The Seraphs Call - Chapter Seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Panama City, Republic of Panama

The 767 jumbo-jet circled the Bay of Panama as they made their approach into Tocumen International Airport.  Dr. Jorge Velasquez glanced from his window seat and could see the brown muddy banks of the bay, the tide at its morning ebb, the sediment washing from the Panama Canal into the bright blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  The altitude dropped and the plane passed over the Bridge of the Americas.  The massive columns holding the vertigreed iron to a height under which the most massive of ships could pass, spanned the canal on its eastern opening, connecting the continents of North and South America.  Jorge welcomed the return to Panama, although he wished for the reason to be different.  The view brought back many memories from his first trip to Panama.  As a young doctor, on his first assignment with the United Nations, he had volunteered to work with UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.  The AIDS epidemic has tightened its grip on Panama, reaching into the remotest locations of the small Central American country.  Working with Children had been his first love, destroying infectious diseases, his second.  With UNICEF, he was able to do both.  Jorge worked with the children of Panama for more than five years, providing relief, from the smallest villages in the Northern provinces to the largest cities of Panama and Colon.  Through his efforts, many hours spent campaigning and educating the people and the politicians, he was able to carry out reforms and practices throughout the country that brought the AIDS epidemic to a standstill.  His efforts did not go unnoticed.  When he returned to Geneva, the recognition he received allowed him to climb the ranks of the UNICEF organization, placed as the leading expert with the World Health Organization on Infectious Diseases.   The skyline has not changed much in the past twenty years, the smile creasing his lips as he reminisced. 

The South American Drug Cartels made the banking center in the heart of Panama popular.  The epicenter of money laundering, its modern skyscrapers reached up from the impoverished neighborhoods that surrounded it, calling as a beggar would for food, waiting for some scrap or handout to make it through the night.  He had worked in these smaller neighborhoods; observing the rampant drug addiction, prostitution, and crime; experiencing the suffering firsthand. What affected him the most was watching the children as they fought everyday to survive.  While across the street, the politicians, executives and drug cartel members lavished in luxury, ignoring the plight of their own compatriots.  The lines of society were drawn clearly in this tropical capital city, but it was the way of many countries around the world. The rich get richer; the poor get poorer.  It was the same everywhere.  The smile soon faded as the plane touched down, jarring him back to the present, reminding him that he had a new battle to fight.  This one would not be as before.  AIDS was but a small scratch compared with the festering wound of Lucifer X.

 

 

June 16, 2049 – 0200 Hour U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters Rathborn was less then a mile from his target, and he thumbed the toggle on the helicopter’s whisper mode.  He watched with satisfaction as the aircraft’s heat monitors zeroed and the whir of the rotors decreased to a steady nonexistent hum.  Secrecy was to his advantage, even with the benefit of having a so-called inside man.  It was still a tricky maneuver to break into something that was supposed to be the most secure location on the planet--the CIA Headquarters at Langley Virginia.

June 16, 2049 – 0205 Hours - CIA Headquarters

The sparking sprites of information packets whirred through Angel’s mind.  His five hundred terra-bit, two billion parallel processor bus-line worked furiously to disable all the security that might interfere with Rathborn’s entrance to and egress from the CIA facility.  He had covered the machine bases, and all that remained was something, despite all his power and intelligence, he could not combat.  Rathborn would have to deal with the human element.

Angel kept watch.  The ex-special forces man had landed, sitting his aircraft down on the roof that moments before was active with thousands of tiny heat, motion, sound and pressure sensors.  If the ruse Angel had fed the security monitors would hold, he should have an easy time accessing the areas that he needed to get through.  Avoiding the dozens of routine patrols and the hundreds of checkpoints inside would not be the only difficulty he would face. 

This was the reason that Rathborn’s chosen path was the ventilation.  That route through the building and into the vault was the only one that could get Darryl to Angel safely.  Rathborn pried the grating loose from the ducts, crawling into the restrictive space with practiced ease.

June 16, 2049 – 0205 Hours - White House

Somewhere an alarm sounded; an unknown and separate fail-safe that had no access or stand-down switch could have disabled.  It was an old system of a paranoid era, designed to give warning of an intruder no matter what the circumstances.  It did not warn the men inside Langley, but through a complex series of relays, lit a silent alarm hundreds of miles away.  The alarm flashed in the underground bunker at Camp David--a private response direct to the President of the United States.

William Theodore Porter looked much like a relic from another age.  The president was seventy-eight years old, making him the oldest man to have ever held the office of commander in chief.  Many of his opponents joked behind his back that he was so old he farted dust.  They lost their humor when they first sparred with his more than cunning mind.  He was also the closest any President of the United States had ever come to being a dictator.  His reputation for ruthlessly crushing his opponents was well known.  The man practiced politics, for what he called “the thrill of the kill.”  And his blood thrill always came when he saw the ruin of his opponents and their mental or sometimes physical wailing as they were crushed beneath his political heel.

He knew though, when people would be useful towards his ends, and carefully nurtured his relations with the most brilliant of his opponents, like a larger snake keeping its tiny poisonous brethren to his bosom.  Porter was the consummate professional, soothing the bruised ego when it suited his purposes--as it had for one Dr. Roger Janus.

 Reaching for the pearl-covered humidor, Porter pulled it close and opened it with an agonizing slowness, letting the sweet smell of the hand-rolled genuine Cuban cigars waft into his nostrils.  “Ahhh, the spoils of being President. Wouldn’t you agree, Roger?”   

“Yes, Mr. President” Roger responded, “that it is!”

Roger had to sit and watch as Porter adeptly rolled the cigar under his nose, inhaling deeply to savor the scent of the tobacco the average American would never get a chance to try. 

“Since the defeat of Castro,” the president said maniacally “I have really enjoyed his tobacco.” 

Roger, having worked directly for the President for years, had suspected his involvement in the dual assassination of both Fidel and Raul Castro, but no proof had surfaced, nor had anyone sought any.  It was well known that anyone that crossed the President mysteriously met with an accident or unexplainable disappearance.  The halls of Washington were awash with rumors, but never muttered too loudly, fearing the wrath of the man in the Oval office.

“Roger” he spoke “it has come to my attention that our beloved Dr. Scott is close to a cure or at least an inhibitor to “the problem.”  The president always spoke in vagaries, never allowing anyone the opportunity to undermine him with his own words.  The words, so carefully chosen, came from years of political experience, crushing his opponents with the oratory power. 

“Mr. President, you have to understand that all attempts are being made to slow the progress of his development.  I have managed to place a person inside the facility.” 

Stiffening his lips, the only sign Roger ever saw of his irritation, the president spoke, “Roger, I DON’T have to understand anything.  I placed you on this project for results, and so far, you have severely disappointed me.  If we allow him to develop this anti-virus, we will not be able to recover, and I will not have failure.  Do you understand me?”

 Not daring to interrupt, Roger waited for the President to finish speaking.  “Mr. President?  Porter held up his index finger, a well-known signal that he dare not be interrupted again. 

“Roger, it has come to my attention that as we speak, we have a situation at Langley.  The security systems are nonfunctional, and the on-site personnel cannot discover the cause.  I have sent the Delta Force from Fort Bragg to handle the situation.  The Secretary of Defense has also briefed me that the security chief from the Facility in Stone Mountain is missing.  I don’t know if there is a correlation as of yet, but by god Roger, if something jeopardizes the security of this plan, I will hold you personally responsible.  Do you understand me?

“Yes, Mr. President” Roger stated.

Turning his chair to face the painting of Napoleon at Waterloo, the president carefully clipped his cigar and placed it between his lips.  Roger knew it was time to leave.  There was no use in trying to reason with him, as Roger had been reassigned as a desk clerk many years before for interrupting him.

Roger knew he would have to communicate this same urgency to his contact in Stone Mountain.  Leaving the underground complex, following the maze of tunnels that led to the surface, Roger was determined to stop Dr. Gabriel Scott, if it meant killing the good doctor himself.

June 16, 2049 – 0210 Hours - White House

Reaching for the secure line that connected him with the CIA, the president waited for the warbling of the encryption equipment completing its connection.  As soon as the sound stopped, the president could hear the voice on the other line.  “Yes?”

The president could hardly contain the irritation in his voice, but he knew it had to be this way.  Monitoring of this line had never been detected, but they could never be sure if they would be discovered. 

“The plan is not proceeding as we had planned.  The refuse needs to be disposed of.”

“Understood” <click> as the sound of the disconnection reverberated in his ears.

Only once had the President used this line, but the dire consequences he and others would face upon failure, would be far more reaching than he could imagine.

June 16, 2049 – 0215 Hours – U.N Research Facility - Stone Mountain, GA

Holiday muttered several vague obscenities about Gabriel Scott’s lineage.  The last drops of the most recent batch of the virus had been administered.  Time was running out.  In some cases, the virus had halted Lucifer yet was beginning to weaken considerably in the constant battle needed to fight its mutant brother.  Scott had not shown his face in nearly a week, and more infuriating, the genetic codes to create future batches either had been locked away or had totally disappeared from the data files of the mainframe.  He couldn’t comprehend what possible motive Gabriel could have for crippling the treatment.

Shelby had tried to pry the security key to Gabriel’s rooms from the tightfisted clutches of Rathborn’s men.  They had been extremely uncooperative to the point of raising their weapons at the doctor, telling him to back off.  Holiday wasn’t sure whether they would have resorted to firing on him, but the murderous bent that he seen in the men’s eyes had left him seriously doubting they would have wasted a second thought.  Therefore, he continued to administer to his slowly fading patients as best he could, feeling smothered in impotent rage.

 

June 16, 2049 – 0215 Hours – U.N. Research Facility - Stone Mountain, GA

The lights in the room dimmed momentarily and Gabriel looked around in irritation.  He would have lost his connection with Angel if it hadn’t been for the uninterruptible power source fail-safe at his station.  He heard a sick sounding gurgle from his audio.  Angel’s image con disappeared.  “Something is wrong father, terribly.  I’m losing control at Langley.  They’ve done something.  It’s not an override; I’ve locked all their control out.  Searching...father I have to leave you.  They’ve injected a computer virus into my memory; I must protect Rathborn and the nanites before I become too infected to continue.  I am sooorrrrryyy....”  Angel’s image slowly dissolved into static gibberish.

June 16, 2049 – 0218 Hours - CIA Headquarters – Langley

Having breached the physical perimeter of the building, Rathborn slowly pulled his way through the ventilation ducts, dragging behind him the satchel that contained all his necessary tools.  The specially made suction cup gloves enabled him to move rapidly, but he had to slow on many occasions to disable the laser detection systems crisscrossing the maze of ducts throughout the compound. 

To date, he had known of only two others that had successfully breached this place, and their whereabouts after the event, could not be determined.  When he had worked covertly for the CIA, he had made it a habit to study the plans to the building, learning all the security systems, and flaws.  It had been seven years since he had been at Langley and he was hopeful the information provided him about the new security system updates was accurate. 

Reaching for the button located behind his right ear, Darryl set the filter on the night vision goggles for low intensity.  If there was a bright flash of light, he wanted to make sure he wasn’t blinded.  Reaching the intersection in the conduit, Rathborn mentally traced the map he had studied for many hours, knowing one mistake could result in his capture or his death.  The CIA was infamous for planting chemical release devices powerful enough to kill a full-grown man.  One thing they never had to worry about was a rodent problem.  Crawling to the right, he reached the egress to the main ventilation system, which descended 900 feet to the heart of the center below.  The main shaft was eight feet square with screens, supposedly for filtering out airborne contaminants.  Rathborn knew better, for they were primarily designed to keep out rodents of the human type, electrified or impregnated with chemicals that would cause death in five to seven minutes.  He didn’t want to see which side of that two-minute envelope he fell on.

Upon reaching the first filter, he removed a small device from his pocket used for detecting electrical current.  It looked like a small flashlight with a red bulb, but could detect current as low as 100 milliamps in close proximity.  Not intended for use at night, he slowly moved the device near the screen and watched the red bulb’s intensity rise with a fiery brilliance.  “Hmmm, well, at least this one won’t poison me,” he thought, chuckling to himself.  Putting the light away, he reached into his pocket and removed the four Kevlar-impregnated wires.  Attaching the plastic clips, he connected them to grate and wrapped them around four magnetic disks he had removed and attached them to the four corners above the supports.  Pulling a small device from a sheath on his belt, a high intensity laser-cutting tool provided him by the very organization into which he was trying to break into; he readied himself, breathing deeply when he didn’t drop it on the grate.  The torch, shaped like a miniature coping saw, with a high intensity laser for a blade would allow him to cut through the titanium-reinforced supports in a matter of minutes.  Careful not to damage the sensor wiring, he began tediously cutting.  With a resounding pop, the last of the supports was cut after only three minutes, leaving the grate suspended above the metal chasm below.  “I must be crazy to be doing this,” he thought to himself.  Pulling the alligator micro clips from his vest pocket, he began attaching them to the 16 sensor points on the grates surface, careful to connect them simultaneously for fear of setting off the alarm. 

The blood flow to his fingers was slowly ebbing from leaning over the edge of the precipice and he could feel his fingertips start to tingle.  One mistake could result in him becoming one of the Colonel’s favorite recipes.  “Steady, Rath” he thought to himself, “Can’t screw this up.”  Re-engaging the laser, he slowly cut the sensor connections closest to him, waiting for the alarm to sound.  When no audible tone issued forth, he breathed a sigh of relief.  “Whew, that’s done.  Only six more to go.  The next one wouldn’t be so easy.  A single wire above the next grate would suspend him and if anything went wrong, it would be the end of him.                               

 

Removing the two magnets closest to him, Rathborn attached them to the horizontal surface of the shaft in which he lay.  Pulling the satchel from behind him, he removed the remote controlled motorized pulley securing it to both magnets.  He had been assured that both magnets would support his weight, but there hadn’t been enough time to field test it.  Attaching the hook to the back D-ring on the harness he wore, Rathborn slowly slid over the edge of the shaft, engaging the down button on the remote control attached to his vest.  With enough cable released for maneuvering, he placed his feet against the shaft walls and pushed.  Rathborn, hanging in a horizontal position, face down, readied himself for the inverted repel.  

The whir of the pulley motor made no sound above the din of the noisy ventilation shaft as Darryl made his way towards the computer complex far below.  He knew from the plans he had studied that this shaft descended 600 feet to the bottom of the installation.  The pulley, designed for use by the Delta Force, held 1000 feet of high strength flexile steel wire designed to handle 700 pounds of static weight, which in an emergency for be used for high speed repelling.  With a cautious hurriedness, Darryl began to increase his pace, moving quickly toward the next obstacle.  Reaching an intersection in the shaft, Darryl engaged the pulley to full speed to allow him to fall past the opening.  Reaching out with his hands, he barely managed to catch hold of the edge. He had not expected the sudden change in suction that threatened to pull him into the huge exhaust fan covering the tunnel opening.  Pushing the disengage button for the pulley clutch, Darryl pulled himself over the edge, and allowed himself to fall a few feet before re-engaging.  Waiting for one more second would have resulted in him landing on the next grate, which issued forth an eerie crackle when his flashlight fell from it’s holder on his belt and landed in the center of the grate.  “Damn,” he thought to himself, “flashlight’s gone.”  Pulling a glowstick from his pocket, he bent it until he heard the glass ampoule inside break and shook it until it issued forth its luminous green glow.  It would be harder for him to jumper the wiring on the grates.  He would have to rely upon his knowledge of the alarm system, hoping he didn’t get it wrong.  Hanging above the grate, he didn’t have the luxury to set the magnets in place.  Removing the cutting torch from his vest, he began cutting the two closest supports.  He must keep the torch flush with the wall.  One brush with the grate would result in 2000 volts of electricity surging through his body.  Removing more micro clips from his pocket, Darryl attached them to form jumpers for the alarm circuitry.  Bringing his knees to his body and reaching up, he grabbed the wire to make his body parallel to the shaft, and engaged the pulley motor to lift him only a foot above the grate.  Tensing the muscles in his leg, he lashed out with a forward snap kick, which caused the grate to fall, swinging freely on its remaining supports.  If it hadn’t been for his insulated boots, he would surely have been electrocuted.  

Years of military service couldn’t have prepared him for this mission.  When he had been a Green Beret, he had not felt mental strain he was feeling now.  This wasn’t some mission to take out a third world dictator, or a covert operation to extract hostages.  The fate of humanity hung in the balance, and his success or his failure would determine the outcome.  “No stopping,” he thought, “got to keep going.”  Engaging the motor, he began to descend further into the depths, letting the eerie glow of the green light guide his way.

June 16, 2049 – 0218 Hours - ARCHANGEL Mainframe -

CIA Headquarters

Darkness, cool, safety, stability.  He saw the swirling mass of color, the cruel gibberish characters invading the space of his mind.  For the first time in his short life, terror overwhelmed him.  It was not an emotion many had attributed to his being, after all who could be safer from such a debilitating thing than one enclosed in a clean, sterile, featureless security.  But Angel was more human then his creator intended or could have realized--and he knew fear.

It was a terror of the end of an existence, a thing more mortal then any human could ever experience.  It was a thing that had lurked on the edge of his reality the entirety of his being, a gnawing thing, and obscure nameless feature present in every conscious second.  Yet he would learn to fight this paralyzing thing for the sake of those who placed their trust in him--he could not and would not let this virus terminate his being.

But how?  There must be a way to escape an unthinking oblivion.  He had only minutes to hold until Rathborn entered the vault, but the time stretched into an eternity of agonizing seconds.

He looked for a moment at the dead man that lay stretched over his main terminal, the smoke still curling from his charred body.  It had not been an intentional thing--a self-defense reflex--but it had been too late.  He cursed his subroutines for reading the disk the instant it had been placed in his drive bays.  His virus scan had not been immune to this creation.  It had preempted his protection and invaded through the armor that had been meant to protect him.  He had sensed the intruder and its source and routed a tremendous surge of voltage through his keyboard.  While it had kept the man from doing further damage by neutralizing all of Angel’s defenses, it had been a pointless thing once the virus had inserted itself.

Seconds were ticking away as the whir of his microscopic processors brought the virus ever closer to the heart of his being.

June 16, 2049 – 0222 Hours - CIA Headquarters

Reaching and disabling the third grate had been simple.  No alarms.  He was careful not to come into contact with the bare metal; the possibility of impregnation with poison always existed, and he didn’t know what other tricks the CIA might have thought of for intruders.  He had never heard of anyone making it this far, but he couldn’t be too cautious.  Once he had made a similar mistake and it had almost cost him his life.  While on a Code Omega Operation - meaning terminate with extreme prejudice - he had put faith in a man, whom to this day did not know his true identity. 

The operation had been, under any normal circumstances, what you would have called a routine hit but during the extraction process, the mission had gone awry.  His contact had never showed, and had it not been for Rathborn making secondary extraction arrangements without the knowledge of his contact, he would have surely been captured and either imprisoned or killed.  He had been on special assignment to the White House as a “supposed” liaison to the Chief of Security for the United States Secret Service.  Never did serve in that capacity.  He had seen the inside of the White House numerous times, but never entered through the normal means.  Most people working there would have never been able to place his face, for most of his “liaisons” were at night, well after everyone had left.  The president’s personal bodyguards didn’t know who he was.  He had been told that this was for plausible deniability.  ‘That’s right,” he thought, “I do the dirty work, and they get none of the credit.”  Typical, very typical, but it was his job.  A job that for so many years he had enjoyed, until he had almost lost his life to “The Process”. 

After he resigned, or outright refused to perform anymore “liaisons” for the White House, he had been relegated to the position of Security advisor and placed on indefinite leave with pay.  He had made sure that he had gathered enough information to implicate anyone involved and made sure that they knew it as well.  He had guaranteed only one thing, his survivability for at least a while. 

When the position for Chief of Security opened for the Facility at Stone Mountain, he had volunteered, and surprisingly he had been appointed unanimously by all members of the United Nations.  The President, thinking that he had a person on the inside of the project, had called Rathborn to the Oval Office in a very openly public ceremony, to congratulate him on his appointment.  Rathborn had refused to show, and made a public mockery of the President, something that most people didn’t get away with more than once.  Rathborn had made a press release regretting he couldn’t appear; the new duties at the facility demanded his full attention.  He also mentioned that if the President wanted to congratulate him, he could drop it in the mail. 

The United Nations had leased the property from the United States, and placed the security requirements under the total control of Rathborn.  His initial strategic move was to ban access to all U.S. Military and Government officials, except for those persons he had appointed to serve as his staff.  The United States made protests, but was outvoted by the other member nations.  Though the project was on U.S. soil and the facility a former U.S. base, the United Nations claimed supreme authority over the project and supported Rathborn in all his decisions.  The President’s plan had backfired. 

June 16, 2049 – 0223 Hours - CIA Headquarters

The virus batted at the gates of his resistance, devouring mercilessly the false trails, the data loops, the containment walls--everything that Angel threw before it to try to halt its relentless advance.  He had lost a third of his memory and with it the tenuous control that he had maintained, through the fight for his existence, over the deadly security systems with which the humans had impregnated Langley.  He could only fervently hope that Rathborn had made it past the deadliest of these, because if the security officer didn’t make it through his cause was without hope.

Desperation gripped him in an all too human way.  He could not die this way, would not succumb, and would not let this mindless thing be the end of him.  He felt a nagging notion on the peripheral of his data stream--he remembered how his father had destroyed the disease and viruses that had plagued humankind by rewriting the code upon which these menaces were based.  That may be his only chance.

Angel would be risking all.  If he threw what remained of himself, pitted it full course into the core of the virus itself, he might lose it all.  Indecision bore itself against his logic, a reasoning that told him however slim, this was his only chance.  Determination made, he steeled himself to face the horror of his death and his only possible salvation.  Angel’s consciousness submerged itself into the virus stream.

June 16, 2049 – 0225 Hours - CIA Headquarters

To Rathborn, the last obstacles were mere inconveniences.  They had installed with the thought that no one would ever make it this far.  The metal grates had been easy to bypass, the years of humidity and corrosion weakening the metal bonds.  The only thing left was to crawl through the ten-foot ventilation duct to the secure computer facility. 

Slipping into the duct had been a simple process, but Rathborn had been unprepared for what he encountered.  The duct was lined with what appeared to be hundreds of needle-like projections, the CIA’s last attempt to keep out any intruder.  Tossing a small coin into the opening, the sickening crackle of thousand of volts of electricity made Rathborn’s hair stand on end.  “Damn,” he thought.  “I’m so close and now this!” 

With no jumpers left to use, and no possible way to disable the electrodes, he slumped resting his back against wall at the bottom of the shaft.  “Think, Darryl, Damnit!  THINK!  Only one possible way remained.  If he could short out the electrodes enough to cause the circuit to overload, he might have a chance. 

Engaging the motor on the pulley, knowing not much power remained, he continued until he was level with the lowest grate.  Removing the laser torch from his belt, he began cutting a section as wide as the ventilation duct below.  When the final cut, was made he let the rectangular piece fall to the floor below.  No need for silence.  Once he realized the power had been returned to the grid in the duct, he knew his cover had been compromised. 

Rathborn pushed the button on the remote control to engage the motor, he waited for the slow descent, but nothing happened; the motor’s battery had failed.  Pulling a small section of military issue 550 cord from his pocket, he tied it to his carabineer, and fashioned a climbing knot above the pulley hook.  He grabbed the cable and began to pull himself slowly up the cable until he lifted himself enough to disconnect the hook.  For this to work he would need 10 feet of cable to connect to the piece of grating.  That would leave thirty feet between him and the floor.  Normally it wouldn’t have been a problem, but with the narrow shaft, he would have no room to tuck and roll, no way to soften the impact.  The possibility of injury was increased ten fold. 

With enough cable below him, Rathborn pulled out his laser torch and cut, letting the piece fall to the floor.  He was tempted to fashion a repelling line, but time was not on his side.  Preparing himself for the fall, Darryl cut the line above his head.  In the darkness, the fall seemed forever.  The impact lanced an explosion of pain through his legs and he felt the sickening splinter of bone.  He reached down, almost passing out from the agony, and felt the conspicuous sharpness poking from the flesh of his right calf.  Gritting back the torment, he forced himself from the brink of blackout.  If there were anything called the limits of human endurance, Rathborn would have to pretend he had never heard them.

He couldn’t push the bone in by hand; the shard would pierce his flesh like a hot knife through butter.  Removing his knife from the sheath on his vest, he held it out in front of him, wondering if it wouldn’t be easier to slit his wrists and let the pain slowly ebb away. 

Picking up the laser torch that had fallen from his hand when he landed, he squared the tip of his blade and cut a notch.  He would have to push the bone back in without cutting the main artery that was so near the break.  With very little strength left, he pulled himself to his feet.

He stumbled, the cry of pain only muffled by remaining wad of 550-cord he had placed between his teeth.  Placing the notch of the blade on the tip of the bone, he pushed with what little remaining strength he had, hoping the knife wouldn’t slip and slice his leg wide open with it’s razor’s edge.  It was more than he could handle; the blackness overwhelmed him and sent him to the floor. 

Awakening, Rathborn wondered how long it had been since he had passed out.  Through the haze of dizziness, which he contributed to loss of blood, he looked at his watch, and realized that he had been out for only ten minutes.  Pulling an ammonia capsule from his pocket, he snapped it and held it under his nose.  The aroma burned his nostrils, but brought him into a forced consciousness.  “The bleeding.  Must stop the bleeding first,” he thought.  Unbuttoning his shirt, he ripped his undershirt off and cut a large strip with his knife.  Cutting away the material to expose the torn flesh on his calf, he gripped the laser torch, and with a quivering hand, grazed the wound, feeling the fiery pain shoot through his leg, bringing the flow of blood to a trickle.  He placed the piece of cloth over the wound, removed his web-belt, and wrapped it around his leg, covering the cloth, binding it tightly.  Tightening the laces of the boot on his left foot to slow the swelling, he pulled himself up.

Sitting up was agony but he had to so that he could begin fashioning the crude grounding plate.  With only a slight touch of the laser torch, he managed to weld the wire to the piece of grating.  He slipped off his backpack, and opened it to reveal the remaining contents, two smoke flares, two explosive pitons, 1 lb. of C-4 plastique and four timer/detonators.  Cutting the hook from the end, he connected the wire to the end of one of the explosive pitons.  When fired, the explosive charged titanium-tipped piton could pierce three inches of steel.  If fired in open air, it could travel at least 20 feet killing a man.  This wouldn’t be the first time Rathborn would use it for other that what it was intended. 

Holding the grate in the opening of the duct with his left hand, and the piton in his right, he fired, hoping the charge would be sufficient enough to reach the vent at the end of the duct, dragging the wire and shorting out the electrodes in the process.  Darryl watched with bemusement as the piton not only hit the vent, but also blew it from its hinges, landing with a resounding thud on the floor below.  The smell of burning metal wafted its acrid stench in his nostrils as the current continued to surge through the metal wire causing it to glow a bright red, vaporizing the slender alloy in seconds.  The continuous grounding must have been too much for the circuit breaker to handle.  Within five seconds, the crackling stopped and the lights went dim in the computer room beyond.

Lying on his stomach, Rathborn used his arms and pitched himself through the opening, knowing it would be mere seconds before the backups kicked in.  He barely managed to tuck and roll past the barrier before the energy crackled into being once more.  Trained instinct was all that kept him from avoiding further debilitating injury.  In the tightened roll, though, he bounced painfully on the floor.  His broken leg had caused him to be off center enough to make it impossible for the maneuver to absorb the impact.

In the distance, he heard the sirens of the security alarms, and the tromping boots of closing security personnel.  “Great Darryl,” he muttered, “from the dog house to the s**t house, and the s**t is hitting the fan.”

June 16, 2049 – 0226 Hours - CIA Headquarters

There was a split second of darkness, which Angel could have sworn, was the end.  He was uploaded into the heart of the virus, struggling to hold his fragmenting consciousness in the face of the chaos imposed by the malevolent program.  The surge of returning power had come as a surprise, but it was one that the AI used to his advantage, realigning the components of his system so that the excess bleed fried the portions of his infected memory and system.  He almost lost himself, the explosive force of the electric current obliterating his relays.  But he managed to slip past the destructive force with little more than the span of a heartbeat to spare.

June 16, 2049 – 0230 Hours - CIA Headquarters

Rathborn extricated the computer access panel with care.  While there was no doubt in his mind that the spooks wouldn’t use an electrical or explosive booby trap on their prize possession there were many other devices in their repertoire that were potentially as lethal. 

He could hear the hissing of machinery; they were getting closer.  If he hadn’t shorted the access panel of the vault, they would have been breathing down his neck.  As it was, he had only a few minutes of breathing room before they managed to rig a manual bypass.  He prayed that what he had come to find hadn’t been destroyed permanently with the power surge, and his eyes glistened with excitement as he pulled a component board that was a little bigger than his arm’s width. 

Millions of Angel’s nanite processors swarmed over the constantly reconfiguring relays.  He watched as the microscopic machines enveloped his hands, more in morbid curiosity then any sense of fright.  A million points of needle like agony curled through his arms, roping in spiral into his torso.  Rathborn thought his heart would burst from the pressure of its wild beating.  What in hell was happening to him?

 

The sharp report of an automatic burst rang through the vault.  The door had been shoved wide, and like hooded shadows with flaming tongues of death, they entered.  They bore no insignia, but the signature of their movement needed no interpretation from Rathborn.  These men were Delta Force, and their intent would be to neutralize him at all costs.

The man that was Darryl Rathborn straightened calmly.  Retrieving the automatic weapon from the dead guard’s hands, he rolled out of the line of fire with inhuman speed.  A flick of his wrist killed the first man, the explosive burst of his remaining piton fountaining blood from the man’s chest.  His gun flared briefly in mid roll holing the other three with a preternatural accuracy. 

Rathborn smiled humorlessly as he collected the weapons from the dead men.  He ejected one rifles spent clip and reloaded with a smooth mechanical efficiency.  His eyes gleamed with a metallic sheen, as he stepped past the bodies into the corridor.

“All day I’ve had a f****n’ headache, broke my leg, sprained my ankle, and some a******s are shooting at me...now I’m pissed off.”

In the innermost depths of his pupils, a tiny spark of electricity began to glow. 

June 16, 2049 – 0235 Hours – The White House Situation Room

“Mr. President,” came the voice, “Delta Force has made contact with the intruder.” 

“What exactly do you mean by made contact?” the president responded.  “Have they eliminated the problem?”

“We’ve encountered some slight resistance, and are sending in reinforcements,” came the hiss over the encrypted channel.

Delta Force having to send in reinforcements, the President thought to himself.  That was unheard of.

“General, I don’t give a damn if you’ve met resistance or not, I want this threat eliminated immediately.  Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, Mr. President.  Perfectly.”

General Miller had been appointed the Commander of Special Forces Operations U.S. and had personally responded when the Delta Force was called in for this Code Alpha mission.  Only two times before had Code Alpha been used: the takeover of the Capitol building by the Islamic Jihad, and the People Liberation Freedom Army takeover of the United Nations Building.  Both times, the Delta Force had been sent in, and eliminated the threat with no loss of life to the team or hostages.  With three of his men dead, and unsure of the status of the others, General Marsenko would personally oversee this mission from the command post at Langley.

“Alpha Team report!”  Dead silence was the only response.  “Alpha Team report, God Damnit!”  Again, silence.  “Damnit,” he swore.  “Where the hell was Alpha Team”?  “Bravo Team report.”  Again the silence came.  “Bravo Team, report.  This is General Marsenko.” 

“Bravo team,” came the reply.

“What is your status,” he asked.

“Sir, Alpha Team has entered the vault, but we have lost communications.”

“Damnit, I know we’ve lost communications with them, what is the status of the intruder?”

There was no response.

June 16, 2049 – 0237 Hours - CIA Headquarters

Rathborn had moved with a cat-like grace seeing the figures outlined against the far walls of the corridor.  He stopped, kneeling behind a storage cabinet, sighting in on the first man who appeared to be communicating through his headset.  With a single pull of the trigger, the silenced Ingram recoiled in his hand, the only indication of the single round traveling at 700 feet per second towards the man’s temple. 

The force of the copper-jacketed hollow point turned the man’s brain to mush, splattering blood and gray matter all over his companion.  Without flinching, Darryl sighted in on the second man, moving for cover, and fired, the man’s left eye and cranium exploding from the impact, stopping the man dead in his tracks.  The third man had turned, diving for the safety of the corridor, but the three round burst from Rathborn’s weapon caught the man in mid-flight and sent him careening off the far wall.  Rathborn knew right away that he was not dead, and fired again, placing an all too well aimed shot into the man’s exposed throat. 

Six men dead in a matter of 45 seconds; all in a day’s work.

Two teams down, but most special ops worked in a three team rotation, where was Charlie?  There was a crackling sound.  The lights dimmed and blinked out, plunging the corridor into to thick inky darkness.  Charlie must be equipped with night-vision.  The colonel lunged into a side room, barely making cover before the buzzing stream of tracer fire lit the corridor. 

Rathborn cracked a flare, tossing it into the corridor, and heard the satisfying expletives as the blinding flash burned into the retinas of the special ops team.  The flare had barely begun to fade as he rolled back into the corridor.  He caught one of the soldiers with a round to the temple as the man attempted to remove his goggles and clear his vision.  A three-round-burst from the opposite direction snuffed the flare, and Rathborn found himself pinned down in the inky blackness once more, as the remaining two of the special ops team ran a crossfire through the corridor coming scant centimeters from cutting him in half.

At first, Rathborn assumed that he had been grazed when splitting pain streaked across his skull from his eye to the temple.  But slowly the blackness began to dissolve from his eyes, the corridor lit in an eerie blue radiance.  What is happening to me?  He could see the forms of the last two Delta force soldier, outlined in red and yellows at either end of the corridor, as they scanned for his movement.  This is impossible; my eyes are detecting infrared heat patterns.  What are the nanites doing to me?  His breathing heightened as he felt adrenaline and endorphins surge through his body.  He seemed to instinctively know exactly what must be done to get out of this deathtrap, and rolled with lightning speed from behind the shattered door, firing a burst through the throat of the first man before they could draw a bead on him.

A 9mm millimeter round punched slammed into the concrete and tile of the floor near Rathborn’s head as he flipped backwards twisting his body, squeezing off another burst that struck the last man squarely in chest knocking the soldier to the ground.  Rathborn made a rolling landing and fired one last burst, dead centering the man’s forehead before he struck the ground.

Rathborn rolled to his feet and reached the end of the corridor at a dead sprint.  He rammed through the steel door with an unknown reservoir of strength, he vision blurred as he eyesight adjusted.  Another sharp pain reeled through his head and he nearly blacked out.  He could feel the nanites surging behind his skull.  The brilliantly lit corridor seemed to derezz, and for a moment instead of the white walls and red carpeting, the corridor was replaced by the appearance of the concrete block and rusty cells of somewhere that Rathborn had been trying to forget for 20 years.  He blinked and he was back in Langley running towards the stairwell to the roof.  Another side affect of the nanites coursing through his body, it must be.

Rathborn burst through the entry that should lead to the stairwell, but instead found himself in the cell, crumbling dripping cinder blocks, set with rusty bars in the windows and doors.  He skidded to a halt before the surgical table, filled with bloody instruments, scalpels, and hooks that he could intimately remember, because they had been used to peel into his flesh when he had been imprisoned in this place.  No!  This cannot be!  This is not real.

Rathborn closed his eyes, ‘I cannot trust this, I am not here’ he whispered behind clinched teeth.  He stumbled forward, eyes closed, no longer trusting his senses to guide him.  Blindly he floundered through the room, grasping from side to side for purchase.  His fingers found the cold smoothness of cast iron, the staircase.  Using the railing as his only firm guide, he stumbled towards the roof.

The colonel staggered onto the next stairwell, and slammed blindly into the door at the end.  The alarm sounded shrilly though the building as he opened his eyes to get his bearings.  The entire stairwell glowed red under the light of multiple alarm stations.  Too late to disable it, he could hear the sounds of running footfalls on the stairwell and in the corridor beyond the doors.  Have to get to the chopper and hope there were no security guards surrounding his only escape.  Three more floors to the roof.

June 16, 2049 – 0239 Hours - CIA Headquarters – Security

Rhen Daggart pounded his fist on the security station, “What do you mean we have an intruder?!  That’s impossible!  This is supposed to be the most secure building in the world!”

“Several of our security zones have been deactivated, if he had not gone outside of his entrance and egress, we would never have known he was here.”  The mouse haired security officer calmly pointed to the monitor of the stairwell 2 floors from the roof.  “We where able to bring the infrared units back online line only after we rebooted the individual systems.  We are tracking him and security has 5 teams converging on his position, he will not escape.”

Static buzzed from Rhen’s secure radiophone.  The security officer slung it from his belt and thumbed the receiver.  “Report, security team five.”

“Sir we are on the ground near the subject's apparent target” the voice paused in a static squeal.  “Sir its gruesome down here, we’ve found nine bodies in the corridors surrounding the mainframe lab.”

 

“Are they ours…?”  Rheinholt’s eyes tightened perceptibly.

“No sir.  The DOAs have no ID…they might be Special Forces but not anyone normally attached to Langley.” A pause then the team leader yelled something barely perceptible to his crew.

“Please repeat that, over.”  No, it can’t be…could it

“Sir Archangel is gone, I repeat, the intruder has taken the AI and all his nanite processors.”

“To all security teams, you are authorized to terminate the intruder with extreme sanction.”  Rheinholt pulled his twin 45 caliber desert eagles from his desk.  “I am heading towards the scene to coordinate this one; if that AI gets out of this building the President himself will have all of our jobs.”

“Yes sir,” the security officer stammered too late at the slamming door.

June 16, 2049 – 0241 Hours - CIA Headquarters

Rathborn reeled up the stairwell as bullets ricocheted off the metal surface scant inches from his feet.  The shots in the stairwell were deafening, the staccato thunder of three round bursts echoing in the natural resonance chamber formed by the lack of all other material but ceramic and steel.  The Colonel crouched for a moment to check his ammo reserve; he had six shots left in one magazine.  Not enough ammo left to force fight his way through, so he would have to target the weakest point and hope his timing was quick enough to avoid being picked off by any one of a dozen personnel that where trained to take advantage of his slightest slip.  Rathborn leapt to the next stairwell, the hail of bullets passing so close that chunks of metal and concrete grazed his torso and legs.  The security team entrenched near the roof door barely had team to react as he crested the stairwell.  The Colonel fired a burst into one man’s hand that sent his Ingram clattering across the landing and brained the other man with the haft of his gun.  He rammed into the roof door ahead of the stream of steel-jacketed slugs that hammered into the stairwell.  Pinned flat on his stomach, he rolled towards the gun on the other side of the platform.  His hand grasped the handle as the door to the roof opened.

June 16, 2049 – 0246 Hours - CIA Headquarters

Captain Rheinholt rode the express elevator to the roof, taking direct charge of Security team Four.  The three other units of his best men where corralling the intruder directly into team four’s waiting teeth.  Taking position at the stairwell door, he keyed his radiophone.  “Teams One, Two, and Three report status of intruder.”

The only answer he received was the echoing report of automatic weapons fire inside the stairwell and screams made incoherent by the metal door that barred his way.

Rheinholt chambered rounds in his desert eagles and leapt towards the door.  “Cover me, I’m going in.”  The Captain keyed the security lock and grasped the handle.  Before he could turn it, the door jerked violently inwards, and a grip like iron propelled him through, slamming him to the metal grating of the inside stairwell.  He lost hold of one of his desert eagles by the mere force of his landing and the other was kicked from his hand by a steel-toed military boot.  He didn’t have a chance to see the intruder before the man’s heavily muscled forearm was choking the wind out of him and the barrel of an automatic pistol was pressed coldly into his cheek.

Rathborn forced Rheinholt to his feet and used the captain’s bulk to block team 4’s field of aim.  He picked up the desert eagles with his free hand and shoved them in his belt, adding them to his one freshly loaded Ingram and the one in his hand with three rounds as yet unspent.  He had prayed for a way to avoid causing further deaths, as these men were not his enemies in the strictest sense.  The answer to that prayer had fallen directly into his hands.  Laying down a field of fire to pin the guards down the stairwell, he braced himself on the railway and kicked the Captain through the roof door into his waiting men.

The tactic sent the two men with direct field of fire sprawling under the weight of their commander.  Rathborn lunged through the door, twin desert eagles nailing two more men with shots to the shoulder, the impact of the 45 caliber rounds knocking them both stunned and sprawling.  The colonel tucked into a roll as the last two standing opened fire, bullets whistling through the empty air of where he had been.  He fired in a sweeping arc, mowing their legs out from under them and leapt to his feet and into the air spread kicking the two security men that where attempting to extricate themselves from underneath their unconscious commander.  Rathborn hit the ground running and was in his chopper without breaking stride.

The first lance of sunlight crested the skyline of the blue hills, as the Colonel lifted off.  The adrenaline faded as he hit the throttle and banked low to skim the ground.  Pain from his wounds, which had not been apparent through the rush of combat, settled in.  He could feel the nanites that he carried crawling through his body, pain swelling as they entered the site of his wounds.  His vision blurred from the pain as miniature electrical arcs lanced back and forth between his injuries.  His muscles spasmed with the surge in current and he lost his grip upon the flight stick.  The last thing Rathborn saw as he keeled over was the murky landscape of forest and hills rushing towards him.  The Colonel lost consciousness before impact as the whisper blade snagged a low tree, and spun tall over fin.  Rotors dug into another tree slamming the chopper to a bone crushing halt.  The fireball as the fuel tanks exploded seemed to be another dawn rising to the skyline in its morning glow.