Anamnesis ©
Chapter Twenty-Three
By Fiction Writer #13
(nosex, sci-fi, paranormal)

Laughter filled the ballroom, most of it genuine, but a few of the chuckles sounded nervous.  No one present knew what to expect when they sat down to hear Professor Rosenberg speak.  Some came hoping to hear him redeem himself, to hear him apologize for his last book (an obvious fabrication) and announce his return to his roots.  Others hoped he’d gone further off the deep end, and were sitting in anticipation of witnessing the ravings of a man gone mad.  Still others had come for no other reason than to heckle the man, to kick him when he was down in order to make themselves feel better.  No one had expected the man to calmly walk up to the podium and make an announcement like that.

The placid expression on his face as the laughter petered out only reinforced the uneasy feeling that began to wash over those gathered.  He hadn’t joined in with the laughter, or even cracked a sly smile to let them know he was poking fun.  He just stood there as the harsh spotlight illuminated him from the waist up.  Beads of sweat glittered on his brow as he sighed heavily and slowly shook his head.  He mumbled something that went unheard by all but those in the very front. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

He held his hand up to his eyes, shielding them from the spotlight. “Can we kill the spot and bring up the house lights?”

The audience looked around in the darkness for the light switches as if he’d been speaking directly to them.  A moment later the overhead lights slowly grew in brilliance and the spotlight positioned in the rear of the room went dark with a loud report that caused everyone to jump in their seats.  A hotel employee charged with the task of operating the spotlight apologized as a wisp of smoke rose from the burnt out halogen bulb.

“Thank you.”

Marcus wiped the sweat from his brow and cleared his throat.  When he next spoke, his voice had lost the steadiness of his opening remark.  His nerves tinged his words with a quavering cadence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know that most, if not all of you here tonight, expect to see me tap dance around the failure of my last outing as an investigative author, and were I not the author of that book, I would most likely be sitting in the audience with you.  In the months since its release in print, I’ve been attacked by nearly every critic, and slandered on all the usual internet battlegrounds.  I’ve remained silent on the issues put forth by those critics until now, because I arrogantly believed that somehow, someway, I’d be able to vindicate what was written.” He sighed once again. “After much inner debate and soul searching, I came here tonight, not to defend what I’d written, but to offer my heartfelt apologies for the inaccuracies and fabrications contained within.  I was duped, plain and simple.  I had allowed my feelings and personal beliefs to obscure my professional duty to remain detached to all but provable facts and physical evidence, and as a result ‘Project Phoenix: An Alien Among Us’ went to print before I truly checked the information contained therein.”

Marcus paused to check the time displayed on his wristwatch.  He took another deep breath before continuing on, his words steadier, but there seemed to be an urgency to them, as if he wanted to get away but couldn’t until he finished.  The beads of sweat multiplied visibly on his face, and damp circles began to appear under his arms.

“That’s what I had planned to talk about during my allotted time tonight, followed by a brief question and answer session that I hoped wouldn’t be overly painful and humiliating.” A sly smile crossed his lips as he chuckled. “My apologies to those of you who worked so hard on wording your scathing remarks, you won’t be getting an opportunity to cut me down with them this evening.”

Again he checked his watch, and the small smile vanished from his lips.

“It has come to my attention, and to my surprise, that the basis of my last book wasn’t entirely a fabrication.  While many of the stated aims of Project Phoenix were altered, the descriptions of a long history of experimentation and scientific discovery were, in fact, true.  The implications of the work done by that organization can not be ignored or dismissed as simply, and I quote, ‘the overactive imagination of a paranoid professor attempting to sell books’.”

Most in the audience recognized the quote used to describe Rosenberg and his book from a popular monthly magazine publication within the conspiracy community.

“Tonight, I’m not trying to sell any books.  I’m not trying to save my career or regain my credibility.  I’m simply here to pass along the truth of things, what you choose to do with this information is for you to decide.” He closed his eyes, his mind racing with troubled thoughts nearly as fast as his heart thundered in his chest. “Though, when I’m finished, I hope you choose to do what is right, because Project Phoenix is real, and they are watching.”

The inside of the Mobile Command Center buzzed with activity.  Techs worked at a mad pace scanning security feeds for any sign of the targets, all the while maintaining the lines of communication between soldiers and officers.  Tech 4847 pressed his hand against his earpiece to mute the cacophony and focus on what the computer was relaying to him.  After listing for a few moments to be sure of what he heard, he called over his supervisor.

“Sir, the computer has alerted me to an active data strand, and I’ve got confirmation that it’s a civilian broadcast.”

The supervisor, indistinguishable from the other techs save for the fact he wasn’t hovering over one particular computer station, was behind him instantly.

“Show me.”

“Right here.” A few keystrokes highlighted the text in question. “A lot of talk about Phoenix and experiments.”

“Where is this feed coming from?”

“Inside the hotel, the computer picked it up coming through the sound system in Ballroom B.”

“Give me a listing of all presenters scheduled in that room tonight.”

A small box of text appeared on the screen, a list of four names with the approximate time they would be speaking.

“The first one, highlight and search.”

More text filled the screen, some of it written in red.

The tech read it aloud. “Professor Marcus Rosenberg.  Red flagged last year after sensitive documents were leaked to him through one of our own.  Says here that the matter was rectified by Lone Wolf.”

“Lone Wolf.” The supervisor shook his head disapprovingly. “I remember this one now.  Lone Wolf gave him false information to lead him away from the truth.  He’s no threat.  Reset the data mining software to a higher sensitivity until that crackpot finishes his speech, then return it to normal.”

“Understood, Sir.”

The supervisor rolled his head, his neck making a crackling sound as the tendons stretched.

“SIR!” another tech called to him. “We’ve got big problems!”

The supervisor squeezed his way down the narrow aisle. “What now?”

“I don’t know how they’re getting this!” The tech frantically hammered on his keyboard. “I… I can’t stop it!”

“Shit.” The supervisor stared blankly at the video playing before his eyes. “Shut it down!”

“I can’t!”

“Don’t give me that, shut it down!”

“I’m trying!”

The supervisor spun around. “Listen up!  We’ve got a breach, a big one.  Shut it down, shut it all down if you have to.”

He spun back around, his eyes narrowing as if he believed he could kill the anchorwoman on the screen just by sheer will.

“As you can see, armed men are roaming the hotel, searching room by room, for whom or what we don’t know.  What we do know is that the hotel is in some kind of lockdown.  The main doors and fire exits are being blocked by more soldiers, and the people inside are not being allowed to leave.”

“Maria, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Dan.”

“Have you been able to identify what department the soldiers belong to?  I don’t recognize those uniforms.”

“From what we’ve been told, they’re from Homeland Security, though after watching the way they are moving through the hotel I have my doubts.  They appear to be more like a paramilitary unit than any security force I’ve ever reported on.”

“Now it seems they are all wearing helmets of some kind…”

“Yes, they put those on just before we began to broadcast.  Unlike most protective headgear worn by law enforcement, or even our military, these helmets give complete coverage.  The way in which they all donned them at the same time makes me wonder if perhaps we’re dealing with a possible biological or chemical threat, not just an explosive device like we were told earlier.”

“Can we see that footage you showed earlier?”

“Let me preface this once again by stating that the hotel holds conferences for a number of different groups, so it’s possible that these are just a couple of conventioneers dressed up in costumes.”

“Maria, am I seeing this right?”

“Yes, Dan.  They appear to be dressed as lizards or snakes, and are brandishing swords that appear to be on fire.  Perhaps these are the terrorists we were told about, and they used the costumes as a way to sneak into the hotel.”

“Oh my God.  Are they attacking someone with those swords?”

“Yes, it would appear that way.  The video only shows them kicking in that door and entering.  A few seconds later you’ll see some flashes of light before black smoke begins to spew out into the hallway, and then three individuals exit the room, though I don’t believe they are the same three who initially entered.”

“Maria, we’ve got to go to commercial, but please stay with us.”

“You got it, Dan.  We’re not going anywhere.”

“That’s Maria Lopez, reporting live on the dramatic events unfolding in downtown Highland.  Stay with us after the break for the only station with cameras inside the hotel under siege, Channel Ten.”

“They’re snagging the feed from our own signal,” 9832 called out to anyone who would listen as his fingers flew so fast they were a blur. “Can’t tell exactly how they’re doing it, or how much of our signal is being rerouted… but we’ve definitely been compromised.”

“Hacked?” the supervisor growled. “Go to emergency status.  Block all ports and send out sniffers to find them.”

“Sir, I’m having trouble shutting down the transmission.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“The news crew’s.” The tech wiped sweat from his brow. “They’re using something to mask the uplink.  I can’t pinpoint the satellite they’re using.”

The supervisor squinted at a long string of numbers cycling in a seemingly random order. “It’s a ghost.  Damn it, they’re using our own tech against us.  Send a team out to the security perimeter, find the source and shut them down.  Get that bitch off the air before they come back from commercial.”

“Sir, we can’t broadcast orders with the firewalls set so high.  Even if they weren’t, I’d still recommend against any transmissions until we can sever the hacker from our system.”

The supervisor scanned the interior of the MC2 until he located the two men assigned to security detail. “You two, get out there and shut them down.”

“Peeping Tom to Alley Cats.”

“Go ahead Peeping Tom.”

“You two in position?”

“Sure am.  You didn’t tell us she’s feisty.”

“Keep your libido in check, boys.  I’ve got two rats coming your way, don’t let them get the cheese.”

“Roger that.”

“Sir, the sniffer program found something, but it doesn’t make much sense.”

“Let me see.” The supervisor pushed his subordinate out of the way so he could view the screen better. “They’re trying to shut off the hotel’s fire suppression system?”

“Yes Sir, but we’ve already disarmed it.  Apparently they don’t know that yet.”

“That’s because they’re looking at a history file, not the real time system information.” He grinned wickedly. “Set up a trace daemon to track them.”

“Sir, won’t they just log off once they realize…”

“No, we’re going to update what they’re looking at with a recent image, one that shows the fire system turned off.  That way they won’t realize we’re on to them.  Then, once they’ve backed out and our daemon is hot on their heels, we’re going to turn the system back on.  That’ll fuck up whatever plan they had.  Just make sure the phone lines are still plugged up tight; we don’t want the hotel’s safety system to make any outgoing calls to the local fire department.”

Once the supervisor moved out of his way, the tech went to work.

“I need a runner.” The supervisor turned to find one of his men waiting for him. “Get word to Black Wolf about the situation here and the steps we’re taking to rectify it.  Make sure he understands that, until we lock out the hacker, we will be unable to securely coordinate between him and his soldiers.  He’ll have to switch all communications to local broadcast only.  Understood?”

The runner nodded before donning his helmet.  The supervisor noticed a thin milky sheen of something that had apparently spilled on the man and then air dried.  He considered reprimanding the soldier for allowing his uniform to become so dirty, but decided that it was a matter for another time.

Around and down they went, huffing and puffing as their hearts beat so fast they could hear them in their ears.  They were moving so fast they’d lost track of how many floors they’d come down.  Every footfall echoed loudly in the empty emergency stairwell, and their eyes scanned the immediate flight expecting one of the soldiers to be waiting for them every time they made a turn.

“Hold up.” Rob came to a sudden halt.

Kay and Tiff skidded to a stop despite the grip tape laid across every step to prevent a fall.

“What is it?” Kay heaved. “Soldiers?”

Rob shook his head.

“Lizards?” Tiff leaned on the railing trying to catch her breath.

“No.” Rob sat down on the landing. “Just need to stop for a sec.  Feel dizzy.”

Not too far above them a door opened and heavy footsteps began to race down the stairwell.

“Shit.” Kay looked up towards the sound of the approaching soldiers. “We’ve got to get moving again.”

Tiff took a deep breath before starting down once again, but Rob remained seated.

“Wait,” he called out in a hushed voice that sounded way too loud for his ears.

Tiff and Kay stopped, but their eyes, full of concern, darted back and forth between Rob and the sound of the soldiers.

Through gritted teeth, Kay whispered, “Rob we’ve got to go.”

Rob shook his head, his face deadly serious as he held up one finger, his lips silently ordering them to wait.

Closer and closer, louder and louder the footsteps became.  Tiff’s eyes filled with panic, and she would have bolted had Kay not put a hand on her shoulder.  Just when they felt the men would be turning the next corner the thundering ended as another door opened and the men exited the stairwell.

All three gave a great sigh of relief as Rob finally stood up. “Okay, now we can move again.”

“Maria, you’d better get out here.”

Maria hurriedly reapplied her makeup and did a quick check that her hair was still holding up against the ungodly humidity.

“I’ll be out in just a sec, Cal.” She clapped the tiny compact mirror shut and stowed it back in her purse. “Just think, after tonight, I’ll never have to do my own makeup in the back of a news van ever again.”

When Calvin didn’t respond she turned around just in time to see him come flying through the open door.  He landed on his back, his face bloodied and his eyes already swelling shut.

“Jesus!  Cal, what?”

Before her cameraman and friend could answer a soldier climbed inside and aimed his rifle at her. “Shut it down, NOW!”

“What?” Maria feigned ignorance even as she feared for her life. “What’s going on?”

“NO GAMES.  Cut the signal from the hotel or I’ll be forced to take action against you.”

The coldness in the soldier’s voice chilled her to the bone.  This guy wasn’t kidding, but she’d never backed down from a fight in her life, and she wasn’t going to start now. “Ever heard of freedom of the press, asshole?”

The soldier lowered his weapon, and for a moment she’d thought she’d won, until he pointed it directly at Cal. “Shut… it… down.”

A thought flickered in her mind, only briefly… ‘Go ahead motherfucker, pull the trigger.  I’ll have your face splashed on every television screen across the world.’

Then she saw Cal’s eyes, the wild fear in them, the blank expression, his bloody lips trembling, and she remembered that he had a family, a wife and two little boys who wouldn’t give a shit that Cal died defending the First Amendment, only that they didn’t have a father anymore.

“Okay, wait.  Don’t do anything stupid, alright?” Maria put her hands up in surrender. “It’s that little box thing attached under the console to your right.”

The soldier kept his weapon on Cal as he called out to someone else not in the van. “Do you see it?”

No response came.

He leaned towards the open door and turned his head slightly. “I asked, do you…”

Before he could finish hands suddenly gripped the soldier and pulled him from the van.  Maria could hear the sounds of a struggle taking place, and then a very loud ‘pop’, almost as if someone had uncorked a bottle of champagne, then all fell silent.  She took a deep breath before mustering the courage to take a peek.  The absurdity of what she found outside the sliding van door caused her to laugh despite the distress she felt.

“Sorry Miss, we won’t be but a minute,” called a tall black man who was stripping bare the unconscious body of the man who’d held her at gunpoint. “Just need to borrow these.”

“Uh… you might want to check on your friend,” a much shorter white male offered as he finished stripping out of his own clothes. “He didn’t look too good.”

“Damn.” A third man appeared out of the shadows, one she recognized as the man with the German accent who’d given her the device to spy in the hotel. “They only sent two.”

“Awe, don’t feel bad,” the other white guy teased as he began pulling on his pilfered black uniform. “I’m sure they’ll be sending more.”

“Not likely.” The German’s words dripped with disappointment. “I always miss out on the fun part.”

Maria, for the first time in recent memory, was at a loss for words.  After a few seconds of open jawed gaping, the reporter in her snapped back on duty. “Who… who are you guys?”

“Believe it or not,” the black man answered, as he finished zipping and pulling straps until the uniform fit him snugly, “we’re the good guys.”

“You sure about that?” Maria sat in the doorway of the van trying to look nonchalant as her hand searched for the handheld camera lying somewhere on the floor of the van. “You just beat up two soldiers claiming to be from Homeland Security, and now you’re stealing their uniforms.  You sure you’re not the terrorists they’re trying to stop?”

The German smiled. “You said ‘claiming to be’.  Sounds like you’re not buying their bullshit story either.”

Her hand found the camera and she slowly maneuvered it so that the lens pointed at the men. “So, you’re saying that those soldiers in the hotel, they’re the terrorists?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but if you want to make this easy for your viewers, then yes, they are the terrorists.”

“Then, who are you three?  Special forces?  Black ops?” Her finger found the record button and pressed.

The two guys, now dressed in the black uniforms, dragged the two soldier’s bodies out of sight and disappeared into the darkness.

“We…” the German smiled again, “we are nothing more than a bunch of unemployed misfits trying to save the world.  And you… you forgot to take the lens cap off.”

Maria grabbed the camera off the floor of the van and deftly removed the cap, but as she swung it around to get the man in frame, he’d gone.

“Son of a bitch,” she cursed at herself as she looked around desperately for any sign of them.  A low groan brought her attention back to the van and her injured friend. “You okay, Cal?”

“Not really,” he moaned as he sat up. “What the fuck just happened?”

Maria shook her head. “I don’t know… but we go live in ten seconds.  Can you hold the camera?”

The hallway they were in was just like the one they’d left only moments before, only now it seemed surreal.  The hotel guests here were going about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.  A lady in her late fifties, dressed for an evening out in the fancier parts of the city, strolled down the carpeted hallway as her pet Labradoodle trailed behind her, wearing a collar that probably cost more than a new car.

Rob’s eyes followed the little dog as it passed by, and an unwanted memory of what had happened to him and his sister bubbled to the surface.

“Oh, God.” Rob blushed furiously.

“What?” Kay asked, full of concern.

“It… it’s nothing.” Rob couldn’t take his eyes off the dog.  It was as if the triggered memory had to completely play out in his head before he would be able to move again.

Tiff put a hand on his shoulder. “Rob, what is it?  You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Finally he drew enough strength of will to avert his eyes. “Seriously, it was nothing.  We’ve got to get a move on.”

Kay looked back at the dog, her face full of curiosity. “It was a memory, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Rob continued down the hall, not waiting for the other two to catch up.

Tiff walked quickly but Kay trailed behind. “Something that happened to you, something they made you do, at that place?”

“Yeah, now come on.” Rob picked up his pace, his face burning red.

Kay started to catch up, but then suddenly stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes opened wide.

“No…” She looked back at the dog that was now waiting patiently beside its Mistress as she fumbled with her room’s key card. “No.”

“Drop it, Kay,” Rob growled.

“They didn’t.” Kay’s eyes whipped back and forth between Rob and the dog. “They couldn’t have… oh, my God!”

Rob sighed. “Yes, they did… and I did… and so did my sister.  Now, can we drop it?”

“What?” Tiff looked more confused than if they’d started speaking Chinese to each other. “Will someone explain what you two are going on about?”

Rob couldn’t bear to look at either one of them. “Go ahead, Kay, but this stays between us, okay?”

At first shocked, Kay couldn’t help but grin devilishly to herself as she thought about how to explain it to Tiffany without laughing.  Not wanting to embarrass Robbie any more than he already was, she pulled Tiff close and whispered into her ear, “WITH A DOG!”

Tiffany squealed so loud that all the guests milling about turned to look at them as Kay shushed her through her own giggling.

“Are you two finished yet?” Rob shook his head in exasperation.

“And I thought they did screwed up shit to us,” Tiff, after regaining her composure, whispered as they again ran to catch up to Rob.

“It wasn’t all… screwed up.  Was it?” Kay whispered back in almost hurt tone.

“What are you talking about?  They kidnapped us, drugged us, and forced us to…” She looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “You know.”

“You don’t have to make it sound so awful.”

“Why not?  It was awful.”

“Making love to each other was awful?”

Tiff looked around anxiously to see if anyone had heard. “No… I mean… You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do.” Anger started to rise in Kay’s voice. “Are you saying what they did was awful, or what we did was awful?”

Rob turned into a culvert where the ice machine and a snack vending machine stood, and the girls blindly followed, too wrapped up in their whispered conversation to notice.  A little further into the culvert Rob found the service elevator used only by hotel staff.  The three of them quickly entered the empty elevator and Rob pressed the button for the first floor.

“Alright, enough of this.” 98723 raised her weapon.

“No… no no no!”

98723 touched the trigger only once.  A single round hit the Mage square between the eyes, and he crumbled to the floor like a marionette cut free of its strings.

“Push it out the window.”

Several of the soldiers under her command heaved themselves against the pyramid.  It was surprisingly heavy, but nothing that they couldn’t handle with their enhanced musculature.  The object ground loudly on the floor, tearing up bits of the ugly carpet as it moved.  They met some resistance as its edge ran into the broken window frame, but a well timed shove guided it up and over the ledge.

98732 waited until the Gythreal teetered before radioing her commander. “It’s going out the window now.”

One moment it hung there, frozen in space, then it tumbled out of view.

Donovan ripped the burnt curtain down just as the Gythreal blurred past his view.  A moment later the lifeless body of the Mage followed.

“Good work 98732.  Now make sure the generators are working.”

“Yes Sir.  Understood.”

Donovan surveyed the damage done to room 2019.  His men had quickly put out the small fire that had consumed the mattress and were now inspecting the bodies of the three Gythe they’d discovered.

“Sir, all three were taken down by a high powered laser rifle, looks like one of our own.” The soldier pointed out the tiny hole cleanly drilled through the Gythe Queen’s head.

Donovan’s eyes narrowed. “I want a radio check of all sniper positions.”

“Sir, something’s wrong.” Another soldier in the room looked up from the body he’d been inspecting. “Mobile Command isn’t answering.”

“We’ve been compromised,” he snarled. “All teams switch to local band and check in.”

Donovan strode out of the room.

“Sir, where are you going?”

“Carry out your orders, soldier.  I’m going to put an end to this game, once and for all.”