Prologue

A warm breeze flowed through the valley. Henry Greene wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a dirty rag, then went back to work. He was in the heart of Egypt, working on a new dig that was only a couple days old. About two years ago, a team of archaeologists who were working on uncovering an unidentified tomb were lost in the desert after straying too far from camp. They wandered for three days, rationing their food and water, when one of them tripped over an ancient vase. They thought they had discovered a new Egyptian tomb. They had actually uncovered an entirely new civilization that predated the Egyptians by hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

Dr. Greene was trying to dig up a new city of the civilization. He had been working for three days, and all he had found was a tiny shard of pottery, too dirty to even see if there was writing. Five of his comrades were cleaning it right now. It would only be a moment before-

“Henry!” One of his students called to him from the doorway of the camper. “Let’s go! We finished cleaning what we could, and I think you better take a look at this!”

“Hold on a second! And get me one of those cokes!” The young man nodded and disappeared into the camper. Henry stood up and groaned. His knees and back hurt from kneeling down all day, and his neck was stiff and sunburnt.

I’m getting too old for this, he thought, then laughed at himself. He was only forty-seven.

Henry rolled his shoulders and cracked his joints, then headed into the camper. The metal doorknob was hot on his fingers, but when he opened the door a blast of cool air hit him.

“Here’s your coke, Doc,” said the student who had appeared to him earlier. At twenty-one, he was a bit cocky, and very impatient, but he was smart and could easily navigate the modern technology necessary for this trip.

“Dr. Greene, take a look at this piece. You think it’s Egyptian hieroglyphics?” said a man who was leaning over a table. Lights shone down heavily on the countertop. He took a step back when Henry approached. Henry peered down at the shard. The students expected to see his eyes light up with recognition, because Dr. Greene was one of the best in the world at reading hieroglyphics. However, he was even more confused than they were. The shard was etched with strange symbols that Henry had never seen before.

There were many x’s varying in size scattered across the inscription, leading Henry to believe that they were markers in a sentence, sort of like commas and periods in English. There was also a sun, which caused Henry to think that the symbols were picture-based and stood for the things they looked like. Repeating images of what looked like two people holding hands supported this, as well as a zigzagging line that resembled grass, or maybe fire. On the other hand, most of the symbols were just symbols. They didn’t appear to resemble anything Henry knew of, so he figured the language was only partly logographic, like Egyptian hieroglyphics, and partly based on syllabary, like the Japanese katakana system. Whatever was correct, they would need another Rosetta Stone to figure it out.

“I have no idea what they mean,” said Henry. “It may just be decorative pictures.”

“No,” someone pointed out. “Some of the symbols appear multiple times. Also, the men are too sloppy to be decorative.”

“So how do we find out what it means?” asked another student.

“Right now, we can’t,” said Dr. Greene. “Just keep working for now.” He popped open his coke, letting the bubbles fizz out. He tilted back his head and chugged half of the can at once. The carbonated liquid pleasantly stung his tongue as the cool drink drained down his parched throat. Refreshing.

*  *  *  *  *

Three months had passed since the team of archaeologists first uncovered and cleaned the piece of pottery. So far, they had uncovered six unadorned vases, three pieces of jewelry, and a large square of marble that hadn’t been uncovered yet. They were brushing away the sand. making the visible area of the platform grow even more. As they headed out for the umpteenth time they’d been there, they discovered that Richard, the young twenty-one year old, was already kneeling down at the marble platform. However, he wasn’t brushing away sand. He was studying a small symbol on the center tile. “Hey Doc, c’mere!”

Henry jogged over to where Richard knelt and studied the symbol. It almost resembled a “w”, but was extremely loopy.

“Kinda looks like a mustache, huh?” Richard said with a slight grin.

“Yes, but I have a feeling that it doesn’t mean mustached,” Henry replied. He reached out his hand and brushed his fingers over the symbol. He noticed that the tile the symbol rested on was raised slightly higher that the surrounding tiles. This gave him an idea. He put pressure on the tile. It slid down, like a button. A quiet, but audible, click came. A few seconds passed. Henry began to think nothing of it, but suddenly a square of tiles lowered, the edges formed by the tiles in a three-square radius of the center tile. A wire-thin crack appeared, splitting the middle tiles in half. Before Richard or Henry could react, the two halves of the square swung downward on invisible hinges. Henry and Richard fell in. They were on their knees in a large room, if you could even tell it was a room. Stones of various shapes and sizes littered the floor, along with many unidentifiable skeletons.

“Dr. Greene! Richard! Are you guys okay?” A face appeared above the hole the two archaeologists had fallen down. Henry stood and brushed the dirt from his knees.

“We’re fine, just a little-” Henry was cut off mid-sentence because suddenly, the hole closed itself almost as quickly as it had opened. Henry and Richard were left in the total darkness. “Well, that was certainly...unfortunate,” Henry sighed.

“Don’t worry Dr. Greene! We’ll get you out!” a muffled voice called from above. “Somehow…”

“Step on the little engraving!” Richard shouted to the people above.

“No!” shouted Henry. “If they fall down here, we’ll all be-” Light briefly flooded the room as the other scientists fell down. Then the door closed again. “...trapped…”

The eight companions stood in the darkness. “Look,” one of the men said. “We’ve faced some pretty harsh situations in the desert up there. If we can find a hole, or even some loose dirt, we can get out of here.”
“And how in the world are we gonna do that?!” someone else shouted in reply. “We’re locked in a pitch-black room in the middle of a godforsaken desert, by ourselves! Nobody will be checking up on us for at least a couple of weeks, and the sat phone is in the camper!”

“Calm down, John,” Henry said smoothly. “As long as we keep a steady head, we’ll be alright.”

“I would not be so positive about that if I were you, sanduet,” a eery, foreign voice hissed. Everyone jumped.

“Who...who said that?!” Richard exclaimed, his voice trembling.

“Believe me, you don’t want to know,” the voice rasped again. “But if you insist…

“We are called Bragh-Nuk Zhow. We have existed for millions of years. In fact, we have seen the Ice Age come and go. Dinosaurs once roamed the land before our eyes. We witnessed the first creature stumble clumsily from the ocean onto land.”

“Impossible!” Richard protested. “Humans haven’t come around until the last few

thousand years!”

“That is correct, Richard…” the voice whispered, seemingly teleporting around the room between sentences. Henry noticed a strain in the voice, like the think it was coming from was trying to fake an accent. Also, how could he have known Richard’s name if it had been living down here? Henry didn’t believe in psychics. The voice continued.

“But we are not human. We are from another world, and we are far more intelligent than you ignorant beasts. Here is one of our first texts, written on paper, in our language.” A piece of rough, thick paper was shoved into Henry’s hand. He couldn’t actually see the text, but the letters stuck up in a way similar to Braille. Henry noticed something. The letters were in English. Odd. He didn’t bother trying to read the entire paper, it would take too long, and there were much more important things at hand. He began to hand the paper back to where he thought the thing was. Then his thumb absently passed over the bottom left corner of the paper. There was a symbol there that did not resemble anything close to any of the English letters above. He slowly moved his thumb around the symbol until he had a mental image of it. He was glad that the man couldn’t see his eyes widen.

* * * * *

Twenty years ago, Henry had been on a dig in Eastern Spain when a man approached him. He told Henry that he worked for a company, GeoCorp, and he wanted Henry to join.

Henry was running out of funds from his university, and he still hadn’t found anything. He needed money.

He agreed to work for GeoCorp, and the man took him to a private airport in Portugal. After small stops to pick up more people in France Germany, and England, they arrived in a similar airport in European Russia. There, an anonymous driver took them to a large building far away from any towns or settlements, or signs of human life of any kind for that matter. GeoCorp was spelled out in large, white, glowing letters at the top of the enormous tower at the center of an enormous complex.

As they pulled up the long drive, they were greeted by a myriad of armed guards. After the car was thoroughly searched, the guards backed up and opened a gigantic wrought-iron gate. Henry went inside the gate and didn’t come out for fifteen years.

Henry started work at GeoCorp cleaning strange objects, artifacts, and mechanical trinkets, but was quickly promoted to Assistant Head of Genetic Engineering. He had a team of one-hundred fifty-seven. It wasn’t enough.

They were assigned impossible tasks. They had to mutate a shark so it could breathe on land, clone insects, and revive a frozen moose. Despite impossible odds, Henry and his team of biologists, technicians, paleontologists, and chemists completed their assignments. They made history, but it was all done in secret.

In fact, it was all very mysterious. They were paid large amounts of money on a random basis. They had no idea why they were told to do their radical jobs. They had never even met their employer. Dr. Greene had worked for fifteen years, and decided he needed to know something.

Three months after Dr. Greene and his team had successfully enabled an Indian cobra to utilize photosynthesis, his boss assigned Greene the task of giving an iguana the ability to regrow a limb. Henry needed a few more supplies, so he consulted the Head of Genetic Engineering. The Head just said to use what was available, because of budget cuts. Henry was confused, because GeoCorp was the richest company in the world as far as Dr. Greene was concerned, and he was sure they could spare a few thousand dollars for a couple supplies. However, the Head had his mind set, so Henry walked back to the lab.

As Dr. Greene began to round the corner to cross into the Genetics area, he heard voices to the hall on his left. The voice speaking had a distinct Far Eastern accent.

Dr. Greene was surprised, because as far as he knew GeoCorp was mostly a Western company. Sure there were people from every corner of the planet, but he didn’t know of any Far Eastern people that were located in his department. He wondered if it was a new employee. He couldn’t help his curiosity, he was an archaeologist at heart after all, and so he turned and looked down the hall.

“Are you sure they’re ready, sir?” a man said. This wasn’t the same man as before; he sounded American. Dr. Greene peered around the corner to see a nervous-looking Caucasian man standing with his back turned to Henry. The other man was standing in a doorway, light streaming from the room. The hallway was dark, so Henry could only make out a silhouette of the silent man. He was very large. Henry assumed this was the Far Easterner, as there was no one else in the hallway.

“Of course they’re ready!” said the hidden man. “The team has been complete for seven years now, and they’ve made history each month! I think they can handle a little task like this.”

“But sir, this isn’t a alittle task.” The small man looked even more nervous now, as he was fidgeting and playing with his hair. He seemed to be constantly fixing his shirt and tie. “There are all sorts of unknown variables that could come in at any moment, and that’s a couple billion dollars down the drain in one moment! Not to mention ten years’ worth of time that could have been used for research on our big project!”

“This could give us fifty years of your research for our little operation in a fifth of the time! I don’t care if it’s risky, I don’t care what happens, and I certainly don’t care how much money we have to spend! I just know that I’m not going to last much longer, and I’m going to gain something, much more than my mere survival. I’m going on with this project, Smith, and you’re not going to stop me. Come this way.” A very muscular man, one Henry hadn’t seen before, stepped out of the doorway and grabbed the small man, the one called Smith, by the arm

Smith’s eyes widened, and he dropped to the floor. “No! Please, sir, don’t! I won’t shut down your project! Please! I have a family!”

“Correction,” the big man who was still in the doorway said. “You had a family. I trust you didn’t tell them anything, but we couldn’t take any chances.”

“You monster! How could you?! My girl was three. THREE!” Smith was screaming hysterically, tears streaming down his face, droplets of saliva flying from his mouth. He was still resisting the muscular man. Neither the man in the doorway nor the muscular man showed any emotion.

“Smith, I like you, and I really do regret having to do this, but, I must. As of now, you are...fired.”

Henry looke away as the muscular man dragged Smith away. Screams echoed down the hallway until Dr. Greene heard a heavy door shut. Henry was confused, but also terrified.. What kind of science project could be that important? Again, curiosity got the better of him.

Dr. Greene slowly turned back to look down the hallway. It seemed as though the larger man had followed Smith and the muscular man down the hallway. Henry stepped cautiously down the hallway and looked into the sole room that the large man had been standing in. The lights were out. He stepped inside.

Henry knew better than to let light suddenly flood the hallway when nobody was supposed to be there, so he shut the windowless door securely first before turning the lights on. The room appeared to be an average office, with a dark wooden desk in the middle, covered with papers, pens, a closed laptop computer, mathematical tools, and a small maneki-neko with Japanese symbols written down the front. A single paw waved tentatively in an annoying yet hypnotically rhythmic fashion. A bookshelf filled one side of the room, filled with everything from college biology textbooks to romance novels to diaries. A blackboard was situated on the wall that the desk was facing. Nothing was unusual in the room. It was what was written on the board that surprised Henry.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of symbols, equations and algorithms were scrawled seemingly randomly across the board. Some of them were stopped in random places. It seemed as though they were partially erased, and the writer began a new one. There were bits of text, some in English, but some in Japanese. There were drawings of animals, cells, and things that looked like innocent little doodles you might find in a student’s notebook. Henry didn’t know what to think. He had always been pretty good at math, but this was way beyond his comprehension. He didn’t know where to start. For the first time in years, Dr. Henry Greene was completely lost. What did this mean? What was it for? Just looking at it gave him a headache. He shook his head and started to leave the room when he heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall. He froze. This could be very bad if he was found snooping around this man’s office. Hopefully, it was just someone passing by, and Henry could leave right after they left the hallway. No one would ever know he was there. He started to back up, slowly at first, then he silently sprinted  the far corner and crouched down behind a large potted plant and a trash can.

The door swung open, and the large Japanese man entered the room. He sighed and rinsed white flecks of what looked like snow or ash off his hands.  Then he stepped over to the desk. He settled down and flipped open his laptop. Henry tried to get a better view. There was a password on the computer, and Dr. Greene nearly fell over trying to see the key. He couldn’t see the keyboard from his position, and the man was so large he blocked nearly the entire screen. Henry did, however, hear four clicks, signifying the keys being pressed.

The computer beeped as it loaded the homepage. The man clicked on a shortcut. A black background popped up. He loaded a file. A small object in 3D appeared. It was motionless, although the user could rotate and flip it. It looked like a big lizard standing stooped on its hind legs.

The Japanese man stared at the blackboard a minute, then suddenly gasped. He minimized the program and opened up a text document. There were complicated notes and equations that took up nearly two hundred pages. He scrolled around until he found what he wanted, changed a few of the characters, then loaded the document onto the program he was previously looking at. The computer whirred as it loaded. When it was finished, he clicked the shortcut and again watched the animal. Nothing seemed to happen, but as Henry looked closer, he noticed one minor detail. The eye blinked. The man smiled and stood up, leaving the room in a hurry, only taking the time to close his computer before bolting out of the room.

Henry stood up and groaned. His thighs burned badly from crouching so long. He rubbed his legs and walked around. He should leave now. There would be no risk of getting caught if he left while he had the chance. Still, Henry was dying to know more about what was on that computer. He took one step toward the door, glanced at the laptop, then jumped over to the desk. He flipped open the laptop and a window appeared, showing that it required a password. Winston groaned. He knew it had to be three letters. Three key clicks plus one to enter it. Still, there were so many possibilities. He looked around the room to see if he could find any clue as to what the password could be. There was nothing. He looked through the papers on the desk, he looked at the books on the shelf. It had been almost five minutes. He was wasting time. The longer he stayed, the higher the likelihood that he would be caught. He needed to hurry. He skimmed and skimmed again the papers on the desk, the books on the shelf, even the maneki-neko. There was nothing. He looked at the blackboard over and over again, but couldn’t see anything that could be a three letter password. He resisted trying any passwords that he didn’t have any proof of just incase he only had one chance. Henry sighed. The password probably didn’t have anything to do with anything in this room. He went back to the desk and sat down in the chair, gazing absently at the blackboard.

It hit him. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed it before. The writing on the blackboard covered almost the entire surface, leaving an almost solid shape, except for a curving line where the writings had been erased seemingly randomly. When looked at from a certain angle, the erased line formed the number six.

Henry poised his fingers at the keyboard. It was now or never. He typed in the word “six” and pressed the enter key. The computer beeped, the password window went away, and he was taken to the homepage. It had worked.

He quickly began to click on shortcuts on the home screen, navigating through them one by one until a black screen appeared. This was the one. He then continued to open the files on the program. There were hundreds of them. Some of them contained unfinished projects, others were just a simple cube, obviously a decoy. Henry soon caught on to the pattern and skipped the ones with random names, only opening ones with names that looked like a purposeful string of characters. Eventually, he found the one.

The three dimensional figure on the screen was even stranger-looking once Henry could study it up close. It was similar to a lizard, but was larger and bipedal. It was colored in bright feathers. None of it was colored yet, aside from the eye, which stared creepily at him. It blinked every once in a while. It was unnerving, so Henry avoided looking at it. He instead began to examine other details about the document. It was titled deinon_F142. Henry wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he kept a mental note of it, just in case. Other than that, there wasn’t much else on the program. There was the enormous text document, which seemed to be just a bunch of programming. There were notes left every once in a while, but they meant nothing to Henry. He was surprised he was able to get this far with a computer. He then glanced at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. The time said that he had been gone nearly thirty minutes. Henry’s heart seemed to skip a beat. He quickly closed the window, slammed the laptop shut, flicked out the lights and walked briskly back to his lab.

What was going on here A computer-generated lizard thing, a team of scientists “making history” for seemingly no reason at all, and a man named Smith getting dragged to the back of the GeoCorp complex when fired. Henry thought this was all very strange. He was walking back to his lab when he saw the Head of Genetic Engineering walking by with a manilla envelope. He looked tense, and was sweating. He cried out when he tripped over his shoelace and the envelope went flying into the air. Papers danced through the sky, fluttering through the air in an unpredictably crazed path to the ground. Henry bent down to help the man pick up the papers when he noticed a “classified” stamp on one of them. It was titled “Operation 65.”

Could this be the big plan Smith and the other man were talking about? Henry had to find out, he was tired of working in the dark. So when the Head began to walk away with his messy clump of papers, Henry secretly followed.

Dr. Greene followed the Head all the way back to the hallway he had just left. Henry watched as the man ducked into the office he had nearly been caught in. If the Head was going into this office, it must be the office of an important person, especially if the documents he handled were classified. About a minute later, he stepped out, looked around suspiciously, shut the door, and walked quickly away, not even noticing Henry. Henry waited until the echoed of footsteps faded into silence, then stepped into the hallway once more.

He was so consumed with the situation at hand that he didn’t even know the large man was in front of him until Henry bumped into him. Dr. Greene was so surprised he couldn’t help but utter a little gasp. The Japanese man looked at Henry scrutinizingly, as if he was deciding if there was anything noteworthy of the doctor, then decided against it and laughed.

“I-I’m sorry, Mr…” Henry stuttered.

The man chuckled. “Just call me the Big Man!” he said, and grinned. “You’re fine, I’ll just be on my way now. Excuse me.”

“Oh, yes sir,” Henry said, and stepped out of the way. The man left, and Henry breathed a sigh of relief. That was close.

Henry walked casually down the hall and stepped into the Big Man’s office. He saw the manilla envelope on the table. Henry opened it and flipped to the sheet labeled “Operation 65.”

Henry read over the paper five or six times before he made sense of it. Then he gasped.

All of the tasks his team had been working on were tests. There were sixty-five tests, and if they succeeded, they would be assigned the mission of developing time travel. Then, a team of fifty men and women would be sent back in time, to a period labeled time A, to execute something called “Act II.” Henry searched the papers for any reference to an “Act II,” but he couldn’t find any. All he could tell was that Act II would bring in a lot of money, which would finance Act III. Nothing at all was said about Act III, except for a handwritten note above it that read “cure.” In a complex simulation, however, they found numerous problems in Act II that were not immediately solvable without “live observation.” From what Henry could tell, Act I involved three hundred subjects being tested against “hindering variables from Time A.” The variables were the files located on the laptop that Henry had just viewed.

Henry deducted that after his team successfully got the iguana to grow its leg back, they would begin developing time travel. There was a note here that said time travel development was 68% complete. After time travel, the team was going to start on the variables.

Henry realized that he would take part in the greatest historical undertaking of all time. He had to finish the sixty-fifth task, and fast. Henry put the papers away and bolted back to his lab.

They worked hard for seven months, salvaging what they could form leftover experiments. They still could not get what they needed, and took twice as long as normal. When they finished, the iguana successfully regrew its upper arm in four weeks, although it could be another three years before it regained complete motor function in the arm. In the meantime, the Big Man appeared to the group.

He stood on a platform above the group, who were circled around him, listening intently. “I know you are all probably confused as to who I am. Simply put, my name is the Big Man, and I am the CEO of GeoCorp. My apologies for taking this long to see you. I have been extremely busy. Congratulations, by the way, on completing the regenerating iguana task, and all the other tasks that have been given to you. They were not done in vain. While Iz makes the recovery, I want you to do another little job. You see, when I was very young, I was captivated by the technologies of tomorrow. Teleportation, flying cars, jet packs, and most of all, time travel.” Henry knew where this was going. “This will be one of your final tasks before you may all go home to your normal lives and families. You should be extremely proud of your accomplishments and abilities. Believe me, you are all a part of this team for a reason.

“I know that many of you are impatient, as none of you achievements have seen the public eye. This one, however, will be different. The entire world will marvel at your work, and you will go down in history as one of the most intelligent people that ever lived. Finally, the world will know how much work we are doing at GeoCorp! This is going to be the most world-renowned phenomenon in history!” People cheered at this, and the Big Man threw his hands in the air, a smile spreading across his face.

When the applause died down, the Big Man continued. “Now, we have already begun development on the time travel machine. The hard stuff is up to you. The work that we have done so far is currently being stored in the supercomputers in the NorthWest Wing. I trust that Dr. Greene will divide you up into work groups accordingly. I will see you again in three months to check on your progress.”

The group filed out of their lab and walked to the NorthWest Wing. This wing consisted of all the major computing equipment, and nothing else. When they arrived at their destination, they could see how vast the complex actually was.

Hundreds of thousands of giant computers were lined up in rows and columns. Paths snaked between them to form a giant maze. Monitors were found next to some of the computers, but others simply stored data.

A young Scottish man approached the group. “Can I help you?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes,” Henry replied. “We’re looking for the time travel research. Can you please direct us to it?”

“Right this way,” the man replied, and led them down a confusing path between the computers. “The time travel work done so far is located on computers number five hundred seventy-six through seven hundred ninety-two. I trust you have the passwords.”

Henry nodded, then gave all of the men a password. “Spread out,” he instructed, “and cover as much as possible.”

The others in the group agreed to Henry’s order and went to sit down at the monitors they were told to sit at. Henry walked over to a monitor and flicked it on. The computer hummed, beeped, then green letters on a black background appeared.

Welcome to Computer #793 Nickname: TBM personal

Password:______________

Henry typed in the password he was given: axY3Kv93.

Incorrect. Attempts remaining: 2

Password:______________

Henry’s palms were sweating. He double checked the password. What else could it be? He tried it again, making sure to compare every letter he entered with the paper he was given.

Incorrect. Attempts remaining: 1

Password:______________

Henry was getting worried now.

“Are you okay, sir?” The Scottish man from before asked.

Henry nodded. “I’m fine.” He turned back to the monitor, thought for a minute, and realized something. He typed in the word “six.” The probability of that word being the password to both the laptop and this computer was very low, and Henry was fully aware of that. He was acting on a hunch. His finger hovered over the enter key, his mind racing, debating with itself over whether or not to enter the password. He closed his eyes and pressed enter.

The computer beeped and welcomed him to the homepage. Henry breathed a sigh of relief. He was extremely lucky today. He scanned the icons on the desktop, but nothing looked like the files he was supposed to be looking at. He then noticed a file labeled “Operation 65.” Henry clicked on it without thinking twice.

He began to read over the file. It was nothing that he didn’t already know; most of it was on the piece of paper he read some time ago in the Big Man’s office. In fact, it was nearly identical. Henry couldn’t find one major difference until he stumbled upon a second page. This page had all the details of Act I. Subjects 1-300 were to be “withdrawn” from flights that were traveling from Lisbon to Rome, from Berlin to Atlanta, and from-

“Dr. Greene,” said a voice from behind him. Henry turned around and gulped. “Is this the information you were told to look at?”

“No, sir,” Henry said to the Big Mans. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“We don’t tolerate this snooping around that you’ve been doing lately, Henry,” said the Big Man. He glared down at Henry. The friendly, jovial man he bumped into in the hallway had gone. “Yes, I know you’ve been in my office.”
The other men were staring now. Before, their boss had never appeared to any of them, but now he was here, twice in one day, and he was looking evilly at Henry.

“I like you, Dr. Greene,” the Big Man began. Henry knew where this was going. Henry glanced back at the screen, not wanting to make eye contact with the enormous man in front of him. He noticed a little box in the upper lefthand corner of the screen. Below it, in little white letters, read “Security Cam #1794: Ex-Employee Export.”

There was a giant transparent tube in the middle of the room. Warning stickers decorated the cylinder. This thing would get hot. Giant gas containers were attached to the base of the cylinder. A man was at what looked like a control panel. On that panel, behind locked glass, was a red button with a picture of fire. Henry spotted a piece of bright red fabric in the middle of the ash, and all at once, Henry knew what this was. The information some people knew was so important, secret, and probably illegal that when they were let go, they were literally fired.They were incinerated. Henry felt a wave of disgust for the man standing before him, but it quickly turned to fear. He knew exactly what was coming.

“It pains me to do this, Henry, it really does, but I feel I must do what is best for the company,” the Big Man said. “As of now, your are...fire-”

Out of fear Henry suddenly shoved the Big Man into the computers behind him and took off running down the complex maze of pathways. Enraged, the Big Man started after him, but realized he was no match for the leaner man’s agility and sounded an alarm. Almost immediately, a multitude of armed guards were dashing off in hot pursuit of Henry.

Dr. Greene knew he didn’t stand a chance against the guards in a flat-out footrace, so he had to pull a few tricks. He knocked over many of the supercomputers that lined his path on both sides. Sparks flew and the room quickly ignited. Smoke rose, and Henry raised his arm to his face, letting his coat sleeve filter the air. He coughed, his lungs burning and aching from the physical exertion and smoke. He knew he would have collapsed by now if not for the massive amounts of adrenaline coursing through his veins, giving him  almost superhuman stamina, speed, and strength. He heard shouts and gunshots as the guards tried to find Henry, but it was to no avail. The smoke, fire, and computers had hindered them too much. He was glad the plan had worked, but the relief was temporary. Fear quickly replaced adrenaline as he realized he couldn’t find his way out. Panicked, he ran blindly until he found himself surrounded by flames.  There was nowhere else for him to go. He was just thinking he had failed and the consequences would now be much worse when someone grabbed him through the fire and began to tug him away. Henry jumped, and as a reflex, turned to face the confronter and delivered a forceful punch to where Henry estimated the facial region to be. A cry of pain rang out, signifying his success.

“Ow!” the man exclaimed. It was the young Scottish man from before. He muttered a string of curses under his breath before continuing. “Why’d you do that? I know what the Big Man is doing, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to escape. You’ve given me that chance, and so I thought I could repay you by leading you through the complex, but you have to go and punch me in the face!”

“Sorry, I-” Henry began, but gunshot again rang out through the room, and the Scottish man again gripped his arm to lead him through the labyrinth of technology.

“The exit’s this way!” he shouted at Henry. They ran quickly, and soon the doorway was in sight. It was fifty feet away...twenty...ten...an arm’s length…

The sound of a gunshot exploded through the air and Henry fell to the ground as the Scottish man suddenly gained a lot of weight. The air was crushed out of Henry’s lungs as he found himself on the ground, lying under his now motionless guide. Blood dripped down onto Henry’s arm. He shoved the man’s corpse off of him. Henry climbed to his feet and looked down onto the man who without which Henry would not have survived. A bullet was buried deep in his chest, surrounded by a growing stain of blood that spread across his white cotton shirt. A single drop of thick red liquid dribbled out of his mouth. He was dead.

Henry didn’t get any time to mourn, because in the very next moment bullets were once again whizzing by Henry’s head. Henry bolted out the door and through the building. People unaware of the situation leaned out of their doors and watched as Dr. Greene raced down the halls, followed quickly by men in black armored suits opening fire.

Henry turned the corner and found himself face-to-face with a guard. Stunned, they stood looking at each other for a fraction of a second, then the guard swung the butt of his gun at Henry’s head. Henry ducked, stood again, and punched the guard in the gut. The guard doubled over. Henry seized the moment by taking the gun. He kept the gun pointed at the guard and began to back out toward the door when bullets again flew threw the air. This time one scored a hit. It grazed Henry’s left arm. Henry felt the warm flow of blood and turned to face the newly appeared guards. He sprayed a shower of bullets at them, mostly just to scare them off, but Dr. Greene saw that he had taken the lives of at least two. He was horrified that he felt almost no pain in ending a man’s life, but there was no time to think on this. He ran out the main entrance and into the massive courtyard.

Luck was with him during his great escape. Henry noticed someone was just getting out of a car. The man was armed.

Henry took aim and fired, watching the guard slump to the ground. Henry ran over and pried the keys from the dead man’s hand, then hopped into the black SUV. He started the engine and floored the gas. He was pressed against the seat from the sudden acceleration, and saw that a few men were lining up in his path. They fired at the car, decorating the windshield in spiderweb cracks and holes. Henry returned the fire by first shattering the windshield, then shooting with one hand while driving with the other.

Although all of his shots missed, he showed no sign of slowing down, and the guards had to dive out of the way to avoid being run over. Henry continued down his path until the giant iron gates came into view. Henry hesitated slightly, then thought better of it and plowed right through.

The airbags exploded into Henry’s face, leaving him dazed for a few seconds. As soon as he regained control of his senses, he opened the door and climbed through the ruins of the gate. He glanced back at GeoCorp and saw the bloodsoaked grounds and smoke rising from the NorthWest Wing. Henry turned and faced the road.

And he ran.

* * * * *

Henry rubbed the logo on the paper again and again. He couldn’t read it, but he could feel it, and he knew what it said. “GeoCorp…” he muttered.

“Ah, Henry, you remembered,” the voice said, although it was no longer using a fake accent.

“How could I forget?” Henry said distastefully.

“I know how, Dr. Greene,” the voice said. “I have a gun, Henry, and it’s not for show.” A cold barrel of a gun was pressed against the underside of Henry’s jaw. Henry gulped as the voice continued. “You know something, doctor, and I intend to-”
The voice was cut off short as a thump sounded through the air. The gun went off, briefly filling the darkness with a bright light. In the flash, Henry could see the man that the voice belonged to lying on the floor. Blood trickled from his forehead, and a bloodied rock was next to his head. Another rock began to fall before the group was left in the dark again.

A scream sounded out, shortly followed by a sickening crunch. A rock had crushed someone. Henry backed away in fear as more and more rocks fell and more and more people screamed. He stepped on something squishy. He reached down to feel what it was. It was long, wet, and warm. He realized it was part of someone’s intestines. Horrified, he retreated to a far corner of the room. A small rock fell onto his head, and he collapsed in a daze. He lied on the cool dirt. A large rock fell and crushed his left arm. He screamed in pain and tried to pull away, but he was pinned to the ground. Henry lied still as the noises of pain and destruction began to fade and he began to lose consciousness.

Author's Note

Please point out any mistakes of any kind. Suggestions are welcomed!