Chapter Fifty-Nine

The rest of the team gathered around the machine. It was impossible to have zero resistance, not even cutting thin bedsheets.

“Drop a drone. Let’s see what the hell is down there,” the professor demanded.

The drone descended to the depth where the binding occurred. The screen speakers made a harsh fizzling sound. Suddenly, all went black and silent.

A few seconds later, a faint ‘plink’ sound echoed from below.

“Give me the other drone.”

“We left the, um… See, the thing you need to understand about that is that—”

“So, we don’t have another drone, is what you’re saying?”

“We’re going to have to send someone down and see what the hell is going on.”

The men turned, looking around at each other.

They knew one thing.

In their line of work, any mistake could be their end, and that was on a good day.

This seemed like a huge mistake.

“I will go down. Get me my suit and gear,” Geoff, the leader of their spelunking team, said. One of his men pulled the suit and handed it to him.

“Hey! That’s a great idea, more power to ya, boss!”

Another worker held Geoff’s helmet while he slowly took off the thick clothing and began to don the blue suit. He retrieved the helmet from his partner, strapped on his gear, then switched on the thermals.

“Powered up, your thermal charge is ninety-six percent. That’ll keep you toasty. Careful down there, boss!” he said.

Geoff nodded.

“All set! Let’s go. Light him up and start recording.”

The team slowly lowered Geoff down into the dark shaft, his light making it brighter than it was on the surface.

“Can you guys read me, okay?”

“Affirmative,” he responded, holding the tablet with human vitals and the helmet camera displayed on it.

“Lower the thermals on my butt; you’re setting me on fire down here.”

“Sorry boss! Got it.”

“Can I ask one thing? Guys, seriously… From now on, keep two backup drones on every rig, right? Not too much to ask, right? I mean, I’m all good with this and everything, but why wouldn’t we have another drone on hand that could do this instead of me? I’m only the boss, after all. Like, I could have a veggie dinner tonight with this sweet herba that I met yesterday at the—SHIT!” Geoff shouted.

The men laughed. “That’s why we don’t have a drone doing this. They can’t say shit!” the engineer laughed back, with his eyes glued to the video feed.

“Seriously, can you guys see this? Is my video coming through? Do you read this?”

“Uh. Yeah. That’s no cave. It looks like a bunker. It has walls, seams. It’s a bloody bunker.”

“How was this not on the mantle scans? How was this hidden?”

“We’ve got to get the Halikkon team down here along with their alien research guys. They have to take a look at this right now. This is Sec-11 stuff,” Geoff said.

“Aliens? Are you serious? Bunker, your melon-head, it’s a bunker. You watch too many damn cartoons.”

“Is there anything on record of this? At this location? Get Sec-level 11 to authorize our data search. ”

“Hold on, Geoff,” Evans said. After a moment, he reported,

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“No, this is off the grid, no entries or data at all. Period.”

“This has to be a military-grade bunker that housed aircraft or something. Large. I mean, why else would it be so big in there?” one man suggested.

“Halikkon bio-science team, en route, ETA one hour and forty minutes.”

“Okay, guys, back to the barracks and warm-up. The smart guys are taking over from here,” Geoff said.

“I’ll stay at the forward bunker with you, boss. I want to see what they find here, the aliens,” one member of the spelunking crew said.

“You are nuts. I’ll stay too, just to watch you freak out over nothing. How’s your HyperVolt charge?” another added.

“Sure, it’s your call. Keep warm. It’s dangerous cold, heater grids or not,” Geoff replied.

As the rest of the Halikkon team arrived, they rappelled into the same hole that Geoff traversed. They dropped into the bunker and began examining the area. In time, they started understanding the structure may not be human in nature after all.

“Damn, this thing is big.”

The shell and molecular makeup of the chamber included plasma at a subatomic level and some unknown elements that read as radioactive. Very faint, but radioactive.

“See! Aliens, like I said! Who’s crazy now?”

The Halikkon team sent down a few more pieces of equipment and took readings and measurements.

Along a large tunnel corridor to the left side, then down a gradual slope at the end, the area opened to what appeared to be a reactor chamber of some sort.

“Are you copying this? Can you see this thing?”

“Yes. I see it. Yes, there’s the same thing here also, off to the right.”

The reactor looked to have been damaged by an explosion, but it was impossible to tell if it was from within or outside the contraption.

“Well, whatever this cave-hole was, it’s abandoned now. And there is definitely no deuterium here. The reading must be bad. This thing has traces of uranium, but otherwise, it’s just a bunch of empty space.”

“You’re not reading the damn thing right, here give it to me,” one teammate said.

“So, I’ve been analyzing this reactor-tower thing here on this side. It definitely was a sub-component of a central power source. And this is, in fact, where we were getting the deuterium readings from. The reading is contorted. It looks more like some elements of uranium. Some electrons appear to be spliced with alpha particles, only a small amount—like Rosa's. Who could have done that?”

“But there are some other elements that I cannot identify, which we should collect and study. Immediately.”

The team brought in an extraction array unit, containment cells, and a spent nuclear core rod array to pull the raw molecular mass from the reactor core to study and perhaps use it to assist the technology for the ark if possible.

They ran several tests, and everything looked good, so they moved in to connect to the core and retrieve the samples.

Once the circuit connected, and it made the bond with the core, they were shocked. Everything they had expected to initialize had reversed—almost the exact inverse of what they had intended for the extraction.

“Wait! Wait! The sampling operation has inverted! As soon as we touched, it took over, like a virus! Something is draining our core sampling array! It’s creating a reverse fusion and drawing in power! The reactor reversed the flow and is taking rather than giving!” one man yelled frantically.

“Disconnect and abort, right now!”

“Wait, look. There’s something there. I see lights coming on. Over there,” one of them said.

“What did you mean ‘draining the sampling array?’ There is nothing there to drain. They are spent and inert, right?”

“Uh, yeah… well, by our standards, anyway.”

Even though the total time for the nuclear encounter was only a few seconds, it was more than enough to start a fusion reaction for the technology to spin up and come back online.

“Guys, this side is lighting up as well.”

More and more blue-green illumination came through, gradually becoming brighter.

The entire area took on a low vibration, and droning sounds echoed throughout.

In the large chamber they first entered, loud, low-frequency humming started, and the walls began moving.

What they were standing on, what each person initially thought was the floor and very bottom of the structure, began to slowly spiral open—revealing even a lower chamber that the team was unaware of.

The men in the chamber ran in separate directions toward the wall, trying to find something secure to attach their harness lines to as their equipment fell below. Once the portal floor finished spiraling away, it left them dangling from the walls.

“Guys, umm. I think this whole thing is powered now, at least somewhat. Guys, can you hear me?”

“What is that, down there, below us? It looks like. Um, like an integrated pod capsule, a cockpit of some sort? Floating in mid-air. How is it just hanging there in the air? What the?”

“See! There is the alien! Right there! Who’s crazy now?”

“No, I’m telling you this is some secret, cover-up, a government project that went south. They were making some kind of super-weapon, and it got out of hand. They had to shut the program down.”

“No. That, my friend, is an alien. I’m rappelling down to get a look.”

“Fine, let’s check it out. Then you can get back to your cartoons where you pick up all this crap about spacemen.”

The other said, “No way! I’m out to the surface. I didn’t sign up for this!”

As the two men went down to the level where they could see the hovering object, they discovered it looked like an ice-covered translucent capsule, about six meters long. Within, suspended in mid-air, they made out a figure similar to a human, only larger.

The almost frozen capsule slowly illuminated from within, and the translucent shell thawed to an immaculately clear surface, much more transparent than any glass.

And for the first time, it became evident: they were looking at what was most assuredly, undoubtedly, a humanoid alien from another world.

“Who’s crazy now?” he whispered.

“Guys, stop screwing around and get the hell up here. This is officially a bio-hazard secured site as of now. Everybody out! Move it!”

“Get Rosa Kuzland on the line. He needs to have an update on this right now.”