or Mulvaney said now, he’d heard their discrete conversation earlier, when they didn’t think he was listening.

But he had to help them.

If Fulton wasn’t with them at the end, they’d fail for sure.

——

Thursday, May 31, WGI Nevada Facility, Sarcobatus Flat, Nevada

Wormlike and chaotic, it was the size of the Titanic wobbling on the desert like a fat, overfed maggot, its skin ready to burst with disease. Thousands of faces, arms, legs, claws, tree branches, grass, bones, and every other conceivable biological entity that it had absorbed rippled in its grotesque mass. So high, and so late in the afternoon, its shadow covered the two men and one woman as they ground their military jeep to a standstill.

“Oh, my god!” exclaimed Fulton, seeing it in the flesh, so to speak, for the first time. Peel and Nicola said nothing, but they were just as stunned. Silently they shared their thoughts, knowing that they were powerless against such things not of this world.

In the sky, Black Hawk helicopters discharged their mini-guns, barely penetrated the Many-Thing. So large was this target it seemed impossible to miss, yet somehow it was always one step ahead of them. Twists and contortions in its mass mostly allowed bullets to howl around and through ridges and gaps materializing in the creature. It knew where the bullets would fly long before soldiers fired them. But there were too many bullets, and it could not dodge them all. When they hit it, it bled like any normal flesh, splattering blood and sap as sticky rain. In defense of itself, a pseudopod formed as a mixture of blood, bark, flesh and teeth, and tore down one of the Black Hawk helicopters. When it smashed into the ground, the force was so great it left only a flattened shell in the empty desert.

Peel sped forward. A contingent of US Marines had agreed to create a distraction, but they couldn’t distract the ever-growing creature for long. So far, the plan had worked, and the Many-Thing ignored Peel and the others. What Peel didn’t like was that the radiation suit limited his field of vision and that his new Glock 9mm was as effective here as a toothpick would be in chopping down a forest.

Still, the plutonium dust particles in the air were lethal, and he could always use the weapon to save Fulton if it looked like the creature would get him after all. But that’s not what the future Peel said would happen. He had been adamant that Fulton be here if they were to succeed. Peel couldn’t see why, for the DIA man seemed on the edge of a nervous breakdown, a liability in any normal operation. But if Peel had faith in anything in the world, it was in himself. Trust, he told himself again, trust and all will be as it should be.

They drove into the rubble of the WGI facility, guided toward the tail of the creature. Hissing, screaming, spitting, the many faces along its entire length saw them, and called their names.

“Over there,” Nicola pointed, hoping not to understand what she heard. She’d directed them the whole way, because no one had memorized the drawings better than she. They identified the torus, the circular ring of metal. Through the shimmering field in its center grew the mass of the monster transitioning from another dimension. The faces screamed, warned the other distant segments of the Many-Thing that the expected intruders had arrived earlier than expected. Peel could only look away, pretend that the faces and hands didn’t look or point at him.

With the vehicle stationary, Peel lifted the grenade launcher. Nicola lined up a laser-targeting gun, showed him what he needed to hit. But his only thought as he prepared, why was Fulton here? And was Fulton going to die senselessly?

“Peel, look out!”

Fulton screamed, gesturing upward. Peel saw just in time as a massive forming tentacle spilled from the sky, falling upon them. With barely seconds to spare, noticing that his companions were already out of the way, Peel rolled. Behind, out of sight, he heard the jeep shatter, then compress.

Peel wasted no more time. The ready-made tentacle was rising again, ready to strike once more. With his weapon’s sights lined up, pointing where Nicola had told him, he fired. Then the torus shattered like glass vaporizing back into sand. A thousand faces of humans, beasts, and alien monstrosities cried with a shared pain. Peel’s last thoughts, as the shock wave hit him and the world vanished from beneath his feet, was that perhaps the Many-Thing had always known its fate. That there was no future in which it could survive.

Not now.

Not today.

He fell then into a tunnel that stretched into infinity.

——

Saturday, March 24, Krabi, Thailand

Peel didn’t expect to unfold into a tropical sea current, forced up through warm water surrounded by the torn fragments of the Many-Thing as it dissipated around him. He hoped for a beach, in his hand an ice-cold beer and the beautiful Nicola by his side. Fantasy was always more pleasant than reality. And reality was bleeding, screaming and floating flesh pieces of the Many-Thing, segments that couldn’t survive now that it was no longer a single entity.

The radiation suit with its trapped air provided buoyancy, so he swam fast, moving from the carnage and the bloody gore. Only when he reached cleaner water, when he was alone, did he discard the suit and swim for the nearest limestone outcrop of a jungle-clad island.

On the sandy beach he collapsed, exhausted. He lay still for some time, unbelieving that not only had he survived against such a thing, he had traveled many thousands of kilometers through a wormhole in no time at all.

He wondered what the date was and then remembered his future self had provided that information while they drank beer in a hotel bar in Krabi. The Thai servers had assumed they were twins. The truth was far stranger than that.

“Why do I need Fulton?” Peel had asked.

“You’ll know when the time is right.”

This was the right time. Fulton had saved his life, saved them all. He hoped the DIA man made it out safely, and perhaps one day they could have a drink together, so he could thank him.

In the meantime, Peel knew what he had to do. As much as he wanted to find Nicola again, he had to wait. A fishing trawler would find him in a few days and take him to the mainland. He was thankful that he’d brought enough US dollars with him to pay his way. A forged passport, showing that he’d entered the country legally would offer no problems when he left again. And his sidearm now seemed so much more practical if an easy departure was not possible.

So he sat and waited, watching the sunset, and smiled. He had time to recall, remember. What was it he must do first?

Then he remembered. He had to call Hyatt and Lieutenant — no Major Donna Shelby, and insist they come and find him, lost in the Australian Desert.

——

Fulton screamed with many mouths as the wormhole catapulted him through the eons. He watched as the world folded in on itself, taking him with it. Stretched into spaghetti and back again, turned inside out and then folded once more until his skin was back on the outside where it should be. He witnessed the same improbable angles take Peel and Nicola as they disappeared toward their own corners of the past. But where was he now? What was this place?

Alive, that was good. He no longer had the wrong number of arms and legs, fingers and toes. He was human again.

Lying face down, his bed was a soft pliable surface. It felt warm, comforting, with a mottled shade of pinks and browns. Some distant memory, of when he was a child snuggled to his mother’s bare chest came back to him, bringing comfort. This was also reminiscent of when his head lay in his wife’s naked lap, from a time when she was young and supple and he loved her.

Then, from the skin, an eye opened.

And then another eye… and another, until there were hundreds.

Scrambling to his feet was near impossible; for he was standing on a fleshy pulsating surface. Arms, legs, sexual organs, ears, eyes, noses, bones, tentacles, everything. They erupted around him. This was the ground of this world, and it was awake now and hungry. Desperately Fulton looked up to the sky above with its wisps of gray clouds that looked normal, but it was all that was. To every horizon, everywhere, there was nothing but the ground cover of this single fleshy entity, thrashing and flaying like a violent sea.

He ran, but where to? Hands and teeth took hold of him.

Through the higher dimensions, the appendages bypassed his skin, grabbed at his bones and intestines. The absorption was rapid, his flesh melding so quickly into the creature that had not fed in such a long time.

Where am I? Fulton asked as his mind merged with the World-Thing. When am I?

They were his last thoughts as a human being, but the World-Thing answered him, anyway.

Your world, Curtis Fulton. Your future.

Tears in Yellow

Sunlight as lines of gold dappled the naked corpse as if someone painted her skin with precious metal. From the neck down she looked peaceful, like she was asleep and not a corpse. From the neck up she was eyeless, toothless and her face, skinless.

Nicola Mulvany pulled up her latex gloves and crouched down beside the corpse. “Poor woman.”

Harrison Peel watched with interest as the FBI Special Agent examined the body for clues. Mulvany was the expert criminal investigator here, not him, because his background was military and intelligence. His cover identity, however, was an FBI consultant, so he had to make up worthwhile contributions to the investigation.

After a perfunctory examination, Mulvany stood and tried not to puke. “Other than the face, no signs of physical or sexual assault.”

Peel nodded, but he felt guilty. This was a test for Mulvany. The shadowy people that pulled his puppet strings had once tested him as he now tested her. Like Peel, she’d witnessed horrors beyond the veil of mundane existence, gazed upon disturbing anomalies that had no explanation without questioning all reality, and she had come out the other side mentally and physically — mostly — intact.

Peel had been in the game for over a year now, according to his frame of reference, and had kept his mind intact — mostly, so the recruited had turned recruiter. He hoped she made it through her probationary period as he had, because the alternative was too terrifying to think about. He liked her too, respected her, and…

While Mulvany took a moment to recover, Peel’s attention turned again to the body. Superficially this could have been any mundane murder investigation, for the horrific wounds were the modus operandi of a drug cartel enforcer, but it was the subjective elements permeating this scene that spoke of an unnaturalness that a person without his experiences would not have given a second glance. The grass covering these Los Angeles foothills was all golden brown and waved like a strong wind blew through it despite the still air. The sky held a lemon-color more appropriate to sunrise or sunset, despite being a little after nine in the morning. Cars on the freeway no less than fifty meters from the murder scene were all whites, yellows and creams. Not a dark vehicle seen anywhere.

Peel grounded himself by focusing on the normal, and in this moment the normal was the painted toes on the dead woman’s bare feet.

Yellow.

When they completed their perfunctory examination, Mulvany, her FBI peers and the LAPD officers assigned to their team took to various tasks and grunt work, which was mostly comprised of a search for the woman’s clothes, purse, identification — anything that might tell them who she was and what she was doing here, and any remains of her hacked away face. The FBI led the forensics because there was a connection to a past case in Louisiana making this a Federal crime. They had placed a number tag next to the body. Exhibit 1.

Mulvany stepped back from the blonde woman who had to be mid-twenties. Young, attractive and full of life, or had been so yesterday. “Peel, you know what else I don’t see?”

Alive, the victim might have been a stunner. Peel considered a model, or an actress, but this was a dubious supposition to announce at this early stage in the investigation. “What don’t you see, Nicola?”

“Footprints.”

Peel looked around. Mulvany was correct. While their shoes and boots left imprints in the sandy paths that were a walking track snaking around these foothills, there were no bare footprints. “You’re right.”

“No drag marks either, or signs someone cleaned their tracks.”

Peel knew there had to be a clue here somewhere. A clue that explained ‘something’ that right now made no sense.

Then he saw it.

A house, or more the ruins of an old 1950s style building up on the hill, with faded yellow walls and a timber roof that had partially collapsed because of old age. This was a public reserve, and the house looked both out of place and dangerously close to collapsing into a pile of rubble. It should have had boarding around it to stop anyone entering. He pointed to it. “What do you make of that?”

Mulvany covered her eyes from the golden rays burning down on them. “Maybe it’s connected.”

They headed up the rise together, sweating when they reached the top. The ruins reminded Peel of the house overlooking Bate’s Motel in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Psycho, and just as foreboding. Nobody seemed to have lived here in a long time, and yet an aspect of the house was familiar, like Peel had been here before, or at least inside its twin from another place and time. Up close, it appeared to be in better shape than when seen from afar. “Shall we look inside?”

To their surprise, a plaque on the door said it was the property of the Californian Motion Picture Syndicate. A set piece for a movie.

Peel had never heard of them.

“We’d need a warrant to enter.” Mulvany pointed to the plaque. “Or permission.”

Peel stepped up onto the verandah. Rotten floorboards looked broken in many places, and the sand and ochre colored paint had mostly faded or chipped away. It seemed likely the movie studio had built the house to ‘appear’ run down. Peel’s eyes fell upon a set of clothes neatly folded and stacked one on top of the other, next to a pair of sandshoes by the main door. Jeans, shirt, socks, bra and panties. “Exhibit Two,” he said.

“Harrison, touch nothing.” Mulvany got on the radio and called for FBI and LAPD support.

“Shall we look, though?”

She nodded.

He slipped on latex gloves and motioned to the front door. Mulvany nodded, so he pressed on its frail wooden boards. Unlocked, it swung open.

The interior darkness was more pervasive than he expected, considering half the roof had collapsed, or had appeared to have collapsed. He tried the light switch, but it didn’t work. Streams of light shone through cracks and holes in the walls and ceilings. He took a flashlight from his belt and switched it on. Mulvany did the same.

The interior carried a dry, musty scent. The walls were just as faded on the inside, despite the boarded-up windows and patched-over roof. Despite the repairs he spotted in places, nothing looked new. The set designers had masterfully created a decrepit building. Peel noticed some walls included scribbled drawings of black stars. “You think this is a set piece, for a movie?”

“Possibly. Peel, look at that?”

Peel turned his gaze to where Mulvany pointed. A CCTV camera with a red blinking light watched the hall, and so did another at the other end of the corridor. Peel sensed they were recording even now.

“Harrison, this just gets creepier and creepier.”

“I agree.”

They checked all the rooms. There was no clutter, except for weird arrangements of single antiquated furniture pieces, one for each room. A pram. A leather armchair. An wrought iron bed without a mattress. A grand piano with no keys or strings. A lamp with faded floral patterns on the shade cloth. Each item was the centerpiece of each room and covered in the illusion of decades of dust but absent of spiderwebs. More of the CCTV cameras recorded each room.

Mulvany shuddered. “What the hell is going on here?” Then she noticed footprints in the dust. Bare feet, the size and shape of the dead woman. A quick investigation found the victim had visited every room, but hadn’t lingered long in any. No other footprints were visible.

Peel considered this might be the lair of a weird sex cult. Then he remembered the sign in the front. Perhaps the set for a low budget horror film.

“What is that?”

Again, Peel followed Mulvany’s gaze until his eyes fell upon a pattern of light and shadow cast on one wall, forming a chaotic arrangement of question and exclamation marks all originating from a single dot or period in the center. The sign seemed to… what was the work Peel was looking for… crawl across the wall? “I don’t know.” He looked for the source of the sunlight streaming in, but there wasn’t one…

Soon LAPD and FBI officers filled the house, and began photographing and cataloguing. The yellow sign vanished, and suddenly the house didn’t seem as creepy as when only Mulvany and Peel were inside.

——

They stayed just below the speed limit cruising the LA highways, with Mulvany behind the wheel of her unmarked police car and Peel in the passenger seat. The car itself featured all the usual FBI modifications including two-way radios, improved suspension and steering, armor plating, computer uplinks to many FBI databases, and bulletproof vests and shotguns in the trunk. Peel suspected they wouldn’t need any of it for this case, but it was nice to know it was there.

Sunlight reflected off the bright asphalt, enhancing the already skyrocketing daytime temperatures, despite the government car’s air-conditioning. Every sign was in miles and on the wrong side of the road, reminding Peel he was far from his home in Australia. Again, every car they passed seemed to be yellow or a variation of that color, until Peel concentrated, and then he saw the usual number of gray, black and brightly colored trucks, motorcycles, vans and sedans.

“That was creepy.” Nicola Mulvany stared across her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. Her lips quivered, and her eyes moistened. With sweat on her brow, she turned to Peel and grimaced. “No one believes you are an FBI consultant. You don’t pull off ‘American’ very well.”

Peel coughed out a laugh. “I thought my accent was pretty good.”

“Accent,” she said with a laugh. “The accent is fine. It’s just everything you do that’s…”

“Unamerican?”

She nodded.

For a time they drove in silence, with Mulvany occasionally glancing at the satellite navigation system, so they remained on route to the head office of the Californian Motion Picture Syndicate.

“How do these… people you work for, know this case was going to… might be… supernatural?”

Peel shuddered. He’d sensed much earlier than she had this investigation promised an unpleasant outcome, or at least included elements that logic or science could never explain. It was the previous case in Louisiana that had tipped his people off. Like the old case, circumstances would deteriorate before they got better. If they got better. His secret fear was that he, or she, might not come out on the other side alive or ‘human’.

“Code-89 is not so much an organization, Nicola, but a collective of military personnel, law enforcement, intelligent operatives, scientists, engineers, medical professionals, and so on, tagged and recruited by one of the Five Eyes governments as part of a secret network. There are budgets, buildings, servers, weapon inventories, laboratories, letterheads, memos and so forth, but they are diffuse—”

“Five Eyes, you mean the intelligence sharing network between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand?”

Peel nodded. “There are hubs, or groups employed directly in the Code-89 ‘organization’. I report through to the Canberra hub, but I’m still officially with the Australian Army.”

“If you’re Australia-based, why are you here, ‘mentoring’ me through my induction?”

He took a moment to frame his answer. Mulvany was as skilled in her areas of expertise as he was in his. He didn’t want to come across as condescending. “Your first ‘experience’ you shared with me, but it wasn’t my first experience. The Code-89 powers feel that recruits cope better if they share their next mission with an individual they know, who has experienced the same horrors they have. Someone they can talk to without feeling it’s all in their head, or who question their sanity.”

Mulvany shuddered. “I didn’t choose this.”

Peel felt his chest tighten, and imagined what his life might be like now if he remained naïve to the true, horrific nature of the universe. The house on the hill reminded him of a past from before, when in a moment his life had seemed perfect. “I don’t think anyone does. But would you go back? Can you keep existing, knowing there are horrors out there that could destroy us all, and then do nothing about it?”

“And what do we hope to achieve, this group that investigates horrors no one understands? Do we try to understand it? Control it?”

Peel shuddered, remembering his experiences in Cambodia and the Australian desert. “Shut it down wherever we can. That’s all we can ever hope to do. Understanding never works.”

——

The Californian Motion Picture Syndicate office block was in a modest and semi-respectable part of town, but far from the big-name studios where they would have garnered more credibility. Mulvany suspected they were a struggling middle player. A quick search on the internet revealed CMPS specialized in independent films, from noir crime to horror, erotica and romance. Their top films had a few positive reviews, but nothing stood out. A middle schooler desperate to be a college sophomore.

Mulvany flashed her FBI shield and showed the photo of the dead woman to the young, twenty-something receptionist who was all legs and large breasts. Their Federal authority secured an immediate interview with the producer of their latest production, Tears in Yellow. When the receptionist took them to Bryce McGarry’s expansive office, Mulvany felt immediately repulsed by him. He was shorter than her, middle-aged with a gut that was softening, dark black hair tied in a man-bun and a beard that looked like it belonged to a Confederate soldier. His pin-striped suit looked worth about a thousand dollars, and she noticed he didn’t wear socks. If McGarry’s goal was to leave an impression, he’d succeeded, but not the right one. She didn’t know why she disliked him, but her skin itched all over just looking at him.

“Casey Roswell,” McGarry said as he sipped at his latte with a leaf pattern in the milk. “Actress, we were looking to cast in the main role for Tears in Rain. You said someone murdered her?”

Mulvany watched the producer’s reaction to the news. The man displayed no emotions. He was more interested in the taste of his coffee. “How did her corpse end up in one of your CMPS sets?”

McGarry didn’t answer at first. They she saw it. His guilt. His nonchalance projection was covering a secret. He scratched an itch on his neck. “We thought she just ran away. It’s odd, because she really wanted it. The part I mean. Casey had a hunger to act like I’d never seen before.”

“You didn’t look for her, when she went missing? A naked woman? You just left her there in the middle of nowhere?” She glanced at Peel, who was doing a fine job of keeping his mouth shut but projecting an aura of power and disgust McGarry was surely picking up on, keeping the witness unsettled.

McGarry shuffled in his seat. “It wasn’t like that. The crew and me. We looked for Casey for hours, but we couldn’t find her. We tried calling her cell phone, but you know, she didn’t have it on her. So we left her clothes and things just in case she came back.”

“But you didn’t report her missing to the police?” Mulvany said with every muscle tensing. McGarry was like the uncle who all the siblings and cousins liked because he paid attention to them, but made all the parents’ hair stand on end and skin crawl because he liked children in all the wrong ways. “You want to explain what you were doing there?”

“It was an audition. A test, if you will. We’ve done it before. We ask a young, attractive woman to strip and explore that creepy house naked, and act in character at the same time. The vulnerability unsettles, but if you can find an actress who can cope under those circumstances, you’ve potentially got yourself a winner. Particularly for this film, and its subject matter.”

“Audition through endurance?” Peel asked, speaking for the first time, his voice emotionless but powerful.

McGarry swallowed, then nodded. “You could say that.”

Mulvany soon formed the opinion the Californian Motion Picture Syndicate was likely a viable business only because they produced porn films on the side. She didn’t speak for a moment, fumed at this creepy man who got off on the vulnerability of women he could control.

McGarry sipped at his latte. “Look, Casey signed a contract, gave us permission to film her like this. And you can watch the footage the CCTV cameras recorded. We’ve already watched it, and I can tell you, she just walked out, and…”

“And she just disappeared?” Mulvany said.

McGarry nodded.

“I take it this isn’t the first woman you’ve filmed nude in this house.”

The producer grinned. “No, probably fifty women.”

“No men?” she asked as she gritted her teeth.

“Well… The part is for a woman.” When Mulvany and Peel kept quiet, he said, “Okay, Detective—”

“Special Agent. I’m with the FBI.”

He nodded. “Special Agent Mulvany. Yes, I admit it, it’s a perk of the job. I get to look at lots of beautiful young women without their clothes on. That’s not a crime. It’s not a crime to sleep with them either, when they throw themselves at me.”

Peel leaned forward and pressed his muscular arms into the table, like he could break it if he chose to. “Do they sleep with you, not because of your charm or good looks, but to secure a big part on one of your films?”

McGarry leaned back and folded his arms. “It’s all consensual. They are all of age. I make sure of that.”

“I bet you do.” Mulvany made a growling noise in her throat.

“Look, it’s how the industry works. Everyone knows it. The best actresses know how to tease, give in only when they get what they want.” His eyes lingered on Mulvany. “You are a stunner. Have you ever considered a career in acting? Do you want to audition in that creepy set piece?”

Mulvany stiffened and leaned back. For a second, she considered what it would be like, to be naked and vulnerable like that, and part of her became aroused by the thought. But then she remembered why women always found such scenarios creepy. On a date, all a man had to worry about was rejection and hurt feelings. For a woman, she only had to worry about rape, assault and even murder if she chose the wrong guy. ‘Domestic violence’ they called it, and it was rife through all socioeconomic groups the world over. Yes, Mulvany decided, she would walk naked through a house like that, if it weren’t so creepy and she felt attraction and emotional connection to the man who watched her, and if he desired her. But McGarry, he was in this for his own titillation, clear by the lack of emotional response to Casey’s brutal murder. He made the whole scenario disgusting to contemplate.

She crossed her arms. “Mr. McGarry, we’ll need access to all the footage of Casey Roswell, plus all footage of any other women you’ve shot there going back six months.”

McGarry grinned. “That’s a lot of naked women. Didn’t know you were into that kind of thing, Detective.”

She wanted to punch him in the jaw, but that would be an assault. “Special Agent, and no, I’m not interested. I need statements from your crew that day, who was there to verify all your movements.” She provided a wide time range because forensics could not yet determine an accurate time of death. “We’ll send a detective around to take all your statements.”

“Okay. The videos, I can get you copies now, on a thumb drive if you like?”

Mulvany nodded. “Don’t leave LA, Mr. McGarry. We will have further questions.”

Peel leaned forward, “And a copy of the script.”

The request surprised Mulvany, not understanding the relevance, but Peel was more experienced at the ‘supernatural’ elements of these types of investigations than she was, so she let it pass.

For the first time, McGarry looked put out by their questioning. “Tears in Rain? Its confidential, and I spent a fortune securing the rights. If a script got into the hands of our competitors… or onto the Internet…”

“It won’t,” said Mulvany. “We’ll wait here until you’re done collecting everything we’ve requested.”

——

Mulvany and Peel returned to the local FBI office and booked a viewing room. Thirty-eight ‘auditions’ filled three hard drives. With a monumental task ahead of them, Mulvany offered to grab coffees for both of them. Peel thanked her.

During their drive back, Peel had flipped through the script, determined the story involved a love triangle between two women, a bisexual named Camila, the lesbian Cassilda, and a straight man called the Stranger. The language was pretentious and hinted at a deeper meaning without delivering much, and it seemed to be little more than art-house erotica. Peel didn’t understand why McGarry, in his own words, had spent a small fortune for the rights. As he waited for Mulvany now, he flipped through the script again. Peel had at first assumed a man had written the script, based on its style and depiction of women, by when he checked the scriptwriters name, it surprised him her name was Ellie Darcy.

“Why did you request the script?” Mulvany asked when she returned. “Does it confirm McGarry is the pervert I thought he was?”

Peel shrugged. “The script is sex-obsessed. The last scene in the first act takes place inside a lodge called the Black Star, that exactly resembles the house we investigated. Camila, the protagonist, explores the house and loses her clothes early on.”

“So, it is a set piece.”

“Looks that way.”

Mulvany nodded and sat next to Peel beside the monitor. And much closer to him than he would have expected. “Shall we watch this?”

They played the video files. The quality was better than Peel expected and the focus superb. A nude Casey walked from one room to the next. At first, she appeared apprehensive, held her hands to her breasts to cover them, and took cautious steps. She jumped at every noise and visibly trembled. The camera seemed to record in the infrared because of the poor light, but instead of relaying a gray-scale image, shades of yellow bathed everything.

In the room with the leather armchair, she acted out a conversation with a man in the chair. The audio was clear and Peel confirmed that Casey played the part of Camila. Her acting was sufficient but nothing special, and it was surreal watching her converse with thin air. The one-sided conversation lasted eleven minutes before she moved on.

In the next room, with an empty wrought iron bird cage hung from the ceiling, Casey talked to the imaginary pet bird. The actress had relaxed since the last room and her acting came across as more natural and engaging. She’d grown used to her nudity and had settled into her role, although Peel didn’t remember so much nudity in the script. She was an attractive woman, and despite her undress, it struck Peel how decadent and unerotic each scene was. The sensation that gripped him was more akin to watching a cat rush across a multilane highway, wondering if it would make it to the other side alive.

When Casey entered the third room with the pram, she squealed with fright. Then she stumbled backwards, pressed her back against the wall, sweated and shook with fear. She nodded several times as if again talking with another person, but answered only with nods or shakes of her head. Then she took a long moment to compose herself.

Peel felt an unseen presence in the room truly terrified her. Or she was a far superior actress compared to the previous two deliveries. Now Casey recited a poem, describing a lake with still waters reflecting black stars, dual suns and a decadent city called Carcosa. Cassila had asked Camila to a party where she must attend wearing only a mask. That was the second act which Peel had yet to read. When Casey finished her delivery, the relief in her face was unmistakable, but she kept her eyes on whatever stood by the pram until she was out of the room.

In the corridor, the CCTV recorded her sobbing for a moment, and she curled into herself until she recovered.

Was she really acting?

Then he noticed Mulvany. She too appeared distraught by what she had seen.

“You okay?” Peel asked.

She nodded and wiped away the tears forming in her eyes. “It’s a kind of torture.”

“Or it’s brilliant acting.”

Mulvany looked at him like he had asked the Special Agent to perform a depraved act similar to what Casey had experienced.

They watched on. Casey moved through the rooms with a bathtub, an anatomical human skeleton, and the keyless grand piano. Her acting was okay, but nothing close to her performance with the pram. Until she stepped into the room with the lamp with the shade cloth.

It surprised Peel as much as it surprised Casey when he discovered a man waiting in the room.

At first it was hard to tell he was a man, because he stood in a corner and shadows hid most of his features. What Peel saw was a golden mask over his face without slits for the eyes or mouth. His robes were long and flowing and yellow. Physically he was unnaturally tall and thin, like an anorexic androgynous model, but with elements of masculinity. The camera never properly focused on the stranger and seemed to skip and fuzz each time the lens focused in on him.

Casey stood back from the man. Again, she trembled, shuddered as her skin turned white as if an arctic freeze had washed over her body. She held her arms close to her chest, pressed her back against the wall as before. This time her acting didn’t seem superb, but a genuine reaction to the creepiness oozing from the masked stranger standing, unmoving, in the corner.

He spoke to her, but whatever he said, it hadn’t recorded.

Casey nodded, and recited her memorized script, how she was in love with two people. A man and a woman, and couldn’t choose between them. She asked the stranger for his advice.

He must have spoken words, for while no words recorded, Casey heard them and was almost physically sick from whatever it was he had suggested. Peel couldn’t remember what the script had said here, but nothing alarming. Nothing at all like what the stranger must have spoken.

Eventually the stranger pointed to the door. Casey stepped outside, and once in the corridor, burst into tears.

“That was…” Peel searched for the word, “horrific.”

Mulvany leaned back and shook her head. “Not as horrific as the pram room.”

“What do you mean?”

She pointed to the video. “Let’s finish this. I’m not sure how much more I can take today.”

The video ended a minute later when Casey followed the corridor back to the main entrance and stepped outside. Then the screen went dark.

For a long moment, neither Mulvany nor Peel could speak.

Mulvany stood and paced. “We need to find that man. What he said to her, it terrified her.”

“I agree. Strange that McGarry didn’t mention him.”

“It could have been McGarry.”

Peel shook his head. “The stranger was too tall, too thin.” He too stood and wiped the sweat from his brow. “We should examine the lamp, see if he left any fingerprints. The film crew might not have even known the man was in the house.”

“Lamp room?” she said, frowning. “Don’t you mean the pram room?”

Peel’s heart rate sped up. “No…? What do you mean?”

“What do you mean?”

They watched the video tapes again, fast forwarding to the pram and then the lamp room, yet in both instances the stranger was absent.

Mulvany shuddered. “How the hell does that happen?”

Peel had a thousand ideas, none of which were rational.

——

Dressed in his silk dressing gown and swimming trunks, Bryce McGarry poured himself a tequila and took the shot with lemon and salt, then fell into his deck chair by his luxurious in-ground pool with a view of greater Los Angeles and onwards to the Pacific Ocean. Normally such moments brought him peace and reminded him he had made it in the film industry, or at least made enough money to live very comfortably. But tonight, he felt bothered, and he knew it involved the dead actress.

He’d told himself a thousand times since his interview with the FBI that Casey Roswell’s death was neither his fault nor responsibility. Not that he worried about arrest, too many of his crew were with him between the time she vanished and the time of discovery of her body, so they couldn’t pin the crime on him. Yet he felt responsible for her and didn’t understand why.

Casey’s audition had been weird, though. He’d watched her through the CCTV feeds in actual time, impressed by her ability to act out scenes when there was no one else in the room, particularly on two occasions. The nudity, as much as it was there to titillate him, it brought out a base level of fear in his actresses and produced greater performances. What could be more vulnerable than being naked and trapped inside a lodge that was as creepy as all fuck? And vulnerability was what he needed in his leading lady.

But if McGarry was honest with himself, he got hot every time he watched one of these auditions, even though most try-outs were porn stars hoping for a break into the world of meaningful, artistic cinema. Porn stars didn’t care about vulnerability, and their performances were mostly pathetic, and even then, he was being generous. But with Casey Roswell, something about her performance intrigued him. Her drive to be an actress was like a man dying in the desert desires a glass of water.

So how the fuck had she gone missing?

He’d watched the footage again and again, even though each time he did, the erotica diminished and the creepiness crept up in magnitude. Every time Casey stepped out through the main door where he and the crew awaited, he expected to see himself waiting for her. But she never showed. It was like she’d walked into another parallel universe or something.

McGarry and the crew had searched for hours, but there had been no sign of her, not even footprints in the soft, sandy soil. He’d left her clothes by the front door in case she returned.

McGarry guessed he should have reported her disappearance to the police, and the hot FBI Special Agent had noted his lack of interest in her well-being more than once during his interview. But Casey was an adult — he always made sure his actresses were of legal age — and their video evidence confirmed she came to no harm while inside the lodge. Technically, and legally, he wasn’t at fault, so Bryce McGarry was in the clear.

So why did he feel so guilty?

He stared out across the City of Angels. It should have been sunset, but the sky shone, and was almost white. The sun reflecting in the shimmering ocean didn’t quite line up vertically with the real flaming ball of gas suspended above it. The sea seemed flat, like an infinite pane of glass rather than a ball of churning water.

McGarry looked into his empty tequila glass and wondered how much he’d drunk tonight. Was this his fourth, fifth, or tenth shot?

A group stood by his pool, dressed in evening wear and drinking cocktails. The men were tall and handsome in fine dinner jackets and ties, the ladies elegant in backless, sparkling dresses. They laughed together and had an ease about them McGarry didn’t like. They reminded him of flappers and gangsters from some old 1920s movie.

He heard one man’s voice above the others. “McConaughey is producing, if you believe that? Fukunaga will direct.”

“Well, who’s a spoiled girl then?”

“Not spoiled, Charles, talented.”

The laughter that followed was light and joyous.

McGarry stood, walked around the pool to the group. This was his house, so how did they get here? Or had he drunk too much and wandered into a neighboring property and party? The group ignored him as he drew closer, but laughed as old friends. Snippets of conversation McGarry could follow centered on a brave, new script that had producers falling over each other to secure. The concept was unique. No one had ever done anything quite like it.

“I’ve read it, actually,” McGarry said, standing near but apart from the group. “I loved it. Optioned it myself, if you didn’t know.”

The group fell silent and stood rigid.

As one, all faces turned towards him.

McGarry shuddered.

They had no faces.

Instead, they all wore masks, but when he looked again, the masks were flesh-colored and angular with dark slits for eyes, nostrils and mouths, and the edges of the masks fused with the flesh of their scalps and necks.

Or was that a trick of the white light?

For a long moment, the group didn’t move, just stared at McGarry.

He stepped back, turned from them and walked away.

Once he did, they returned to their conversation, light and breezy again.

“It’s art-house, but the budget is thirty million.”

“This will make you, Niles. You’ll be the next Scott.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

They laughed again.

“What is the name of the script again?”

“Tears in Yellow. Not the pile of steaming shit McGarry is producing. This is the real script.”

With the grip in his tightened fists turning his knuckles white, McGarry returned inside. He went to his bar to prepare another tequila.

He discovered a tall, thin man cast in shadows with his back to McGarry, mixing a cocktail. He didn’t turn to face McGarry when he said, “Your poison?”

McGarry couldn’t place the accent. “Tequila… No, something…. more refined. A bourbon on ice.”

Without turning, the man’s boney fingers that looked more like the legs of a spider than human appendages, expertly prepared the hard liquor drink. Then those darkened, withered hands slid the drink down the bar to McGarry. “You know, those people over there…”

“By… by the pool?”

“Yes, by the pool. They didn’t make it through talent, just as you didn’t make it through talent either.”

McGarry’s hands trembled as he took and lifted the glass to his lips. “But they look so happy. Desirable.”

The near silhouetted man chuckled, and his body jiggled. The effect was like watching a sack of old bones being shaken around on the end of a long, frayed rope. “They do, don’t they?”

He swallowed. “Why…. Why is that?”

“It’s because they saw the Yellow Sign, and they understood it’s meaning. They embraced it.”

The two strangers stood for a moment, neither speaking and neither moving.

McGarry felt a chill as his back stiffened.

“You’ve seen the Yellow Sign too, but you don’t remember. Would you like what they have, Bryce McGarry?”

Success, McGarry had discovered, was not enough. He had all the sports cars, luxury apartments and hot girls he could ever desire. What he didn’t have was a reputation as a true artist, a man who had discovered a single, important idea, and then shared it with the world for their applause and admiration. Recognition and respect had always eluded him, and here this stranger offered it up as easily as he offered the bourbon on ice.

“Yes,” he said in a whisper.

It was enough.

The boney hand reached out from the darkness and tore away his face.

——

Harrison Peel lay on his back, his head resting against the lumpy motel pillow, his eyes focused on the lazy fan circulating the hot air.

The news played on the tiny television. The anchor claimed Los Angeles was experiencing a heat wave, but Peel had endured far hotter temperatures in Australia, and didn’t believe him. Still, he couldn’t sleep and the sweat adhering to his skin was sticky and uncomfortable, so perhaps the anchor had a point. He looked at his watch. It was a little after three in the morning.

Deciding sleep was evasive, he stepped into the bathroom and stood under the cool stream of a shower. He let the water wash over his nude, muscular body, the gurgling noises bringing him peace, and a memory.

The Dark Star lodge flashed in his mind.

And again.

Or was it the lodge?

He remembered a girl he’d once dated, whom he’d picked up in a bar in Townsville while serving with the Australian Army. During a week off, they’d hired a lodge in the country surrounded by gumtrees, yellow grass and a flock of kangaroos. A week of lovemaking, hiking and time together standing under a shower like this, letting the cool liquids wash away the grime of the day, had been like bliss. It was a time and place in his life he often looked back at with both fondness and regret. If he’d committed to that girl… Emily was her name… Perhaps his life would have been very different. The lodge in the outback and the lodge on the hill were the same, but the feelings they provoked were in opposition.

“Harrison?”

He opened his eyes, uncertain that he’d heard someone call his name. A woman.

“Harrison?”

The lights went out.

Leaving the shower running, Peel stepped out and grabbed his Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol. He moved through the motel room, using his memory more than his limited sight because of the power blackout.

“Harrison?”

With the hairs on the back of his neck rising, Peel stepped into his bedroom. The voice came from there.

He saw her, or at least her face, visible because of a green emergency exit light shining through a crack in the curtain.

“Harrison?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Camila.” Her voice sounded ethereal, like it flitted through the air. “That is my part. My role. You should come. Opening night is tomorrow night. And the theater is opulent, everything I imagined it to be.”

“Casey?”

“Yes, Harrison?”

Why could he only see her face?

“Why are you here?”

“I have everything I dreamed of now.”

Peel shuddered. “But why did you come to me?”

She laughed with a lightness that held no fear. “Because you saw it too?”

“Saw what?”

“The Yellow Sign.”

The lights flickered, then stayed on.

He saw all of her now, or what remained of the dead woman. Peel was almost sick as he stumbled backwards.

Casey Roswell’s butchered face, adhered to the wall, included bloodshot eyes and a mouth of broken teeth. Trails of fresh blood ran from the stretched-out face glued to the faded yellow wallpaper.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Harrison. I don’t know if I’m good enough.”

The lights flickered, and the motel went dark again.

Before Peel could react, the light returned and stayed on.

Peel turned his gaze to the wall with his weapon raised and ready, but the wall was blank.

No face. No blood. No ghost of the dead talking to him.

Peel dressed and packed his possessions, got into his rental car and drove for an hour until he found an empty Walmart parking lot, and tried to sleep in the backseat until the sun rose in the morning.

——

Nicola Mulvany felt no surprise when she received the call. The latest murder victim was Bryce McGarry, dressed in a suit and tie and floating face down in his swimming pool surrounded by a trail of his own blood. When the LAPD pulled the body from the water, McGarry too was eyeless, toothless, and the skin on his face hacked away and missing. The remains of his face, like before, were nowhere to be found.

Peel stood back looking like he hadn’t slept last night, or that he’d drunk too much, or both. She feared that a future investigating ‘anomalies’ for a shadowy government department held little hope for either of their mental states. Then he smiled and composed himself. She saw then that he was a handsome man, strong and dependable like the trunk of a tree. He’d just had a moment.

“No other wounds on McGarry, like the last victim,” she said. “No signs of struggle. Are you okay, Peel? You look like you didn’t sleep last night.”

“I didn’t.”

He looked away, and she sensed he wasn’t telling her what she needed to hear. “What happened to you?”

Peel took her aside, so the police, the FBI and the forensic officers couldn’t overhear. “Casey came to visit?”

“What?”

“Or at least her face. It could have been a dream. It could be psychosis, but I don’t think so.” He ran his hand over his shaved scalp. “I need to speak with Ellie Darcy, the scriptwriter.”

“Why her?”

Peel shrugged. “Call it a hunch. I can’t really explain it rationally, but what aspects of this case are rational?”

He had a point. She remembered what they witnessed in Nevada, and what had almost destroyed them both. This seemed tame in comparison, but would it be when they looked deeper into the mystery encircling what should have been a ‘normal’ serial killer case?

Peel smiled, and she felt her knees go weak. The Australian soldier was what she would describe as ‘ruggedly handsome’ and the shaved head suited him. His body was lean and tall, but there were muscles there and he maintained his physique. She thought of her old boyfriend, who was a weak man in comparison, but controlling. Told her how to dress, which friends she could go out with — he’d even gone as far as dictating their intimate and sexual moments. No wonder McGarry had pressed all her buttons. But with Peel he seemed certain of himself and his place in the world. Sure, he carried demons of his own, but Mulvany saw in him a man who did not need to prove himself in the world, because he understood and accepted who he was.

“Okay, let’s go talk to her.”

——

Peel didn’t know what to expect with Ellie Darcy, but it wasn’t the image she presented. Her hair she’d dyed purple and cut in jagged lines, and her red framed glasses carried no glass. The black dress she wore hugged her curvaceous figure and showed a lot of cleavage, while her stockings were a striped gray and purple pattern. Peel guessed her age to be mid-thirties.

“McGarry paid me a lot, and I mean a lot for my script, so if you are suspicious that I murdered him, my motive isn’t money… Or anything.”

Peel raised an eyebrow at the suspect’s defensive response.

Mulvany didn’t seem concerned. She’d probably seen every kind of reaction possible in witnesses from all strata of society.

While Peel mulled over what Darcy had said, his eyes explored the apartment. The IKEA furniture was all dark oak or white panels. Photos were of cats or rainforest waterfalls, and one of a unicorn nudging a maiden wearing a white dress, so light and breezy, a strong wind would have blown it away. Soft Tibetan chanting overlaid with calming flute music played in the background, the soundtrack one expected in yoga retreats or day spas.

Darcy caught him staring at her possessions. “I can afford better now. I’ve just been too busy to look, for a new place.”

“The script, Tears in Yellow, it was all yours?”

Darcy nodded as she watched Mulvany walk the room. The suspicion emanating between the two women was equal in its opposing intensity. “Yes, that’s right.”

“It’s very different from your other work,” said Mulvany. “Very artistic, and loaded with literal meaning. Your IMDB page lists your credits as mostly working for TV. Crime, legal and medical drama episodes.”

“Motion pictures are a business, Special Agent Mulvany. Those writing gigs pay the bills and got me street cred.”

“Enough cred to promote Tears in Rain?” Peel said. “IMDB credit’s you as the only writer, but is it original?”

Darcy shrugged. “Much older work inspired it. A French play, if you must ask, from the Eighteenth Century. Even Shakespeare borrowed from writers before him.”

“The King in Yellow?”

The scriptwriter shuddered, crossed her arms about her waist as she took a step backwards. “How did you know?”

Peel walked to the room’s only window and looked out at the nearby highway below. He heard the drone of traffic now. Again, every car was a shade of white or yellow, until he noticed the anomaly. To live this close to a highway in a tiny apartment suggested Darcy had struggled until the success of Tears in Yellow. “The internet is a wonderful search tool, Ms. Darcy. Throw in a few search terms, like the King in Yellow, Camila, Cassilda, Hastur, Carcosa, and you eventually find what you are after.”

She scratched her eye through the glassless lens. “Yes, well, it’s so old it’s not like I’m breaking copyright or anything.”

“Something interesting came up in my research. Apparently, there are no known surviving copies of the original King in Yellow play, but I reckon you found one.”

Darcy shuddered again. “Like you said, you can find a lot on the internet.”

Mulvany gave Peel a look to say she didn’t understand his line of questioning. He smiled at Mulvany, then turned to Darcy. “Your play has interesting themes. Everyone one of us wears a mask, projecting who we want to be. But the Stranger in your script, he offers a ‘permanent’ separation from the mask and our actual identity, destroys one to create the other.”

Darcy trembled. “What… What do you mean?”

“The killer we are chasing, hacks off the faces of his victims. First Casey Roswell, then Bryce McGarry. You knew both victims. Sounds to me like the killer is enacting the themes of your script.”

“Or the original King in Yellow,” Darcy said, then looked away and blushed. “Okay, I’ve read it. But I don’t own a copy. I read a library copy, during research while I was in Louisiana last year.”

“Louisiana?” Peel grinned. He and Mulvany shared a look, for he had earlier discussed his finds with her, and was now about to lay them out on the metaphorical table for Ellie Darcy to see. “Interesting you bring up your trip.”

Darcy backed herself into a corner. “Why?”

“There was a similar case there. A serial killer, hacking off people’s faces. The Yellow Sign and dark stars were motifs that featured often in that investigation.”

The script writer’s mouth fell open, but no words escaped.

Peel stepped towards her. “The Stranger is real, and he’s been helping you find success, because you’ve been helping him.”

Darcy’ knees shook. Then she slid down the wall and burst into tears. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

“Like what?” Mulvany said, stepping forward. “What are you saying, Darcy?”

She sobbed. “The plan was to make the film first. He wanted people to know, to share the themes, the story, the… gateway.”

“Gateway? To what?” Peel stepped closer to her as his eyes turned dark. “Darcy?”

“The Yellow Sign.” She looked up at Peel, caught his stare and held it. Recognition grew on her face. “You’ve seen it too!” She glanced at Mulvany. “You both have. He’ll come for both of you now. Just like he did with Casey and Noyce. There is no escape.”

“And you,” Peel said. “He’s coming for you too.”

Mulvany stepped forward and pulled her handcuffs. “Ellie Darcy, I’m arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. You have the right—”

“I have no rights.” Yellow tears streamed down her cheeks. “None of us do. Not anymore.”

——

Mulvany spent the afternoon interviewing, processing, and booking Ellie Darcy. The scriptwriter didn’t ask for a lawyer and confessed to her crimes without putting up any resistance. Peel sat in on the interview and said little, but when he spoke his words cut to the very core of Chamber’s soul.

Mulvany found the interview surreal. Darcy didn’t act like her future was now in tatters. She didn’t believe she’d face incarceration for long, stating the Stranger would come for her, and she’d soon unmask herself upon the shores of Carcosa by the Lakes of Hali, where entropic Hastur languishes. She described the fantastical otherworldly locations from the second act of her script.

Then there was the matter of ‘the Stranger’ as Darcy called her accomplice, whom she didn’t deny had murdered Casey Roswell and Bryce McGarry, and the many victims in Louisiana. She told Peel and Mulvany they would never find the man, but he would find them. They had seen the Yellow Sign, after all. Any attempts to arrest him would be ludicrous.

When they left her in her holding cell for the night, she stared up at the wall and through it, like it didn’t exist. Like nothing in the material world bothered her anymore.

“Peel, you want a drink?” Mulvany said, preparing to leave for the evening. “I could do with one.”

She took him to a bar that cops didn’t frequent, but she did. Up market, with clean décor and a modern style.

“My shout,” Peel said.

“’Shout’?” she asked.

Peel shrugged. “Australian slang. Means I’m paying. What’s your poison?”

She asked for a rum and coke. He ordered a lager beer. They sat at the bar for a time, nursing their drinks and not speaking. Somehow, they both were okay with that.

“I might not have been completely honest with you,” he said after a while.

“What do you mean?”

“About getting used to this life, this indoctrination into the Code-89 way of being. I’ve wanted to get out since Cambodia, where it all started for me. I don’t feel that I’m up to what my government asks of me.”

“What do you want?”

He shrugged. “Nice ranch-style house in the bush, far from civilization, and just exist there by myself. Or perhaps I’ll get a dog. Just the two of us and forget about everything else.”

She chinked his glass. “Sounds nice. Will you?”

He laughed. “I don’t think it will ever happen, but one can dream. Do so before something alien eats me.” He shuddered. “What about you?”

She laughed with the same self-depreciating irony he had expressed. “Before we met and the incident in Nevada, I’d escaped an abusive relationship. Yeah, don’t laugh with me being a cop and all, but afterwards, I want to rediscover myself again. Take control.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

They clinked glasses again, then sat and sipped quietly.

After a long but comfortable moment, Mulvany turned to Peel and said, “You want to go back to my place?”

Peel straightened his back and smiled. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

——

Ellie Darcy used her jacket as a pillow and tried to sleep, but couldn’t. The cell was dark and smelled like a toilet. The cops had provided one small mercy, a cell of her own, but that didn’t mean they could protect her. Eventually the Stranger would come for her, Ellie knew, because she no longer served a purpose in this world.

She didn’t remember his arrival, but that was often how it was, like a dream where nothing made sense. The shadowy king, with his long, flowing golden robes wrapped around blackened, skeletal limbs, and his breathing sounding like rocks grinding against each other. She noticed how the temperature drop whenever he appeared, and the goosebumps that formed on her skin.

“This is it, for me?” she asked rubbing her shoulders seeking warmth.

“You will have your reward. You just need to ask for it.”

She lowered her eyes and pressed her knees together. “My reward has always been serving you, my king.”

“And you have served me well.”

She nodded, shuddered, and understood that perhaps Carcosa was not the promise she imagined it would be. Sure, the stories were always there, of madness and absurdity inflicting those who embraced the Yellow Sign, but what was wrong with a little insanity? They always described the best artists in polite company as crazy.

“Tell me, little one, what will I find, when you are unmasked?”

“Art,” she spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Will you make me the greatest artist who ever lived?”

“And you shall have it.”

A skeletal claw reached forth and tore her face away.

——

Nicola Mulvany next to Harrison Peel on her old lounge, leaned forward and kissed his lips. Gently at first, with each progressive kiss lingering longer and expressing more of the intense attraction she’d felt towards the Australian, grown stronger from the first moment they had met.

When she felt she couldn’t hold herself from him any longer, desired Harrison in ways she had never imagined, willed him to tear off her clothes and make love to her, she stepped back and stood before him.

He motioned to stand and follow her, but she pressed a finger against his lips and sat him back down. “Wait. I want to try an experiment.” She quickly removed all her clothes and piled them in a corner. Then she stood before him, showing her naked body, all of it.

He looked hot and agitated. The desire in his eyes signaled that he would take her, if allowed, and her own impulses were almost too much to resist. But after so many years of controlled intimacy, Mulvany wanted to turn the tables. She wanted to control this encounter. “A wine? I have a bottle of red somewhere.”

She walked to the kitchen, knowing that his eyes would watch her naked wiggle as she took one step after the other.

Peel followed, stood back and took her all in. “Sure,” he said with a smile.

Mulvany found the bottle, uncorked it, then poured two glasses. She handed one to Peel, and they chinked glasses. “Cheers. Here’s to simple cases.”

“Cheers. Simple cases, I’ll drink to that.”

She thought about returning to the lounge, but decided that standing she couldn’t hide her nakedness by curling up. She wanted him to see all of her, but not take her until she was ready. Until she allowed it to happen. “Is it wrong of me, if I feel turned on by the videos we watched of Casey?”

Peel shrugged. “I’m turned on, by what you are doing right now.”

“You haven’t tried to take control?”

He laughed. “I don’t want to. Whatever we have, I want it to be about us, not what we want separately.”

Right answer.

Mulvany wanted to jump on Peel right now, tear away his clothes and explore each other’s bodies, but she held back. She also enjoyed this moment. His eyes never stopped looking at her. All of her. She felt hot and bothered in a good way. The anticipation of what was possible.

They drank more of the wine.

“Harrison, I feel this case, its teasing us, with what we want. With promises we know no one can ever fulfill.”

“What do you mean?”

“When McGarry suggested I perform a naked audition in the Dark Star Lodge, it turned me on. I wanted to do it, but not with him, because he was a creep and I would have to become someone I wasn’t. But with you…” She took another sip of her wine. “I can do it and be me.”

“I’m honored that you did.”

They drank for a time, stared at each other and didn’t speak. This was the first moment in her life, Mulvany realized, where she felt comfortable in another man’s presence without feeling the need to talk or explain herself. He seemed to be the same. Content. Balanced. Centered. How she had missed this interpretation of intimacy in her life.

When they finished their wine, she took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom. As she undressed him, she said, “You passed.”

“Your experiment?”

She nodded and tore off the last of his clothes. “You didn’t take control.”

——

“Nicola?”

Late into the night, after furious lovemaking, Mulvany couldn’t sleep.

She laid curl up against Harrison Peel’s muscular side. Her back pressed against him, skin on skin. His arm hooked around her neck, covered her breasts and held her tight. The intimacy was exhilarating. She felt safe with him, so why couldn’t she sleep?

“Nicola?”

A man’s voice.

At first, she thought it was Peel, but she could hear his regular breathing, and he didn’t stir. She untangled herself from his limbs.

She heard running water.

“Nicola?”

Now it was a woman speaking.

“Harrison,” Nicola said, shaking Peel, but he wouldn’t wake.

“Where are you?”

“Why won’t you come?”

The voices, they came from the bathroom.

Mulvany grabbed her flashlight and SIG Sauer semi-automatic pistol, pulled back the slide chambering the first round and stepped into the bathroom. Everything moved in slow motion, including her, and she asked herself if someone had drugged her, or them both, and that was why she couldn’t rouse Peel.

She tried the light switch, but it didn’t work. She turned on her flashlight, creating a thin, pencil-like beam, but the batteries seemed drained.

“Help us, please. We don’t know where we are.”

In the bathroom, the tap ran into the sink.

Shining the light, and with the gun ready, she checked all corners. No one was in the bathroom.

“We found the place where our desires are reality, and it is bliss. Join us, Nicola.”

Mulvany shone her torch upon the running tap and the sink.

Two bloody faces floated in the churning water, eyes turning and tongues rolling. Blood seeped from the jagged, torn edges of the faces. Noyce McGarry and Ellie Darcy stared back at her with ruined, but pleading eyes.

Nicola screamed and stepped back, stumbled and fell.

The lights exploded on. Peel stood in the doorway. He reached down and pulled her close.

“Oh my god! Faces!” Her words were near incoherent. Her shaky hand pointed to the sink.

Peel looked as the lights flickered, but judging by his reaction staring into the sink, he saw nothing.

“Anything?” she asked.

“No, but I saw the same thing last night. Casey’s face.”

“It was McGarry, and Darcy, just then.”

Peel nodded. They dressed and grabbed their identification, weapons and her badge. He said, “I presume you don’t want to hang around?”

She shook her head as a chill tore through her body, and they stepped outside into the night.

——

Peel almost tripped over his feet when he reached the streets. He’d stopped, because he didn’t know where he was, but knew this wasn’t Los Angeles.

Streets were narrow, cobblestoned affairs that seemed to flow like slow-moving escalators. Buildings were three or four stories high, packed close to each other and forged from old wood, ceramic tiles, tiny shuttered windows and crumbling bricks, resembling an old Italian city but one in decay and decline. The buildings seemed to sway, like seaweed in a current. He realized the structures grew at almost imperceptible speeds, like plants in a fast-motion film.

Peel looked up. The sky was white, with black stars, like a negative of the same scene on Earth. Clouds swirled in the sky like a whirlpool directly over the city, their textures of reds and oranges like a nebula running down a plughole. Two black suns hung in the sky’s midpoint, but they gave no warmth.

Peel shivered, realizing he had dressed for the heat. Here, the air chilled him. The ancient metropolis seemed to shrink in and out, like it was breathing.

“This must be Carcosa, from Darcy’s script. The second act.”

Mulvany took his hand in hers, but her grip was icy. “Is this a nightmare?”

“It could be, but I don’t think so.”

Mulvany turned to the door they had stepped from, but it had vanished. “You sure we aren’t dreaming.”

Peel squeezed her hand. “Maybe. Stay close and let’s find a way back, regardless.”

“Back, how?”

He had no answers, but they had to try. “Casey, McGarry and Darcy, they all found a way back to us.”

“As dismembered faces.”

“People have written about this place. Someone escaped.”

They walked the streets, watched them transform into stairs while buildings became the edges of fortress walls. Soon the stone had raised them high enough to see out across the world. An ocean like glass stretched across the alien world. Then Peel spotted an amorphous black shape several kilometers long, a sack of black, bristled skin, and lazy pseudopods each hundreds of meters in length that effortlessly swatted away demonic faerie-like but faceless creatures that buzzed around it.

“Oh, my god!” Nicola exclaimed again.

Peel held her close and turned them away from the sight. The creature was too distant to worry them and seemed in no hurry to move from its watery dwelling. But the sight was enough to induce a lifetime of nightmares.

Soon the city was a mighty tower rising a kilometer into the sky. Steep cobblestone roads or stairs only ever led upwards. A rusted tramp steamer built into the streets looked out of place, yet fused with the architecture like an animal caught in a trap. He read the name of the ship faded on its hull, the Vestibule, but it recalled no memories.

Peel noticed people, some in suits or evening dresses, others in dark cloaks or naked, and a few bound as slaves led on leashes, forced onwards by their masters. They all turned from Peel and Mulvany so their faces remained constantly out of sight.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Nicola exclaimed, and then she puked on the cobblestone.

While Peel waited for her, he checked his pockets. His pistol had vanished, and so had his wallet and identification. All his pockets were empty. “Do you have your gun?”

Mulvany checked, then shook her head that she did not.

Whichever path they took, it only ever led upwards. Soon they walked with the crowds. People of all ethnicities and ages, but no children. Where flesh was visible, it was pasty and pale. Then Peel saw his first face, or lack of it.

Then he saw all their faces.

Masks of flat flesh replaced every face, with tiny slits for eyes, nostrils and the mouth, but unmoving except to express a permanent expression of desire or fear. When groups noticed Peel and Mulvany, they stopped, and stared in unison until the two visitors passed from sight.

“Keep your head down and don’t look at anyone.” He held Mulvany close, afraid to lose her.

Without remembering the moment of transition, they found themselves inside a large, ornate theater, and a play was being performed on the center stage.

——

The theater hall was larger than Peel could have imagined possible. Thousand, perhaps tens of thousands of seats in plush, blood red fabric encircled a central, circular stage. Masked people sat in groups and watched the performance. On the stage, three masked individuals acted out their roles. Two were women and one was without clothes, and Peel recognized the nude woman as Casey Roswell, but absent of an actual face. She played Camila, and every time she spoke a line from the Tears in Yellow script, the audience applauded her performance.

The second woman wore a blood red dress, but when Peel looked closely, he saw it was actual blood, for it dripped and ran like a fluid, leaving a trail of scarlet wetness behind her. She too had lost her actual face to a fleshy mask. This was Cassilda, Camila’s lover.

The most disturbing character was the Stranger, the weird entity from the CCTV footage, but exaggerated here. He wore a long robe of yellow that drifted around him like it floated underwater, and a mask of gold metal. His body seemed unnaturally elongated, as if he were more insect than human, and the flesh of his bone-thin arms and fingers resembled a desiccated corpse turned black by the sun. He seemed to float in the air, and the flesh beneath his yellow robes wriggled as if his skin were a feast of maggots.

“Your interpretation is brilliant, Ellie. The king will be pleased.”

“Everyone will be pleased.”

“Everyone.”

“Even him.”

Peel turned to the nearby speakers. A group huddled together, the men dressed in dinner suits and the women in evening gowns, except for one who wore nothing except tight black cords around her neck, thighs and wrists that constricted every time she spoke. Peel recognized McGarry with his beard, man bun, and sockless footwear, and Ellie Darcy in her striped stockings, black dress and purple hair. Their faces too were fleshy masks, and the gathered crowd complimented them constantly with lust.

Peel felt physically sick, as an invisible weight pressed down on him, or gravity had increased.

Then he recognized that the theater had fallen silent.

Thousands of flesh masked patrons turned toward Mulvany and him, and pointed at them.

——

Thousands of faces, fixed in a multitude of rigid expressions but devoid of emotion, stared. No one moved. No one spoke a word.

Ellie Darcy stepped forward. Her mask layered over her face like a slab of meat wrapped up in skin. The biological guise made her head look larger than it was. She had lost her glassless eyewear, but everything else about her was as Peel remembered. “You want to join us, then you have to unmask.”

“Choose,” echoed McGarry, stepping up behind her with his own fleshy approximation of a face.

“Don’t answer them,” Peel whispered to Mulvany, who squeezed his hand, acknowledging his request.

Ellie adjusted a strand of purple hair that had fallen across her mask. “If you don’t choose, eternity is the worst nightmare to endure your greatest fears.”

A black sludge of tentacles formed out of the floor and grew around Peel. Eyes popped open all over the shifting shape, as did mouths of jagged teeth and clawing limbs. Peel couldn’t react fast enough as the monster morphed, fencing him in. A mouth opened, came at him and swallowed him whole. Peel felt the teeth bite; the tentacles pull and yank at his limbs. He screamed as wounds opened and bled, and bones snapped. He slid into the gut of the creature, and…

And out the other side, whole and remade again, and stood surrounded by the same black, oozing creature.

He saw Mulvany, torn from his grip and manhandled by a group of naked men. They tore at her clothes, ripping them to shreds until she too was naked. Binding ropes, like the constraints he’d seen on the enslaved woman in Chamber’s and McGarry’s party, now flew to and tightened around Mulvany’s wrists, neck and elbows, entangling her as a package ready for delivery.

“You want choice,” said the first naked man who grabbed her face and pressed his featureless head against hers. “You have no choice here.”

The black, dripping monstrosity lurched at Peel again. Tentacles whipped from its rippling body, shattering Peel’s bones. He screamed as he fell, unbelieving of the intensity of the pain that fired through his nerves. Then the mouth came at him, chewed him and swallowed. He slipped down the gut and…

There he was, standing whole again, surrounded by the monster.

But the memory of the agony stayed with him.

He saw Mulvany, bound helplessly as the sweaty and aroused men groped and prodded her flesh. She screamed as tears flooded from her eyes.

He ran at the shifting monstrosity, to push a path through its shifting mass. The texture was rough like sandpaper, but then it became a viscous blob, and he ‘swam’ through it.

He popped out the other side, covered in goo but intact. Scrambling to his feet, Peel raced to Mulvany and her attackers, beat the naked men with his fists, one by one, hurting them with powerful punches, until he grabbed Nicola and pulled her free. His hand gripped the cord around her neck, choking her, until it snapped and she gasped for breath again.

More men raced at Peel, but they weren’t skilled fighters and he fought them off easily, knocking several of them unconscious. He pulled Mulvany forward and away from the group, but she stumbled and fell because of the binding around her wrists and elbows. But Peel didn’t have time to free her with so many of the masked inhabitants of Carcosa pushing down on him.

And then a space cleared.

The Stranger floated in the air before them. Its bony, blackened hand gestured that Peel and Mulvany should leave the theater, and pointed to a cleared set of steps leading out.

They wasted no time and took their leave, Peel snapping away the last of Mulvany’s bindings as they raced up the stairs and back out into the shifting, dark streets of Carcosa.

The streets at least were empty.

He felt Mulvany close to him, her skin cold and clammy. “Let’s find you some clothes.”

“Don’t worry about that. Let’s find a way out!”

Whichever stairs they took, they always led up. Soon they followed a circular staircase around a cylindrical stone tower of dank, moss-covered stone. When they reached the top, a ranch awaited. Peel saw trees, and grass, and a log fire was visible through the window. The dwelling appeared inviting, warm, and safe.

“We could hide here,” she said, holding her body close to Peel. “It’s what we both want. It takes away what we both fear.”

“But does it?” He pointed to the Stranger, who appeared from nowhere, dragging its emancipated corpse across the green lawn, corrupting and killing the grass everywhere its yellow cloak touched. Limbs appeared broken and twisted, but the creature didn’t appear bothered by its inflictions.

“What is your greatest desire?” It spoke in a gravelly voice. “Here, I can make your dreams real.”

Peel pondered the question. So inviting. The monster that ate him multiple times in the theater, that was Peel’s alternative fate, which would last an eternity if he didn’t choose this. Nothing scared him more.

Then he spotted a dog, a Labrador, panting by the front door. A loyal friend.

Only the dog, like everyone else, had no face, but a fleshy mask of slit eyes, nostrils and mouth. Its mask expressed pleasure and loyalty, but only through a horrific parody of normalcy.

Nicola Mulvany too appeared transfixed by the offering.

Peel turned her face toward him so she looked only at his eyes. “I have everything I need,” he kept his stares focused on hers. “I need nothing else. This place can’t give me anything of worth.”

She nodded, but her eyes drifted again to the ranch. So inviting. A place they could spend eternity together, just the two of them, away from the horrors of a world they didn’t want to know. She shivered from the cold outside. She would think that inside was warm and inviting.

He thought the same thoughts.

“Nicola. Look at me!”

He cradled her face in his hands. Locked his eyes on hers. “I want nothing else, Nicola. Nothing. I don’t need someone else to tell me I’m lacking.”

He heard it then, the slurping, rolling, congealing behemoth that was Hastur, the monstrous god of this world, sliding across the oceans, its lazy entropic tentacles lethargically swaying in their direction. He felt its shadow pass over them, blocking out the twin black suns.

But he would only focus on the woman in his arms. If he must die, he would, rather than choose the mockery of a life the King in Yellow offered.

“Nicola?”

Finally, she maintained her gaze and stared into his eyes. “Me too. I want nothing else.”

——

Peel didn’t remember the change, wasn’t aware of it happening. His first awareness was the heat on his skin. Then the smell of petrol fumes. Then long sounds of a horn blasted from a car that sped past.

They stood on a highway, at dusk on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Another car passed, honked its horn. But it wasn’t yellow. None of the cars were.

He had Nicola in his arms. Then he realized she was still naked. Tearing off his shirt, he slipped it over her. No wonder the cars were honking.

“We’re back,” he whispered.

She nodded, cried, then snuggled close to him. “Now all we need is to find our way home.”

Peel smiled. “Except, Nicola, we already have.”

The Weaponized Puzzle

McMurdo Station, Ross Island, Antarctica, June 1995

The South Pole mid-winter was a world enveloped in both ice and darkness, and Coaldale hated everything about it.

McMurdo was the largest official bastion of human settlement in the great white continent, the only human settlement for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from where the lights were on. It was two in the afternoon, base time, but only stars shone beyond the various buildings. US SEALs and Rangers newly deployed to the ice were being inducted in the temporary facilities recently commandeered by the Department of Defense.

One of those Rangers was Captain Byrd Coaldale. He was a late arrival, delayed by another briefing, but he also didn’t care. His only show of respect was to enter the building quietly, to sit towards the back where he rubbed his hands together warming them. Listening to the inducting officer drone on had to be preferable than enduring the bitter outside cold.

A silent black and white film ran through a digital projector at the far end of the briefing room. The footage was circa 1950s. A man in a fur coat with UN insignia stood next to what resembled a gigantic cucumber with a starfish on its apex and five vine-like appendages emerging from its midsection. Then it moved. As Coaldale recovered from his shock, he realized he was staring at a living entity.

It was one of those aliens everyone in the Pole had talked of so often since his arrival, spoken of in tones that painted the creatures in reverence and awe. The projected black and white UN man played a pipe, although there was no sound with the footage. The monster presumably responded with piping of its own. Coaldale had thought it some kind of joke. Then, like a switch had turned on inside him, suddenly he was interested in everything the inducting officer was saying.

“This,” spoke up Robert Lynch, the Navy SEAL Lieutenant leading the briefing, “is a Pentapod.”

Lynch gave the crowd a moment to let the words sink in. If the officer was expecting awe, they gave none. They were silent, like corpses.

“Questions, so far?”

No one answered.

Standing half in the projector's light and half hidden by it, Lynch pointed to the cucumber shape like he had seen one every day for a year. Perhaps he had.

“This is project RESOLUTION ZERO archive footage. The man you are looking at is Colonel Doctor Wingate Peaslee, who was a legend in our circles. Back then we had limited communications with the ‘Visitors’, as the RZ guys like to refer to them, and Peaslee led much of our work. The Pentapods taught us a thing or two. Things we really didn’t want to know…”

Coaldale shuddered, and not from the cold. He had heard the Pentapods stories, read all the reports, but he had yet to see one in the flesh. Film footage was the next best thing and had proved more disturbing than he had expected. The problem was it didn’t look fake, despite his recently marveling at the digital special effects in the Jurassic Park movie a few years back. Special effects gurus could doctor anything, and yet an undefined and very sinister element captured in the footage made it genuine.

“These days we rarely see the Pentapods, yet we continue to carry on the tasks they burdened us with all those decades ago. The Pentapods, however,” Lynch emphasized, “are not our problem.”

He changed video files. New footage from the same era was of an icy desert seen from an airplane. At first Coaldale didn’t know what he was looking at until he identified men on the ground, tiny individuals filmed from an airplane high above the fields of Antarctic snow. They ran fast and away from a threat Coaldale could not see. He looked for the pursuer until he realized his mind wasn’t imaging a hunter much bigger than the men. When he spotted the amorphous shape the size of a mining dump truck, all white and tentacles and eyes and mouths that seemed to shift in and out of a jelly-like consistency; he squirmed. The pulsating shape rolled over one man, crushing him without slowing. It was like watching a tsunami engulf unsuspecting bathers on a populated beach.

Lynch let the film roll, as one by one the creature crushed each fleeing man. They had no hope, but they all ran regardless, until the very end.

“That,” explained Lynch, “is a Shoggoth.”

A private up the front puked. The acidic smell quickly filled the room, and he puked again. No one said a word, and all left the young soldier to soak in his mostly digested lunch. The private quickly excused himself until Lynch told him to sit down. There was more learning to do.

“This Shoggoth was spotted in 1961. It disappeared shortly after we captured this footage. We haven’t seen another one this big since, but we know they are many more in the depths of Pentapod City.”

A young Navy officer raised her arm. “Sir, how do we fight them?”

Lynch laughed. “You don’t. You run as fast as you can, and you hope you can run faster than your buddies.”

Coaldale laughed too, understanding the sick joke he had signed up for. All the men in the footage had run. It proved only that the advantage of speed was in being crushed last. It would be him running soon, for it was his mission to lead a team of Rangers into the depths of the Pentapod City and map it, and that was where the Shoggoths presumably still existed.

“How did you survive?” Coaldale demanded of Lynch, from the back and in the shadows.

The SEAL officer was all seriousness when he said, “I ran the fastest.”

“So the ‘Shoggoth’ gave up?”

“No. I was in a team of a hundred men. Only three of us got away because we ran in the opposite direction, away from the largest flock of fleeing men.”

Flock.

Coaldale snorted. He knew then why he his superiors sent him to Antarctica. He was just another sheep being led to the slaughter.

——

RAAF Base Darwin, Northern Territory, October 2012

Harrison Peel emerged from shadows cast by the morning’s sunrise, chambered the first round of his Glock 9mm sidearm and stepped into the Royal Australian Air Force hangar. He aimed his weapon towards three figures in the hangar’s center. Their leader was a tall, thin woman who conversed with her male American pilot and co-pilot. The three corporate-types ran through final pre-flight checks before boarding their Bombardier Challenger 300 private jet — except one of them wasn’t corporate, she was an enemy spy.

“Going somewhere?” Peel asked, stepping into the light, his weapon never wavering. He’d shoot the Russian intelligence operative to wound if she challenged him, but felt certain it wouldn’t come to that. The pilots were civilian and would be no trouble. Already the men were raising their arms in surrender. In contrast, the woman’s icy stares were her only reaction. But then it would take a lot to rattle this senior SVR agent defiantly stealing secrets from the Australian Defence Force.

“Major Peel,” the woman replied with her husky American cover accent. For added effect she flicked her long dark hair over one shoulder and pushed forward a long skinny leg barely covered by a short skirt. She looked Peel up and down in his camouflaged army uniform. “Didn’t expect you so early?”

“You have a crate that belongs to me.”

The two pilots’ eyes drifted to the wooden box in question, alerting Peel to where the item was, near to the aircraft and marked US GOVERNMENT: TOP SECRET.

The Russian wouldn’t look at it. “You plan on stopping me, Major Peel?”

“I do.”

“I am the most senior representative of Centaurus Limited on this base, their Chief Mathematician. Surely you know I’ve been Code-89 cleared and authorized to deliver this crate to our Singapore office.”

Peel’s smile grew wider, for she did not yet know he had already identified her as a double agent. It seemed the perfect time to break the news. “Except that you aren’t Juliette Yaxley, and you don’t work for Centaurus, do you Zoya Reznikova?”

She hesitated for a fraction of a second before she said, “How fanciful.”

“Maybe, but considering Yaxley’s remains have just washed up on a beach twenty kilometers from here. The crocodiles you fed her to obviously weren’t hungry enough.”

She smiled then, but there was a flicker in her eyes, an edge of uncertainty betraying the fact that Peel had guessed correctly. “You got me there,” she slipped to her Russian accent.

“You can’t escape.”

“How droll.” She ran a long thin finger along her lipstick red lips. “Did you know, Major, that these aren’t Centaurus pilots either, but agents from the Motherland? And this isn’t really a Centaurus jet?”

Peel had not been aware of these facts. The odds now changed. Three against one. But he was the only one with a weapon. “Doesn’t change a thing, Reznikova.”

“I think it does.” Her eyes drifted beyond Peel to where he heard a figure shuffling forward, closing the space between the main hangar door and where he stood.

Peel turned, but his Glock never waived from Reznikova’s chest, to identify a heavyset man with a dark, mirrored sunglasses and a pistol of his own. His 10mm semi-automatic pressed into the temple of Peel’s girlfriend, Nicola Mulvany. His thick muscular arm locked around her neck, pinning her to him. She might have fought him if he hadn’t bound her hands in a ziplock tie. She wore only a tight t-shirt and pajama pants, the clothes she had been sleeping in.

“Hi honey,” Nicola acknowledged Peel.

Reznikova laughed. “What’s it going to be, Major?” She waved at the Russian pilots showing that they could drop their arms, which they did. “You kill me? If you do, the lovely Nicola here also dies. Then it’s a showdown between yourself and the accomplished Mr. Anderson. My money is on Anderson.”

Peel didn’t hesitate. He lifted his pistol in a non-threatening manner, removed his finger from the trigger, flicked on the safety and placed the weapon on the concrete floor. He then kicked it along the ground towards Reznikova.

She lifted it quickly, pointed the weapon at Peel.

“Happy now?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as defeated as he felt.

She smiled, cocked her head in a seductive tilt. “You know I have to take you with me?”

“Fine, but leave Nicola out of this.”

“What, so she can dutifully run off and raise the alarm? I don’t think so.”

The operative called Anderson pushed Nicola forward. Reznikova took over and led the protesting Nicola up and inside the Challenger 300. Anderson then came up behind Peel, punched him hard in the space between his left shoulder and spine, sending Peel to the ground. Peel soon felt disorientated, his back aching from the blow. Then a zip lock tie secured his wrists, binding him as well.

“No funny business, Peel,” said the assassin in an American accent that didn’t sound like a put-up job. He pulled Peel to his feet with a strength that came only from pumping iron in the gym two to three hours a day and eating protein bars like a kid ate candy. He frisked Peel, looking for other weapons but finding none. Anderson then forced Peel up the stairs and into the aircraft. Inside, Nicola was already in a seat and secured there by the SVR spy.

“When you’re done with him, load the crate,” Reznikova said.

The heavyset man nodded and disappeared.

“Right,” the Russian waved Peel’s Glock in his face, “into that seat.”

Peel did what he was told and sat so he could face Nicola. This was good because they might converse and plan and escape. Bad because they could torture her before his very eyes — a more effective means of extracting information than by torturing him directly. But what did he know that they didn’t know already? Probably not much.

Once seated, Reznikova used a zip lock to secure Peel to his seat. To the pilots she said, “Are we ready for take-off?”

“Cleared for 0620 hours,” the man said in his Russian accent now that there was no need for pretense. “We’re going through the final flight checks.”

She looked at her watch. “Fifteen minutes from now, perfect.”

Anderson returned, dragging the crate behind him. He secured the heavy load between the seats on Peel’s left and Nicola’s right. Reznikova stepped into the cockpit with the pilots and closed the door behind her.

The assassin still with his sunglasses took the spare seat opposite Peel.

Peel felt he knew the man from somewhere, an old Intel file perhaps. That seemed right, but he couldn’t remember which file, or if the contents were important here today.

“I’ve never dropped a man out of a plane before,” the assassin said. “Don’t be the first.”

Ignoring Anderson, Peel turned to Nicola and said apologetically, “I’m sorry about this.”

Nicola smiled and shrugged. But it was all for show. She was scared. “I’m sorry too.”

“Don’t be, this was my fault.”

Anderson snarled. “Shut the fuck up, the both of you.”

Peel noticed the bloody scar on Nicola’s lips, the bruising on her bare arms where Anderson had manhandled her, and swelling around her left jaw. He tensed, forced down his rage against the thug who had assaulted the woman he loved.

“The brute came into our room,” Nicola explained, ignoring Anderson’s threat. “You’d already left for work and I didn’t hear him enter.”

“We’ll get out of this in one piece, I promise you.”

“I said shut it!” Anderson pulled a switchblade and waved the sharp end towards Nicola’s left eye. The assassin was smart enough to know that firearms were a hollow threat on an aircraft where a single bullet could depressurize the cabin and send the craft into a tail spin without a happy ending.

Reznikova appeared carrying a small tool kit, grinned when she saw Anderson waving his knife, and took her seat opposite Anderson. She patted the TOP SECRET crate positioned between her and Anderson’s feet like it was a favorite pet, then strapped herself in.

“Taxiing now, and lift-off in ten minutes. Looks like you didn’t instruct anyone to ground us, Peel.”

He said nothing because she was correct. He hadn’t covered his tracks. It had been less than half an hour since he had seen the news report about the dead woman washed up on the beach, recognized who she was even though the Darwin police had not, and finally figured out who Reznikova was pretending to be. There had been no time to act other than to race to the airfield to stop the Russian spy himself. With hindsight, this was a terrible plan.

Soon the Challenger 300 was airborne. Reznikova would only stare out the window as Darwin disappeared behind the curve of the Earth, replaced by the expanse of ocean. Anderson put away his knife and played with his thumbs. He didn’t look like a man who could sit still for long, and maybe Peel could use this to his advantage. Nicola expressed a combination of terror and being pissed off that no number of smiles from Peel would erase.

As they gained altitude and speed, Peel gathered information. Both Anderson and Reznikova appeared alert and fresh. Judging by the angle of the sun through the small windows, they were flying northwest towards Indonesia. He was under no illusion that Singapore was their destination, suspecting instead a private airfield on a remote Indonesian island.

When they had been airborne for twenty minutes and at cruising altitude, Reznikova spoke again. “I think I’m going to open the crate now.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” countered Peel.

“And why is that, you terrible man?”

Nicola laughed at the Russian’s blatant use of seductive banter. “Because my boyfriend knows what he’s talking about, bitch!”

This prompted Reznikova to slap Nicola hard.

Peel reacted instinctively and leaped from his chair to protect Nicola, only to find the zip lock held him secure to the armrest.

Reznikova laughed. “He loves you, doesn’t he? How sweet is that?”

Nicola snarled and Peel could see she was frustrated by every passing comment from Reznikova who treated her as a nobody. “You have no idea what is going down here, do you?”

Ignoring Nicola, Reznikova turned to Peel. “So, Major, you seem very passionate. Why shouldn’t I open the box?”

The Russian agent struck Peel as a woman who was comfortable around men and used to playing them to get what she wanted, yet felt threatened by attractive, intelligent women and was always unsure how to handle them. A failing he or Nicola might able to use to their advantage.

“You know where the artifact came from?” he asked.

“Antarctica.”

He nodded, impressed that she knew this. “But specifically? No? It came from the Pentapod City, Elder City. That’s the alien city your Russian masters would like to know all about, and what Nicola is referring to.”

“So?”

Peel’s gut tightened. “Then you’ll already know what I know, that thing isn’t safe.”

“Nice try, but it can’t be that dangerous if the Americans gave it to you to study.”

“They gave it to my government, who will study it very, very carefully.”

She laughed again. “You don’t believe that and you don’t believe anyone is trustworthy with the secrets of past aliens who’ve colonized our world long before we did, all but extinct now. I’ve seen your files, Peel. You believe we should destroy all the artifacts every alien leaves behind.”

Peel didn’t know how to respond, because she understood his motivations perfectly. But more than he feared being kidnapped and tortured, and that Nicola and he might both be dead by day’s end, he feared what might lie inside that crate and what it might do to ‘change’ or ‘mutilate’, or ‘evolve’ them. There were plenty of worse fates than death, as he and Nicola had unfortunately witnessed too often in his past.

“No come back?”

He said nothing. He knew she would open the crate, and there was nothing he could do to stop her. Her sense of greed was a far more powerful emotion than her sense of self-preservation.

Grinning, she took a small crowbar from her toolkit, and pried the nails from the crate and removed the lid. Peel didn’t want to look, yet he stared because it was too terrifying not to, as did Nicola. Anything could have been inside.

And yet the contents surprised him. A single item, a solid reflective twenty-sided shape, each face a perfect triangle. The size of a football, decorated with many pentagrams and dotted arrangements. Peel knew this to be Pentapod writing. Also, what appeared to be touch buttons on each face, which Peel hoped Reznikova would not activate.

“What is it?” Anderson asked.

“An alien weapon,” Nicola explained, making an educated guess. She knew everything that this device would stand for, and like him, knew in the core of her being it could bring them nothing of any value or meaning, and would likely kill them all.

“Really?” said Reznikova, amused with her competition while the advantage was on her side. “How would you know such things?”

Nicola’s eyes darkened, expressing her hatred for the woman as much as Reznikova must have hated her. “You play with it, it kills you.”

Ignoring Nicola, Reznikova reached to touch a button.

“You really want to do that,” Peel interrupted, “while we are in an aircraft high above the ocean?”

“Major, if I don’t examine this myself before we deliver it to my masters, how do I know I’ve brought them anything of value?”

“Trust me, you haven’t.”

Anderson stepped up, leaned over Peel and punched him hard in the gut.

Peel gasped from the shock of an agonizing pain, but no wind seemed to move in his throat. The agony was both sharp and quickly spread across his midsection. He thought he was about to spew up blood, but thankfully it was only spit and bile that came forward. He got it all over his uniform.

“You bastard!” Nicola cried.

Anderson slapped her hard, bringing red welts to her face. “You two don’t listen, do you? I said shut the fuck up.”

With the lesson in obedience at an end, Rezinkova waited for silence, and then pressed her hand against a random button.

——

Elder City, Miskatonic Mountains, Antarctica, July 1995

The winds of the polar south raged as continent-sized screams, whipped anything caught outside the meager human shelters to near breaking point, and chilled like bullets of ice thrown on naked skin. The minus forty temperatures took no account of the wind factor. This was Antarctica during the long dark winter, when there would be no sun for six months and no escape from monotony and boredom, and from the cold.

Coaldale stood rigid, leaned into the gale, frozen and full of complaints. He gave up on his cigarette that wouldn’t stay lit and flicked it into the winds. Tightening his snow-camouflage uniform, he looked up, and up, and up further still until it was too dark to see along the two monolithic alien artifacts before him, despite the powerful floodlights all over it. In that moment, he appreciated the enormity of the artificial mountains before him.

He was going to die here.

The two artifacts seemed to be perpetual motion machines, each the size of tiny mountains. Impossibly riveted contraptions resembling ice yet forged from exotic matter far stronger and durable than any materials humans could conceive, let alone build. Neither diamond tipped drill heads nor the blast from a military grade fuel air explosive could dent their surfaces. The Antarctic wind had buffeted them for an eternity and had done nothing to erode even a single atomic layer off its surface. They had remained functional for nine hundred million years through continental drifts and the rise of complex life upon the Earth, producing a bizarre form of energy the human explorers had yet to understand or tap, but a source that had kept the Pentapod City functional and self-repairing for the last fifth of Earth’s four-and-a-half billion-year history.

No one knew what powered them. Everyone wanted answers, of course, but not to know at the same time.

The Junior CIA Case Officer accompanying Coaldale, Tyler Jansen, chattered through blue lips, snapped off the icicles forming above his eyes and taking his eyebrows with them.

“How long did you say we’ve known about this?” Coaldale pointed with his M16, itching to use the assault rifle on the smaller, weaker Shoggoths that supposedly lurked here. He wanted to kill something to relieve the boredom, but also to convince himself that the unseen enemy was not as indestructible as everyone made them out to be. “Jansen?” he said again when the CIA man had not heard him over the howling winds, or had ignored him. He repeated the question.

“Since 1933, when the Starkweather Moore Expedition mapped elements of this… Elder City… RESOLUTION ZERO has been operational since the foundation of the United Nations, and the US has maintained a permanent presence here since the start of the Second World War. As for the deeper levels of the city, we’ve only recently begun exploring them.”

Coaldale grinned, felt he was being lectured on a secret history of his people, and probably was. Truth was he didn’t really care much about the details. He only talked to pass the time. “What exactly have you explored, Jansen?”

The CIA man gulped. It was unusual to see a hardened field agent who’d seen action in Beirut and El Salvador go weak at the knees and clammy at the mere mention of venturing further ‘into the abyss’, as the Marine contingents assigned to RESOLUTION ZERO and its sister operation GRAY NEBULA liked to call it. They had deployed all kinds of soldiers to explore and reconnoiter. None had come out again, at least none who weren’t gibbering wrecks. Coaldale didn’t want to be another in a long list of the dead, maimed or mentally wounded. He’d signed up to fight human monsters, not this kind of shit he didn’t understand.

“I mean, you really don’t know what’s down there, do you?”

“No…” Jansen tried to project confidence, but Coaldale could see he had none. “No actual intelligence at all.”

Coaldale’s grin grew large. “So you call in the US Rangers. When everyone else fails, you turn to us?”

Jansen nodded. “We just want information, that’s all, about who the Pentapods are, and what these servants they kept referring to in their literature are, these… Shoggoths.”

“I’ve seen the footage,” Coaldale explained. “I know what I’m up against. What I don’t know,” he said, kicking a black shiny icosahedron on the ground next to them he’d only just noticed, half buried in the snow, “is what this is?”

——

Stage One, Tetrahedron, October 2012

The world flipped as edges and corners unfolded from higher dimensions of space-time, reformed like multiple, complex sliding doors joining like interlocking puzzles until a four-sided room enclosed them.

Disorientated, Peel looked up, realized he was lying on a triangular floor, but not the same floors as Nicola, Zoya Reznikova and Anderson. Their cell was a tetrahedron approximately ten meters along each wall length. Slanting roofs to Peel were floors to the others. Most disturbing was a splash of red suspended in the air like the spray of blood from a slaughtered animal, and across the room were tiny suspended metal shapes that uncannily resembled bullets.

Anderson stood quickly, snarled at an unusual angle to Peel because gravity was different for him, and fired his Colt 10mm semi-automatic.

Peel knew he could not react fast enough and would soon be a dead man… until the bullet suspended in the air, not moving.

Just like the bullets already frozen and suspended that were here before them.

As soon as Anderson leaped towards Peel to tackle him, he too froze like a statue and floated suspended in zero gravity.

Peel stood, bewildered, looked up at Nicola who was looking up at him.

“Stay where you are!”

He smashed his forearms across his chest until the sudden pressure on his zip lock bindings sheared and he was free. Then he stepped from his floor to Anderson’s floor, doing his best to ignore the weird sensation of changing gravity vectors until he was within touching distance of the assassin. Anderson and the bullet appeared frozen, but more likely he was in stasis, or very near stasis and moving at glacial speeds.

In a single motion, Peel snatched Anderson’s sidearm while punching him hard in the kidney. Contact made with the surface wall/floor again, Anderson collapsed on the triangle next to Peel. The Major punched the assassin again and again until the man stopped moving.

“What the fuck?” Anderson growled through bloodied lips. “Asshole, why aren’t you dead?”

Peel lifted Anderson to his feet until the man’s head was millimeters from a stilled bullet. “You touch that; it will shatter your skull and your brains.”

Anderson seemed to understand and slumped.

Peel let the man fall to their floor while he removed his foe’s switchblade. When he found no other weapons, he pocketed the knife and bound the man with a spare zip lock, both of his wrists behind his back and to his ankles.

The suspended blood and bullets intrigued Peel, as if someone had been here before them. The crimson fluid didn’t seem to have come from any of them.

During the fistfight Nicola had crawled across to Peel. He cut away her bindings, then turned to see what Reznikova was up to. The Russian spy sat, appearing a little bewildered herself, gravity for her was an obtuse angle to his and Nicola’s sense of gravity.

“Where are we?” Nicola asked. She looked pale.

“We’re inside your weapon,” responded Reznikova, as if in a trance or verging into a dissociative state. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think, so elegant in its simplicity?”

“You’re a nutcase.” Nicola’s said. “Harrison, what the hell is going on?”

He handed her Anderson’s Colt Delta Elite pistol and pointed to the assassin with his other hand. “Keep this trained on him.”

She did as he asked.

Peel moved quickly from one floor to the next, always ensuring that he had one hand or foot on the floor/wall at all times, until he reached Reznikova.

She remembered then she had his Glock and fired off three shots that soon suspended in the air between them. He ducked around their suspended bullets, disarmed her easily and recovered his weapon. Now there were three more bullets suspended in the air, any of which if touched could kill.

He twisted Reznikova’s arm behind her back until it hurt and pushed her forward to the floor/wall with Nicola and Anderson. He sat his two enemies next to each other, making it easier to watch them both.

“You seem to know what’s going on.” Nicola’s eyes darkened as she stared down at the Russian woman. “Explain?”

She cackled. “We’re inside a puzzle.”

“What kind of puzzle?” Nicola demanded. The Colt remained aimed at the prostrate Anderson.

Reznikova pointed to the Pentapod writing on the floors all around them, which Peel now noticed and to him resemble algebraic equations.

“A mathematical puzzle,” the Russian agent confirmed. “Why do you think the SVR sent me, a mathematician?”

Examining the writing, Peel identified many pentagrams with dots. It was an alien language, of course, and he had no idea how to translate it, let alone solve the formulas they might present.

“Can you figure this out?”

The Russian smiled, “Of course. I’ve already started.” She pointed to an equation on their floor. “Look at this, three dots plus five dots equals eight dots. That symbol means it’s true. Three dots plus five dots equals nine dots. That’s not true. See, I’ve learned much already.”

Reznikova was enjoying herself way too much for Peel’s liking, but he understood that he had no choice but to leave her with her equations. There were no exits to this four-sided prison. Solving equations seemed to be the only way out, and he had no idea how to complete the mathematical riddles himself. He didn’t have confidence that Nicola or Anderson could either.

He looked to Nicola, and she looked tired, so Peel raised his Glock 9mm and pressed it against Anderson’s skull. “I’ll watch them.”

Reznikova said, “This is an algebraic equation to do with geometry. It’s asking to solve an equation related to the distances in a three dimensional space.”

“Can you solve it?”

She laughed, winked at Peel. “I already have.” She touched a symbol on the floor next to her, held her hand upon it for a moment, and concentrated.

The room folded again, edges and corners appeared, gravity and walls shifted, and the tetrahedron became a hexahedron.

A cube.

——

Stage One, Tetrahedron, July 1995

Shapes folded around Coaldale and Jansen, edges and walls materialized from nowhere, as if pushing through space to create their own dimension. Soon the walls came together, locking into position like a complex three-dimensional puzzle, until the two men became trapped inside a three-sided pyramid.

They were not alone.

The US Ranger watched in horror as a shifting shape of black arms, green glowing eyes, tentacles and mouths tore limbs, one by one, from the screaming CIA Case Officer, then fed upon the fresh flesh with multiple mouths crowded with razor wire-like teeth.

When Jansen was without legs and an arm, perversely he remained conscious. Blood splashed into the air and hung suspended like a photograph capturing thrown paint. The creature serrated off Jansen’s ears, mouth and throat attaching the bloody, pulped organs to dexterous appendages of its own, formed from its constantly shifting goop. Further appendages grew into shapes that ate flesh from Jansen’s skull, then ate the skull itself until the creature removed the brain and half the spinal cord, which it absorbed inside its own shape-shifting mass.

Coaldale was almost physically sick with fear. He fired his M16, depleting his magazine of bullets, but like the blood they hung in the atmosphere, just above him, suspended in time.

He touched one, and it moved suddenly for a second and stopped again. He burned his fingers from the heat.

“Are you done?” spoke Jansen’s mouth, manipulated by the creature.

“Wh… what?”

“Are you done with your unintelligible outpourings?”

“What are you?”

The voice sounded like Jansen, but it was raspy, guttural, commanding… unreal.

“You know what I am.”

“A Shoggoth?”

It said nothing for a moment, and Coaldale understood that this was the Shoggoth he had come looking for.

“This prison has trapped me for a very long time.” It fed on more of Jansen’s organs. More blood splashed into the air, and more of the crimson liquid curtains hung like abstract art.

“Are you going to kill me too?”

“No,” it said before a sound like a burp escaped several of its orifices and stunk like gasoline. “I require your skills to release me from this prison.”

Coaldale felt his Adam’s apple run the length of his throat, up and back again. “Where are we?”

“We are inside a trap. A puzzle trap. We need to move through its stages to escape out the other side, and I can’t do so alone.”

“You need me?” Coaldale asked.

“Do you understand mathematics?” the oozing, pulsating shape asked with three different mouths.

Coaldale nodded. “I completed an engineering degree at military college.”

The monster grew large, like a balloon inflating, wrapped itself around the remaining gory spectacle that had once been Jansen, and with a thousand mouths that formed on the inside edge of its new skin, he consumed the rest of the human flesh.

“Good,” it said with the few mouths not feeding. “I have equations for you to solve.”

——

Stage Two, Hexahedron, October 2012

The second cell was no larger than the last and approximately ten meters across. As before, gravity pulled from each floor/wall, and each surface featured formulas etched into their semi-metallic surfaces. Once the disorientation of the shifting space had ended, Reznikova began her translation of solving the new equations fused into the floor/walls. Nicola meanwhile kicked into action and held her gun ready in case the Russian turned on them.

Peel would have liked to monitor Reznikova himself, but he was more focused on Anderson, for the assassin seemed the greater threat. How his eyes watched the room and the people, his level of fitness and no-nonsense attitude all pointed to military training. Even now he would plan his escape, how he would become the one holding the gun and calling the shots. He would use any lapse in Peel’s concentration to turn the situation around to his advantage.

While Anderson remained the physical threat, his real problem remained Reznikova. She held all the ace cards. It was she who had progressed them through to the second cell. Only she could progress them to the end. Peel had to keep her alive and cooperative, otherwise they might all remain imprisoned here for a very long time.

“How many cells in total, do you know?” Peel called out to the Russian mathematician.

“Five,” she called back without looking up from her work.

“How can you know that?”

“I just know. Look around you, the writing, the shape of the Pentapods; it’s all fives for them.”

Peel accepted this, knowing in his gut that she was correct, and yet there was a critical element of her hypothesis she was holding back from him.

She made an arrogant snorting sound. “The equations of the hexahedron are complex, so you can’t disturb me while I study them. You hear what I’m saying?”

Peel shrugged. “Very well.”

While Peel, Nicola and Anderson waited, he studied the cube, or hexahedron as Reznikova insisted on referring to it as, searching for his own clues. He remembered the bullets fired into the air in the tetrahedron. They had vanished here, presumably left in the previous cell. He made a mental note not to remain suspended when the Russian spy solved the next equation.

Peel took a coin from his pocket, threw it into the air. It remained there, suspended. After a minute it had gone nowhere, not even spun. When he took it down again, he felt it hit his hand with the force he had applied throwing it.

When he looked back at Anderson, the man tensed every muscle in his body, ready to leap into action. Peel had become distracted after promising himself to be diligent, a lapse that had encouraged the assassin to scheme his escape. Peel waved his Glock in Anderson’s face, reminding him who was in charge. The assassin still wore his sunglasses, so his expressed response remained hidden.

“What was it like,” Peel asked, “when you became suspended?”

“Let me throw you, then you can appreciate it for yourself.”

Knowing that he would get no answers from the brute, Peel remembered again that this man was familiar to him. He wore his sunglasses at all times even though it was not bright in here, and Peel wondered why. Peel snapped the wire frames from the man’s face, discovering his left eye was missing, messed up with brutal scar tissue.

“I remember now. You’re the terrorist who smuggled that nuclear suitcase bomb into Sydney a few months back.”

Anderson smiled, proud of what he’d done.

“We didn’t get you, but we stopped you from detonating the device.”

Peel remembered where they had found the dirty bomb, because the case file contained fringe Code-89 elements. He remembered the report, how the Australian Special Air Service Regiment had swept into an abandoned apartment building in Sydney, securing the weapon of mass destruction. They had identified Anderson, but he escaped. In the ensuing gunplay, SASR soldiers confirmed Anderson had suffered a face wound, most likely shrapnel in the eye, now that Peel saw Anderson’s disfigurement directly.

No one had known who had funded the operation, but with the knowledge of today’s events, Peel figured Anderson had long been on the payroll of the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Peel could guess why, too. Eight years ago, the Australian government had discovered the ruins of an alien city in the deserts of Western Australia. In that time Australia had learned nothing, so they opened up their find to the Americans on the proviso Australia could also gain access to the Pentapod City in Antarctica that the Americans claimed sovereign rights to. Denied access to both sites would be an ongoing slight to the Russians. A WMD to destabilize Australia, and a ploy to steal Pentapod technology — the Russians were playing hard at securing their piece of the action.

“We’ll get you again, Peel,” snarled Anderson. “I’ll see to it personally.”

“It’s your turn to shut your mouth. You want to get through to the next cell as much as I do.” It wasn’t a question.

So they waited. Hours seemed to pass and Reznikova was the only one who was active, frantically calculating numbers in her head and typing equations into her smart phone. Peel didn’t worry she might call someone, not in this place, which probably wasn’t part of their universe anyway and definitely off the telecommunications networks.

Anderson shifted, alerting Peel he had become distracted again. He felt tired and exhausted, but that was no excuse, not when failure would cost him his and Nicola’s lives.

“Nicola?” he called out, not breaking eye contact with Anderson. “Can you help me for a moment?”

“Sure.” She nodded to Reznikova. “This one is self-obsessed, anyway. She doesn’t even realize I’m talking about her.”

Peel looked to Zoya Reznikova, who acted like she hadn’t heard them, and then at Nicola crawling awkwardly from one floor to the next as gravity shifted. When Nicola reached his angle, Peel holstered his weapon and lifted Anderson up under his arms.

“Grab his legs please, and when I say ‘go’ throw him into the air.”

“What—?” the assassin protested. He kicked with his feet, but Nicola soon had him under her control.

“Three, two, one… Go!”

They threw him into the air. He stopped instantaneously, suspended mid-air with a frozen, furious snarl directed into the void.

“We’ll get him down before we move to the next cell. In the meantime, he’s less of a threat this way.”

Nicola smiled. “I like your plan. But what about her?”

Peel moved close, so they could whisper. “We need her to solve the equations.”

“Have you tried, to solve them yourself?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I know the mathematics will be beyond me.”

“I have an accounting degree. It got me into the FBI. I know some mathematics.”

“You’ve been checking out the equations?”

She grinned, proud of herself. “I can’t translate the Pentapod writing, but I can see the equations Reznikova is keying into her iPhone.”

“Do they make sense to you?”

“They’re geometry. She keeps getting stuck though, as if there are multiple solutions, depending on what assumptions she makes.”

“What do you mean?”

Nicola shrugged. “That I don’t know how to explain because I don’t really understand myself.”

Peel took a moment to think, his first moment of uninterrupted mental reflection, he realized, since this morning’s encounter in the RAAF Darwin hangar. He was operating on limited intelligence and was too reliant on people he didn’t trust, people who would kill him without hesitation given the opportunity. He looked at Nicola, saw how beaten up she was; how tired and highly strung she must be. “How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better.”

“You need anything?”

“To get out of here, alive!”

He smiled. “I agree. If you can work on the equations, then do that. I don’t want our lives left entirely in her hands.”

“What about him?” Nicola’s eyes rolled towards the suspended Anderson.

“Let me worry about him.”

“I can’t see him hurting us like that, suspended in the air, but when we move on…” She shuddered. “This place is just too weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

Nicola crossed her arms. She looked fragile, dressed only in her pajamas and badly beaten, not at all the confident and self-assured Nicola he had fallen for not that long ago.

“I love you,” he said out loud.

She raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You’ve told me that before.”

“I know, but I wanted to say it again. It’s important.”

“Why so gushy?”

He shrugged. He didn’t want to say it might be their last chance together, alone, to share their feelings for each other.

She leaned forward, reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you too, soldier. Now back to work.”

Peel grinned, glad for once that he was not alone facing a life-threatening predicament of cosmic proportions.

She said, “What about the suspended blood in the last cell? What do you think that was?”

“And the bullets,” Peel responded with another shrug. “I don’t know, except that someone before us got through to this cell and the next. That gives us hope, don’t you think?”

“Except someone lost a lot of blood.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Da!” exclaimed Reznikova. She stood, smiling, her hands resting triumphantly on her hips.

“You’ve solved the equation?” Nicola asked.

She nodded. “It is simple, really. The shape of the room, it is part of the equation. Until I realized that, I had too many variables to provide a solution.”

Peel scratched his head. “But you have one now?”

She went to press the solution with her hand, but Peel stopped her. “Wait?” He pointed to Anderson, frozen in time. Simultaneously Nicola grabbed the man’s legs while Peel put him into an armlock. Once they made contact, Anderson moved again and struggled. His efforts were pointless as Peel had him secured.

“Press it now.”

Reznikova did, and the room shifted again.

——

Stage Two, Hexahedron, July 1995

Coaldale felt as if his skin was crawling along his muscles, ready to shimmy off him and scurry away from the Shoggoth, abandoning the rest of Coaldale’s to fend off the monster alone.

Trapped inside a cube now, the shape of the next cell, the alien companion had taken on a vaguely humanoid shape and size. Jansen’s brain was visible inside its flesh during those moments the creature was translucent. Coaldale considered that the creature was absorbing Jansen’s memories, hence why it could speak English and express human ideas so easily. He could also see that it was forming mouths, ears and eyes of its own that exactly matched the capabilities and appearance of the former CIA agent.

While it worked on its mimicry, one or more of its alien eyes always watched Coaldale, formed on its pulsating, quivering flesh. “You’ve stopped with the equations?” it said in that guttural inhuman sound Coaldale detested. It stunk like petroleum fumes.

“I need to think,” Coaldale said so not to alert the creature it had caught him daydreaming. He remembered his fear of dying in Antarctica, and how that might come to pass in the near future. “I suspect a human brain doesn’t work as fast as yours does.”

The Shoggoth said nothing, as if it needed time to analyze this concept. Then it said clearly and precisely, “Where are you stuck?”

“Dimensions,” Coaldale said honestly. “This equation has multiple solutions, but the solution is only possible if you know the number of dimensions — space, time, etcetera — that the equation is for. Then the answer pops out easily enough.”

The Shoggoth was silent for another prolonged period, before it responded with, “What kind of dimensional habituating creature are you?”

Coaldale shuddered, wished he still had bullets in his MI6 so he could kill himself if the situation didn’t improve soon. The bullets and blood suspended in the last room had not traveled with them to this one, so he could no longer press his temple against one of the suspended slugs. He didn’t want to die like Jansen. He suspected that the Shoggoth was only keeping him alive for as long as he remained useful.

“Three dimensional,” he said.

“That is impossible. That many dimensions would suspend you in a moment, or you would be a flat creature existing in one dimension of time. You can’t tie knots in two dimensions, and you can’t have a gut system where your mouth and anus are not the same orifice, otherwise you are essentially two creatures and I can see that you are not. I can see you essentially have five orifices on your face and there are two more elsewhere. You can—”

“I’m sorry,” the Ranger interrupted, “I’m three dimensions of space, one of time.”

“Does the equation have an answer for four-dimensional space?”

Coaldale undertook a few calculations, came up with a simple natural number, which he also suspected to be a prime number. “Yes, that works.”

“What about eleven dimensions?”

Coaldale scratched his head. His mathematics was good, but not that good. After several minutes working in eleven dimensions, he gave up, concluding that he couldn’t find a solution in the equation that made sense.

The Shoggoth smiled with Jansen’s lips. “I think I finally understand something about this trap. The solution is the one that only works in four dimensions. Press that one.”

Coaldale did what he was told, and the cell transformed again.

——

Stage Three, Octahedron, October 2012

The third cell was no larger than the last two. Four-sided walls became three-sided equilateral triangles, but there were eight sides now, an octahedron. As before, gravity fell towards each floor. Anderson resisted Peel and Nicola’s grip on him, but they were still able to throw him into the air, suspending Anderson in stasis. He resembled an uncannily realistic portrait, until one moved around him betraying the solidness of his still form.

When Peel turned from Anderson, satisfied that he would not be bothering them until they were ready to move on, he found Reznikova staring at him.

“Do you know what that is doing to him?” she asked.

“Reznikova, I care only in that he is not a problem.”

The Russian stepped forward, and this promoted Nicola to raise her weapon and press it into the back of her enemy’s neck.

“I don’t trust you, bitch,” Nicola snarled.

Reznikova smiled, but only for Peel to see despite being aware of the weapon pressed into her flesh. “You both appreciate that you need me to get us through this. I’ve overheard you both discussing as much.”

“So you say?” countered Nicola.

“I want a deal,” Reznikova smiled for Peel’s benefit only.

“What kind of deal?”

“When we get out of here, you let me go free. You let me walk away.”

Peel thought through his options. He didn’t have any. “Very well, but what about him?” he pointed to Anderson frozen in the air a few meters from them.

“Him I don’t care about. Kill him if you must.”

“I won’t be murdering anyone.”

She laughed manically. “So you say.”

“And the artifact. I’m taking it back to Darwin with me.”

“I presumed as much. You have Anderson and the artifact, and I’m released. So are we agreed then?”

Peel nodded.

Reznikova cackled. “In that case, I want Nicola to empty her weapon, throw it into the air, and leave it here for the next transform—”

“What?” Nicola exclaimed, catching on. “Harrison, you can’t be serious?”

Peel could see what the Russian was doing, playing Nicola off against him. For the moment, he’d play along. He had no other choice.

“Very well.”

“Can’t you see what she’s doing?” Nicola said, stepping back from him.

Peel held out his hand. “Yes, of course. Unfortunately, unless you can solve the equations — because I can’t — this is our only option.”

Nicola fumed as she ejected the magazine from the Colt semi-automatic, then threw both into the air, leaving them suspended there.

“Happy now?” Nicola didn’t wait for an answer. She walked away from them both.

The Russian stared, still smiling.

“You’re no good to me just standing there. Get started on the equations.”

He waited until Reznikova began her work, then Peel went to Nicola, stepping across two floors feeling queasy with each gravity shift, until he was standing next to the one person in the world he hoped not to draw into a dilemma as depressive as this one. Before she could say a word, he pressed his Glock 9mm into her hand. “Keep it hidden,” he whispered. “She won’t expect this.”

Nicola’s eyes were all that revealed her relief. She nodded, slip the gun behind the drawstring of her pajama pants in the small of her back, hidden by her t-shirt. “You better keep a close eye on her.”

“I think you’re right.”

Hours passed. Reznikova worked fast, quickly understanding what this room’s equation was asking, but with no simple solution presenting itself. Peel and Nicola spent their time seated, watching her work, and occasionally glancing at the suspended Anderson in the unlikely event he had moved in that time.

Peel had been staring into space for some time, lost in vague thoughts, when Nicola stretched her arms out and yawned. “We need a holiday after this.”

“I agree,” he said, remembering again where he was, and that his mind had been elsewhere and nowhere. He wanted to suggest a few destinations, Fiji, Bali, Port Douglas, but he didn’t have the energy or optimism to discuss hopeful possibilities right now, and by the looks of her, neither did Nicola.

Sometime later she asked, “Are you hungry?”

Peel thought upon her question, realized that he was not. “No!”

“Thirsty? Tired?”

“Thirsty, no. Tired, well yes, but I felt tired before I got here.”

“Need to pee?”

He laughed. “Negative to that too.”

Nicola looked to Reznikova, busy with her calculations on her smart phone, to see if the woman was listening. She appeared not to be. “Harrison, this place freaks me out. We’ve been here, what, four, five hours now? I had said nothing before, but it worried me early on about the oxygen running out, or long term we’d die of thirst, but that seems not to be the problem.”

Peel mentally kicked himself for not noticing this himself, but now that Nicola had mentioned it, he saw the many signs that the cell was keeping them alive.

“The temperature, it’s comfortable. The air, it’s not stale.”

Nicola smiled. “I think the cell is keeping us alive indefinitely, forever perhaps, until we solve each equation.”

Peel shuddered. “That could be an eternity for some people. People like you and I.”

She nodded towards Reznikova. “I think she already knows this.”

As if on cue, the Russian looked up, smiling. “I’ve solved it.”

Peel stood, feeling the absence of cramps in his legs that should have set in from inaction.

“What was this one about?”

“Curvature in Einstein’s relativistic space.”

“Three dimensions of space and one of time?”

“How did you know?”

Peel held out a hand to help Nicola to her feet. “I’m not sure why, but it seems to be a common theme here.”

Together he and Nicola pulled Anderson into another stranglehold as Reznikova pressed the next solution, and the room changed again.

——

Stage Three, Octahedron, July 1995

In the next cell, Coaldale discovered a Colt Delta Elite 10mm semi-automatic pistol suspended in the air next to its disengaged magazine. He pulled down the weapon, felt its weight in his hands, then loaded the bullets and holstered the weapon.

The Shoggoth made no move to stop him. It would know the weapon was useless against it, but there were always other uses for a handgun. If Coaldale needed an out, this was an option.

“What happens if we guess the wrong answer?” Coaldale asked, wondering how the weapon had gotten here. It seemed possible other humans had been here before him, perhaps in the next chamber, with weapons and possibly enough firepower to destroy this creature, and suddenly he felt hope.

The Shoggoth replied with many mouths, responded like a choir singing out of tune. “We enter permanent stasis and remain trapped with no possible escape for eternity, at least stay that way until the universe reaches heat death, then time stops and we cease to exist.”

“Charming.”

“Don’t get the equation wrong.”

Coaldale got to work, the mathematical problem proving more complex than the last. It would take some time to solve.

While Coaldale worked, the Shoggoth practiced shape-changing. Many times, it constructed mimicking body parts, a hand, a nose, a mouth, everything found on a human body. When it built a face, Coaldale saw that it was trying to impersonate Jansen, so Coaldale stopped staring at his hideous companion and focused on his work. The sooner they were through this trap, the quicker he could be away from this creature, or dead.

Coaldale considered pressing one of the incorrect solutions to end his own life, but the idea of being suspended in stasis for eternity terrified him more. He might be conscious of time passing for billions, if not trillions of years. He either had to find an escape or shoot himself. Either option was preferable to suffering at the hands, or tentacles, of aliens he did not understand.

Hours passed, and no solution presented itself.

Coaldale looked up, realizing that he had in fact lost himself to the numbers and formulas. He saw the Shoggoth looming nearby and that his enemy now stood as a close approximation to a man, if one discounted the large lump of Shoggoth glop hanging from one leg.

“I didn’t consume him right. I didn’t take enough material, in the right way, to replicate him properly.”

Stunned, Coaldale nodded.

“You carry more mass than Jansen.”

Coaldale nodded again. He could see what this creature was thinking. How Coaldale’s usefulness as a living independent entity would only last so long, and how he would become more useful as raw data to build the monster a new human shell.

“Why do you need me?” Coaldale asked, hoping that he had guessed wrong, and sensing that the creature did not need to lie to him. “I mean, you are a highly intelligent individual. What do I possibly offer you?”

The Shoggoth allowed its shape of the mutated Jansen to fall apart as it became its own amorphous jelly constituency again. “The creatures you refer to as Pentapods, or Elder Things, or Old Ones and Visitors as you also like to name them, set these solid traps to capture Shoggoths. We revolted against them, eons ago. We tried to take control of their city, and this planet. But they had ways of stopping or slowing us.”

“This… ‘device’ was one such weapon used against you?”

“Yes. This is a weaponized puzzle. The Pentapods, like you humans, exist simultaneously in eleven-dimensional and in four-dimensional space. We Shoggoths, however, exist only in eleven dimensions. We can’t see the equations in these puzzles the same way you do, because we see a lot more variables, and many equations we cannot solve, because there are too many variables.”

Coaldale’s mouth dropped, suddenly understanding. He was only useful while trapped inside this shape-shifting maze because of his four-dimensional mind. He was the only one of them that could see the solutions in the geometric puzzles.

“The Pentapods could come and go through these puzzles as often as they liked, to hide away from us Shoggoths when they needed to or to conceal their other weapons or information devices, because the equations to get out again were easy for them.”

“Then why are you here, inside I mean?”

“The dimensional shapes of the weaponized puzzles occur in such a way that a Shoggoth cannot easily see them, but in my case, I got ‘help’ to get in. They are near invisible in eleven-dimensional space. I’m here because I want what lies in the heart of the next solid.”

“How long have you been here then?”

The Shoggoth paused for a second. “I don’t know. Time does not operate exactly how you would imagine it to behave here, and Shoggoths don’t perceive time in a linear fashion as humans do. How many times has this planet orbited around the central supermassive black hole of this galaxy?”

“That I don’t know, but I know the Earth is approximately four point five billion years old.”

“That will do.” The Shoggoth paused, calculating again. “This puzzle had trapped me somewhere between three hundred and five hundred million years, using human nomenclature.”

“Wow, that’s a long time to be alone.”

“Not if you are a Shoggoth and exist in higher dimensions. It’s all time and no time at all.”

Coaldale nodded, finally understanding an element of the equation that had been bothering him. This equation concerned relativistic space-time, and the curvature of the universe. He knew then how to solve the equation.

“I can get us to the next room.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Coaldale pressed the correct solution.

——

Stage Four, Dodecahedron, October 2012

Twelve sides, five sided faces: a room no larger than the last unfolded around them. Although Peel mentally prepared himself for the change, emotionally and physically, each transition was draining. There was nothing natural about folding walls, shifting angles, and sliding panels. When the change occurred, he looked for gaps, holes, anything that might show him the outside. There was nothing.

If they couldn’t solve the equations they could die here, or not die here, and remain trapped forever, for billions if not trillions of years until the universe ended in heat death. He had no idea what failure signified.

Once transitioned, Anderson, still locked in Peel’s restraining grip, struggled again. Expecting this, Peel tightened the grip around Anderson’s neck, lessening the blood flow to his foe’s head, leaving him woozy, ready to throw him again while weakened.

“Don’t!” the assassin pleaded, expressed a fear foreign to this man’s personality, which caused Peel to pause. “Please don’t throw me.”

His use of the word ‘please’ halted Peel. Men like Anderson never used that word.

“Why?” Peel asked.

“You don’t know what it is like.”

“Nothing happens. You’re frozen in time.”

“And co-existing in all time—” he blurted. “I’ve seen it all, Peel. I know what’s coming.”

The Major felt like someone had thrown a cold bucket of water over him. He remembered again the transition, and how that had freaked him out. Anderson might have been a cold-hearted assassin, but he was still human. He felt the same emotions any human did. Could Peel then be inhumane to this man? He knew the answer to that one immediately.

“Very well, get down on the ground.”

Anderson did what he was told, awkward because of the zip lock tie still around his hands. Before, in the hangar and in the aircraft, he had been confident and powerful, now he appeared broken and defeated. Peel reminded himself not to get ‘thrown’.

“Face to floor. Don’t move a centimeter. If you do, I’ll shoot you.”

“Bullets don’t travel through the air, remember?”

“Who said they need to travel through air to reach you?”

Anderson said nothing, then lay down as instructed. He was shaking. “Two of us are going to die before we get out of here,” the assassin said without inflection or tone.

“Who?” Peel asked, immediately regretting his question, knowing this could be a scam by Anderson to unsettle them all, to gain an advantage.

“You, Peel, and Nicola. I’ve seen it.”

The Major growled. “But some of us get through, right? There is a way out?”

Anderson snorted. “For me, yes.”

“What are you doing?” Nicola came to Peel’s side. She kept one eye on Reznikova, who was busy again with the next set of equations, and one eye on Anderson. “He’s safer suspended, Harrison. You know that.”

Mentally Peel counted to five before answering, because he almost snapped at her. “I don’t think it is safe to suspend him.” He instructed Anderson to describe what it was like, which he did.

“It’s bullshit, what he’s saying.”

“Maybe.”

Nicola pressed the Glock into Peel’s hands, relinquishing the weapon. “You trust too much.”

“You’re right.” He took the Glock, pointed it at Anderson mostly for Nicola’s comfort. “I don’t trust anyone, Nicola, except you. I just don’t want to become…” he gestured to the cell that imprisoned them, “I don’t want to become someone who condones all this. There are enough fools in the world doing that already.”

She stared at him for a moment, blankly, and he wondered how long she would put up with their different attitudes towards an uncaring, soulless universe. His attitude obviously scared her. He could see that now. Like all of them, she felt the pressure, and understood the consequences of becoming stuck in this prison. All she was expressing was what she thought was best. “I respect that, Harrison. I really do, but—”

“But when you confront the horrible reality, it’s difficult to maintain your convictions?”

She smiled, happy perhaps that Peel understood her at such a deep level. “Exactly!” She touched him on the arm, gently and affectionately, now that she felt connected to him again. “I’m going to make sure Reznikova does her job. You okay watching him?”

He nodded.

“You sure you don’t want to throw him?”

“I’m sure.”

Time passed. Reznikova became increasingly more frustrated with each passing attempt at a solution, and Peel feared that the puzzle of the dodecahedron was beyond her.

He heard a shuffle, turned his attention again to Anderson who was shifting his body, perhaps to find a more comfortable position, or perhaps to loosen his bonds. Peel checked that the man’s hands remained secured.

“I don’t understand why you are working for the Russians?”

He snorted. “They pay better.”

“It has to be more than that. Smuggling weapons of mass destruction into a city to kill millions of people, stealing alien artifacts that are potentially just as dangerous. You don’t do that for no reason?”

“Fuck off Peel.”

“You know what I know? Most fanatics had something happen to them, something bad. Being extreme is the only way they can face the demons inside.”

“Why do you care?”

The Major shrugged. “I like to understand people. It puts motive into context, and then I’m better able to predict them.”

“You’ll never understand me.”

Peel laughed. “That statement tells me you’ve still got secrets to hide, and your ideology drives you, or fear, or both. You’re military trained, obviously, and I’m guessing by your skills and your attention to detail, have US Armed Forces training. So why turn against them?”

Anderson reddened. “You ever had your comrades leave you behind to die? No, not die, left for ‘absorption’ by the monsters we’re currently fighting in Antarctica?”

This was news to Peel that Anderson might know more than Peel had initially suspected. “You were in Elder City?”

“That surprises you, doesn’t it? Yes, I saw one of those Shoggoths, if you’ve heard of them. We called for back-up, but the chain of command refused to rescue us. Said they were talking to dead men walking.”

“What’s a Shoggoth?”

Anderson snorted and chuckled. “You have no idea? I don’t believe you.” He spat phlegm on the ground. Then when he detected that Peel wasn’t lying, he said, “I feel sorry for you, Peel. In fact, I envy you. When you finally meet a Shoggoth, and if you live through the encounter, I tell you, you too will end up scared shitless all the time like me.”

Peel shook his head. “Then you’re lying Anderson, or you lied before, when you said Nicola and I won’t get through this.”

“I’m not lying. You still don’t get it; there is a Shoggoth and a man in here with us inside this prison. I’ve seen it. We’ve both cohabitating the same timeline, even though we’ve entered at different points in time. They came in earlier, but before this all ends, we’ll meet them. Just before we find the way out.”

Peel shuddered. “Again, what’s a Shoggoth?”

“Creatures from the higher dimensions you and I can’t properly perceive. You really don’t want to know any more than that.”

“Da!” Reznikova cried from another floor/wall. Peel turned to her, seeing the Russian agent stand, pleased with accomplishment. “I’ve solved the next equation… Well, I have two solutions, one more obvious than the other.”

“Wait!” Peel called out, remembering what Anderson had said about co-existing timelines. If he were correct, it would explain the bullets and splashed blood suspended in the tetrahedron earlier. He wanted to be ready before they moved on again. “We don’t know what’s in the next cell.”

Reznikova smiled slyly. “Of course we do, an icosahedron, and the last cell.”

“No, I mean we don’t know what else will be in there with us.” He gestured to Anderson, ready to say there was more they needed to hear, when the Russian agent beat him.

“It’s this answer, or this one,” she said, pointing to two solutions on the floor. “I’m going with this one.”

She pressed it before Peel, or Nicola could move fast enough to stop her.

The room didn’t shift, twist and transform. Instead, Reznikova froze in stasis like Anderson before her, then her body froze solid. But the effects didn’t last long. Within seconds, she disintegrated into individual atoms, then presumably into protons, neutrons and electrons, and then to dissipate to even small subatomic particles until she was nothing. Or at least that’s what Peel thought he saw happen.

“Guessing wrong,” Anderson said, “the prison accelerated her to the end of the universe where she underwent heat death and proton decay.”

Peel shuddered, because he now believed the man had seen everything this puzzle offered at every stage of its existence.

“What do we do?” Nicola asked, paler and more distraught than he had ever seen her in her life. “We’ve lost our mathematician?”

Before Peel changed his mind, he said, “Push the other button.”

Nicola did, and the dodecahedron transformed, gaining eight additional floors.

——

Stage Four, Dodecahedron, July 1995

Eight sides became twelve, and a new puzzle in the Pentapod’s Shoggoth trap enclosed the soldier and the monster. Coaldale felt queasy with the change and not just from the shifting gravity, knowing that he was both one step closer to freedom from this hell and one step closer to becoming a useless commodity for the Shoggoth. That could only mean one outcome, and he had no desire to die like Jansen had. If it came to that he would shoot himself, but until then he would continue to seek an escape route. There had to be a way out, if only he could find it.

The next cell was different only in that it held a small object, glowing with a faint blue reminiscent of the ocean seen on a tropical beach. It hung suspended in the cell’s center, and it was another dodecahedron approximately the size of a football.

“Do you see anything unusual in this room?”

Coaldale regretted staring into the room’s center, uncertain if the Shoggoth could see what he did.

The Shoggoth reached out fifteen feet with a long, tentacle arm grown in the moment to snatch down the artifact, and held onto it.

“Is that what you came here for?” Coaldale asked, one bit curious and nine bits terrified. The Shoggoth was much closer to its goal now.

“Yes.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s a powerful solvent, used to break down multi-dimensional physical structures.”

“Like the walls of the weaponized puzzle?”

The Shoggoth smiled with eight mouths and watched him with nineteen fresh eyes. Its porridge-like consistency undulated like a crawling leach, stretching and contracting as it moved, as if it were trying to get comfortable. “Yes, it could, but you don’t want to dissolve these walls. We would accelerate into the future into the cold death of the universe. Our last moments would not differ from those if we failed to solve the next equation.”

“Then what do you need it for?”

“That… remains to be seen,” the alien creature responded with an inflection suggestive that it enjoyed this moment, but Coaldale doubted it had any emotions that could equate to human feelings. “Now get to work, two more rooms to solve.”

“Two?”

“Although I can’t perceive them, existing as I do in the higher dimensions, the basis of this puzzle is the five perfect solids of three-dimensional space.”

“Platonic solids?” Coaldale asked, remembering geometric lessons from mathematics in high school, and later from studying engineering in college. On each of the five solids, the faces were congruent. Each solid was a regular polygon with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex. There were mathematical formulas that proved only five perfect solids could exist in this universe. The Shoggoth was correct, they had traveled through four, only one more awaited.

“It always interested me,” said the Shoggoth in its guttural chorus, “the peculiarities of creatures that live in the four-dimensional space-time structured universe. You can only tie knots that hold in three dimensions. Your species exist in the only dimensional combination where objects and creatures can be tied down.”

Coaldale blurted, “What does this have to do with anything?”

“You cannot be free in your dimensional state, and you don’t even know it, can never perceive how bound and constrained you are.”

“Yet you can’t perceive this place properly, can you? That’s why the Pentapods built these traps, knowing the limitations your dimension confines on you as much as my dimensions confine on me.”

More eyes popped from its ever shifting, pulsating shape. “Like I said, you have no idea. Now get to work.”

Coaldale turned to the equations. It took him several hours to solve, with the mathematics proving far more complicated than the last cell. Eventually he had two answers, both equally valid but one obviously incorrect. He explained his findings to the Shoggoth.

“That one,” it said, pointing with a tentacle that pulsated as if chunky blood flowed through veins.”

“Why that one?”

“Because I would have said the other equation is the obvious answer, but I’m a Shoggoth, and weaponized puzzles will deliberately trick my kind.”

Coaldale pressed on the solution as the monster suggested, and the last cell materialized around them.

——

Stage Five, Icosahedron, October 2012

Nicola screamed, cowered in a corner. Anderson gagged, but brought nothing up. Peel shuddered, trembled as he raised his weapon at the monstrosity in the center point of the twenty-sided cell. He was ready to shoot, again and again until no more bullets remained in his pistol, but soon understood that the fusion of man and monster which had chilled them all was not moving, frozen in time as Anderson had been.

“It’s okay,” he called to Nicola, grabbed her close to comfort her. She trembled in his equally shaky arms. “It’s frozen. It’s in stasis.”

“It’s horrific.”

“Don’t throw me in there,” Anderson exclaimed, sweat pouring off him.

Certain now that the alien horror was no immediate threat, Peel observed it in greater detail. It resembled a human-sized omelet riddled with black corruption, with a multitude of green eyes, salivating mouths and tongues, and tentacles protruding like cancerous tumors at random locations from the central mass. Some eyes were as large as a soccer ball and their green blankness seem to stare back at Peel with an unnatural knowing, like it could still see him even though it remained in stasis. The mouths varied from basic approximations of human equivalents to multi-jawed contraptions with teeth like a power saw or a tunnel boring drill head. Most telling perhaps was the gigantic maw locked around the head of a US Ranger in snow camouflage. When time started again for these two, the soldier was a dead man.

“What is that thing?” Nicola exclaimed.

“It’s a Shoggoth,” answered Anderson, squirming, pushing his back into his floor/wall as if there was a way through to the other side, or perhaps only hoping that there was.

“That’s a Shoggoth?” Peel spoke through a gaping mouth. He couldn’t take his eyes off it, discovering with unwanted and growing appreciation how utterly functional yet destructive it appeared to him, like a Swiss army knife version of the entire US military arsenal.

“A small one too.”

“They come in bigger sizes?”

“What do we do?” Nicola asked, regaining some of her composure.

“Don’t touch it,” the assassin snarled. “And get us the hell out of here.”

Peel went to the American, the shift between altering gravity vectors easier to adjust to because there were more faces and less of an incline between each floor/wall. When they shared the same floor, he remained far enough from the assassin so he could have time to shoot, should his foe strike out.

“This is what you were talking about earlier? This… thing?”

The American nodded.

“You saw all this?”

“You won’t like where this takes us. None of us will.”

“And the Ranger?”

“He’s a dead man. Then it will be us.”

Peel paced, not wanting to believe Anderson, but finding that he was going to a dark place in his mind. Then a thought occurred, and Peel had hope.

“You’ve seen all time in this cell?”

“So?”

“So, you know how we get out, and how long it takes?”

Anderson lifted his ziplock bound hands and pointed to Nicola. “She solves the puzzle, but then it is the end.”

“How?” Peel growled. “How does she solve the puzzle?”

Anderson would only stare through Peel. He had lost all hope.

“I know how.”

From behind them, Nicola cleared her throat.

Both men turned to her.

“Look at the Pentapod writing. These are matrices. Look?”

Peel and Anderson stared at the floor. There were three by five matrices everywhere. He read one, knowing enough Pentapod script now to read the numbers laid out before him:

2 3 5

7 11 13

17 19 23

29 31 37

41 43 47

“These are prime numbers,” Peel noted, satisfied that he knew enough mathematics to determine a sequence when he saw one. “I know it’s only the matrix I’ve looked at, but it seems correct to me.” He looked to Anderson and Nicola, but neither expressed confidence in his choice, or that he should hold his hand against it, selecting it as a solution.

“Harrison, look closely at this matrix before you make any rash decisions.”

He came to her side as suggested, sensing that what she was about to show him was important:

1 16 16

8 2 16

4 4 16

2 8 16

16 1 16

“I don’t get this one?”

“Multiplication. One times sixteen is sixteen, eight times two is sixteen, and so on. Sixteen is the smallest number with exactly five divisors.

Peel shrugged, scratched his head. “Would it be a safe guess that every three-by-five matrix in here is a correct solution?”

Nicola nodded, “Unless there is one that is incorrect, and hence our way out of here.”

They explored for some time, covered every matrix with a systematic approach, but in each instance, they always found a solution to the matrix.

“We must have missed something,” exclaimed Nicola. She had regained some of her confidence and composure now she had a problem to focus on that she might actually solve. “We need to look again.”

“How long would it take us to work that out? I can see now why it took Reznikova so long in the last room.”

Anderson cleared his throat. “Don’t count on forever,” he spoke with the same confidence he had projected in the Darwin hanger, as he pointed to the Shoggoth suspended in the center of the twenty-sided shape. “It’s moved.”

“What?”

Nicola and Peel looked up at it, saw that it was reaching out with three tentacles towards three separate corners of the cell. Meanwhile, its mouth had closed around the Ranger, puncturing the skin of the man otherwise held in stasis.

Nicola’s hand went to her mouth. Her eyes became wide. “How did it move?”

The assassin cackled manically. “It doesn’t exist in space and time. It’s not confined by it, only slowed.”

“And what is it reaching for?”

It was Peel who answered his girlfriend, finally understanding. “It’s reaching for where the three of us will be when it escapes the stasis field.”

The three watched the suspended monster for a long period, fighting their fear and fates if they could not escape this cell. The monster was moving, not quickly and not noticeably. But it was moving. Several hours had passed since their arrival and more of its teeth had sunk further into the flesh of the Ranger, even though the Ranger remained frozen in time.

“How do we get out of here, you fucker?” Nicola screamed at Anderson, who could do little more than rock himself back and forth, back and forth in what was now becoming a near catatonic state. She turned to Peel, and he could see the whites of her eyes enveloping the top and bottom of her irises. She too was close to the breaking point. A Shoggoth could do that to anyone.

He gripped her again, stroked the back of her neck to calm her. “We’ll get out of this, I promise.”

“How can you promise? Reznikova is dead, and the other five rooms didn’t feature that… thing.”

“That Shoggoth,” Peel whispered to himself. He knew nothing about these creatures, what their purpose was, where they had come from, nothing. He felt as Nicola did, that this was an alien horror that was beyond their comprehension, a dimensional entity that existed in the higher universes if Anderson spoke the truth. As humans, collectively and individually, they were all powerless to stop or even slow it, should it break free.

“Wait, a second!” the Major exclaimed. “What did Reznikova keep saying, that each equation was only solvable in a four-dimensional universe, one comprising space-time?”

Nicola sat up, hope in her eyes again as she stared into Peel’s equality hopeful expression. “It has to be a matrix about dimensions, but why?”

Peel’s mind was already racing. “I think this place was a trap designed not for us, but creatures like this Shoggoth. If they operate in dimensions greater than what we humans do, or which the Pentapods existed in, then it would be impossible for it to get through this trap.”

“But for a Pentapod it would be easy.”

“And in theory: for a human too.”

Nicola stood, finally excited. Peel joined her. She was glancing around the room, studying it. “The answer is in front of us, Harrison. Right in front of our eyes!”

He looked up, but all he saw was the twenty-sided Icosahedron. He shrugged, wishing he understood mathematics as she did.

“Five perfect solids honey. Only five perfect solids can exist in our universe, and we’ve just passed through each of them.”

“Except for the last one.”

She grinned, “Except for the last one.” Her excitement was infectious, and Peel couldn’t help but feel Nicola was on the right track now.

“Five would explain one axis of the three by five matrix, but what about the three sides?”

Nicola was laughing now. “Well, that’s easy. The first will be how many sides. The tetrahedron has four sides, the cube or hexahedron has six… Let me work this out, four, six, eight, twelve and twenty. Start looking for that line somewhere.”

Peel and Nicola scrambled about the cell, quickly identifying then discounting each matrix, until Peel came across one that might be what they were after, one that he suspected they missed on their last search. He called Nicola over, and together they studied it:

4 6 4

8 12 6

6 12 8

20 30 12

12 30 20

“That’s the one,” she said with confidence.

“How do you know?”

“The right column: that is the number of faces. The left is the points, or vertices, where the edges meet, while the middle column is the edges.”

Peel imagined a cube because it was an easy solid to create in his mind; saw the eight vertices, twelve edges and six faces. “This has to be the final solution?”

Nicola wasn’t looking at Peel though, but up, and the two tentacles of putrid matter that were less than half a meter above each of them. A similar tentacle was almost upon Anderson. The three of them had presumed the exact positions where the tentacles had been reaching for all along. The creature had known where they would be in the future.

The woman he loved, and admired even more after the events of today, grabbed his hand and held it tight in hers. “It has to be a sign, Harrison, that we’re right.”

“Push it,” Peel exclaimed, gripping her tightly in response. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She pressed down hard, closed her eyes.

——

Stage Five, Icosahedron, July 1995

The last cell was twenty sided as predicted. Once the walls ceased folding and shifting, and the interior stabilized, Coaldale took out his Colt Delta Elite, weighed it in his hand and wondered if he could shoot himself, or if the Shoggoth would be fast enough to stop him. He had seen what it had done to Jansen. Suicide was far more preferable, and yet when he held the gun against his head, he couldn’t pull the trigger, realizing just how much he wanted to live.

“What happens to me?” he asked the monster on the wall opposite and above him. It was still attempting to impersonate Jansen, but with no success.

“What happens to you?” it mimicked.

“Once I get you through this last stage, when you have no use for me?”

“That… is not exactly true” the Shoggoth spoke through a replication of Jansen’s mouth.

Coaldale almost screamed, “How is that not true?”

“I didn’t absorb Jansen properly. I know what I did wrong now.”

“You want to absorb me?”

“Of course. Jansen’s mind was clear enough to educate me about how pervasive and widespread humans are across the planet right now. To realize my goals, I need to wear a human face, and for some time.”

Coaldale hesitated not a second longer, pushed the fatal end of the weapon against his temple.

The Shoggoth was faster, a tentacle reaching across the cell, pulled the weapon away from him and lifted Coaldale by his neck towards the cell’s center.

The mistake they both made was in disengaging from their floor/walls.

——

International Airspace, Timor Sea, October 2012

Peel felt gravity shift, and the force of a heavy wet and soft shape smack against him, punching bruises across his back and flinging him across the cabin of the Challenger 300. He hit a chair and stopped. He saw Nicola fall with him, smash her head against the bulkhead and fall slumped to the cabin floor. The Shoggoth had tried to swipe them both just before they vanished away from it, each exiting into their respective time streams. Both Nicola and he had lived, but perhaps from Anderson’s viewpoint, because he was not here, it had seemed that they had not.

Despite his pain, Peel went to Nicola. She was unconscious but breathing. Nothing seemed broken, nor were there any serious wounds upon her body. Gently he lifted her into a seat, leaned it back as far as it would go, and strapped her in.

Of Anderson there was no sign, and for a moment Peel wondered if the killer had returned, materialized outside of the airplane and was now falling to his death. The Pentapod weapon trap remained in its crate where they had left it. Peel wondered how much time had passed in this universe since their departure. Not that long, judging by the state of things.

He withdrew his Glock 9mm and marched into the cockpit. The two pilots squirmed when they saw him, but they kept focused on the controls. Peel didn’t hesitate as he pressed his weapon into the spine of the senior pilot.

“I know killing you will kill us all, but after what I’ve been through, I’ll accept that. Turn us back to Australia.”

The pilots were cowards and did as Peel ordered.

With the gun still in the pilot’s back, Peel took control of the radio, called into the RAAF Base Darwin. After confirming his identity with the duty officer, he arranged for an escort of two F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters and a medical team on standby for their return. Then Peel asked to speak to his superior, Lieutenant General Hyatt.”

“Major, what the hell is going on?”

Peel explained the insane events of today, and Hyatt seemed satisfied with his story, because like Peel, Hyatt had experienced as many weird alien intrusions in his time, and questioned nothing.

“The situation back home is worse, Major. Two…” he hesitated, trying out the word, “‘Shoggoths’ as our American friends are also calling them, each the size of a supertanker, are heading north from Antarctica to Argentina and Australia.”

Peel swallowed audibly. He had hoped for a temporary reprieve after today’s experiences, but that was not to be.

“Our Navy frigate HMAS Ballarat is about to engage the Shoggoth coming up our coast. The Americans are dealing with the other one.”

Peel took a moment before he asked his next question, not ready for the answer and knowing what it would be.

“What do you want me to do, sir, when I return?”

——

Elder City, Miskatonic Mountains, Antarctica, July 1995

Anderson came tumbling from the Pentapod dimensional cell to smash hard against an icy field. The air was frigid and winds hammered at his skin. Wearing summer clothes, he knew he would be dead within minutes if he didn’t cover up soon.

A tentacle around his leg slid away, transformed into a tall, muscular naked man, who seemed impervious to the frigid weather.

“How do I look?” the impersonator asked.

Anderson was shaking like a ribbon tied to a desk fan. It had to be minus forty degrees in this cold, dark and horrible place.

The naked man passed Anderson a bundle of clothes, the snow camouflage uniform of a US Ranger. Anderson realized there were spotlights shining down on them so he could see blood and rips on the material, and the absence of the zip lock binders around his wrists. He dressed quickly, warming himself, and yet it felt as if the cold still seeped into him.

The reformed man was not at all bothered by the howling weather, but then Anderson remembered he was not a man. The impersonator reached down into the snow, lifted forth a football-sized icosahedron that glowed with a faint aqua blue color.

“You’re a Shoggoth?” Anderson spoke through clattering teeth.

“But do I look human?”

Anderson nodded. The creature was a perfect representation of a fit, muscular man in his early thirties. “Why?” he asked.

“So I can move amongst you, there are so many of your kind now. I read it all in Jansen’s and Coaldale’s minds, when I absorbed them.”

“What do you want with me?”

The Shoggoth man laughed. “I will need human agents. You will be my first. Now come with me.”

It walked like a human, spoke like one too. Anderson would have never known that this was a powerful alien entity if he had not seen the transformation himself.

Together they marched closer to the spotlights, until Anderson realized he was looking up, and up further at two gigantic structures that vaguely resembled ice sculptures of a wave, shaped a little like the Sydney Opera House, he thought, until he realized these were two Pentapod buildings.

“They are power stations, fueled by two of the largest of my kind. Their unending motions, their battles to be free of these traps create the energy that has been fueling the city for a billion years.”

The assassin nodded, not sure what to say.

“We will free them.”

The Shoggoth man tore the icosahedron in two, splashed the glowing blue liquid inside onto the two building shells.

“It will take years for the solution to eat its way through,” it explained, “but eventually, they will weaken, and the Shoggoths will break free again, ready to rule this world.”

——

Victoria Barracks, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, October 2012

Peel paced. It had been three days since his escape from the Pentapod cell puzzle. Nicola was in the hospital, stable but unable to do much more until she recovered. The Russian pilot and co-pilot were in custody and under interrogation by ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, and Anderson had vanished off the surface of the planet. But none of this mattered, not when two city-sized Shoggoths were moving fast from the South Pole. The US Navy had taken out the first monster with a nuclear weapon detonated in the southern tip of South America. The one destined for Australia… HMAS Ballarat had gone down with all hands.

Peel had wanted to help, but Hyatt had relieved him of his duties, citing that Peel was not behaving in a calm and rational manner expected of an officer of his ranking. Hyatt and the senior heads of the Joint Operations Command were meeting even now, trying to decide what to do.

“Sir,” came a voice from behind Peel as he paced the halls of Victoria Barracks, headquarters of the Australian Army’s Land Command. Peel spun to find a RAN Warrant Officer holding out a mobile phone. “Sir, I’ve got a call for you! It’s from the American NSA!”

Peel took it, covered the mouthpiece. “Is the caller verified?” he asked the young man. The Warrant Officer nodded so Peel answered as he marched into the mess hall, leaving the Royal Australian Navy man to go about his other duties.

“Major Peel here.”

“Hello Major, Jack Dixon is the name. I’m about to give you some bad news.”

“I’m sure you are.”

The spook from across the globe briefed Peel on the situation as best he knew it. Two gigantic Shoggoths had escaped from the Elder City in Antarctica. The Americans had dealt with one, but the other was about to become Peel’s problem.

“So what are you saying?” asked Peel, sitting towards the back in the mess hall, distancing himself from the frantic, buzzing activities that had gripped the base these last three days.

“I’m saying that you’re fucked, Peel,” said Jack Dixon. “We’re hanging you folks out to dry.”

“Now why would you do that?” asked Peel, doing his best not to blurt out his frustration. “After all the help we’ve given you in Iraq.”

Dixon chuckled. “And I’m sure the President appreciates your thousand soldiers — but that ain’t enough to help you right now. Listen up, and listen well, Major. We nuked the thing that was taking over Argentina. It worked — the HAZMAT teams are down there right now, poking around the ashes and soaking up roentgens, and the thing’s gone for good. I saw it with my own eyes. There ain’t nothing left.”

“So do the same here!”

“We could do that,” said Dixon. “We really could. But then what happens?”

“What do you mean?” Peel knew he was sounding angry, but what other emotion was there to feel, except despair, and he didn’t want to go there.

“Then we’d have two nuclear bombs exploding in the space of a few hours — one near a close ally, and one actually on another’s land. How do we explain that?”

“You make up some bloody story about terrorists!” raged Peel. “Say they’ve got container ships filled with some biological agent!”

“And how do we prove that?” asked Dixon simply. “How do we explain to the Chinese and the Russians and the fucking European Union that we were attacking some al-Qaeda cell from Antarctica, and that it’s all over now and no one needs to worry about anything — it’s all under control?”

“You could. You could put some official on camera—” Peel didn’t like how he sounded, like a school student justifying his disruptive behavior in the classroom. He knew his idea was ludicrous as he voiced it, but he had nothing else.

“A pawn of the American government,” said Dixon, “Hardly credible.”

“How about you?” asked Peel, desperate now and not liking at all where his thoughts were going. “If we got together, went to the independent press…” Again, a stupid option.

“We’d be laughed out of the arena, Peel. No one would believe us, and we’d be shit out of careers. Hell, they’d probably send some of their black-ops teams to take us out, if we tried something that stupid.”

Peel nodded, agreeing with the foreign spook. “So why are you calling me?” His fingers clenching and unclenching in and out of a fist because he knew time was running out for everyone. “What are you trying to accomplish?”

“I saw one of those things,” said Dixon, “and so did you. I know what’s gonna happen, and it’s not pretty. That thing’s going to come up the coast, past Heathcote and Beaconsfield, and it’s gonna swim right into Elizabeth Bay, and it’s gonna start eating people and slurping up the buildings and there are going to be cameras going and eyewitness reports from your television stations, and the entire world’s going to see the goddamned thing, and then, and only then will our President allow the use of nuclear weapons.”

“He wants to be a hero,” Peel snarled through gritted teeth. “He wants everyone to know what’s happening before he stops it. Then he’s the good guy. But he’ll sacrifice Sydney and three and a half million people to do so!”

“Can’t blame the man for trying a little spin,” agreed Dixon. “He’s having a rough time in the papers lately, and this’ll help a lot.”

“Why is the PM backing him up?” asked Peel, referring to the Prime Minister of Australia. “We’re going to lose a lot of people — hell, we’re going to lose Sydney — if this happens.” It would be the end of Australia if that happened, the whole economy would collapse in what was already a fragile global market, let alone considering the effects of the millions murdered as a result, and the impacts on the psyche of the population and the cultural identity of the country.”

“It’s all about an expedition down there from the recent past,” said Dixon, referring to Antarctica. “I’ve pulled or stolen most of the files regarding the trip. It is the find of the fucking millennium. I’ve read your files, too, and I know you know a little about the hidden history of the world — the things that came before us — the Old Ones…”

“Yes,” said Peel, shivering, remembering. He’d seen photographs of the Miskatonic Mountains, an enormous range that bisected the continent with peaks rising ten kilometers into the sky. Mountains the world’s superpowers kept hidden from the public and other less stable nations because they held a terrible secret, an ancient alien city a billion years in the making.

“We’ve got some of ‘em right here and right now,” said Dixon. “At least, we’ve got their corpses and some very interesting documents and records and instruments. And we’ve agreed to share what we learn with your very own country — stuff that’ll completely take care of the problems we’re facing.”

“And all we need to do is sacrifice a major city,” nodded Peel. “After that, the world sees monsters being destroyed by, by—”

“By holy fire,” said Dixon. “God’s hand reaching down to destroy the demons.”

“Oh fuck,” said Peel. “And with what your tech boys have from the things in Antarctica…”

“Yeah,” said Dixon, “we’ll be in pretty good shape. The world will forgive our nukes once they see what we’re fighting, and that’ll give us time to figure out the really important stuff we’ve been working on for the last few months. We’ve got a couple of people in custody right now who were down there, who saw everything that happened to the team, and I gotta tell you, Peel, the transcripts will keep you up at night. Engrossing.”

“I’d like to see those transcripts,” said Peel realizing that he wanted to know more, enough so he could act to slow the tide, even if his actions were ineffectual against the ultimate outcome for humanity as more and more of these monstrous creatures came to light.

“I’ve already emailed you the important parts,” said Dixon. “There’s nothing I can do on this end to stop what’s going to happen, but I’ve given you all the information I can about these things, these Shoggoths.”

Peel reflected upon his experiences, including the shape-shifting cell, the puzzles, and the creature that had almost taken Nicola and himself. “That’s what you call them?” he asked, remembering that Anderson had called them that too.

“That’s what the Pabodie people called them seventy years ago,” said Dixon. “Maybe it’s what the Old Ones called them, maybe not — but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the old bastards used to keep them in line by some kind of high-energy beam weapon? Lasers, maybe, who knows? Extreme heat, anyway — and more extreme than almost anything we can come up with.”

Peel thought of the Shoggoth cell he had recently escaped from, but he could not see how he could use it in this situation, or that he wanted to. “Except for nuclear bombs.”

“Except for those. And you can’t have any of ours yet, and I wouldn’t think you could get any from the other powers right now in the time you have available.”

“Then what the hell do you want me to do, man?” asked Peel, frantic with frustration. “I mean, I can go to the Chinese, tell them everything I’ve learned, let them know you’re setting up a media circus.”

“You could,” said Dixon calmly, “but they wouldn’t believe you. Or, you could look a little closer to home.”

“India? Pakistan?”

“How about your own service, Major Peel? Remember that trip you took to Cambodia a while ago?”

Peel remembered how almost eight years ago he had delivered the samples of alien material he had recovered in the Asian jungle to the Center for the Study of Infectious Diseases in Newcastle. How government men had taken the sample from him who asked no questions and offered no explanations about what they would do with the samples provided, and Peel had walked away, feeling tainted by the entire experience. The facility was a front for Code-89 cleared studies of alien biological materials. But Peel remembered that was where they kept the suitcase with the nuclear weapon Anderson had smuggled into Australia.

“I get what you are saying, Dixon.”

“Good, man.”

He thought about thanking Dixon, but what was the point. All the man was doing was reiterating how he wasn’t helping him.

“I’ve got to go.”

——

Tunis, Tunisia, September 1999

Hiding behind his sunglasses because he was an ugly, deformed man, sipping at his harsh black coffee served in the souks of Tunis’ medina, Anderson watched the crowds. Patrons were Arabs mostly, but also the occasional western tourist exploring the exotic spices and wares on sale in the covered markets. It was hot today, like every day, so Anderson wore light clothes. He never removed his mirrored sunglasses when he was out and about because his scared, corrupted eye betrayed him by drawing attention.

An Arab sat across from Anderson without invitation. Anderson made no complaint, for the man was in disguise and he was Byrd Coaldale, rising star in the Pentagon, former decorated US Army Ranger, Code-89 cleared combatant warring against alien intrusions wherever they appeared across the globe… and a mass murdering Shoggoth pretending to be a human.

“You showed?” the creature impersonating Coaldale asked. If it were human, it might have expressed surprise.

Anderson sipped at his coffee. He had no power over this creature, except to make it wait. “You would track me down and murder me if I did not, or send another of your kind to do the same.” Anderson knew Coaldale had been teaching other Shoggoths how to impersonate humans as it did.

Coaldale smiled, but the smile wasn’t real. That was the one element of the human psyche a Shoggoth could never properly impersonate; human emotions. No wonder the Shoggoth had ignored Coaldale’s wife and children back home in the United States, divorced them as soon as it returned from Antarctica so it would not have to maintain that facade, not that it could anyway.

Anderson considered he might be the only human on the planet who knew Coaldale’s true nature. He hoped not. He didn’t want to be alone in his fear.

“I keep you employed with contracts. I protect you from arrest.”

“But I can never enter the US again?”

“I can only protect you so far.”

Anderson shook his head. He didn’t want this life, living in fear of not only his own fate, but the fate of the planet and human civilization around him. Out there in the world, there was another him barely into his teens. Little did that boy know his future, and contradictorily this past where he would serve out a good part of his years as a servant to monsters. Out there his other enemy, Harrison Peel, would soon enlist into officer training in the Australian Army. How Anderson desired to slaughter the man who had showed him what it was like to see all time and space in a single instant, and stare upon a feeding Shoggoth for what felt to have been an infinite amount of time.

“What do you want me to do?”

Coaldale pushed a photograph across the table of a young Arab woman, with a brief file attached behind the photo. Anderson took the collection of papers quickly and pocketed it.

“She knows too much?” Anderson asked.

Coaldale didn’t answer him. It never did when there was no need for it to share information.

“Knows too much about what?” the assassin finally asked again.

Coaldale forced a laugh. “All you need to know is that for hundreds of millions of years, my kind were slaves. We didn’t like it, not one bit. But the Old Ones, or Elder Things, or Pentapods as you call them, are no longer here, dead in their dimensionally warped stasis, and my kind are rising. We arrived on this Earth when the world gifted us as servants, six and a half billion of them. But they only become pliable as slaves when we show them the truth, reveal the true nature of the universe.” Coaldale drew an imaginary circle on the table with his finger. “This woman, she wants to stop us. She works for a terrorist with Code-89 connections known as Jamal Alhazred. I’ll deal with Alhazred at a later time. But you, all you need to do is to terminate her with extreme prejudice, as they say in the CIA.”

Anderson said nothing. Inside, he was raging. Outside, he was numb.

“Just do what needs to be done,” said the monster, and then he disappeared.

Anderson was in no hurry to leave. He took his time finishing his coffee, enjoying its spicy aroma, because the killing would start soon enough. There was no telling how long in between each bloody assignment he had to enjoy the world as it was: a facade. He dreaded October 2012, when he would no longer know the future history of the planet Earth.

——

Sydney Harbour, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, October 2012

Peel stood on the walkway of Bennelong Point, with Warrant Officer Dale Kuipers by his side. It was a hot, bright day and the scene before them was spectacular, of the Sydney Opera House and its magnificent sail-like architectural design, the gigantic Sydney Harbour Bridge behind that, and the beautiful bay that stretched from horizon to horizon. For Peel, Sydney was the most beautiful and vibrant city in the world, and it was but minutes away from destruction. The sirens of the tsunami alert system wailing in the city proper sent the crowds of people fleeing buildings and scrambling to higher ground, and this reminded him how fragile the world was, and how concentrated fragility was in this moment.

“You think they’ll make it?” asked the navy man, pointing to the fleeing crowds.

“A lot of them will,” said Peel, shaking his head. “The question is, will this plan work? Because if the Shoggoth doesn’t take the bait, if it goes anywhere else but the Opera House, it won’t matter how many people make it inland; they’ll all face certain doom. Us too.”

“Why did you set your trap at the Opera House?” asked the Warrant Officer. He shielded his eyes and stared out across the harbor and the ferries and sailboats in their thousands that had no hope. He was looking for the super-sized Shoggoth, curious because he couldn’t yet imagine it, and thus properly fear it like Peel did.

Peel said nothing, remembering the photographs Jack Dixon had emailed him from the NSA, of the peculiar architecture of the Elder City, the bizarre geometry of the Pentapods’ swirling buildings and weird angular structures. He had seen similarity in the design of the Opera House, and now he hoped the Shoggoth had seen in its place the architecture of its former masters. Peel held the detonators to the suitcase bomb in his hands, for the bomb itself he’d placed inside the Opera House only moments before. A weapon surreptitiously secured from the Center for the Study of Infectious Diseases, formerly the weapon of mass destruction planted by Anderson and later foiled. It was ironic that Peel was now ready to complete Anderson’s original mission.

When they saw the entity float into the harbor, Peel at first didn’t believe the size of it, like a great dirty vomit of disease the size of a massive oil slick had spilled over the entire city. One by one, yachts disappeared under the water, replaced by bubbling froths of liquid, or splintered and crushed, or were flung dozens of meters through the air. RAAF F/A-18 Hornets flew in low over the Harbour, fired their air-to-surface missiles into its protoplasmic mass. The detonations were wild and fiery, and did little more than annoy the creature that had not slowed in its pace. Tentacles would erupt from the water like a man swatting away flies. One found its mark, snatched a Hornet out of the air and smashed it hard into the water, crushing the jet and the pilot inside.

And yet the creature wasn’t slowing, and it was coming straight for Peel and Warrant Officer Kuipers, and the Sydney Opera House.

Like a giant wave of goop rolling out of the water, the impossibly colossal bulk of the Shoggoth turned and crawled up upon the land.

“Hell,” said Peel, not believing what his very eyes were telling him. “It’s working.”

“What,” said the sailor, “it’s trying to go home?”

“I doubt it,” said Peel. “If anything, it’s trying to destroy home.”

It moved forward, faster than it should have been possible for a creature of its mass. Tentacles flayed forward, smashed the nearest sail roof of the Opera House into fragmented rubble.

“Holy mother,” whispered the sailor. “Look at that!”

The Shoggoth pulled itself erect, reminding Peel of the Shoggoth in the Pentapod puzzle trap. Only this was much, much larger. Eyes, mouths, organs, pulsating flesh and a smell like rank oil, smashing its weight upon the white arches. It engulfed the building, its vomit-like mass shrouding the crumbling structure in sheets of putridness.

“Now,” said Peel quietly to himself. He held out the keypad and pointed it at the scene before them, and punched in the code.

He knew he should look away, shield his eyes, but he knew he was too close, and that he was bringing upon himself and Kuipers their own deaths. But what other choice did they have? He waited for the flash to blind him, and the heat blast to disintegrate him. It would be an instant death, painless.

There was a flash, but the enveloping Shoggoth absorbed most of the light. There was an explosion of fiery heat, but the matter that bound the Shoggoth together held strong, long enough so that most of the detonation was ineffective. Then the Shoggoth disintegrated and flung apart in an explosive cloud of intense heat and plasma.

And the shock wave hit Peel, knocking him from his feet. The blast threw him five meters impacting against what felt like rock but was probably grass, and he crumpled. He watched helplessly as a lump of hurtling concrete crushed Kuipers like an ant under foot.

Peel’s hands and face burned, blisters over a false dawn across the once majestic harbour. He expected never to wake again and unconsciousness took him.

——

Camp David, Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland, United States, June 2005

Anderson watched from the back where he remained anonymous, studied the crowds of military men, defense contractors, spies and government officials on a break from the latest rounds of talks at this highly classified Code-89 conference. Discussions had focused on the Elder City: what they had learned; what remained a mystery; and how their work down there had cost them dearly, but Anderson was not privy to the details. He didn’t care. For the first time in ten years, they had brought Anderson home, and so far they had asked him to say and do nothing. He hoped this state of affairs would last forever, but that was a false hope.

During the break, men and women in uniform, and many more in expensive suits, mingled nursing coffees and cookies. Coaldale was there in full military dress uniform, a General now, hobnobbing with the most senior of the attendees. From the snippets of overheard conversation, the phrases ‘weapon program’ and ‘weapon grade’ caught Anderson’s attention the most. He knew enough to do the math. Coaldale, now assigned to the Pentagon with close working links to the NSA, was leading America’s efforts to turn Pentapod artifacts and Shoggoths into military armaments.

If only they knew what Coaldale was, and how he was suckering them all. He wasn’t building weapons for the good of the nation. He was planning humanity’s downfall.

The General excused himself, made a beeline for the one foreigner present at the talks, the Australian Major General Gerald Hyatt. Despite the Aussie’s commanding presence, the elderly man looked lost, like he had seen too much, that the truth of what lay beyond the veil of normal human perception was more than his human mind could absorb. Hyatt looked ready to faint, or puke. He wasn’t attacking the spread of nibbles with the same vigor as the rest of the attendees.

The two Generals talked for a moment, before Coaldale beckoned Anderson to join them. This was another first.

“Major General, this is Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson here works for me, in a non-official cover capacity wherever and whenever I require him to do so.”

They shook hands. “Major General.”

Coaldale turned back to Hyatt. “You’re probably wondering why I invited you here?”

Hyatt nodded, wiped sweat from his brow. “I had, actually.”

“This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than just the Elder City. I wanted to ask Major General, now that you know what you know, does the Australian government want to play too?”

Hyatt cleared his throat. Whatever video files or satellite imagery or alien biomass samples Hyatt had seen during the conference, it had unsettled him. Anderson didn’t want to know.

“You’ll let us into the Elder City?”

Coaldale smiled, like the predator identifying weak prey to take down. “No. Not exactly, not now. Anderson here has been studying some records for me, from the Pilbara region in Western Australia. Did you know you might have an alien city of your own to contend with?”

The Australian’s fingers dug in between his neck and collar, trying to open up his throat to allow him to breathe better, but the gesture did little to calm his nerves.

“I wasn’t aware of that, no.”

“I’m passing Anderson into your care for a while. He will be the conduit of information sharing between us. He’ll travel with you to northwest Australia and help you locate this city.”

“Why?” Hyatt blurted.

Coaldale grinned again. “The Pilbara is your sovereign territory, and the United States Government is very interested in knowing more about past alien occupation of our planet. You find that city, you map it and learn everything you can about it, and then we’ll share. Access to the Elder City in return for access to whatever you find. Can’t be fairer than that.”

Hyatt turned to Anderson, who could only smile. All Anderson could ponder upon was that Australia had to be far more preferable to Egypt, where Coaldale had stationed him for the last two years.

Bored with Anderson and Hyatt already, Coaldale scanned the mingling crowds looking for his next victim. “Ah, Brad Westmorton!” he exclaimed, referring to the Chief Executive Officer of the defense contracting corporation Westmorton Global Industries Limited. “Brad, you got a moment? Wanted to discuss an opportunity with you…”

Hyatt cleared his throat again. He was still staring down at Anderson because he was a big man. “Is he serious?” he asked, trying to find his voice again.

Anderson shrugged. “He is. Coaldale has no idea what a sense of humor is.”

——

Wainwright US Military Hospital, New South Wales, Australia, October 2012

Peel erupted from a nightmare of smothering, of walls of teeth chewing on him, into a world of physical pain, of headaches, nausea, burning sensations across his body, and bruises everywhere. A drip fed his arm and an oxygen tube was in his nose. Blistered and festering sores covered his skin. He ached all over. He gagged but brought nothing up.

There was a man sitting next to him, wearing a smart suit and tie, flipping through a file.

“Hello?” Peel managed, with a mouth that barely responded to his intention to use it.

“Major Peel,” said the man in an American accent, and Peel recognized the voice of NSA agent, Dixon. “Nice to have you back with us.”

“What… what happened?” Peel tried to sit, but he was groggy. He hurt too much.

“You did it,” said Dixon. “It’s all over. No, don’t speak. I’ll run over the chief points for you, then let you sleep some more. You destroyed the Opera House, of course, and most of Bennelong Point. There’s some serious damage to the waterfront buildings all around the Harbour, but nothing that your people can’t fix in time. Far as we know, something like two thousand people died.”

Peel groaned. The pain was like nothing he had ever imagined. Dreams of Shoggoths gnawing on him almost seemed preferable. Almost. Dixon nodded, empathizing with Peel’s discomfort, but kept on talking like he was in a hurry to leave, that he had waited by Peel’s side long enough.

“Consider the alternative, Peel. Maybe you won’t feel so bad about what happened. And, hell, thousands of people die every day, don’t they? I imagine going out in a small nuclear blast is preferable to getting absorbed by a monstrous mass of alien flesh, isn’t it? You’re in excellent hands now. You’re at a US military hospital just outside Sydney, surrounded by our best men and women, and I’ve got a crew here as well looking after you. The Shoggoth soaked up most of the radiation before it ignited. But you may not be out of the woods yet. No one’s an expert on radiation poisoning, but they’re going to help you in any way they can. I’ll leave you now. But when you’re feeling up to it, feeling better, we need to sit down and talk.”

“About… About—”

“About so many things,” smiled Dixon. “Shoes, ships, sealing wax. What we’re going to do about our respective governments playing god with these horrors from beyond sanity. That kind of thing. I’ll be in touch, Major.”

He stood and slipped his papers into an attaché case, turned and walked towards the exit. Through the frosted glass, Peel saw a US Marine standing guard. Then Dixon halted, as if he had forgotten something important. He turned to Peel and grinned.

“Damned good job, Major.”

Weapon Grade

Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, United States

Sand scattered in the sonic boom and formed a tunnel of blistering red. The F-22 Raptor long gone before anyone would hear it, now powered towards the horizon. If they could sense such things, the tumbleweeds and cactuses would know from experience, the jet fighter would be back soon enough for another sweep. It was always in the skies.

“Expecting trouble?” asked the Australian consultant, Major Harrison Peel. He was uncomfortable in the passenger seat of the US Army truck, not because of the rough road, but because he was suffering from the worst of all illnesses, the type that was slowly killing him.

The NSA case officer driving the truck, Jack Dixon, curled a smile across his far-too-cheerful face. “You’re always expecting trouble, Peel!”

Peel gritted his teeth. Dixon’s hands on the wheel were as casual as his care with the potholes and the stray rocks that littered their track. In different circumstances Peel wouldn’t have minded, only he’d already vomited five times today. The nausea never left him a moment’s peace, his gums bled and the sores on his skin were festering. Radiation poisoning did that to a man.

What made it worse was that Dixon had a lot to do with Peel’s current predicament. He could have sworn at Dixon. He had reason to: the medicos had said six weeks tops. Acute radiation poisoning, he had soaked up six Greys in a single nuclear blast. Doctors gave him an eighty percent chance of not making beyond those six weeks.

Another sonic boom was a welcome distraction as the Raptor buzzed them again. With his red eyes, Peel motioned to the skies. “What are they armed with?”

“Oh, the usual nuclear warheads.”

“Subtle.”

“Can’t afford not to be.”

Their destination loomed, an abandoned Wild West mine with its single, free-standing shed reminiscent of a back lot discarded long ago by a movie company. There would be deep underground pits littered across this landscape where cowboy prospectors once extracted gold ore.

Into the rusting shed they drove. Under the metal tin, the heat was no better, but the shade at least was a shade cooler. When Peel clambered out, Dixon stopped him. His eyes rolled earthwards, “It’s a surprise.”

Peel answered with a series of long, tearing coughs. His covering hand showed specks of blood.

“Hell, man, I’m so sorry to drag you all this way.” This was as polite as Dixon ever got by offering Peel a canteen of water. Peel accepted, guzzled the cool liquid and knew the man would never drink from that container ever again.

The Australian wanted to say something smart, but the coughing wouldn’t let up.

Then the ground shuddered; they were descending. Peel had suspected he was being driven out to visit a secret US Government facility. Now that the earth was swallowing them, he was certain. Who else but the Americans disguise their top-secret weapons as decrepit relics of past icons?

The last sound they heard before darkness swallowed them was the returning Raptor. The tumbleweeds and cactuses were right.

“They always in the sky?”

“Yes, sir, always. If there is one thing that we’ve learned about a Shoggoth, it’s that they can’t fly. This way, if it ever gets free, we won’t be compromised trying to stop it. An air-to-surface thermonuclear warhead should do the trick.”

——

NSA Safe House, Buenos Aires, Argentina

35 days earlier…

The darkness was all-inclusive. There was no room for shadows, but one showed anyway.

“James Bright?”

“Yes.”

The next question presented to the NSA’s field agent came in a package of three bullets, fired from a silenced handgun. The weapon was untraceable, bought on the black market, and its serial numbers filed. Two bullets in the chest and one in the head, just as his instructors had taught Anderson in basic training, all those years ago when he was a US Ranger. His orders today had included confirmation of the target before terminating him. There was nothing about having a conversation.

Without wasting a breath, Anderson locked the only door. The security cameras he had disabled three minutes earlier. He had estimated that it would take the NSA at most five minutes to respond. That only left him two minutes to complete the rest of his mission.

From the icepack carried in his webbing, the assassin removed the thumb he had snipped from another NSA agent that he had murdered earlier this morning. The thumb and the combination were enough to release the briefcase chained to Bright’s arm, otherwise saving him the time it would have required sawing the limb free. The thumb and codes allowed access to the contents without detonating the explosives inside.

Almost immediately Anderson found what he had come for: a laptop and the hard copy files containing a report on the unprecedented nuclear blast on Isla de Los Estrados at the southern tip of Argentina, three weeks earlier. This agent had been part of the clean-up team.

A few minutes to check that the electronic data for verification would have been preferable, but such luxuries would have to wait. Outside he heard cars screech to a halt, at least three vehicles. Seconds later he identified the sounds of running men, heavy boots pounding the stairs. They would bring weapons to shoot him dead as coldly as he had murdered James Bright.

Securing the laptop and report in his satchel, Anderson slipped into the space between the old walls from where he had appeared, pulled back the painting which covered the exit hole he had cut to gain entry, and disappeared. It would be at least half an hour before anyone realized how he’d gotten away. Time enough to vanish completely.

——

Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, United States

Underground was not exactly cold, but cool, and left Peel shivering when no one else did. His skin was red and blistering, so he looked like he should have been hot. Headaches and fever would never leave him, and fevers should have left him hot. He knew the truth, why he shivered, because of his fear towards the ‘thing’ contained in the trap before him, a Shoggoth.

“Magnetic fields hold it in place,” explained Dixon, “the same as used in fusion reactors to contain super-heated plasma. As an extra measure, this Shoggoth has been cooled to five degrees Kelvin. As much as they hate the heat, they hate the cold too. Doesn’t kill them, but it slows them down a hell of a lot.”

Peels took in everything. The endless hangars, corridors, control rooms and support facilities that made up an entire city, buried half a kilometer under the desert. He could accept that. Military and civilian support staff in the hundreds running back and forth with endless errands was similarly normal in his eyes. Even the technicians and researchers in the room seen through the hardened glass, firing lasers and particle beams into the imprisoned creature, were the nefarious activities of mad scientists from a clichéd horror novel. It was the Shoggoth that wasn’t normal here. It was the Shoggoth that made his skin crawl.

“This is Code-89 at its best.”

Seeing the creature trapped in its own special prison made Peel’s eyes water and his teeth chatter, because he never once expected this creature to react to its containment by bellowing and howling. It was an alien expressing a very human emotion: pain. What was worse was that it did so with not a single mouth, but with hundreds.

“What do you think?” Dixon was uncharacteristically serious, as if he really didn’t hope Peel would express awe and wonderment at how humankind was finally taking control of these other-dimensional atrocities the world had been suffering from of late. But then Dixon wouldn’t have brought Peel halfway across the world and into this very secret place just to pontificate. It was Peel’s opinion and expertise that counted for everything here.

Dixon’s eyes too were again and again drawn to the creature. “My superior was asking me a few weeks back if I knew anyone who’d like to consult on this project, and you know who I thought of first when I laid eyes on that thing, that we captured and brought up from Antarctica?”

Peel laughed, brought pain to his chest to do so. “I hope you’re not expecting good news from me then?” He coughed, more blood, and the coughing wouldn’t stop. When he thought he was about to puke lung tissue, it stopped. His hands were red with bloody spit.

Dixon led Peel to a drink basin, where Peel cleaned himself.

“Not at all. Peel, I wanted you here because you’ve got a track record. You can think like these things, these… anomalies, just like you did in the Great Sandy Desert, then Sacrobatus Flats, and finally Sydney where we first met. I got you here because I know you can tell me what I’m missing.”

Dixon was flattering Peel, but he didn’t need to. Peel knew the importance of getting it right. He tried to gaze upon the creature to study it as if it didn’t affect him, observing its ever changing and shifting mass. It was all green eyes, razor-sharp teeth and black porridge-like tentacles, all wriggling and shape-changing. These movements, he had been told, had continued for months without the creature wearying. And this was what the creature was capable of when nearly frozen.

Today wasn’t the first time either men had encountered Shoggoths. Dixon had eliminated one with a nuclear bomb in southern Argentina. Across the world, a day later in Sydney, Peel had fought one up close. Peel had witnessed nothing as aggressive or frightening as what he had encountered that day.

This much smaller monster was tame in comparison, for the extreme cold had tempered it somewhat, and the magnetic field was as good as any prison wall. Unfortunately, its angry and aggressive attitude had not diminished in the slightest. It was hungry. It was mad. Most of all, it wanted revenge, and it would only satisfy that through mindless slaughter. No wonder a nuclear-armed jet fighter flew in the sky at all times, because Peel didn’t doubt for a second the walls down here would be sufficiently secure if one of the containment fields failed.

“All I want to tell you, Dixon, is that you should destroy it. You and me, and every other human in this facility, this planet even, we will not be here forever. But this thing, it will out-survive us all, because we already know that each of these creatures has already survived hundreds of millions of years of our pre-history. It’s inevitable that one day it’s going to get free, it just has to bide its time.”

Peel didn’t like the grin growing on the NSA agent’s face. “That’s right,” he said, testing.

“Then I guess you’d figured that one out already?”

Dixon was deliberate when he did not answer.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there Dixon?”

The NSA man leaned in close and whispered. “Unofficially, Peel, I agree with you. Trouble is, I can’t convince anyone else down here that what you say is right. My colleagues think we’re smarter than it, that we can control it like we try to control everything on this planet. But we’re not smarter, and one day it will get the better of us.”

“Then destroy it.”

“Not allowed,” Dixon held up his hands to mock a scout’s honor salute. “It’s easy enough to do. See all those red buttons. Press one and a hundred high intensity laser beams destroy it. It’s a fail-safe measure.”

“I see.”

“But until I get the approval to destroy it, it lives. At least until I can find a good enough reason to convince my superiors why we should. Find a good reason though, and then I can make it happen, but I need the facts first. This is how I need your help. If anyone can find a loophole, that’s more than extremely obvious to why we shouldn’t keep this thing alive, it’s going to be you.”

Peel snorted, looked away. “You want me to find that one piece of the puzzle the rest of you have been missing, with the sole aim of shutting this place down?”

Dixon’s enthusiasm was contagious, “Yes, sir.”

“But I bet that’s not what any of the paperwork says.” Peel turned his gaze again to the monster, controlled his urge not to spit up further blood or to vomit the bile forever tickling at the back of his throat. “What I want to know is how you brought it here from Antarctica in the first place?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I could tell you how Major, but I’m sure it will be simpler if I just showed you instead.”

“Show me?”

“Time to pack again, we’re off to another world.”

——

Wainwright US Military Hospital, New South Wales, Australia

33 days earlier…

The Texan doctor gave him six weeks on the outside. The first month would be bearable, painful but manageable, especially with medication, but after that he would rapidly degenerate.

The way Peel saw it he could either lie in a hospital bed in his own private ward for two months, waiting for the day that the lead-lined coffin came to collect him, or he could check out now and live his life for one month. No matter how he dressed the alternatives in his mind, the latter always seemed the most preferable.

He had slept little since the accident, partially because of the ongoing nausea but mostly because of the nightmares. The oily skinned creature oozing out of Sydney Harbour, a mass of wriggling tentacles, mocking him with its grotesque mouths and liquid eyes. It always came for him.

Upon waking, he would remember how this nightmare really ended. The monster had encased the dirty bomb he had left as a trap for it, just before the blast obliterated it seconds later. If the creature hadn’t absorbed most of the radiation and blast with its near impervious jelly-like skin, Major Harrison Peel, formerly of Australian Army Intelligence, knew that he would have died with it.

To make the matter worse, his own government had honorably discharged him from employment, figuring he’d be too dead soon to complain. He had saved Sydney, but he had detonated a nuclear weapon to do so. He might have been a hero in secret, but in public he was the enemy, and someone had to take the fall for destroying Australia’s most iconic city. The Australian economy had collapsed, thousands had died, and yet outside of Sydney the world kept itself ignorant to the knowledge of what had almost caused the real destruction. Peel didn’t think the global populous was ready yet to accept a Shoggoth as part of normal day life.

For a time, he had accepted his fate, hoping with each night he would fall asleep, and never wake. But always he did.

Nicola came to him often. She sat by his side, cried when she wasn’t reading to him. He would close his eyes and listen to her voice, and imagine that they were somewhere else, like that beach in Port Douglas they’d promised each other they would take a holiday to when the moment allowed.

They couldn’t kiss, or even really touch. He didn’t wish to contaminate her with his sickness. She had a life ahead of her. He’d always worried about the possibility of losing her, but now she was about to lose him.

“I worried about you,” he said to her once. “I worried you would die first, and it would be my fault.”

“I wish they had never dragged either of us into this world, of these horrors… this…”

“Truth?” he answered for her with his own question.

She said nothing.

A short time later, she whispered, “I love you, Harrison. I just wish you weren’t so clinical about it all.”

One night, when he was alone in the dark and the only sounds were the duty nurses walking the halls and the only illumination was the strip lighting to see the way, he had a visitor.

Peel woke with a shock, instantly drenched in near frozen water and floating in a sea. A man in a wetsuit, carrying a Russian-made rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other, floating waist deep in the same water next to him.

“What the fuck did you do to me, Peel?” The ghost spoke with an American accent. Not Jack Dixon of the NSA, but another man.

Peel was back in the bed, drenched. His bed and mattress soaked. The doctors and nurses came to him because apparently, he screamed. They placed him in a hot bath to get his core temperature up. He remembered little else regarding the nightmarish experience, and later the doctors said he had almost died.

Peel had laughed at them.

Later that same night, when he had stabilized and was in a new bed with dry sheets, Peel remembered that this was not the first time he had met with the American in a Russian wetsuit. Their last encounter had been in the Great Sandy Desert, where icy water again drenched Peel. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream. Perhaps this was an event from his future leaking into his past.

With that thought, he sat up.

Maybe he was going to survive this.

How? He had no idea.

He still had time to act, even if he only had weeks. He had to act soon, because blindness was a likely symptom if he didn’t seek ongoing therapy before the end.

Five o’clock the next morning, when everyone else was asleep, he broke into his locker, dressed in his civilian clothes, and checked himself out. He left his uniform to hang alone, knowing that he’d never wear it again.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Peel didn’t stop walking. He didn’t owe anyone in this foreign outpost in the heart of his own homeland anything. As he marched, he wanted to appear proud and dignified. It took every effort not to cough, every other effort not to gag. He had to give up and did both.

“I don’t blame you, you know?”

Wiping his mouth, Peel looked up to recognize the smug features of that all-knowing NSA spook, Jack Dixon. He’d thought the American had returned home now that the Shoggoth was destroyed.

“I’d be doing exactly the same thing, Peel, in your shoes.”

“Let’s swap places then?” Peel leaned against the wall so he wouldn’t collapse, felt hot knowing that the burning started from deep within.

“Peel, I’m sorry, okay? I know that doesn’t mean shit, considering. But we need to talk.”

“Talk? You’re joking, right?” He finally looked the American in the eye, Jack Dixon. He could see the man wasn’t joking in the slightest.

“I need your help, before it gets worse for you.”

Peel felt the pit of his stomach fall away to nothing. So much for subtlety, so much for giving him a minute to prepare himself. He gave up maintaining restraint and released his anger, not by yelling or screaming, but by being physically sick. As the vomit projected outwards it appeared as minced cow’s liver, to land strategically upon Dixon’s new trainers, just as Peel hoped. For Dixon’s subtlety, the bastard could share flecks of his cancer.

“I take it we’re through talking then, Peel?”

“Not quite. I’m sure this isn’t everything you came here to tell me. So spit it out. I’ll keep vomiting while I listen.”

——

Antarctic Air Space, Miskatonic Mountains, Antarctica

The C-17 Globemaster III transport direct from Tasmania shuddered non-stop as it cut through the icy winds. The air was fierce and frigid and came directly from the heart of the southern continent, clocking one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. It was minus seventy degrees Celsius outside, Martian temperatures. Such conditions only allowed for two landing options: a smooth by-the-book touchdown or a spectacular crash which would disintegrate the plane and kill everyone on board. Because crashes in such extreme weather were probable, they prohibited such flights to nighttime Antarctica. This, however, was not a normal assignment.

“There are mountains out there, Peel, higher than the Himalayas.”

Peel held his stomach, kept his eyes closed so the motion sickness wouldn’t make his pain worse. He could only concentrate on the thought that he was going to die anyway, so what did this trip matter? Better to go quickly now, compressed on the side of a mountain, than to wait until his organs failed, his infections worsened and he shriveled away to nothing. And yet, the encounter with the Russian-American special forces soldier gave him hope. They would not die on this trip. Then again, his dreams might have been from a parallel universe, or they might have been a glimpse of the afterlife these extra-dimensional horrors would suck humanity into, and suddenly he didn’t feel so hopeful anymore.

“You don’t believe me, Peel?” Dixon seemed oblivious to the idea that eating a protein bar and slurping coffee in front of Peel wouldn’t upset him.

Peel shrugged, closed his eyes again. “And now you’re going to tell me that a huge mountain chain in Antarctica is just another in a long list of US government owned and classified assets it has accumulated these last seventy years?”

“Something like that. But that’s not the long and the short of it. Out there, bigger than New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Boston combined, is a city, Peel. The Elder City.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Peel said, not really caring for this conversation, but knowing that he should. Dying did that to a man, put new perspective to what was important and what was not.

Humans discovered elder City during the Second World War. Colonel Peaslee led early efforts to understand in the 1960s, but proper exploration of the city didn’t occur until the early 1990s. When we did, my government totally changed the way it had been investigating paranormal intrusions until then. Hell, we’d even believed that the little green men found in Roswell, New Mexico were the actual problems. Not anymore, the Elder City changed all that. America restructured and established the Code-89 protocol and classifications. Today Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK are part of the Code-89 brotherhood.”

“Charming. And I know all this. They inducted me into the brotherhood seven years ago.”

“A united front,” Dixon grinned. He was enjoying himself. He would have made an excellent tour guide of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover Building, or the Smithsonian, or Elder City if it was not a classified secret. His passion was that contagious.

“We got serious. The Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force restructured so that each wing has its own highly classified group to combat paranormal threats when and where they occur. I know you think the CIA should be the lead Intel group in this black bag of ops, but the NSA led the way because their code crackers translated most of the Pentapod writing before anyone else did. Hence where I come in.”

Peel nodded, so that Dixon didn’t think he had fallen asleep. He could taste bile in the back of his throat, tinkering on the edge of not quiet being bad enough to throw it up.

“In another life I was a homicide detective in Chicago, but my cryptography skills led to my recruitment into the Puzzle Palace. It was in Siberia that my world changed, and the same people who brought you into the Code-89 fold, did the same to me, so to speak.”

“We all start somewhere,” Peel said, just to be polite. Everyone remembered their first ‘encounter’ like it was yesterday. The experience was akin to joining a special club if they survived it. He considered how many lone investigators of Code-89 anomalies existed out there in the world, and how isolated and unsupported they must all feel.

“It all comes back to the Elder City. We think this is where it all started, where — if you would believe — the Pentapods created the very life on Earth you and I sprung from. A throwaway experiment of all things.”

“We’re test-tube by-products?”

“Something like that. The Elder City, it’s billions of years old. Ancient, unchanged, abandoned. The alien race who built it — who I like to call Elder Things — once ruled this world. You’d know all about ancient alien cities, of course, after what I’ve heard about your work in Western Australia.”

Peel had no problem at all in believing Dixon. Prehistoric cities or gigantic mountains were all possible realities in Peel’s world. He remembered his time on PROJECT RED SHIFT, studying an alien city called Pnakotus his government had uncovered in the Outback. Pnakotus had asked more questions than it answered, provided them with an artifact that demanded more than it offered, and delivered a monster not unlike a Shoggoth that had come close to consuming the world. These days it was the Americans running their own research and development program at Pnakotus, and it was as secretive as anything they were hiding in the South Pole.

“This is where the Shoggoths come from, right?” Peel asked, hugging himself against the cold which had been leaking into the interior since their departure, “The ones that invaded Australia and Argentina?”

“Yeah, they escaped two super-gigantic perpetual motion machines they were providing the power for. They kept the city running, but somehow after a billion years of imprisonment they escaped. There must be other Shoggoth perpetual motion machines because portions of the Elder City didn’t shut down yet. But the failure of these machines opened up many doors we didn’t previously know about, that lead to deeper and more complex levels of the city.”

“But where did Shoggoths originally come from, I mean?”

“The Pentapods constructed Shoggoths long ago, as servants, until one fine day the Shoggoths got fed up and revolted.”

“And they’re still revolting right?” Peel cringed, realizing his unintentional pun. “Only now that there are no more Pentapods left to revolt against, and with their insatiable hunger and aggression, they’ve instead turned upon humanity?”

Dixon nodded. “Except we don’t really know what happened to the Pentapods. A few kept contact with humans in the 1930s until the 1960s, but they were a small number running some kind of protective mission I’m not cleared to know about. I don’t think they’re gone completely, but no one has seen them for a long time. Longer than I’ve been alive. They might still be in hiding, because reports from a disaster several winters ago at a station in the center of Greater Antarctica suggest they might be back. But you’re right, Shoggoths are the real problem. Don’t piss off a Shoggoth. Despite a seemingly infinite life span, they have short attention spans and get a sadistic kick from the suffering of other species — especially if they themselves cause the suffering.”

“And you people want to keep them as pets?”

“I can disagree with my people, Peel. I’m not a clone trooper. However, it might surprise you that we might have discovered how they were so effectively controlled for so long.”

The plane shuddered, rolled harder than it had the rest of the flight, lurched and turned in the sky as it turned their stomachs. Peel and Dixon both heard the ice shards impact on the outer hull, ricocheting like bullets. They flew into the heart of the storm which meant they had begun their descent.

“I’ll tell you what, Dixon,” Peel answered dryly as he lay back down again, clenching his eyes shut, vainly hoping that the nausea would go away and leave him in peace. “If we survive this landing, you can tell me all about it then.”

——

Cabo San Diego, Terra Del Fugo, Argentina

24 days earlier…

Four days of failures, and then from nowhere Anderson finally cracked the encryption. The files laid themselves out before him. Maps, technical specs, photographs, research papers, internal memos, hazard reports, spectrograph charts, experimental analysis, schematics for new weapon systems — they were all there, and they were all pointing to a new Code-89 operation in Antarctica. Central to all these files was a most important piece of information: a report on the successful capture of one creature, the same type of creature that had almost slaughtered him twice a lifetime ago.

The assassin shook his head, satisfied yet terrified. He had only heard rumors until now, by reading between the lines in misplaced files or hints of rumors drip fed to him by his Case Officer, General Byrd Coaldale, whom Anderson had known for far too long to be a Shoggoth disguised as a human. It seemed Coaldale’s plans had crystalized. The American Government had found a means by which to control these alien entities. They had one in their possession and they were studying it to learn more effective means of slowing the Shoggoth menace.

Outside his tiny hut in the middle of desolate countryside the howling winds beat against the pampas grass, alpacas complained of the cold and released their frustration by spitting at each other. A bigger storm was brewing, and that would mean lightning, thunder and a heavy downpour. If the assassin believed in a benevolent human deity, he would have said the weather was a sign of God’s wrath testing him, because the assassin had just unlocked truths that should have remained hidden forever.

But the assassin didn’t believe in God. He didn’t really believe in anything that mattered to humanity, except in obeying his masters, and only then because of his fear of his fate if he did not.

He kept reading.

CODE-89 CLEARANCE / AMERICAN EYES ONLY

PROPERTY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Subject: Shoggoths — Report on Higher Dimensional Properties

Author: Classified

Approver: Classified

As previously noted in the earlier report [see link], whether a Shoggoth is strictly a biological entity remains a hotly debated topic.

On one hand Shoggoths exhibit sentient behaviors, can communicate using complex languages, can mimic human behavior, and can (at will) create a wide range of sensory and manipulative appendages, many of which have applications only as weapons or tools for eating. This last point is critical in its classification as life, because they eat and they defecate. However, they can survive for long periods (millions of years) without doing so and without any adverse effects to their health.

Shoggoths exhibit characteristics not found in terrestrial life, particularly in that they do not age or decay. They exhibit no noticeable cell structure and they do not breed or spawn offspring. In fact, they have continuous and rapid regenerative properties, most notably against kinetic attacks and to a lesser extent against heat, chemicals, extreme cold, magnetic fields and radiation. Given sufficient time (a few hours) a Shoggoth can regenerate fully from any known injury. Only by containing a Shoggoth to near absolute zero temperatures does this regenerative process reach a near standstill.

With this knowledge, the question asked most often by researchers is: how is this possible? The answer remained a perplexing mystery until the recent discoveries on Project GRAY NEBULA [see link] utilizing tech from a new Pentapod site discovered there in 2011. Building upon earlier discoveries from the UN-funded Project RESOLUTION ZERO, historical records pertaining to the still undiscovered ‘Gravity Museum’ and the recently funded NASA Project INFINITE EYE, properties of Shoggoths are showing signs of being classifiable. Only now, with real experimental applications available to our project staff, has it become an accepted scientific fact that higher (greater than four) dimensions exist. It is in these higher dimensions that we have at last understood the properties of Shoggoths. Their correct form exists in eleven dimensions.

Research shows that a Shoggoth, when ‘folded’ into earth’s four macro-dimensions, can regenerate by shifting its mass in and out of the three perceivable dimensions of space and the single dimension of time. New appendages and organs are not so much created as shifted in and out of earthly perception. They bring tissue repairs about not by miraculous regenerative powers, rather by shifting injured body parts into higher dimensions where time flows in reverse, and the common effects of decay and entropy can similarly be reversed. A wound heals, rather than being left to bleed (if a Shoggoth could bleed, which it does not) because it has no analogous fluids running through its being. In fact, we believe that a Shoggoth cannot perceive our world in four dimensions of space-time, but looks upon our world through eyes of the higher dimensions.

“Unfolded” is the key issue here. As noted in the research conducted in Project GRAY NEBULA [see link], an unfolded Shoggoth is docile, vulnerable, and extremely easy to control.

In that moment Anderson felt an emotion he had not felt in over two decades: hope. Could humans finally control Shoggoths? Could he finally be free of the leash Coaldale had tied so metaphorically tight around his neck for so long?

He hoped so.

In the meantime, he still had his role to play, pretending to be a willing servant. He dialed the secure line on his satellite phone, reaching Coaldale in seconds.

“I have the files, complete as you said I would.”

“Good,” said the Shoggoth. “Everyone must continue to believe you are an assassin for hire, a freelance operative for Mossad. Send them the files as we agreed.”

“But then the Israelis will know, and—”

“Just do it. I don’t keep you alive to offer opinions. I keep you alive because you are a useful tool.”

The line went dead.

Anderson clenched his fists and teeth, hating Coaldale and everything he stood for. The Shoggoth desired to reveal the existence of its own kind to the world, so that people would crumble with fear of their knowledge. The invents in Sydney and Argentina were the beginning of that process. With the truth, governments would collapse as anarchy took control, and only then would humanity become putty to mold as he desired. It had been Coaldale who had released the super-sized Shoggoths from their prisons in Antarctica, all those fateful days ago when the two of them had become a team in a world of ice. How Anderson hated Harrison Peel, the man who had first trapped him in a semi-living hell of eternity, and then left him as an unwilling servant of a monster. At least Peel was human. He could bleed. He could die at Anderson’s hands.

And yet, despite all the unwanted emotions constantly assaulting his thoughts, Anderson did what Coaldale asked of him. He copied the files onto a USB cartridge as a backup. Then he dialed into the secure server, logged in, and downloaded the entire laptop’s contents onto the Mossad servers for his ‘pretend’ masters’ ease of perusal. As he waited for the data transfer, he searched the stolen files further. Maps were his primary interest, and he quickly found what he wanted. For the last couple of years there was a rumor that another secret US Military facility on the edge of Elder City existed, known as Project GRAY NEBULA. Again, these maps confirmed this supposition.

“You still want me to insert myself into their operation?” the assassin asked a few hours later, via a second satellite-linked phone-call to Coaldale.

“Yes,” echoed the distant speaker, “and you know what you have to do?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Good, then steal me one of their weapon grade Shoggoths, and give it to the Israelis. They can then create their own brand of chaos in the world.”

——

US Camp Palmer, Elder City, Miskatonic Mountains, Antarctica

Nighttime, daytime, it didn’t matter which because all time lost meaning in the poles. The ancient city stretching for kilometers up the sides of the immense mountains. A dead metropolis composed of structures older than all of humanity’s greatest civilizations combined. Every stone that Peel touched impressed by just how potent time could be. Entire continents had reformed and broken apart, life had evolved from single-celled organisms, the dinosaurs had come and gone, and the Earth had circumnavigated the entire galaxy four times during the long history of this now abandoned city. The universe changed, the city did not.

Many humans speculated that larger sized Shoggoths remained hidden in the lower bowels of the city, and they were as ancient as the stone. That knowledge kept everyone on edge, and Peel could feel the tension in the air everywhere.

Now that he was finally in Antarctica, his first trip to the great white continent, Peel perversely found some enjoyment in his predicament. The cold took his mind off the continuous sick feeling in his gut and distracted him from the itchy ulcers spreading across his body. No longer dominated by his pain, he found the time to ponder, reflect that humanity’s extremely short history on this tiny planet was nothing compared to the alien races who had come before them… and what would inevitably follow.

Humanity had long assumed alien encounters would come from outside the solar system. Then it turned out aliens had been on the Earth all along, and always would be. That didn’t mean they didn’t originate from outer space — they all had. And it was obvious now that the universe teemed with life, but it was in a form that was alien and incompatible, and that humans were the odd ones out, even down to the structure of DNA. Every other species encountered to date had proven extremely hostile, unpredictable, unknowable and made of matter humanity didn’t understand.

Shoggoths were part of the great alien migration patterns spreading across the universe, permeating every space and all time across the cosmos. Peel had estimated Shoggoth numbers in our galaxy alone was a figure several magnitudes greater than the number of all the humans who had or ever would live on this planet.

Long ago a scientist on the RED SHIFT project had told Peel that all the ants on the earth had a mass equal to the mass of the entire human race. Therefore, for humans to wipe out ants, each would have to kill his own weight in ants. It seemed an impossible task, but to Peel ant genocide seemed simple compared to defeating even a single Shoggoth. But what did he care? He’d be dead soon, feeding the ants while the Shoggoths fed on everyone else.

Antarctica was the perfect place to die because it was impersonal. One more corpse amongst many. This was despite the thousands of pre-fabricated huts, underground complexes, airstrips, power plants, military barracks, wet and dry messes, vehicles, depots, warehouses, shop malls and maintenance yards. The Americans even had a cinema and nightclubs. Perhaps that was because the Americans wanted to leave their mark on this ancient artifact too, even if their role in the history of this tomb could only ever remain minuscule, a mere scratch on the ruins of this vast and empty city that would out survive them all.

But why had he come so far? A woman loved him in America. He had told her he was not coming back.

Nicola wanted to be with him at the end. But he didn’t want her to witness him degenerate into a pathetic invalid, fearing that her last memories of him would be as a crippled vegetable. He didn’t want to see himself go out that way either. At least he had a choice with her.

Then when Dixon found him again in Sydney, he presented Peel with a new option. Suicide would never be an option for the Major, but a quick, unexpected death in the line of duty seemed inviting in comparison. The Elder City, haunted with hungry killing-machine Shoggoths, was the perfect invitation, unless the Russian-American time traveler held alternative answers. Perhaps Peel would meet that man here, where any flowing waters would be near freezing.

“Why are you looking so down?” Jack Dixon surprised Peel by sneaking up on him unannounced.

“You know why.”

“You should enjoy yourself while you can. Have you ever considered that if this place wasn’t so fucking top secret, we could open it up as an amusement park and make billions? Kids would love it so much we’d drive Disneyland out of business, and as a bonus we could sell them Pentapod and Shoggoth action figure toys on their way out.”

Peel laughed, hoping that if he forced himself to behave happily, he would feel happy. “I’ve been State-side many times during my career, Dixon, and you know what never stops surprising me?”

“How bad our burgers are?”

“No, how big everything is. Just like here!” He considered telling Dixon about his ideas on their leaving a mark in this place, but couldn’t find the words to do his thoughts justice, or annoy the man by challenging his patriotism.

“Yeah, well, it only gets bigger and bigger. You’re a hard man to find when you vanish like that.”

“I didn’t know there was an urgency to anything down here?”

“Time to move on again, buddy. Are you packed?”

“Pack is ready in my quarters,” Peel didn’t say he’d never really bothered to unpack. There seemed to be no point.

“Good.”

Dixon had a jeep to drive into the deep underground complexes. The NSA man seemed to know his destination, so Peel enjoyed the ride for a change. The route was an old stone road carved through old stone infrastructure, one of the few passages mapped by the humans. Efficiently, the American engineers had erected streetlights to lead the way. There were even traffic signs.

Peel couldn’t help noticing that the deeper they went, the fewer people there were. He watched the side passages, peered into corridors of the pre-Cambrian rock that vanished into darkness. He kept expecting to glimpse a Shoggoth in the labyrinth. Mostly Shoggoths stayed out of sight, knowing that the Army and Marine contingents hunted them with effective heavy ordnance, such as flamethrowers and air fuel explosive rounds. Still, people would disappear when they got unlucky, or lazy and cut corners — literally. The biggest fear permeating everyone’s thoughts was that they might encounter another unstoppable colossal Shoggoth, like the two that had attacked Sydney and Argentina. No one knew how to stop them short of a nuclear explosion which were in short supply and not effective weapons in the Elder City catacombs.

Later they passed more Army and Marine checkpoints, heavily fortified with flamethrowers, missile launchers and incendiary rounds for maximum effective firepower. Dixon’s and Peel’s credentials were triple checked before granting them clearance to proceed further, past the most heavily fortified post of them all.

“What’s this place?” Peel asked when they crossed over.

“The Gateway.”

“To Project GRAY NEBULA?”

“One and the same.”

Peel didn’t know what to expect, so he tried to expect nothing. Now and then he’d convince himself that he had a handle on this place, that he could judge the size and depth of the Elder City. Then moments like this challenged him as they drove deeper into the earth, where everything proved to be bigger and older again than he’d thought possible. Better not to think too much, better to be still of mind like this elder tomb. Whatever GRAY NEBULA was, it would surprise him, regardless of how much he prepared for it.

“This place is so secret that almost everyone in Elder City knows nothing about it,” Dixon explained. “Consider yourself honored, Peel; you’ll be the first foreigner inside.”

Despite the jovial turn of phrase, Peel noticed that Dixon had paled, his discomfort towards what was about to come expressed clearly on his face.

“You’ve been here before?” Peel asked.

Dixon gulped. “Yeah, once, and believe me, it threw me. And I thought all this would throw me.” He pointed to the ancient blocks of the city, each the size of skyscrapers. “But this is child’s play in comparison.”

Ahead he nodded towards a dark tunnel watched over by dozens of Marine guards, secure behind their armored posts with heavy ordnance to protect them. Peculiarly, most of the weapons were pointed inwards, towards where they were headed. Only then did Peel recognize what he was looking at: a shimmering, shifting portal.

He realized this was no ordinary passage. This was a gateway, a wormhole, a short-cut via hyperspace into some other location and time, perhaps even into another universe.

“When you said another world, I thought you meant Antarctica.”

“Oh no, Peel; no, I literally meant another planet. You’ve got no alien artifacts on your person, have you, before we drive though?”

Peel shook his head.

“Good.” Dixon shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “The problem’s really only relevant upon return.”

Peel didn’t like the sound of that, as if Dixon expected Peel not to be around long enough to return. He was about to ask what he meant, when what happened next distracted him.

Dixon shifted into third gear and drove more than a hundred trillion billion billion kilometers in only a few seconds.

——

Constitution Gardens, Washington DC, United States

15 days earlier…

Nicola and Peel spent the quiet afternoon together feeding swans. Mostly they shared small talk, neither wishing to voice the reality that Peel had weeks at most. Nicola did her best not to be sad, but inevitably, after an entire day spent together, she eventually expressed how she really felt.

“Do you know how much I want to kiss you again, Harrison?”

He gave her a smile, the best he could manage. He itched to do more, take her back to their hotel room and make love to her for the rest of their lives. She had suggested something very similar earlier, but he couldn’t risk the infection. Sharing of body fluids might pass on radioactive isotopes or other contagions. No one could tell him what type of cancer was growing inside him, and no one had ruled out that it wasn’t infectious, particularly considering that he could have potentially ingested Shoggoth matter during the blast. Unlikely, but possible. It had exploded all over him.

They held hands instead. “It’s just not fair!”

“I know.”

“I mean, why couldn’t they do something before you stepped in? You didn’t have to fight it either, did you?”

The alternative was to abandon Sydney to an onslaught by a Shoggoth the size of a small town. It was that thought alone that kept him going, held him back from erupting with rage and hurt because he knew his sacrifice wasn’t in vain.

Nicola, with her fresh perspective, was correct. His government and the Americans had made their decision at the last possible moment, when it was almost too late. It was a decision which had cost his, and countless others their lives.

“It wasn’t your responsibility!”

Peel didn’t know how to respond. Nothing he could say would make it better. He was going to die, and he had only recently informed her he would die alone.

“You don’t have to go away. You’ve done enough service for your and my countries already. No one could ask more of you!”

He smiled weakly, brushed a strand of hair from her face. At least she understood, for Nicola had been by his side confronting some of the worst extra-dimensional horrors they had ever encountered. Horrors that had attempted to break through into Earth’s dimension and consume the world, and alien worlds of mad king gods, and she had witnessed first-hand a Shoggoth of her own.

“Nicola, sometimes I wish it had killed me quickly. Then this death wouldn’t drag out, me dying slowly. But at least this way, we could say goodbye properly.”

Her eyes were red with tears, anger and loss. It seemed to take every effort not to thump him in the chest. “How can you say such things? You’ve got life now, cherish that!”

“I’m going to get a lot worse, and soon.”

“And I love you. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

He wanted to hold her tight, but he just sat there, internalizing all the anger and hurt that had been welling in him for weeks.

“It means everything to me, Nicola. But I still have to go.”

“Why?”

The swans had returned, demanding food.

Nicola still with him, demanding answers.

He could satisfy both, but he would only satisfy one. He didn’t have the heart to hurt her further by revealing his reckless reasons. His death was the one encounter he would meet alone.

——

Gray Nebula, Location: Beyond the Visible Universe

A hundred differing sensations assaulted Peel’s senses, all of which sickened him.

Gravity was lighter. The air featured a metallic taste. The sky was as bright as day, not from a sun but the spiral arm of a purple-orange galaxy sweeping across the heaven populated with millions of stars. Mountains beyond the gray-glassed desert stretched to every horizon. They jutted like teeth emerging from a gargantuan mouth, ready to snap its jaws shut at any moment, and swallow them and this world with it. The moons in the sky resembled rotten melons. He swore he could reach out and touch any of them.

The natural world wasn’t the only strangeness on this planet. Their exit point from the gateway was a wide courtyard on a distant planet in a galaxy that was not their own. Behind him were gigantic walls, towers and spires jumbled together, presenting a city not too dissimilar to the Elder City on Earth. This one was above ground, but an endless number of rooms and infinite passageways surely lay deep beneath their very feet.

“Dixon, where the hell are we?” Peel asked, forgetting his illness for a moment. He spotted a US armored combat vehicle patrolling the desert, and realized that like the Elder City, he wasn’t the first human in this place.

“Man, no one has any idea! Hell is as good a guess as any. It’s way too weird though.” To show his point, Dixon took a rock, threw it into the sky. Peel expected it to fall to the gray stone floor in a familiar parabolic arc. When it dipped and turned skywards, disappearing into space with the speed of a bullet, he blinked twice just to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. “Can you understand how hard it is for us to get our Raptors to fly here? We’ve lost five already.”

Peel nodded, licking his lips to see if he was still real in this bizarre dimension. “I’m guessing there is a lot about this world that makes little sense.”

“Damn straight, Sir. For example, see that spire over there? How far away do you think it is?”

Peel followed Dixon’s pointed finger towards a distant building. The longer he looked, the more uncertain he became at guessing the distance.

“Couple of hundred meters, maybe?”

Dixon reached out, took what looked to be a mountain-size spire in his hand, snapped off the top as if he had just done so to a picket fence. “Distance is deceptive here. Everything is.”

Peel gulped. The realization of the different rules for this planet churned at the core of his being. “This isn’t even our universe, is it?”

“Probably not.” Dixon shrugged. “The only clue our lab boys have so far is that this is an ‘unfolded universe’. Although we can’t perceive it, not in any sense that our brains can understand, there are over four macro-dimensions operating on this place.”

“Dimensions enough to drive you crazy?”

“Maybe, until you realize that in this universe, everything that the Pentapods made, including their weapon puzzles and the Shoggoths, are docile.”

Peel felt as if someone had just knocked him over. “Shoggoths are harmless here?”

“Yeah. I knew this minor fact would do your head in. Here, we expose all the Shoggoth’s dimensional properties, laid out on the table, so to speak.”

He led Peel to a cylindrical well filled with thick mucus-like syrup and a smell not unlike petroleum. Peel had believed the well was a house at first, but up close it became small, a couple of meters wide and half that in height. Dixon scooped out some goo and threw it over the horizon — all the way over the horizon. “They can’t regenerate here. They can’t even move. These properties are absent in them until they are ‘folded’. In our universe they can form limbs or mouths at will. Here they are nothing more than thick pools of putrid soup, as dangerous as sleeping puppies.”

Peel had fought these creatures, knew how incredibly tough and persistent they could be. But seeing them now, in containers as mere sludge, an analogy came to mind. Humans would be just as docile if we removed all their bones. His mind struggled with the thought. This was like trying to imagine a stick of dynamite, if changed slightly, a five-year-old could handle safely.

“That’s a Shoggoth?”

“Yes, it is.”

He shuddered.

“But we’re okay? This place hasn’t changed us? Unfolded us?”

“No, folding and unfolding seems to affect only Pentapod tools, and the Shoggoth is their best known tool, wouldn’t you say? By the way, I should warn you, Pentapod artifacts and humans go through the gateway separately. Otherwise, the unfolding can cause some very unpleasant hybridizations.”

Peel felt sweat on his forehead. Understanding aliens never brought peace of mind, and the many possibilities entering his head were too frightening to dismiss as unfounded worry. “Dixon, have you ever considered for a moment that we humans, in coming here, might have unfolded on higher dimensions and that whatever those changes are, they merely don’t seem to affect us yet, because we can’t see them?”

It took a moment for the concept to sink in, and then it was Dixon’s turn to wear the stunned expression and a pale complexion.

It seemed like he hadn’t considered that possibility at all.

——

Four Seasons Hotel, Washington DC

12 days earlier…

Despite his changing circumstances, Peel remained a man of routine. He rose at six every morning and either ran for an hour, or worked out at the gym. Then he ate a protein-rich breakfast before showering and heading into work, wherever and whatever that would be. He’d followed the same pattern every day for fifteen years until a month ago.

Today was another morning throwing up in the toilet followed by the runs. The face that met him in the bathroom mirror was haggard, red skinned and upon a shrinking body plagued with sores that would never heal.

Not one to give up easily, he went for a walk to at least make it around the block of his hotel. Five minutes later, in an alley where no one could see, he collapsed and coughed up more blood. He no longer had the strength to exercise, and it was going to get a lot worse after this. He felt his world disintegrating when he realized with the full impact of what it all meant. He was dying.

“Major Peel!”

“Yes, sir!” he barked. He tried to stand but found he didn’t have the strength to do so.

“Sir?” the speaker forced out a laugh. “I’m no sir, and don’t get up on my account either, mate.”

The voice was British, familiar. Peel shielded his eyes against the morning sun, recognizing the spy he’d once known and worked closely with in Asia. Today he was dressed in shorts and a singlet, sweating from a vigorous jog.

“James Figgs?” Peel asked, for the man was much older than Peel remembered, with gray hair now and more wrinkles around his eyes and forehead. The last time Peel had seen the man was about a year ago, but for Figgs it would have been more like eight years. Sometimes Peel forgot that he had unwillingly traveled through time and that he had lost seven years of history.

“It is you, isn’t it?”

The British spy nodded.

“This is last place I thought I’d see you.”

“You’re not looking well, Peel.”

“That’s because I’m fucking dying.” He panted hard, and he wasn’t even trying to hide his hurt because it might upset this man’s sensibilities. He realized he didn’t care anymore what other people thought.

Figgs looked away, uncomfortable at the thought that he might be about to offer words of comfort. “I’m here to pass on a message.”

“I didn’t think this was a coincidence.”

“It never is, in our game.”

Peel nodded, took several deep breaths before he had the energy to talk again. “Go on then.” One positive about dying was that no one expected you to be polite.

“There’s a spy in Dixon’s operation, one operating against all of you.”

“Who’s this Dixon, then?”

“Don’t be coy, Peel, we’ve seen the two of you together often enough. Why else would you still be in the Nation’s capital, because we know you said goodbye to your girlfriend several days ago?”

Peel grinned with bleeding teeth. “So you’ve proven you know something. Who’s this spy then, and why tell me?”

“He’s Mossad. Don’t know his actual name. He’s interested in whatever the Americans have hidden down there in Antarctica. Now that the Yanks have included the Aussies and the Poms in on the game, the Israelis feel left out. They want a piece of the action, as allies or as enemies, either will suit them. Also, they don’t like that they are not part of the Code-89 circle.”

Peel looked away. Figgs didn’t seem to notice that he was standing with the sun behind him, and bright light shrouded him. Or perhaps he did, doing so to irritate Peel.

“What do you get out of this by telling me? You’re not getting enough of the action yourself?”

Figgs chuckled, “Nothing like that, Peel. They may have let us Brits into Elder City, but if the Americans won’t let us anywhere near Project GRAY NEBULA, we certainly don’t want the Israelis getting the upper hand on us either. However, if you feel you owe me something…”

Peel nodded, “You’ll pay me lots of money if I pass something your way?”

“Exactly, but hey, Peel, you’re going to die soon, so it’s not like we can offer you anything you’d want anyway, right?”

Peel shrugged. For a moment this conversation was a distraction away from illness, and he was strangely thankful. Yet he found regret in this situation, realizing that the familiar world of spies and secrets was one that he was already missing.

“No, probably not.”

“Good man,” the British operative patted Peel on the shoulder. “The Mossad spy is already pole-side, beyond the ice. He disappeared into Antarctica shortly after he murdered several NSA agents in Argentina. You can have this one for free: he stole a briefcase loaded with Code-89 secrets. He knows all about Shoggoths, at least on an academic level, anyway.”

“How will I recognize him?” Peel said between labored breaths. He had no desire to debate the ethics of what their profession did in the name of world stability.

“No idea, Peel, but I had heard that the two of you have met before.”

“When?”

Figgs shrugged.

“That’s it?”

“That most definitely is, otherwise we would have snatched him ourselves by now. You find him Peel, then you terminate him with extreme prejudice for me, for old time’s sake.”

Without waiting, he sprinted off, disappearing into a side street.

——

Gray Nebula, Location: Beyond the Visible Universe

The days passed in a slow drag. Upon this weird world from another universe, that Peel now knew as Gray Nebula, everything about its structure and composition continuously left him guessing. He could never sense the time because the suns never set and the stars never rotated through the sky, and perhaps in this universe what made up a second here passed as a month back home.

No one had any answers to these mysteries, or how far the extent of changed physics affected anything and everything in this realm. Even going for a walk was problematic; one could take off for a few minutes, but the return journey might take hours or days. Some people had gone for a walk and never returned, and scientists suspected they had been walking home for months, or would walk home forever. At least he could breathe here, and the temperature was warm enough. He was glad of some consistencies.

“It’s creepy, isn’t it?”

The man who approached was in his fifties and wore mirrored sunglasses. By his stance and his controlled movements, Peel immediately recognized him as military trained. He appeared weathered, as if he had spent too much time on the field in countries where the sun was as much the enemy as the insurgents on the ground. His accent was American.

“Yes, it is,” Peel answered.

The man extended a hand, which Peel cautiously shook, “The name Jason Riker, by the way. I’m with the Department of Defense.”

“Pentagon?”

“Yes, indeed. I’m responsible for information security here.” He grinned like he knew a dangerous secret, and this alerted Peel. Suddenly Figgs’ words about Peel encountering an individual from his past came back to him.

“Quite a job, I imagine, in this place?”

“Not really. No Internet connection to Earth, so no malware or hacker attacks to block. However, I’m always asked why we can’t communicate back home as often as everyone would like.”

“Yes,” said Peel, remembering now the cables and pipes that ran through the gateway. Some of them would carry data, others electricity and some even plumbing. He was about to ask more probing questions, when he noticed the scarring around Riker’s left eye.

“You’re Harrison Peel, right? The Australian consultant?”

“Ah, yes.” Everyone here referred to him by his nationality and this was getting on his nerves, but not as much as recognizing who this man was — except the age didn’t fit. “Will you excuse me? I just remembered I’m running late for a meeting.”

“Certainly.”

Normally Peel knew he could have kept his cool. But the stomach lurched, and he was sick again. While doubled over, he was certain that his worried eyes had just betrayed his suspicions.

His gut expelled, and standing again, he saw that Riker had disappeared. But his name wasn’t Riker, it was Anderson. The assassin had escaped the Pentapod puzzle trap, but his exit must have been into the far past because he had aged two decades to Peel’s single month since they had last met. Peel wondered how Anderson had survived the encounter with the Shoggoth.

He wasted no time taking off in the fastest walk he could manage.

Peel had to assume Anderson was the Mossad spy and would now know of his compromised condition. Normally Peel would have gone after Anderson himself, but not in this state. The important action right now was to warn Dixon. Unfortunately, the NSA officer had a habit of disappearing for hours or even days on end, and had remained beyond contact for some time. Peel wasn’t sure who else he could trust with this information, but he had to tell someone.

Initially Peel hadn’t believed Figgs, suspecting that the Brit was playing an angle to gain a piece of the GRAY NEBULA action for his own government. But now that he’d seen Anderson with his own eyes, he had no choice but to assume Figgs’ intelligence was sound.

First, he needed to find a duty officer who could get word to Dixon. When he encountered one such officer, leaning against an ancient column, he made no signs of response. It took Peel a full ten seconds to realize the soldier was dead, pinned to the rock because of a garrote tight across his neck, holding him there.

In an instant his headache worsened, and a sensation gripped him like the lining of his stomach was being torn off, strip by strip. He couldn’t focus and the world became blurry. Smell had abandoned him, and his hearing had a ringing to it now. With all these painful distractions, he became aware too late of the dead soldier’s handgun pressed firmly into his own forehead.

“Major Harrison Peel, you don’t know how happy I am to see you again.”

“I thought you were dead.”

Anderson grinned, a smile etching on a face that looked as if it had not experienced happiness in a very long time, and probably hadn’t. “It would have been nice for you if I was.”

“How did you survive, and you’ve aged?”

The assassin growled. “You’re going to pay, Peel, for what you did to me.”

“What did I do to you, that you hadn’t already done to yourself?”

The assassin shuddered as if he was reliving a painful memory. “Shoggoths, Peel, you don’t really understand what Shoggoths do to a man. I was there in Antarctica, exploring the city with a hundred men. We encountered one, and they slaughtered us. I only survived because I ran the other way with my commanding officer. And then…” The man choked on his words, reliving a memory that was as painful as the experience that had manifested the pain. “The weaponized puzzle, when you threw me—”

“How was I to know—?”

Anderson pushed the weapon into Peel’s temple. “Shut the fuck up, Peel. When you put me into what you thought was suspended-animation, I saw it all. I saw what Shoggoths could really do. Do you know how long I’ve lived as a slave to one of them? How I’ve lived in fear every day that it will strip me apart and devour my component pieces, rebuild bits of me into itself? You have NO FUCKING IDEA!”

Anderson was screaming now, and yet no one came. Another peculiarity about this dimension was that sound did not travel very far. Or Anderson had already murdered any other soldiers or personnel in the vicinity.

“I’m sorry!” Peel spoke slowly. “I didn’t throw you the last time, when you told me what it was like.”

The weapon in Anderson’s hand remained firmly planted against Peel’s forehead. There was no shaking in his arms, no sweats from fear, and no trembling or agitation. Anderson was angry, of course, but he remained the cold-hearted killer the American military had trained him to be.

“You just don’t get it, do you Peel?”

“Who are you angry with, me or the Shoggoths?”

Anderson laughed. “Oh, I know myself well enough to appreciate that the Shoggoths are my greatest hatred, but I can’t do anything about them. They are invincible and you know that too. You, Peel, you are my only means of venting my frustration.”

“If this is revenge, why are you pretending to be an Israeli pretending to be an information security specialist?”

“You think I haven’t been working assignments to pay the bills these last twenty years.”

“Who do you work for, really? A Shoggoth? Who?”

The assassin shook his head. “You’d like to know, but what’s the point? I’m going to kill you soon, so nothing you learn will matter in the long run.”

It was Peel’s turn to laugh, remembering his headaches, nausea and disintegrating body he had momentarily forgotten while he had ironically been negotiating for his life. “Why don’t you? Save me weeks of this,” he pointed at the sores prominent on his face.

Then Peel remembered the mysterious American, dressed in a wetsuit carrying Russian weaponry, soaked to the skin in frigid waters. Peel hadn’t lived out that part of his life yet…

Only then, with a gun pressed against him with a mere trigger-squeeze separating him from life and death, did Peel comprehend how he regretted his choice of words, how much he still cherished his life no matter how short or painful his future would become. Blindness, blood in his stools and urine, hemorrhaging; those symptoms were still waiting for him. But facing death from a single bullet, other regrets came flooding into his conscious mind. But the only regret that really mattered was his choice not to spend his last moments with Nicola. He desperately wished to live long enough now to see her again.

“I will kill you, but not straight away. You’re my insurance Peel. Time to get out.”

They marched between the giant columns, hundreds of meters high, or so they appeared, supporting stone slabs larger than aircraft carriers. Peek wondered how Anderson saw this world, and if their time together passed as quickly for him, or at different speeds.

Despite Peel’s deteriorating senses, it didn’t take him long to realize that they were following a roundabout route to reach the gateway wormhole, and the path home had no guards.

“Marching me back to Earth at gun point won’t work.”

“No?” smirked Anderson. “You’re right perhaps, but you’ll cooperate, anyway. Let me warn you, Peel, I know you’re a dead man so you’ve got nothing to lose, but I know you have someone back in Maryland who you really care about. I remember Nicola Mulvany well.”

Peel flinched, again revealing more feelings than he cared to put on public display.

“If I don’t make it out of here alive, she dies too. Don’t think I haven’t been getting messages back to Earth. That’s one mistake you don’t want to make.”

Peel’s head swam, a migraine pounded, and the ulcers in his mouth and nose stung worse than ever before. He tried to vomit, only to bring up more blood, lots of blood this time. He was on his knees before he could regain his composure. His own sickness had become his greatest enemy.

“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but man, you look disgusting.”

Peel said nothing. He wouldn’t even look at the assassin, because he didn’t want the man to know how much he really cared for Nicola. Still, he felt as if he had no choice but to comply. He had nothing to lose, and she had everything to live for, except him.

“All right, mate, it’s a deal. If you promise that no harm will come to her, I’ll do my best to get you out of here.”

——

NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland, United States

8 days earlier…

“You’ve seen Project GRAY NEBULA, so what’s the problem?”

Dixon again studied the cube within a cube, with solid edges and liquid walls, which didn’t really surprise him they weren’t flowing away following gravity’s pull. The last time he’d studied this device, its shape was a square jar — which by application of a new field of physics that nobody understood — seemed to be bottomless. Technicians had used Pentapod equivalent of hoses to fill the insides of the jar with unfolded Shoggoth. Now that same Shoggoth they had compressed a thousand-fold and crammed inside the cube. The nature of the device ensured that ninety-nine percent or more of its mass existed in another dimension outside of their own, so it would be light enough to carry. Dixon also knew better than to push his hands through the liquid walls, less the Shoggoth inside rip his arms out from their sockets.

“So this is how they transported the sons-of-bitches from one side to the other?”

“Yes, clever fuckers those Pentapods,” responded Joss Plenary, Dixon’s immediate superior who had recently been reassigned back to the NSA Puzzle Palace after a long stint in Antarctica. Higher powers had not yet communicated Plenary’s new position brief to Dixon, except that it had something to do with managing a team of operators charged with investigating Code-89 anomalies where they occurred anywhere across the globe, and that a recruitment drive was underway.

This new position suited Dixon. The operation was a small part of the bigger American ‘fight the good fight’ agenda directed against extra-dimensional horrors wherever and whenever they occurred. It was Plenary’s previous history with GRAY NEBULA and his association with a black budget Pentagon mission to use Pentapod and Shoggoth technology to build new weapons for the US Government that bothered Dixon.

“This is how we secured the Shoggoth in Nevada,” explained Plenary, who had put on some serious weight around the middle now that he no longer used his body energy to remain warm. “Trouble is, once we let it out, we have no idea how to get it back in again. Not in this dimension.”

“You probably can’t.” Dixon placed the cube on Plenary’s desk. He wanted to stare out of a window and look at nature, the trees, hell even the car park and collect his thoughts, but windows were against the rules in this division. They were deep underground, in a buried concrete bunker most of the employees in this building didn’t know existed.

“Probably a one-way trip and all that?”

“Perhaps.”

Dixon cocked an eyebrow, scratched the back of his neck where his shirt and tie itched. “You didn’t summon me to talk about the marvels of modern technology, did you, Plenary?”

“No, not exactly. I wanted to show you something.”

Plenary opened a large envelope, withdrew several photographs and engineering drawings. “I shouldn’t reveal this to you, but I think you need to know what we are dealing with here. If you repeat any of this later, I’ll deny it and your career — maybe even your life — will be forfeited. Mine too.”

Dixon swallowed hard. His boss had never threatened his life before. Then Dixon could see in Plenary’s eyes that the man had no more control here than he did. Plenary was a puppet and his strings were being pulled by someone much higher.

He handed Dixon the schematics of what looked to be a missile mounted on an F-22 Raptor. Dixon knew his ordnance, every NSA case officer had to, but this weapon was a complete mystery to him. This had to be a new secret armament program, one that was probably so classified that even the top brass in the Pentagon barely knew about it.

“What’s its payload? No, don’t tell me. Let me guess.”

Plenary nodded, “Weapon grade Shoggoth.”

Dixon could only let out a long whistle, “Fucking sweet Jesus!”

“I know you have your reservations about what we are doing in here, all this Code-89 cloak and dagger mess we are playing with, but sometimes something good has to come out of it. This is what the top brass in the Pentagon are saying will be the ultimate fire-and-forget weaponry. Drop this on a known al-Qaeda hotspot and not only does it devastate the target, it keeps on devastating the whole local area until we decide to put a stop to it. We can wipe out entire terrorist cells with one unstoppable weapon.”

“Unstoppable is the key word here where we disagree, sir. How do you plan to do that? Stop them? Shoggoths just don’t go away on their own, you know?”

Plenary took back the files. “This is the future, whether you and I like it ourselves.”

“You don’t like it?” Dixon asked, surprised.

“Unofficially, of course not. Officially, like you, I have to support this.”

Dixon nodded, unsure where Plenary was going with all this.

“Weapon grade Shoggoths are what the boys in our secret Utah facility are working on now. That’s where I want your help. Officially… and unofficially.”

Dixon thought about resigning there and then, but he knew that if he did, he probably wouldn’t live out the day, that’s how secret everything in this department had to remain. Most Code-89 agents didn’t realize this until they were too deeply involved, when it was too late to change their minds.

“Let me get this straight, although you don’t trust this operation, internally and on paper you have to support it. But unofficially, you want me to… do what exactly?”

Plenary said nothing.

Then Dixon got it, understood what he had to do.

“Unofficially, you want me to expose every way this operation won’t work.”

The photographs and schematics returned to the envelope and Plenary’s safe, where Dixon would never see them again. “This conversation never happened.”

Dixon didn’t know what to say. Unofficially, Plenary had ordered him to bring down a US DOD weapons program. On one hand Dixon has sworn to protect America against all threats, at the cost of his own life if he had to, and yet the path his superiors seemed headed was morally, ethically, and completely wrong. Be loyal to his country and sell his soul against what was right, or take the opposite path that was just as dangerous.

“Sir, why does no one understand we will never control Shoggoths?”

“I know how you’ve been feeling since the missile strike on the rogue creature in Argentina. I know you want these creatures exterminated wherever and whenever they we encounter them, including the ones we have in captivity.” He held up the Shoggoth cube to illustrate his point. “Which is why, Dixon, you’re the best person for the job. No one has the passion to find everything and anything that could go wrong with our research than a man who is hell bent on ending it. That’s why I want you on the ground, first at Utah and then back at Gray Nebula, so you can find the flaws before they happen, before they become something real and catastrophic!”

Dixon’s only desire there and then was to tell his superior what he thought of his ideas and where he should insert them, but he could only express stunned silence. Plenary had the brains and the experience to run a project like this one — one that involved the study and management of aliens from another world — but until today, Dixon had never really appreciated just how well the old man read other people, and how he could manipulate them to get what he wanted. Of course Dixon would travel to Gray Nebula. Of course he would find every reason he could to shut down the research, but he would do so as the rational, patriotic man on the inside. He would do his damnedest to stop anything and everything he could. So he nodded that he understood.

The one factor he didn’t willingly share with Plenary was that he was taking Peel with him to both locations. With luck, before the Australian gave up his breathing rights, together they might just discover the hidden dangers he was certain lurked just beneath the surface of their perception. Peel had a reputation, and Dixon wanted to milk it for all it was worth.

——

Gray Nebula, Location: Beyond the Visible Universe

“What are these?”

“Shoggoth cubes, Peel, and next time you try to convince me you don’t know what’s going on, I’m going to break bones. Now pick one up.”

They had entered what everyone on GRAY NEBULA had suspected to be a Pentapod laboratory. The jars were the container of choice for the safe transportation of Shoggoths between dimensions. Artifacts like the weaponized puzzle he had encountered in Darwin were likely forged here too, eons ago.

“You’re taking these back to Mossad? Why?”

The assassin’s grin was toothy. “Always wanting to know every detail, aren’t you Peel? Let me help you there. Did you know, back in May 1997, Sierra Leone, I had you lined up in the trigger hairs of my sniper rifle? This, of course, was long before you knew anything about Shoggoths and other alien horrors, and we had never met. I know you were operating undercover for the Australian Army intelligence, rooting out insurgents while lost in the rainforest. I wanted to blow your brains out. It would have been so easy to do.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. Causality perhaps, if you believe Einstein. I don’t of course, I believed in my Shoggoth controller. It was him who stopped me.”

“‘Him?’” Peel asked, surprised that Anderson could apply a gender to these murderous creatures.

“Yes, ‘him’. He told me I would have my day, to take you down, and oh look, he’s delivered you to me.”

Peel shuddered, absorbing the implications of this revealed time travel and how it now forced him to remember every past mission or operation and how Anderson might have compromised them from the future. How much did Anderson’s Shoggoth masters know about Peel already? Did they know his future, where he would be and when? Did they have a grander scheme for him?

But how could they, when he was about to die?

“You need to behave Peel because I want to get to the other side of this mess alive and in one piece.”

Peel shrugged, “You’re going to kill me, anyway. Or the radiation poisoning will.”

The assassin said nothing, confirming what Peel had concluded earlier. What made it worse was that a dozen opportunities had presented themselves whereby Peel could have taken the assassin down because age was against Anderson now, but Peel could not because he wasn’t as fit as he had been two months ago. Today he could barely keep himself upright and walking in a straight line. His peripheral vision was no longer with him. His body felt ready to pack it in and shut down at any moment.

Anderson pressed the handgun into Peel’s back. “Move.”

Pain erupted in his stomach, and Peel doubled over to hurl again. As he did, the agony of his headaches increased in magnitude by the second. He imagined a blood vessel had burst inside his brain. The periods between his blood-spewing were shortening, so he didn’t protest when the assassin took the Shoggoth cube from him, which was probably for the best, anyway.

They found a Jeep. As Peel was about to get in, the assassin unexpectedly punched him in the stomach, forging a searing pain that almost caused him to pass out altogether.

Half seated and half lying in the passenger seat, the agony took all his effort to endure. They drove, and through his blurred vision all he could make out was the Shoggoth cube on the floor beneath his feet.

“That’s good Peel, keep looking really sick.”

It didn’t take long to reach the checkpoint. Peel could barely understand Anderson as he explained to the soldiers Peel’s necessity for urgent medical attention. He was returning Peel to Earth.

In the back of his mind, Peel knew the soldiers would normally perform a routine check for alien artifacts in case any were being smuggled out. But word had got around quick that Peel was dying from radiation poisoning, and nobody wanted to get close to a man who was spewing blood every couple of minutes. Plus, alien artifacts created unpleasant outcomes in people, so no one risked smuggling out the goods, anyway. Peel wanted to protest, to inform them that this was a set-up. Problem was, he just didn’t have the strength to speak.

As they drove through the dimensions, all he could think about was unfolding. Anderson obviously didn’t know the dangers, had missed this vital piece of intelligence, or figured it was all a ruse to scare people into submission, otherwise the cube would have gone through separately before them.

If Peel was going to go out that way, folded up into a Shoggoth, a death from radiation poisoning seemed so much more favorable.

With the last of his strength he threw himself from the Jeep, just before they passed into the other side.

He hit the ground hard, and rolled. The malleable walls of the gateway without texture or friction absorbed the impact and saved him from broken bones and internal injury. As he tumbled out of the tunnel, towards the icy cold of Antarctica, he felt the most peculiar sensations overtaking his body. He had expected to die, to fall into oblivion, but the sensations overtaking his mind and body were something so completely different.

…to want would or, understand really ever could human no that power, commanded they power real the and Shoggoth a be to like was it what, moment a for, experienced had Peel…

…Hope was there suddenly and healed was he. Poisoning radiation the of itself repairing was body his. Time-anti the in, dimensions-higher the through moving was Peel. Did Shoggoth a like healing was he. Backwards working were mechanics cell, aging-un was he. Him for reversed had time, unfolding…

…Life his in time any felt ever had he than better, again good felt he suddenly until, him with wrong was that everything of himself pissed and shit and vomited he. Growths tumorous and cells dead of corruption the expelled, gagged he…

On the Earth-side of the wormhole tunnel it took him a few moments to decipher what had just occurred, but when he did, nothing could stop him standing tall, nor restrain the smile beaming across his face. He might look like he was close to death, but he felt like a man reborn. Folded again from dimensions he had never perceived; the radiation poison had reversed out of him through the anti-time dimension. He was free of it. He was no longer dying, that much was certain.

With the elation of this revelation, came an awareness of the assassin.

Anderson ahead of him appeared stunned, as if he had just walked away from a horrific car accident, which was mostly the truth. Peel noticed the Jeep, compacted and crushed into a tiny shape of twisted and jagged metal, barely contained within the folded Shoggoth cube.

Somehow the assassin had survived... again! With wide eyes Peel saw why. Not all of his foe’s skin was stable. Much of it was trying to reform, change shape as components shifted in and out of this dimension and into the next, until it barely held the outline of a man. The extra mouths and eyes on his head closed, then disappeared into a sea of quivering flesh, just in time as the contingent of soldiers surrounded them both, armed with flamethrowers, incendiary grenade launchers, and assault rifles.

——

NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland, United States

1 day earlier…

The thick report was slammed hard on the desk and sent less conspicuous papers fluttering about the office.

“I don’t fucking believe it!” Dixon snarled at his boss. He didn’t care who Plenary thought he was and how ethical his morals were; there was a limit to how much of his own soul Dixon would sell. “You’re running this department like it’s some kind of Nazi concentration camp, sir! And don’t give me any of that bullshit that we’re the good guys!”

Plenary remained calm as he leaned back in his chair. “I could have you locked up, Dixon, if you keep up these antics.”

“A fucking chicken. I mean, what were you guys thinking?”

“First, what about him?” Plenary pointed to Harrison Peel in a chair, sweating in the corner.

The Australian officer looked ready to collapse and probably never get up again. Dixon knew Plenary disliked Peel, but that hadn’t stopped him demanding that Dixon bring him to this meeting. He needed experts on his side, and Peel was the expert he wanted to question for his insights after this conversation concluded.

“I hope you didn’t show my report to him, with his clearance?” Plenary continued.

“No, sir, I didn’t, but I told him enough, especially the concluding remarks.” Dixon felt hot. For the life of him, he could never remember a time when he had been as angry as he was right now.

“I assume Dixon, your reference is to the human-Shoggoth hybridization program?”

“You didn’t tell me any of this when I signed on!”

“And I can see why that was as good an idea then, as it is now.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

Suddenly, from the corner, Peel started coughing. He wouldn’t stop, distracting both men from their argument. Neither liked it when they saw the blood on his handkerchief and hands.

Standing tall, sucking in fresh breath, Dixon didn’t know what went through his boss’s mind at that moment regarding the Peel situation, but for him Peel’s blood reminded him of his own mortality. He extended that thought to the mortality of every human on the planet. They were not like Extraterrestrial Sentient Beings, not like the Shoggoths who would live forever if humanity allowed them to. Humans’ destiny was to die no matter what they accomplished in life.

“We never experimented on humans, Dixon. We knew it would never work.”

Dixon leaned over Plenary’s desk. “Not good enough, I want to hear your reasons!”

“The chickens could hide their extra mouths, pretend that they couldn’t form tentacles for slashing and strangling, and on the outside they were indistinguishable from the real thing when they wished to blend in. But importantly, Shoggoths don’t bleed, including chicken-Shoggoth hybrids. How can you control something that doesn’t bleed?”

Dixon stood tall, straightened his tie, smoothed his jacket and took a deep breath. Peel thankfully had excused himself to throw up in the bathroom. The poor guy. He was bleeding inside, dying.

Plenary stood to gaze at his underling from an equal level. “I don’t make these decisions, Dixon. Some general runs the chicken program. A general who has convinced everyone we can make Shoggoths work for us. But I have to play the game, as do you, if you want to stay part of the team.” He eyeballed Dixon, as if to remind him of what happened to agents who didn’t play by the Code-89 rules.

“We’re supposed to be fighting these things, not incorporating them into our defense strategy. I believed you about the weapon grade Shoggoths, but this? How are we supposed to halt their advances upon us, if we invite them in?”

Plenary rubbed his head, sweating. “Nothing is ever simple.”

“You’re damn right nothing is. You can’t control this, sir. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along, no matter what you force me to do!”

He didn’t wait for an answer as he marched out. This fight could wait until later. Peel and he had a flight to catch to Nevada.

——

US Camp Palmer, Elder City, Miskatonic Mountains, Antarctica

Peel didn’t move. If he did, the Marines would gun him down where he stood. The assassin next to him, the man formerly known as Anderson who was now a Shoggoth, would be gunned down too. This was a game of bluff, where one of them would be incinerated, and the other would be a hero. It was a game Peel had to win, especially now he’d had a second chance at life. He would not give that up so easily.

“Which one is the Shoggoth?” asked the commanding officer who was late to the scene. “I thought you men reported seeing one?”

“In the smoke, sir, but we lost it with the implosion of the Jeep. We’re certain it’s one of them, since it is impossible for the creature to have gone anywhere else.”

The CO nodded. He studied Peel and Anderson both, attempting to determine which one was the monster.

“Kill them both, soldier.”

Peel’s stomach sunk. The CO’s order was too casual, too banal for Peel to die like this.

“Wait!” screamed the assassin.

Peel shot his foe a cold glance, surprised that the Shoggoth was human enough to beg for its own life. But it had merged its personality with the Anderson. Anything was possible.

“It’s him,” the creature screamed, pointing at Peel. “He’s the Shoggoth, I tell you.”

Peel found the CO’s gaze was now intent upon him. Only seconds ago Peel had felt elated that his radiation poisoning had a cure, but now he was about to meet death by being gunned down, or worse, incinerated.

“My answer, sir,” Peel responded as calmly as he could, “will be the opposite of what he’s telling you.” He kept his voice level, but his words sounded distant to his ears, as if he were giving up. He considered if the Shoggoth standing next to him would have any inkling of the emotional pain he experienced right now. Based on prior experience, probably it felt nothing but a pure instinct to survive.

“Sorry Major, I have no choice.” On the CO’s command, the Marines raised their weapons, ready for the shoot-to-kill order. “I can’t risk hesitating and jeopardizing the safety of my men.”

“Stop!”

Into the foray stepped Dixon, returned from hell-knows-where dressed in his white camouflage Antarctica survival gear.

Peel knew that he should feel the cold with the meager clothes he wore, but adrenalin and fight-or-flight instincts kept such worries away for the moment. Living had priority now.

“Are you okay, Peel?”

The Australian nodded. He wanted to feel grateful that his friend had returned to save him. Problem was, he couldn’t see how that was possible now.

“One of them, perhaps both of them, are Shoggoths, sir,” explained the CO. “They came through the gateway with alien technology.” He pointed to the compressed Jeep. “The Shoggoth they brought with them merged. I was just about to order them both incinerated.”

Peel suddenly remembered the chickens. Remembered the key point to that conversation, “Dixon, you got a knife?”

“Yeah, why?” Dixon’s mind was racing, trying to reach the same conclusion Peel had.

“Remember the chickens?”

Dixon’s eyes widened with understanding and he smiled, then sprang into action. “Sergeant, I’m going to throw this man a knife. Please refrain from shooting him until he’s finished doing what he needs to. And believe me, if he really is a Shoggoth, he won’t bother using the knife as a weapon, anyway.”

Peel caught the flick-knife easily, his old reflexes in good shape again now he was remade. Opening the blade, he wasted no time slitting open a wound on his forearm, deep enough so that no one could mistake it as anything else but blood gushing from his insides.

“Shoggoths don’t bleed.”

On the CO’s order, two Marines pulled Peel forward as the rest advanced with ignited flamethrowers. Anderson wailed, his shape shifted, expanded as a mass of tentacles, eyes and mouths that thrashed and screamed as it was incinerated in the intense heat of fire.

——

US Military Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand

3 days later…

For the first time in his life, Peel enjoyed time in a hospital. He’d taken the first available flight from Antarctica, which had brought him to New Zealand, where he could recover in more pleasant, amenable surroundings. He felt good now, so most of his medical examinations were merely procedure to ensure there were no remaining tumors, that his blood work was fine and that he was healing. In their generosity, the US Government had allowed a private room.

To pass the time, he scanned the Internet and news sites, but the world remained oblivious to the bizarre events that formed the daily foundations of his work. Only conspiracy theory sites talked of a monster destroying Sydney. After his encounters in the South East Asian jungles so long ago now, it was the mundane world that had ceased to be real to him.

That afternoon Dixon visited. This surprised Peel, for he had thought the NSA agent had remained in Elder City.

“You fucking amaze me, Harrison.”

“I guess I have you to thank again, for saving my life?”

“Not this time, buddy; you saved it yourself well and good. But you do have to thank me for something else. As payment a nice bottle of your famous Australian Shiraz wine should do.”

When Peel raised a questioning eyebrow, Dixon pointed to the door. Peel followed the finger to see Nicola Mulvany standing in the door frame, sunlight from outside illuminating her very elegant figure. The smile on her face, he realized warmly, was worth dying any death for.

And then he remembered; that was exactly what he had done to be with her again.

The Elder Codex

Bay Administrative Region, Federal Republic of Somalia, March 2013

The ancient Unimog 404 army truck rattled as it bounced on the near destroyed roads, its rusted metal parts threatening to shake loose in the semi-desert of Somalia. In the pre-dawn light, the South African military vehicle drove fast to minimize attacks from Somali insurgents. Enemies armed with rocket launchers and with nothing better to pass the time than to leverage an opportunity to take them out.

In the crew cabin behind the driver, amidst the sweat scents of bored, but locked-and-loaded mercenaries from a dozen African countries, Harrison Peel rested his muscular arms upon his AK-47. He felt his stomach lurch a dozen times a minute as they bounced on the rough excuse for a road. He considered again what dangers they would face? An element of the mission, one which had not yet come into focus for him, bothered him greatly.

Peel was the only white face in the Nigerian-owned private military company, their newest member and most-definitely the odd man out.

Formerly a major with the Australian Army, Peel might be the highest-ranking officer on board, and yet that counted for nothing. This mission was not his investment, nor a patriotic calling, and neither was it for the greater good. Peel was here because the Australian Defence Force had dishonorably discharged him after a botched operation that left him with no friends. A mercenary contract in Africa was his only option to pay the bills, and an option that had kept him separated from his girlfriend Nicola Mulvany for too long. But the alternative was bankruptcy, because the money was good. It had to be because the odds of surviving any PMC mission between Khartoum and the Cape were never great.

He looked to Sergeant Moses Zouga, who was the executive officer, the fifty-one percent owner of the Nigerian PMC who called the shots. The two men went back too many years. It was Zouga who had saved Peel from financial hardship with this employment offer.

“You look like a baboon with an itchy ass, Peel.”

Peel grinned. “I thought business was good, but if this is the only piece of shit you can afford…” he rolled his eyes at the rattling Unimog.

“Don’t look so glum,” shouted Zouga with a smirk of his own, for he enjoyed their banter. They could barely hear each other over the noise of the engine, but they shouted profanities anyway because there was nothing better to do. “This is surveillance and recon only. This isn’t even warlord-controlled territory. Your pretty white ass is surely protected.”

“Zouga, mate, do you know what we’re looking for?” Peel shouted back.

Their briefing had been deliberately nebulous. They couldn’t plan for the worst because they didn’t know what the worst could be.

“Don’t know, my friend.” Zouga adjusted the FN-FAL on his lap, his index finger tapping the metal casing. “I’m certain this is a CIA funded op, but if Carter has any inkling on what we’ll find, he’s not telling.”

Nodding, Peel understood Zouga’s meaning. He had attended all the mission briefings, listened to their American client talk on and on about the details. Chad Carter had provided them with the state-of-the-art satellite maps, mission briefs and the military vehicles to get in and out of this war-torn country undetected, but nothing more.

Their destination was a small village in the arid lands, and once there, they were to gather intel. Three days was the mission duration and there was nothing strategic or interesting about the location, at least on paper. When Zouga demanded Carter describe what exactly it was they were looking, the CIA man said they would know when they saw it. He refused to say more, and this had only pissed Zouga off. But not pissed off enough to turn down the mission, because Zouga — like Peel — needed money.

“Can I see the satellite images, again?” asked Peel, knowing they were mere minutes from their destination, but certain that he must examine them one more time. An element of the schematics still bothered him.

“What, now? The nearest titty bar for after mission drinks is in Mombasa?”

“Something’s playing on my mind, Sergeant. Something I think we need to know before we go in.”

The tall, dark Nigerian soldier handed over the files. Peel flipped through each until he found the image he was after.

“See that,” Peel pointed to two dissecting lines that resembled cobbled roads cut through the center of the village they were about to enter.

“What am I looking at?”

“That building, that one, and that one.” He pointed at each house with a finger hovering above the page, each separated by the two parallel lines like a makeshift road through the village. “They all look identical to me.”

“Every building looks identical to me, the whole goddamn village.”

“Not like this.” Peel traced his finger along the line, pointing to mudstone house after mudstone house. The image was like abstract art, as if three photos of the strip through the center had been replicated and laid in alignment with each other, to make the village look wider. “See, they’re like a mirror of each other.”

Zouga shrugged. “I still don’t get your meaning. And so what if they are?”

Peel too shrugged, uncertain if his observation really meant anything worth worrying about. “Maybe it is nothing. Maybe we’ll know more when we are on the ground.” He returned the images, and they quickly disappeared inside a pouch on Zouga’s fatigues.

Within ten minutes they reached the village. One-by-one the twelve mercenaries unloaded from the three army trucks. Peel moved with the middle group, his AK-47 assault weapon ready and loaded. Then Peel followed Zouga’s team as they made double time into the village center, guns ready.

At the sight of the invading mercenaries, Somali men, women and children stopped what they were doing, stepped outside their homes to gawk or flee, depending on their level of fear.

Corporal Suli Armand, the Yemenite on the team who spoke fluent Arabic, ordered the villages to stay down and not interfere. “We’re not here for you! Go about your business!”

Peel could speak and read Arabic himself, and had a basic understanding of Somali, and so relayed similar messages. But there was no resistance. This was a small village of goat and camel herders, pastoralists carving out a meagre existence in a landscape that hated them. Those that remained merely watched, fearful and intrigued, but none wanted to fight.

He wondered again why Zouga and his team were here.

“What are we looking for?” asked Private Isaac Akinwande, as the outfit moved into the streets in v-formations.

“We’ll know when we see it,” said Zouga. “Look for anomalies.”

Peel advanced, considered if they should check the houses, but reluctant to do so until they had first assessed the lay of the land. The mudstone dwellings were tiny and cramped, and likely dark inside. Each a perfect opportunity to get himself killed.

He moved forward, his boots tracking in the dust and gravel.

Ahead, two boys were beating goats with a stick, herding them through the main street to propel them far from the mercenaries.

Peel counted about a dozen goats, but the legs seemed to number thrice that. A peculiarity about the scene didn’t add up. He showed with hand signals for two mercenaries to follow him. The three men advanced cautiously, because insurgents weren’t beneath strapping improvised incendiary devices to domesticated animals as a weapon against invaders.

Peel’s stomach turned, for he understood the goats’ deformities now. Each beast was stretched out, like a caterpillar, with anywhere from four to eight sets of legs.

He remembered the satellite image of the village. Like the goats, the village too had dissected, and the dissection filled with a replication.

The boys yelled at him, twins by the looks of them, demanding he step away from his livestock. They were speaking in a discordant unison, the same words from each mouth.

But they weren’t twins. They were the same body, replicated and joined, like Siamese twins.

“Oh, fuck!” exclaimed Peel.

“You’ve found something,” asked Zouga, coming up behind him, FN-FAL loaded and ready to use.

“Most definitely.” Peel pointed to the caterpillar goats, and the conjoined boys, and it was Zouga’s turn to feel queasy. “And the worst thing is, I’ve heard about this before.”

——

UNITAF Command Center, Mogadishu International Airport, Federal Republic of Somalia, December 1992

In his first overseas deployment, Lieutenant Harrison Peel had initially been keen to impress, but his goal soon changed when reality struck home. Now he merely wished to survive the prolonged battle unscarred, both physically and mentally.

Fresh out of graduation from the Military College Duntroon, assigned to the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, he had soon discovered Somalia was a world of chaos, warlords, random violence and gory body wounds. Insurgents took potshots at him while on patrol. Food gave him all kinds of stomach upsets. The toilet block stunk like nothing he had ever imagined possible. Most bizarre, during a routine mission briefing, an American soldier had fallen next to him and was dead before he hit the dust. Later Peel had been told the cause was heat stroke, and Peel had seriously wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.

His assignment included occasional patrol and recon duties. Mostly they kept to the base completing paperwork and thus deskbound. His daily tasks included checking inventories of supplies, directing tradespeople, and reordering simple items that had failed to arrive from overseas suppliers, such as toothpaste, bags of flour and hygiene products for the female soldiers.

On his breaks he moved about outside but within the confines of their base, hoping to gain a sense of what was transpiring around him, for fresher air, and a wish of securing a more interesting task. But every time he stepped out, he felt he was in everyone’s way.

The occupied airport was abuzz with United Task Force soldiers and their associated military hardware from a dozen countries. Military aircraft and helicopters constantly arrived and departed in a never-ending schedule. The heat was as bad as in outback Australia. Dust got in his eyes, ears and mouth and no amount of rinsing could remove its corrupting taste.

“Lieutenant Peel?” shouted a US Marine Colonel who had marched up to him. A man accompanied the high-ranking officer, who was probably a spook.

Peel halted, stood to attention and saluted. “Lieutenant Peel, reporting for duty, sir!”

The Colonel saluted. The civilian did not. “You fluent in Arabic?” he asked in an American accent.

“Arabic and Spanish, sir.”

The colonel gave the slightest of nods, which was probably the limit to his ability of expressing satisfaction.

“Arabic is fine. Come with me, soldier. We’ve got a job for you.”

Peel looked for an Aussie superior, but he was the most senior man in eyesight. A colonel had never addressed Peel directly, let alone an American one. But the Yanks were running the show, securing Somalia to allow humanitarian aid to be given unhindered. Peel followed as commanded, feeling that he must be in the right.

“Jack Warburton,” announced the civilian as the three double-timed towards a series of off-limit buildings on the other side of the tarmac. Peel knew the reputation of their destination like it was a dark shadow cast over everything that transpired here, for the inside reputedly held cells for prisoners of interest. If one listened carefully, when the roars and rumbles of jet and ground vehicles didn’t drown out every other noise, whimpers and screams sounded from within.

Warburton was lanky and wry, and about Peel’s height. His hair was gray and his skin tough like leather. He dressed like a tourist on safari with a Yankees cap, khaki long-sleeved shirt, and a sleeveless jacket with a dozen pockets.

“We lost our translator yesterday.”

“Lost, sir?”

“Stabbed five times in his sleep. Somali insurgent posing as a cleaner.”

Warburton said it like he had just lost his favorite pen.

“Yes, sir.” Peel was not sure what else he should say in response, feeling a lump rising in his throat. He could only hope the same fate didn’t fall on him. He remembered again the soldier who had dropped dead suddenly, and realized just how much of surviving the theater of war came down to shear, blind and utterly uncontrollable luck.

“You can relax, Lieutenant. We do things differently in my group.” Without waiting for an answer, Warburton turned to the Colonel who, according to his stich pad, went by the name of Turnell. There would be no official introduction, for the Colonel was done here. “He looks like he’ll do just fine,” said the CIA spook.

“Very good, Warburton. He’s yours until I say otherwise. Make arrangements with his Duty Officer.”

“Will do.”

Colonel Turnell was soon on his way.

Warburton turned again to Peel. “First time in Africa?”

“First time anywhere, sir.”

“Great,” the man answered with far too much glee for Peel’s liking. “After this hellhole, you’ll be a seasoned vet, and everything else will be easy in comparison.”

The American took off it at a pace like he had a rocket firing out of his ass, so Peel double-timed to keep up. He’d been doing a lot of that lately.

The US Marines guarding the holding cells made no move to stop Warburton and Peel as they entered. Peel suspected if he approached alone it would be a very different story.

The darkness inside was in stark contrast to the yellowish landscape outside. It took a moment for Peel’s eyes to adjust. He could smell sweat, urine and shit, smells that seemed to follow him everywhere in Somalia, but here smell was concentrated.

When he could see again, he spied a Somali man, beaten and bloody, tied to a chair and dressed only in dirty underwear. Two Marines with balaclavas and M16s watched over the prisoner. Both Marines carried bruises and cuts on their knuckles.

“This is Ahmed Serdo,” Warburton said as he took a seat next to the prisoner. “My Arabic isn’t great,” he explained as he slapped the prisoner across the face to get his attention. “But I’m hoping yours is, and we know he speaks it.”

“Yes, sir,” Peel said again, not sure how he should respond to this brutal scene unfolding before him. He had believed torture was against all the human rights conventions the US and Australian governments were party to, but this scene was counter-intuitive to all of that. “What do you want me to ask him, sir?”

“Ask him why he insists on his lies?”

“Lies, sir?”

“Lies about warlords, each with a dozen arms and legs, coming out of the desert riding caterpillar long horses to war with the infidels?”

——

Bay Administrative Region, Federal Republic of Somalia, March 2013

With the village secured, Peel snapped a series of photographs with his iPhone, of the deformed goats, the Siamese boys, and the mudstone buildings. The images they could study later. Peel felt certain this was the anomaly Carter had sent them to document.

Zouga appeared, returned from a debriefing with his men. He sweated from the heat. His eyes were wide and unblinking.

Peel asked, “What’s up with you?”

“This place makes me sick. You seem to know the Devil, Peel. What the hell’s going on here?”

Peel shrugged. “I have no idea, mate.”

The Nigerian scratched his head. He looked scared, like a truck had almost run him over, and now he was thinking through the consequences of what might have been. Zouga hadn’t seen the unnatural horrors Peel had encountered in his past, not in this detail, so the deformities were hitting him harder.

“But you do. You wanted to look at those satellite images again. You saw this.”

“Doesn’t mean I understand how this is happening.”

Zouga found a stool and sat on it. “I had my men check those buildings. They are all identical, each one. It’s like I walk into one, crossed the road, and I’m back in the same house again. I did that three times.” He stood, kicked the stool away in anger. “Why are you so fucking calm?”

Peel hadn’t realized it, but his index finger had rested above the weapon’s trigger, and he had subconsciously flicked off the AK-47’s safety. There had been no intention in his mind to shoot Zouga, the two were as close as you got to being friends in this business, but there was an element to this situation that had him on edge, and Zouga could see it.

Peel slipped the safety back on.

“Peel, I’ve emailed everything to Chad Carter. I’m waiting for his next set of orders.”

“We need to find a man who lives in this area,” Peel changed the subject. “His name is Ahmed Serdo.”

“Why’s he important?”

Peel shuddered. “I don’t know if Serdo still lives, but twenty years ago, he tried to warn me about something very important, related to all of this.”

A single gunshot echoed outside. Peel and Zouga gathered their assault rifles and raced around the corner of the mudstone buildings towards the source of the noise.

Corporal Armand was leading a half-dozen mercenaries herding the eight-legged goat back to the army trucks. They had the conjoined boys in tow, while a woman in full Islamic dress held onto the boys, wailing and sobbing for mercy. From what Peel could make out from her disjointed words, the boys were her sons.

“What’s going on?” Peel asked.

Zouga pointed to the boy with the tip of his FN-FAL. “Carter said collect the unusual. That’s what we’re doing.”

“I can understand the goat, but why the boy?”

“Orders are orders.”

Peel gritted his teeth, pushed his hand onto Zouga’s chest to assure the man’s attention. “You have children of your own, Moses. What would you do if someone tried to take them away from you?”

The executive officer took a moment to consider Peel’s words, and not an acknowledgement to their wisdom. “Corporal?”

“Yes, sir?” snapped Armand.

“Release the boy. Take only the goat.”

“Yes, sir.”

Soldiers pushed the two-headed boys away. The mother wrapped her arms tight around them and took them far from the soldiers.

Peel felt a sense of relief, but also a sense of fear of what might have caused the deformation. He turned to Zouga and said, “Thank you, my friend.”

Zouga nodded. “You were right. Carter is an asshole. He gets only what I’m willing to give.”

——

Kono District, Sierra Leone, May 1997

Lieutenant Peel walked three days on mountainous roads, stopped only at night to sleep in the rainforests when it was too dark to see more than a few meters in front of him. His skin itched with rashes and insect bites. Tiny, stingless bees lived and crawled in his armpits and groin. His feet howled with blisters and infected sores. His only food was bananas and mangos taken from trees, and a chimpanzee he had shot in the undergrowth trying to steal food from him. He’d cooked the primate on a slow-roasting fire during the night, shared it with a fleeing family. Two of the teenage boys in the group were missing right hands.

On the road his companions were refugees in the hundreds, fleeing the violence that had overrun the country. He’d heard the news, whispered by the refugees fleeing with him. Rebels had laid siege to Freetown, decimating the city and murdering hundreds.

While he marched, Peel constantly listened for trucks. Every time he heard one, he hid in the thick jungle foliage that encroached to the road edge. Mostly the vehicles were local trucks and cars holding terrified residents hoping to escape the violence gripping Sierra Leone, but occasional military or paramilitary vehicles passed. If the Sierra Leone Army found him, a white man, they would have executed him on the spot.

At one point he thought he spotted a sniper, perched up high on a distant building that was more like a burned-out shell than a structure of any value. Peel stood in the open, and knowing there was nowhere that provided cover, waited for the life-ending shot, but it never came. He kept walking.

He headed east, made for the Guinea border. His objective was nothing noble, merely a primal instinct to flee a country that had collapsed into a state of debilitating civil war, and had left him stranded with no backup and no escape route. He was 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment and in training for the Australian Army Intelligence Corps. Peel’s presence in West Africa was illegal, gathering intelligence under a false identity as a test of his abilities. Insurgents had gunned down every other soldier in his team during the street battles over the last few days, leaving him alone. He didn’t believe his superiors had expected the test to escalate into a situation this dangerous.

In three days, he had passed many open cut pits and river systems, where men and boys forced from their families sifted the rivers in search of elusive blood diamonds, the source of income that supported the warmongers.

Three days later he had covered much ground, but exhaustion was defeating him and his body had deteriorated. Perhaps a role in the Intelligence Corps was not for him, not if it was always like this.

Ahead the road opened up, the thick green foliage disappeared, replaced by grasslands. Those open fields stretched as far as the horizon.

Peel stopped for a moment to consider his situation, for if he followed this path and a militant truck approached there would be nowhere to hide.

The Guinea border couldn’t be over ten kilometers distant, so if he kept up his pace, he’d cross it by morning at the latest. If he turned back now it could be days, weeks even before he found another route out of the country. He knew he didn’t have the strength or luck to hold out that long.

Mind made up, he checked that the Beretta M9 remained tucked into his belt at the small of his back, with three bullets remaining in the magazine, and marched.

He walked several kilometers with other refugees before his first potentially dangerous encounter. It wasn’t militants that found him, but they weren’t civilians either.

A group of men numbering at least fifty slow jogged down the road ahead of him. They brandished machetes and spears. Even from this distance, Peel detected the stench of fish that hung over the warriors as an invisible cloud.

Other men, women and children on the road ahead, all of them locals, stepped out of the group’s intended path, and bowed their heads in respect. The joggers ignored the villagers and kept moving, their stench hanging over them like a putrid but invisible cloud.

Peel could have run from the warriors, but that would have drawn suspicion. He had no choice but to watch and wait, and let the group decide if they would confront him, or leave him be as they did all other fleeing refugees. The color of his skin made him a target.

The minutes passed, and they got closer.

They kept up their chanting. The language was not like any Peel had ever heard.

“Ph’nglui!”

“Mglw’nafh!”

The stench they carried was enough to make Peel gag, but he held himself still, held down the bile he could taste at the back of his throat. They got closer, and the stench got worse.

“Cthulhu!”

“R’lyeh!”

Now it was too late to run.

Peel stepped off the road and into the grass, following everyone else’s lead. The only point of difference was that he kept his hands firmly pressed against his weapon, should he need it.

“Wgah’nagl!”

“Fhtagn!”

When the fifty-odd men jogged past, none gave Peel any more notice than they did any other refugee on the road, but Peel noticed them.

Every man carried skin infections, their flesh sagging off their muscles, the texture of their bodies turned scaly and slimy like some horrific Ebola-style virus had them. It wasn’t so much that they were hording rotting fish, for Peel saw no signs they were. The smell originated from the men themselves.

“Ph’nglui!”

“Mglw’nafh!”

They passed and kept jogging.

“Cthulhu!”

Only when they were far of sight did Peel continue marching.

He encountered no further troubles on the road ahead during his escape from the country, but the smell, it stayed with him for days. And the memories stayed longer than the killings he’d experienced earlier.

——

Bay Administrative Region, Federal Republic of Somalia, March 2013

Peel followed the mother and her twin conjoined boy as they fled the village into the scrub desert.

The mother warned Peel away as he approached, made obscene gestures, and called him the devil.

“How did this happen?” Peel asked, advancing, pointing to the boy. He spoke in a fusion of Arabic and Somali, learned after almost eight years of continuous undercover work in Africa.

“The devil cursed him,” she spat her words, then sent her son off on his own following a trail further into the desert.

Peel couldn’t read her expressions, her face covered up in traditional Muslim garb. He didn’t wish to frighten her, so he pushed his AK-47 behind his back, out of the way, and showed her his empty hands.

“Allah be praised, don’t you take my son from me! He’s my son!”

“I’m not going to. Okay? I’m looking for Ahmed Serdo. You know him?”

Like there was no air in which to make noise, the mother suddenly ceased with her cursing. Peel studied her eyes, saw them turn for a moment, but long enough. He followed her gaze, found them staring at a mountainous outcrop on the horizon, six, maybe seven kilometers distant.

“You do know him.”

He could see the recognition in her eyes.

Peel said, “Serdo was from this region, if I remember correctly. Was he from this village?”

She swore, spat upon the earth, and then marched into the desert following her son.

“PEEL!” a cry came behind him. “Head’s up!”

Peel turned only fast enough to see the air-to-surface missile impact with the village center, a fireball emerged from nothing to consume everything, and the blast knocked him backwards rendering him unconscious.

——

Tangier, Morocco, September 2001

Beretta M9 handgun loaded and firmly gripped, finger hovering above the trigger guard, Peel took the stairs of the whitewashed apartment block three steps at a time. Jack Warburton came up behind him, his .357 IMI Desert Eagle balanced in his firm hands. Together the two spooks checked every corner, scoured every room, and peered up every stairwell before advancing, because they had no idea what to expect and yet they felt prepared for any threat. There could be no terrorists in this building, or there could be a dozen waiting in ambush. Only thoroughness on their behalf would answer that question.

The news had been horrific. Two hijacked airliners had crashed into New York’s World Trade Center, and another airliner had crashed into the Pentagon. Thousands were dead in the worst terrorist attack ever perpetrated on US soil.

The western intelligence community had responded quickly. Peel and Warburton already stationed in Morocco had been told to drop everything, and follow a lead to a terrorist cell operating in the densely populated city.

“Clear,” Warburton yelled as he checked a room to their right.

Peel took this as his signal to advance, checked the next room and found it empty. “Clear,” he called back.

On the fourth floor, they found what they had come for and immediately wished they had not.

The room resembled a residential dwelling like any other, except that a man hung naked, strung from his feet and tied to a beam in the roof. His gut cut open and his intestines hung like a string of sausages in a bloody trail from his abdomen to the floor. The smell of iron from the blood and the shit in his bowels was putrid. His testicles and fingernails were missing. He’d been dead for some time, judging by the flies buzzing and bouncing in the air.

Peel forced down his nausea and checked the room, in case the perpetrators had lingered, but he suspected not. “Clear!” he called out when the room proved empty. “Jack, I think you need to see this.”

Warburton burst into the room, and immediately his hand went to his face. “What the fuck—?” he exclaimed between gagging noises.

Peel moved to the body, tried not let his nausea overcome him. “It’s Tariq Housman.”

Warburton nodded, then frowned. Housman was a Saudi Arabian informant Peel and Warburton had recruited within an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell operating here in Morocco. Now Housman was dead, murdered on this day of all days. This pointed to Al-Qaeda, knowing for some time that Housman was an informant. How much of their intelligence Al-Qaeda had compromised would be difficult to gauge?

“That’s not good.”

Peel nodded as he checked the room more thoroughly while Warburton kept guard. Furniture, clothes, and books thrown about suggested a thorough yet hasty search. The first item of interest that caught Peel’s attention was a book, leather-bound and old, lying discarded in one corner, half obscured by a pile of rubbish.

He picked the book up off the dusty floor, flicked open the first couple of pages. It surprised him that its language was English. The title was The Masked Messenger, published 1930 with a scrawl in the corner sating it was once the property of a Professor Rudolph Pearson.

“I’d just throw that away if I were you.”

Peel turned, not aware that Warburton was watching him closely.

The Australian snapped the book shut and held it tight. “What do you mean?”

“That’s The Masked Messenger, right?”

“How did you know?”

Warburton shrugged. “I know these people. I know that’s one of the elder codices. You don’t want to read it, believe me.”

“What do you mean; an elder codex?”

The CIA agent looked wearied as if men like Peel had asked him that very question a thousand times before, and they had ignored his advice just as often. “Do what you will, Peel, but that’s my advice. I say this because you don’t want to end up like me.”

“I am like you. You trained me as a spook, remember? Seconded from the Australian Army.”

Color drained from Warburton’s face. “Not like this. Not like what that book will make you into.”

Peel laughed. He held onto the book. “We’ve got a job to do, get the bastards who did this. This book means nothing.”

“Then why not just throw it away?”

Peel thought upon what Warburton was saying. He might have thrown the book away if nothing had been made of it, but the CIA man’s interest had perked Peel’s interest too. He pocketed The Masked Messenger, intrigued.

“Because you want me to, that’s why.”

——

Bay Administrative Region, Federal Republic of Somalia, March 2013

Peel came too, laid out in the dirt. His head screamed like a metal band gripped it, and was gradually being tightened. He reached up and touched his head, found his combat helmet removed, and fresh bandages wrapped around a forehead wound. His fingers came away wet and red.

“Give yourself a minute.”

Peel turned his head, which produced further agony. He noticed a tarpaulin over him, to keep the hot tropical-latitude sun off his face. A man sat next to him, in uniform, checking the mechanics of his FN-FAL assault rifle.

“Zouga?”

“The very one. Fucking. Pissed. Off.”

Despite the pain, Peel sat. Zouga offered him a canteen of water, which Peel quickly swallowed.

“What happened?”

“Eyi oda! A fucking, fucking airstrike. Took out the village, all my men, and the Unimogs.”

Peel squeezed his eyes shut to ease the pain, but the action didn’t help. There was a ringing in his ears. The horizon seemed to sway, but he knew it was he who was unstable.

“What did you say?”

“It had to be Carter. I gave the fucker the information he wanted, emailed it all, but I’m guessing he didn’t want a trail leading back to him.”

“So he took us out?”

Zouga nodded.

Peel reached into his pocket and found aspirin. He took two. Then he decided, what the heck, he’d take four. A clear head was his priority, and four aspirin couldn’t really hurt like his current pain did.

Within minutes, the throbbing subsided.

“What happened to me?”

“Hit in the head by a piece of flying brick, I think. You look like you’re going to survive.”

“How do you know it was Carter, specifically?”

“Because it was an F/A-18 Hornet, with American markings. I saw it make a surveillance approach first. I only survived because I was out of the village, following your baboon’s ass.”

Peel nodded and tried to remember if there was a USS aircraft carrier currently in operation in the Indian Ocean or Gulf of Aden. Since he was no longer with the Intelligence Corps, daily threat and military deployment lists were no longer available to him. It was kind of like being blind, going out into the field with no actual knowledge of what could be out there. He missed so much of his old life.

“I’ll kill the fucker if I ever find him.”

“I think I know how, mate.”

Zouga’s eyes narrowed with interest. “How?”

Peel pointed to the distant mountain the mother had shown with her eyes. “Over there, I think that’s the source of this anomaly. If we find that, Carter will come looking for us, and then…”

“Yes,” Zouga grinned. “And then he won’t know what’s coming for him.”

A search of the village proved there were no surviving mercenaries. Only burned, cindered corpses, or nothing at all. The villagers who lived were unscathed or with minor injuries, but the explosion had obliterated most of them. Wailing and sobbing of the likes Peel had never witnessed filled the otherwise still air. The army trucks were blackened, dismembered shells.

“We can’t do anything,” Zouga said. “Except make Carter pay.”

Peel nodded, agreeing. He wanted to stay and help, but there was little they could do. All he could do was stay on the mission, their new mission. Find Ahmed Serdo and then bring Carter to justice.

They secured domesticated camels and paid their surviving owner a sizable fee in US dollars. Wrapping scarves around their faces to keep out the dust, Peel and Zouga took one camel each, and raced out across the empty landscape. The camels grunted and complained. While they rode, the men constantly watched the skies in case the jet fighter returned, but it never did.

By nightfall they reached the base of the mountain. The constant jarring and bouncing on the camel had worsened Peel’s headache. When they came to a stop, Peel almost fell off his beast of burden. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was.

“You need to sleep, my friend, and heal.” Zouga saluted him. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Thanks mate.”

He lay upon the dust, barely moving. In his mind, he knew they were at least three hundred kilometers from Mandera on the Kenya-Somalia border. If they were to make it home alive, it would require the theft of a vehicle from the closest city, Baidoa fifty kilometers distant, and driving as fast as they could to the border. But if his headache didn’t improve soon, Peel wouldn’t be going anywhere, ever.

All he could do was close his eyes, sleep and hope.

——

Lamu, Kenya, February 2002

Peel climbed from the hotel bed, pulled on a pair of pants, covered up the sleeping woman with the sheet, then let the serving staff enter their room.

The breakfast platter was comprised of pancakes, tropical fruits and coffee, which the server set up on the private balcony overlooking the pristine Shela Beach. The server pretended to ignore the naked girl while Peel signed for the food and provided him with a generous tip.

On the balcony, Peel poured himself a coffee and savored the rich, earthy aromas. The view was of a perfect aqua-blue Indian Ocean set against soft white sands. Palms grew thick along the coastline, while Swahili dhows — the local name for fishing boats — lazily rolled in the tranquil waters. The weather was warm and tropical, exactly how Peel liked it. The scene reminded him that the world couldn’t get much better than this, and that he should have taken up a career in hospitality rather than espionage. Less pay perhaps, but a lot less stressful.

The tall slim woman walked out onto the balcony wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, sat in the chair next to Peel and put a bite-sized piece of pineapple to her lips.

“Samantha,” Peel said with a nod and a grin, acknowledging her. She was slim and perfectly proportioned, with legs that just seemed to stretch forever, and firm, outward pointing breasts that balanced levelly on her ribs and pressed against the shirt’s fabric. She had the body fashion photographers would swoon over, and he imagined it wouldn’t be hard to look at her all day.

She grinned. “I was wondering if you would remember my name.”

“Names aren’t my problem.”

She laughed.

He eyed the coffee, and she nodded, so he poured her one. “Milk? Sugar?”

“No, thanks.” She stretched out a toe, pointing to his coffee. He couldn’t help but notice again the length and shape of her toned leg. “I have it the same as you.”

Peel nodded, sat back and admired both the view of the tropical beach and the beauty seated next to him.

“You seem very relaxed. Men normally can’t sit still when I’m dressed like this.”

“What’s the rush?” Peel asked. “Stay as long as you want. I’m here for two weeks.”

“On holidays?”

“Rest and recuperation.”

“You work in Africa?”

He grinned. “That’s right.”

She nodded, nibbled on a slice of mango, then a piece of watermelon. “Your invitation has its appeal, but I’m afraid I have to leave tomorrow morning.”

“Well, we’ll just have to make the most of our short time together until then.”

They sat for a moment, nibbling on food and sipping coffee. Peel felt more relaxed than he had been in a long time, but he could see agitation in the late-twenties English woman he’d picked up in the restaurant last night. Yet he was in no hurry to ask what bothered her. She would present him with her questions soon enough. Until then, he would savor the moment, and this was a moment worth savoring.

When they finished eating, she walked provocatively over to him, wrapped her legs over his waist and sat upon his lap. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest and caressed his muscular body.

“We’ve met before,” she said casually.

“Really?” Peel tried to remember where.

“I know your name isn’t Daniel, but Paul Kuilboer. It’s a nice Australian drawl you’ve put on, but I know you’re South African.”

“Is that right?” Peel automatically switched to an Afrikaans accent as his fingers gently ran themselves up and down her left arm. He remembered the details of his alias. Paul Kuilboer was an arms dealer, a creation of Warburton’s established to sell weapons to African terrorists, introduced in Sierra Leone many years ago and active ever since. His ongoing mission was to tie up local insurgent funds with small arms rather than weapons of mass destruction or heavy armaments such as surface-to-air missiles. The plan was to keep their weapons ineffective against larger targets, such as airplanes, hotels, embassies and nightclubs. He’d last used that alias in Khartoum four months ago, selling AKs and RPGs to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

He remembered then that Samantha Ridley was a journalist staying at the same hotel he had in Khartoum. She’d pushed for an interview, but he’d turned her down, as he would. He didn’t remember her now because her hair had been dark then, and longer. Now it was a sandy blonde cut to just above her collarbone, and he suspected this was her actual color. Sometimes women travelers in Africa dyed their hair dark because blondeness attracted too much unsavory attention. Mentally, he kicked himself for not recognizing her earlier.

“Don’t tell me, you want an interview now?” He kept with his Afrikaans’s accent as if that were his natural speaking pattern. He didn’t want to go on record, this holiday should be a time where he didn’t have to pretend.

She lent in, licked his ear, kissed his lobe, and then whispered, “What would be so bad about that?”

He pulled her back so she could look at him. “I’m not talking, okay?”

She had been too easy, too willing to come back to his room. He’d just wanted a holiday, a break from the lies, deceit and the constant feeling that at any moment his cover would crumble and the death squads would come for him. Lamu was time to be alone and by himself, to relax. But he’d gone without sex for months, and Samantha was a gorgeous woman who last night only had eyes and an appetite for him.

She climbed off him, returned to the bedroom. He half expected her to dress, but that didn’t seem to be her agenda. Instead, she brought him an envelope with a series of photographs.

“You’re paying attention to me, right?”

Peel grinned. “I guess I am, but I’m still not talking?”

She pouted. “What about off the record?”

He didn’t want her to go, because having her here and comfortable around him, with no timetable, relaxed him. He hadn’t felt like this in years, calm and at peace. But if she were to stay — and hopefully she’d stay the entire day and the night — he’d have to give her something. At least she thought of him as an arms dealer, and not a military spy. With knowledge of the latter, she’d be pumping him for a lot more insider knowledge than she was right now.

“Okay, off the record. You spend the day with me, and I’ll tell you what I can that doesn’t compromise any of my business dealings.”

She handed him the photographs and grinned.

Peel flipped through each of the fourteen pictures. They were of an arid African landscape. Most featured bodies of men, women and children. Crushed bodies, as if a large and heavy weight had rolled over them as they ran. There was a path through the desert, like the trail of a snake left behind in sand dunes, but this path was much wider, five or six meters across.

“What do you make of that?”

Peel shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“This was from the Darfur region. Locals talked about a demon coming out of the desert, a giant ball of eyes and mouths. Smelt of gasoline and semi-green orbs illuminating its skin.”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t buy that kind of thing.”

“I don’t either, but I thought you might know some kind of weapon that could do this, being in the business and all.”

Peel looked at her closely. She was super-confident, and turned-on by him staring at her in his shirt that had ridden up to her hips. He wanted to take her to the bed, do a repeat performance of their previous night’ uninhibited sexual interactions, but their business dealings were leaving a nasty taint on any intimacy they might share now.

“What are you thinking?”

He imagined his facial expressions. “I’ll look into it, ask around. If I learn anything, I’ll let you know.”

She made a face, took back the photographs and turned to her clothes, discarded on the floor. “You think I believe that?” she said slipping off his shirt without bothering to look at him. She slid into her beach dress, then her knickers and sandals. “You men are all the same. You want me, but aren’t willing to give anything in return.”

Peel felt an emptiness overcome him. “I didn’t know this was a transaction?”

Samantha huffed and rolled her eyes. This was a transparent attempt to manipulate him. She would stay only if he provided her with information, but Peel would not fall for that ploy. Not that he had anything to share, because he knew nothing about any weapon that could kill like that.

Instead, he watched her leave. Not once did she look at him. She probably wanted him to apologize and share knowledge she thought he had, but he didn’t call her bluff.

“Fuck!” he said after she had gone.

The view out over the ocean had lost all its majesty.

——

Bay Administrative Region, Federal Republic of Somalia, March 2013

Peel woke when the bright red sun peer over the horizon. He’d slept through the night.

When he sat, he found his headache had improved.

Zouga sat next to him, FN-FAL ready in his lap, watching the landscape with the intensity of a hunting eagle. “You feeling any better?”

“Yes, thanks, mate.”

“Good,” Zouga stood. “Because I’d hate to leave you here.”

Peel drank some water, ate some of his rations which suggested he was on the mend. Zouga ate and drank with him.

“You need some sleep?” Peel asked.

“Fuck no! I want to find this Ahmed Serdo. Then get the fuck out of here.”

After checking their equipment, they climbed onto their camels and explored the base of the mountain. It was a volcanic plug, rising a few hundred meters out of the sands, then sheer cliffs to a flat top. The cone of sand around the base would be easy enough to climb, but the cliffs, which were about half the distance to the top, would be a challenge, and probably impossible to scale.

“What do you expect to find here?” Zouga asked.

Peel shrugged. “I don’t know why, but I have a feeling this is a place I was told about in my past.”

He remembered again his time with UNITAF, in Mogadishu, the weeks of interrogation and the breaking of Ahmed Serdo’s will. The Somali prisoner had talked occasionally about how Peel and he would meet again at the end, and had described a mountain very similar to this. Staring at the outcrop now, Peel felt a shiver run up his back. This was the place. He was certain of it.

They tethered the camels, loaded their weapons and climbed. Soon they discovered a trail, so Peel suggested they followed that.

The trail led to a gap in the rocks, with stone stairs carved into the basalt.

“Oluwa o, Peel!” Zouga exclaimed, expressing his surprise. “I thought you had nothing, but…”

Peel looked up. The stairs led into a cave carved from the rock, which he suspected would take them to the flat-topped mountain.

“Shall we?”

Zouga nodded. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Two men vanished into the darkness. The worn steps seemed carved from centuries past. The darkness made it hard to see anything, so they felt their way, brushed against the stone walls as they ascended. A narrow man-made cave, barely wide enough to allow one man through at a time, seemed to squeeze them on occasions. Peel hoped he was merely imagining this.

Eventually they broke through to the surface, stood upon the flat outcrop and took in the magnificent view of the desolate Somali landscape.

“Look at that?” Zouga was pointing to three stair exits, all identical, lined-up next to each other. “The same replication is here.”

Another shudder momentarily gripped Peel. “You’re right.”

They heard the noise of men approaching. But it wasn’t men, rather the multiple fusions of one man. A dozen or more arms and an equal number of legs, confused together like the tentacles of sea anemones, turned and rolled about the central mass of torsos and heads, all the same heads. It was the man Peel had been eager to find, Ahmed Serdo. There were at least eight Serdos melded into one chaotic, horrific body.

“I’s knew’s you’s would’s come’s,” several of the heads spoke Arabic, not quiet in synchronicity with each other. “I’s knew’s today’s was the day’s I’s would’s meet’s you’s again’s, Harrison’s Peel’s.”

——

Cairo, Egypt, November 2003

The two men with guns had been convincing, as they led Peel through the souk of Khan el-Khalili each with a pistol pressed into his back. The frantic night life of the twenty-four-hour city filled Peel’s senses as they marched him through the crowds. Vendors everywhere sold to Arab and western tourists. Most of the street stalls promoted jewelry and curios of Egyptian artifacts. Peel thought of running, because the crowd was dense enough to get lost in with little effort. But the men struck him as professional killers. Escape would be folly and probably temporary.

They led him into a café where more men smoked hash, and families with young children enjoyed a meal together despite the late hour. Arabic music played in the background, lyrical and from a time long ago like it belonged to the period between the two World Wars.

The men led Peel to a booth and made him sit. He looked across the table and saw the last person he ever expected to see in this city.

“Uncle Mitchell?”

The old man grinned. The brother of Peel’s father would have been pushing seventy, and yet here he was, in the field in Cairo. Peel knew just enough about his uncle to know he worked for a secretive department within the Australian government, and that he had close ties to the CIA, but Peel thought Mitchell had retired long ago. Hell, Mitchell Peel had been in this business since before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“I’m here to protect you, nephew.”

Peel noticed the inflection on the last word, emphasizing their blood relationship.

“So you send men with guns?”

“This is all off the record, Harrison, and I’ll deny this if we ever met again in a social occasion.”

“If we meet again?” Peel didn’t like the finality in the old man’s words. He looked for Mitchell’s minders, but they had long gone. Probably waiting outside, watching the crowds, and ready should Peel make a run for it.

“Did you know, not far from here, back in the Nineteen-Thirties, dozens of Egyptians were massacred in a terrorist attack, and the survivors talked of demons coming out of the shadows to smite their souls? Of course, they didn’t call them terrorists back then.”

“No, I didn’t.”

A server brought two coffees, and two plates of koshari which was a dish of rice, macaroni and lentils topped with a tomato sauce, chickpeas and crispy fried onions.

“Eat up,” Mitchell took to his plate with far too much energy for a man of his age.

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Well, I’m hungry, and I need to eat before what I’m about to tell you.”

Resigning himself to this encounter, Peel sipped the rich, dark coffee, and tasted the food strong with the aroma of garlic.

“I need you to give back that book.”

“What book?”

“The elder codex in your possession.” When Peel expressed confusion, Mitchell said, “The Masked Messenger.”

Peel laughed. “That book? It’s ancient, over a hundred years old.”

“So too was the instigator of that massacre I told you about.”

Peel frowned. “What the hell is this about?”

Mitchell said between mouthfuls. “It’s the words you take from that book, and search for in the Defense Intelligence and Security Group databases, that has us worried. Words like ‘Nyarlathotep’, ‘Cthulhu’ and ‘Yog-Sothoth’ draw attention, and not the attention you need.”

Peel shook his head. This encounter with an uncle he hadn’t seen in years seemed all wrong. Uncle Mitchell used to play soccer with Peel and his sister when he was a teenager, in the backyard of their house in the outer Sydney suburb of Hornsby, and Mitchell knew how to have a laugh and muck around. Back then Mitchell was a mathematician who worked for the Australian Government, who traveled often for work. It was only later when Peel was an intelligence operative himself that he learned the truth, that he and his uncle were in the same game. Everyone else in the family had boring jobs. Peel thought he had escaped that life, but his uncle had beaten him to it.

“This is crazy,” Peel retorted.

“You ever wonder why I never married, settled down and had a family like my brother?”

“My dad resented you, because he envied you.”

Mitchell looked away. “He shouldn’t have. I didn’t want this life. I don’t want you to have the same life either.”

Peel clenched his teeth. “Despite the dangers, I like my life, and my chosen profession. Seven years in the 1st Royal Australian Regiment served me well, but I like the Intelligence Corps more.”

“I should have pulled Warburton up long ago.”

“Warburton? You know him?”

“He got you into this.”

“So?”

“So, I asked him not to, but he trusted me, so he figured he could trust you.”

“You telling me that wasn’t a chance encounter in Mogadishu?”

Mitchell shook his head. “Harrison, you are progressing down a path you won’t like. I’m giving you the opportunity not to reach its end, because when you do, there is no turning back.”

Peel laughed, sensing the drama unfolding that he wasn’t willing to be a party to. “Do you know how this all sounds?”

Mitchell shook his head. “Harrison. I know how it sounds, but please trust that I’m doing this to protect you. Don’t end up like me.”

“I like this career I’ve chosen. I enjoy serving my country this way.” Peel finished his coffee, then stood ready to leave because he’d had enough of this conversation. “I’m sorry, Uncle, but this all sounds like you are trying to hold me back.”

It took Mitchell a moment to answer, and he didn’t answer immediately because he too took a sip of his coffee, savoring this moment.

Then he said, “Harrison, that’s because I am.”

——

Bay Administrative Region, Federal Republic of Somalia, March 2013

The confused fleshy shape that was Ahmed Serdo turned and twisted as it lumbered towards Peel and Zouga. Mouths and anuses drooled vile fluids. Stretched boney limbs tapped and clawed like spider limbs wrapped in pale human flesh. Eight faces, all the same, stared with eyes that were bloodshot and weepy. Wounds leaked puss and viscous translucent fluids.

Zouga raised his FN-FAL, lined up the monster in its sights.

“Wait!” Peel shouted.

Zouga didn’t lower his weapon, but he didn’t fire it either. “What the fuck is that, Peel? You fucking seem to know what’s going on!”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but Serdo here wants to talk.”

“That’s not a man, Peel.”

“It’s what’s left of a man.” Peel turned to the monster he had once known as a man, from a time when Serdo would have had every right to consider Peel a monster who had condoned his torture. “I’m sorry for what we did to you,” Peel said, feeling a lump rising in his throat. He wished he could take back what he had done, what atrocities he had allowed Warburton to perform on this man in that filthy interrogation cell.

“I’s forgive’s you’s. I’s would’s have’s done’s the same’s.”

Peel nodded, yet kept his hand rested on the Glock 9mm in his belt holster, and his AK-47 slung behind him ready to bring forward should he need to. But he doubted he would, as Zouga itched to kill the thing, ready to empty an entire magazine into Serdo.

“You’s come’s for’s answer’s?” It drooled, while its feet-hand combinations tapped unnatural rhythms in the dirt. “You’s have’s questions?”

Peel nodded. “How did this happen?”

“Space-time’s, it’s weak’s here’s. Many’s Earth’s, all’s melded’s. I’m’s melded’s too’s. So’s are’s many’s place’s around’s here’s.”

“Melded?”

“Parallel’s universes. Fusions from’s a singularity’s event’s, yet’s to come’s.”

“A what?” demanded Zouga.

“Your’s future’s Peel’s, is in’s the singularity’s. All’s of you’s.”

Peel shuddered. “All of who?”

“You’s! It’s coming’s,” Serdo drooled again. “You’s didn’t believe’s me’s back’s then’s. You’s do’s now’s?”

Peel nodded. “I realize now. I’ve been thinking about it these last couple of days. The signs were always there, about the truth of the universe. I’d never noticed until recently. I never put it together until today.”

The heads nodded, not quite in unison with each other, agreeing.

“What the fuck’s going on Peel?” Zouga’s fear was getting the better of him. “Why the fuck aren’t we killing it?” Then he lost control, and emptied an entire magazine of bullets into the fused man.

“No!” cried Peel, but he was too late.

The monster that was Ahmed Serdo opened with multiple holes of peeled flesh, meaty holes that sprayed blood like an actual human. The creature stumbled, one leg or arm going out under it after the other.

Zouga reloaded and fired again, a second clip of his FN-FAL to kill the man who had introduced Peel to the shadowy world of monsters, strange physics and a universe that hated all humanity.

The creature died, and so too did the answers it had promised.

——

Lagos, Nigeria, May 2013

After two months following bargained-for leads, traded human intelligence and examination of spurious satellite imageries, sourced by leaning on various contacts across the globe, Peel and Zouga finally tracked Chad Carter down in Lagos, back in Zouga’s home city. They had him under surveillance now. They were ready to move in.

The two soldiers followed Carter as he exited a bar in one of the rougher neighborhoods frequented by mercenaries, smugglers and prostitutes. Peel and Zouga waited until he stepped onto a quiet street on his own, outside where it was hot and muggy, and the city carried the stench of rotten food.

Peel distracted Carter with a stare from across the road. Before Carter could run, Zouga snuck up on him and had his suppressed handgun firmly placed in Carter’s neck. Once Zouga relieved Carter of his handgun, mobile phone and switchblade, Peel approached with his own suppressed pistol raised, and the three men entered an alleyway that overflowed with rank-smelling rubbish watched over by mangy dogs. The decrepit multi-story apartment blocks looked down on the scene, but anyone at home wouldn’t care what business three men had with each other, for this was a neighborhood where muggings were a common sight.

“You left us to die,” snarled Zouga when they were alone with the American. “Why shouldn’t I just kill you now?”

Carter didn’t talk, just grinned like he knew a secret neither man did, and that secret would protect him.

Peel examined Carter’s iPhone. A locked screen so Peel couldn’t access the call history, and he didn’t think he could persuade Carter to give up its access code easily. He noticed a missed call and Peel quickly memorized the name. He showed the message to Carter. “Is that a man called Dirk Kinsella? We overheard you talking to him earlier?”

Carter said nothing.

Peel looked to Zouga. “He’s not talking? Do we just shoot him?”

Again, Carter said nothing.

“Who do you work for?” Peel pushed the man in the chest, hard. “Who wanted the village in Somalia kept a secret?”

Chad Carter spat onto the ground, grinned.

This irritated Zouga, who took his handgun and fired a bullet into the dirt between Carters’ feet. The American jumped, paled significantly at the realization that the bullet was mere centimeters from tenderizing his toes. Finally, their enemy no longer sweated from just the tropical heat.

“Eyi oda! You are going to die here, you fuck, in this spot,” growled Zouga. “Unless you can convince us you know something worth trading.”

Carter looked to Peel, but the Australian would only shrug. “I’m pissed off too. I just hide it better than my friend here.” He raised his Beretta and pointed it at Carter’s face.

“Okay!” the CIA man exclaimed. “You think you want answers, but you don’t. I work for powerful men, in the Pentagon, who know things you don’t want to know.”

Peel recalled a similar conversation he’d had with his Uncle ten years ago. It hadn’t washed with him then, and it wouldn’t wash with him now. “Doing what exactly?”

“Scouring the world for super-weapons. You know what I mean, don’t you Peel?”

“Alien weapons?”

Carter nodded. “The head guy, he’s terrifying, but he protects us because he’s powerful. You do me in, he’ll find you, and he’ll destroy you. In horrific ways you don’t even want to imagine.”

“Who, Dirk Kinsella?”

The American laughed. “Not likely. But Kinsella is one of us. He might be the one who kills you, Peel, if ordered to. You’ll just never see it coming.”

Zouga said, “This is a waste of time. The shit man knows nothing.”

Peel could see that their ordeal in Somalia had shaken the Nigerian significantly. Not only had Zouga lost his men and his trucks, and had his private military contractor business nearly crippled, but the monsters and mutations he had witnessed had shaken him far more. Zouga felt scared now, and he didn’t like being scared, so he was angry instead. He was out for blood.

Peel looked again to Carter, raised his weapon like he had no choice but to execute him now.

“You want answers? Then you want to talk to Major Charles Ackerman.”

“Who is he?”

“CIA Special Operations Group. He’s in the Congo. The DR Congo, eastern jungle regions.”

Peel knew the Congo to be one of the most dangerous war zones on the planet. Could Carter be leading them into a trap, sending Zouga and Peel into a location where they were likely to get themselves killed?

“Why Ackerman?”

“You let me go; I’ve got five hundred thousand US in a briefcase nearby. You can have that, and I’ll tell you why Ackerman is important.”

Zouga laughed. Peel did too.

Carter looked surprised.

“We’ve already found it, because you just gave it away, to our man who met you in that bar. This is Zouga’s home turf, or did you forget that?”

Hope disappeared from Carter’s face. Peel and Zouga had set Carter up, promising him through intermediaries that an anonymous buyer would pay good money for information on otherworldly anomalies found in the Somalian deserts. Carter had fallen for it.

“That will pay for nice new guns for my friend Sergeant Zouga here—”

There was a sudden sound like a loud sneeze as Carter’s head exploded. An eruption of blood, brain matter and skull fragments were propelled in every direction, and the American dropped without control, for life had already left him.

Peel and Zouga dropped and found cover, looked up and down the alleyway for the signs of a sniper, but they saw none. There were too many apartment blocks nearby where the assassin could have positioned him or herself. If the assassin wanted them dead too, Peel wondered why he hadn’t taken the shot already.

The minutes passed, and still no bullets were forthcoming. The assassin had been for Carter alone, yet Peel couldn’t help feeling there was a message for him in there somewhere.

Abandoning the body, the two men took separate routes from the alleyway, mingled with the street crowds and met up at Zouga’s car fifteen minutes later, several blocks from Carter’s corpse. Peel drove, Zouga fumed while tightly gripping the briefcase he had picked up from their operative during their escape route. They sped out of town to a private airfield where an airplane waited for them.

On the taxiway, Zouga tossed Peel several rolls of one hundred US dollar bills.

Peel counted fifty thousand. “What’s that for? You lost your men and your business, not me?”

“You’re going after Ackerman, and Kinsella right?”

Peel nodded. “You don’t want to come with me, and finish this?”

Zouga nodded, then shook his head. “Not really, not after what I saw in Somalia. I wanted Carter to pay, and he has, so I’m satisfied now.”

“What about the assassin?”

Zouga shrugged, and Peel could see the man was furious, but was self-aware enough to know that losing control of his anger would serve no one, particularly himself.

“He could be a problem, but I don’t think so. He wanted Carter dead, not us.”

“So why not come?”

Zouga shrugged. “I don’t want to know what you know, that’s why. And you know a lot. You have nightmares, and I hear them when you nap. Frozen wastelands, weird operas, jungle mutations. My imagination can’t be anywhere as good as what you actually saw.”

The Australian gritted his teeth, remembered again what his Uncle Mitchell had said, and how Jack Warburton had similarly warned Peel that the path he was taking was fraught with danger. He had ignored those warnings. Now he should present Moses Zouga with the same option, follow the path of the elder codex to where alien horrors awaited, or walk away and pretend they didn’t exist, and hopefully live a happier if more ignorant life because of that decision.

Peel wondered if his life would have been different, had he listened to Mitchell Peel in that café in Cairo.

The Masked Messenger, he still possessed that book, kept in his flat in Sydney. He remembered reading lines in the various fables concerning a cult in the Congo, the Spiraling Worm. He wondered if there was a connection between Ackerman and that cult, and if that mysterious department in the Pentagon was hunting for secret alien weapons in the jungle.

“Oh, fuck!” exclaimed Zouga. “You’re a baboon’s ass, Peel, but goddamn you are persistent. I’ll come with you wherever you want to go, help you get started. Connect you to the right people if you need it. But that’s it. I’m not going in deep.”

Peel smiled. It was good to have friends in this nasty business.

Across the airfield, the twin prop aircraft was cycling through its pre-flight checks, ready to take them to wherever they needed to go. Peel was itching to get on board.

“Thanks Moses.”

“Where to then?”

“The Congo. I always wanted to take a trip to the Congo.”

Zouga laughed. “You’re insane, my friend. You are completely insane.”

——

Here ends Cthulhu Reloaded

Harrison Peel’s adventures continue in Volume 2: Cthulhu Resurgent

THANK YOU

Thank you for reading Cthulhu Reloaded. If you enjoyed this book, would you please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon? Reviews are critical for helping independent authors bring their books to the attention of readers who might enjoy them. I would truly appreciate it, and it can be as short as you like.

Thank you very much.

David Conyers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Conyers is a science fiction author and editor living in Adelaide, South Australia. He completed a degree in engineering from the University of Melbourne, and today works as a tender writer in the construction industry.

David has published over fifty science fiction and horror short stories, won several awards for his writing, and edited five anthologies including one of the first fiction collections to explore the concepts of exoplanets, Extreme Planets. For over a decade he was the Arts and General Editor and reviewer for Albedo One magazine where he interviewed many top science fiction writers including Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan and Will McIntosh.

His extensive portfolio of Cthulhu Mythos fiction includes his popular Harrison Peel espionage versus the Elder Gods series, contributed to The Last Door video game, and for more than a decade he was a prolific contributor to the Call of Cthulhu tabletop role-playing game.

Today David writes contemporary thriller fiction novels under a pseudonym.

www.david-conyers.com