The Enclave (62 page)

Finally, he, Swain, and the guards passed through the double set of locking doors that separated the orange sector from the red, then followed a short hall into a long, narrow prep room lined with rows of changing lockers and wooden benches. As the guards waited, Swain directed Cam to pull a white Tyvek coverall over his clothing and did the same himself. A second, lesser boom rattled the lockers and shook the floor. But when, as before, no alarms went off or calls came in, they proceeded from the prep room into a spacious meeting area with couches, chairs, and low tables arranged before a large video screen.

As they entered, the people waiting stood to greet them: Gen,Slattery, a half dozen scientists, one of the Saudi guests Cam had observed at the party last night, and most surprising of all, the general he had met at Swain’s reception—General Lader, if he remembered correctly—now in uniform and looking quite unhappy.

Swain left Cam by the door as he went around to greet each guest, so, of course, Gen had to come over and taunt him. “Well, if it isn’t our great hiring coup, our rising star geneticist. Spy and liar extraordinaire.” She shook her head. “I have to say, Reinhardt, the Christian act was a great cover. You almost had me believing you were for real.”

He stared at her, deeply dismayed by her words but having no idea how to counter them. Before he could even begin, Swain called for everyone’s attention. “You all know why we’re here,” he said, “and again I apologize for the blindfolds. I assure you, that minor indignity will be more than made up for by what you are about to see.”

“Your confidence is awfully high, Director Swain,” said General Lader, “for someone who has freely admitted he doesn’t know how to open those pods yet.”

“Ah, but that’s all changed today, General,” Swain informed him. “I neglected to mention last night that Dr. Reinhardt here was present during the opening of the pods in Afghanistan eleven years ago.

Obviously he escaped that incident. As far as I know, he is the only man who did.”

Lader turned narrowed eyes upon Cam. “Reinhardt may have survived, but he remembers nothing. The experience addled his mind.”

Cam frowned at him. Lader knew about Tirich Pazu? Knew about his past?

“Only temporarily.” Swain turned to Cam. “He’s been having a lot of flashbacks lately.”

“But not about that,” Cam said. “I was there, yes. But General Lader’s right: I don’t know how to open them.”

“I believe you do,” Swain countered confidently. “I believe we have only to jog your memory to get the information we want.”

“Even if I did remember,” Cam said flatly, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

“No?”

Suddenly the image of the bearded Garzi standing by the giant pod in the oversized cleanroom flashed into his mind. “They were bloody, gruesome rites,” Khalili said in his heavily accented English, still occupied with the Canaanites, “but that was not uncommon in ancient times. Man has believed for millennia in the power of blood to restore life, acquire strength, form unbreakable bonds. . . . ”

An angry, fearful voice intruded upon Garzi’s musings, as memory again gave way to present reality: “You mean you intend to open those pods today?!” one of the scientists demanded.

“Only one of them,” Swain assured him. He went on to detail the precautions that had been taken to ensure their safety. The observation booth was well above the reach of anything that might come out of the pod and was reinforced with steel and concrete, its windows made of impact-resistant glass. If at any time they felt uncomfortable, they could easily move back into the prep room, or leave the laboratory entirely, though he didn’t anticipate any problems that would require taking such drastic measures.

When he’ d finally persuaded everyone that the small risk was manageable, he took them into the spacious observation booth that lay beyond the meeting room’s reinforced far door. The observation window encircled the booth on three sides, overlooking a cavernous chamber of cement block walls more than thirty feet high. On the floor stood five massive steel tables, each supporting a monstrous dark green pod, wrinkled and tipped with the black points of the preemergent cubes. For Cam the sight of them was chillingly familiar.

A crane loomed off to the left beside a twenty-foot-wide metal plate set into the cement block wall. Beside it stood the massive cylindrical tank Cam recognized from the videos as the home of the dead Ecuadoran Nephilim, frozen in liquid nitrogen. All around, heavy chains dangled from reinforced ceiling tracks, used no doubt for moving the heavy pods. A line of steel drums stood against the base of the observation booth’s front wall, their top edges some fifteen feet below the booth’s window.

The pod Cam assumed would be opened today was surrounded by a cage of stout steel bars. Inside, hanging from a track that ran the length of the cage’s ceiling, was a fanlike device with four nozzled flanges, all aimed toward the pod. Outside, a large housing stood beside a cylindrical tank of web-spinning material, hoses connecting it to the nozzle apparatus inside the cage. This, apparently, was Swain’s promised method of restraining the awakened Nephilim.

A side gate provided access into the cage, beside which stood an IV stand of heavy-duty stainless steel, several oversized bags of liquid nutrients and attendant tubing hanging from its hooks.

Cam observed all the aspects of the lab while deliberately keeping his eyes off the pods, fearing they’d trigger another flashback. He was certain that was precisely what Swain intended. Indeed the director’s eyes darted to him frequently, watching for sign of one. When nothing happened, he took Cam’s elbow and urged him toward the booth’s side door. “Let’s get a little closer,” he said, guiding Cam out and down two flights of metal stairs to the lab’s floor, his cadre of guards following.

The place smelled of acetone and an unpleasant musk that raised the hairs on the back of Cam’s neck. As Swain walked him toward the caged pod, which was the nearest of the five, Cam began to tremble. Tension squeezed his gut and clenched his teeth. The Nephilim calls grew increasingly frenetic.

His sovereignty rules over all,
Cam told himself.
He will never leave
me nor forsake me. And He brought me here for a reason.

To open the pods. You are the only one who can.

No,
he argued with the Nephilim.
I don’t remember how.

Yes, you do.

He frowned then, noting uneasily that the one who argued with him didn’t sound like a Nephilim. . . . For one thing the Nephilim had never argued with him.

Suddenly he was back in Tirich Pazu, in the facility’s cavernous lab, where six pods now lay on their respective steel tables, awaiting preparation for transport. Rudy had rejoined the team by then, but Khalili had pulled Garzi aside for a private conversation in Farsi, earnestly seeking to change the latter’s mind about selling the pods to outsiders, particularly American infidels. Garzi argued that they needed the money and the Americans might figure out how to open them.

“I already know how to open them!” Khalili told Garzi, apparently unaware that most of the Americans in the room at least understood Farsi even if they weren’t fluent speakers. Or maybe he didn’t care, seeing as, in addition to the American team, there was an army of lab techs on hand to assist with transport, some of whom Cam knew were actually security personnel. Rudy had warned things might go south in a hurry and to be ready.

“You have lost your mind,” said Garzi to his subordinate. “We’ve already tried the blood thing and it didn’t work. It has become a bizarre obsession for you, Sayid.”

“You’ve tried pig’s blood.”

“There is no scientific rationale for any kind of blood being able to penetrate those pods,” Garzi pointed out. “This is wild, magical thinking and I cannot—”

“It is not wild. All mythologies speak of the power of blood . . . to bind, to enliven, to free . . . And I don’t know how you can throw scientific rationales in my face, when you have no scientific explanation for anything about these sarcophagi. They defy all our knowledge— do things they shouldn’t, don’t do things they should.”

“Sayid—” Garzi began.

“It would also explain why they always make us think of blood when we are around them. And why we are always cutting ourselves.

Garzi sighed in exasperation. “You have good points, Sayid,” he said finally, his tone one of toleration rather than sincerity. “And we will give this idea a more thorough trial once the Americans are gone. But right now is not—”

“Right now is the perfect time!” Khalili interrupted. A knife appeared in his hand, and Garzi lurched back in alarm. But it wasn’t Garzi that Khalili cut. . . .

Cam’s awareness reverted to Swain’s cavernous lab, chains hanging about them like silver lines of rain, shocked to his core.

It wasn’t me!
he thought in wonder.
All this time . . . I didn’t do it.
It was Khalili!
The terrible guilt he’ d borne, not only for being the lone survivor of the catastrophe at Tirich Pazu but because of somehow coming to think he’ d been responsible, was not justified. He’ d blotted out that memory, perhaps because it was the start of a whole chain of horrors better not revisited . . . but not remembering, he’ d feared the worst.

And now you know otherwise. You also remember how to open
them.

What?!
He must be mistaken. Surely God did not want these pods opened. The voice must be one of the Nephilim, regardless of how it seemed. They had impersonated Andros with Zowan, so why not God with Cam?

Do you think I fear them, my son? Do you think I cannot handle
them?
The Nephilim
never
called him son.

“Open the gate,” Swain said, “so he can enter.”

But the voice
had
to be one of the Nephilim. God would never ask him to do such a thing. They would destroy everyone here. Lacey. Zowan. Rudy and the team. It made no sense at all.

My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts.

“Oh, Lord, no,” Cam murmured aloud. “This can’t be right. I can’t do it.”

Will you trust me?

This is insane!
But now words from the sermon he’ d heard yesterday ran through his mind:
“To find your life, you must lose it. What makes
no sense to us is often exactly what He wants us to do. Remember in the
Exodus, when the Israelites—two million people with all their goods and
their livestock—were told to head
away
from the Nile into a waterless
desert full of tombs?”

They had a pillar of cloud guiding them,
Cam noted.

You have the Holy Spirit.

What if I make a mistake?

You think I can’t handle that? You think I can’t make myself clear
to you?

Cam drew a deep breath, his head spinning, his stomach cramping, his mouth dry as dust. How could he do this? If he was wrong . . .

Swain stood on the other side of the bars, staring at him intently.

Cam said, “I’ll need a knife.”

Swain didn’t quite smile, but his lips tensed. “How about a scalpel?”

“That’ll do.”
Oh, Lord, I must be out of my mind. . . .

You can’t hide from them forever, Cameron. As long as they are safe
in their pods, they are a threat. . . .

At Swain’s signal one of the workers hurried off to get the required implement and quickly returned to lay a steel-handled scalpel into Cam’s palm. As Cam stepped through the gate into the giant cage, he heard the latch clang shut behind him. Outside, the man at the web-spinner controls flipped a switch, and the nozzles overhead spun into motion, the apparatus moving slowly along the cage-top track but not yet distributing solution.

Cam tore off his left glove and dropped it on the floor, then took the scalpel in his right hand. Fighting past the urge to stop and rethink it all, he retraced the cut that already lay across his left palm, the instrument so sharp he felt nothing. He handed the scalpel back through the bars as dark red blood oozed between the cut’s edges. When it started to overflow his hand, he stepped to the pod, turned his palm sideways, and let his blood spill onto the casing.

“Blood?” Swain demanded indignantly. “What is this—some kind of joke?”

Dribbled the length of the pod, the blood stood inertly in uneven drops and blobs for a moment. Suddenly it began to bubble and steam, then sank into the pod’s pebbled surface and disappeared.

There was a sudden momentary jittering of the table and the cage bars around them, the technician alert and ready to switch on the feed for the webbing solution. But nothing more happened. The pod sat inert as before, the spinner head whirring and creaking overhead as it continued slowly down its track. Cam’s blood dripped from his hand onto the floor.

“Do it again,” Swain said.

And Cam did. “It may be dead,” he said as he walked the length of the pod. “Or just too weak.” Relief washed through him. God had known the thing would be unresponsive.

“Are you sure blood is the way?” Swain asked.

“Yes.”

“It can’t be dead!” the director cried. “Move out of there and give me that scalpel.” He tore off one of his gloves, seized the scalpel from the technician, and unlocked the cage door to press in beside Cam. There he slashed his own palm and dribbled his blood in the place where Cam’s had already disappeared.

Right then Cam realized the Nephilim had ceased to call to him. Uneasily, he stepped out of the cage, backed away, and was starting to speak a warning to Swain when for the third time that day a deep boom rumbled from somewhere above. Everyone froze, looking upward as the floor shook, rattling the cage, the steel table, and the observation windows.

One of the techs said, “Maybe there’s a thunderstorm going on up top.”

A hissing, bubbling sound drew their attention back to where Swain’s blood was now smoking and sinking into the pod’s leathery surface, just as Cam’s had earlier. But as before, nothing more happened.

Suddenly the intercom crackled: “Sir, we’re under attack! A military team has broken through the door from the Enclave into the EDL laboratory. They’re heading your way.” Barely had the voice finished when a floor-level door crashed open in the lab wall, not far from the observation booth’s metal stair, and five more security guards burst in. Three raced toward Swain, as the other two covered the open doorway.