Origin, page 28
Adams stared down the end of the large barrel. ‘Wait!’ he shouted, and the urgency in his voice caused Eldridge to hesitate for a moment. ‘I have information about the Anunnaki.’
Eldridge scoffed. ‘What could you possibly know about them that we don’t?’
‘Something Travers told me back at Area 51, something that might be useful to Jacobs. All I want to know is if Lynn is alive. If she is, then release her and I’ll tell Jacobs everything. If she’s not, then you might as well shoot me now.’
Adams watched Eldridge’s face, and knew the man was weighing his options. Suddenly, he flipped open a phone and dialled a number. He quickly relayed what Adams had told him, listened, and then turned back to Adams. ‘He’s not interested.’
‘Tell him it’s about where they come from. Originally, I mean. I don’t think Jacobs knows, does he?’
Adams remembered Travers’ history lesson, and clearly recalled him saying that advanced humans arose on the earth many thousands of years ago, but nobody – apparently not even the Anunnaki themselves – knew how this had happened.
Eldridge scowled but relayed the message to Jacobs. He then waited – for what seemed to Adams an inordinately long time – for a reply. Eventually, he gave a confirmatory ‘Yes, sir,’ and ended the call. He turned to his men. ‘Did you search him?’ Two of his men told him that they had performed a thorough search, and Eldridge turned back to Adams, looking him up and down with suspicion. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘search him again. He’s going inside.’
Jacobs had no idea what information Adams might have, if any. He realized that it was probably just a ruse to get inside, but there was an outside chance that Travers had told him something; the professor had spent more time in contact with the Anunnaki than even he himself had.
He also knew that, despite his confidence with his guests, their position wasn’t as secure as he made out; the Anunnaki were far more powerful than they were, and there were no guarantees that things would be as promised. As such, any scrap of information that might be of use to him in his dealings with these ancient humans would be worth having. Knowledge of their origins, for instance, might be of great value.
And so he left the viewing gallery and went back inside the conference room, where he took a seat and waited for the arrival of Matthew Adams.
10
ADAMS WAS PUSHED into the room minutes later, forced to sit in a chair directly opposite Jacobs.
Jacobs smiled warmly at him. ‘We really must stop meeting like this,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no time for pleasantries, so we’ll get straight to it. What is the information you have?’
‘Is Lynn still alive?’
‘Yes,’ Jacobs answered simply. ‘We thought it best to keep her alive as collateral in case you decided to come here. Now what is the information? Where did the Anunnaki come from?’
‘Not until I see her,’ Adams responded.
Jacobs nodded to Eldridge, who grabbed Adams’ head and slammed it into the glass conference table, before pushing him back in his seat, blood leaking from his nose.
Adams just held Jacobs’ gaze, silent.
Jacobs watched Adams for several moments, searching for any sign of weakness, but found none.
Finally he tutted to himself and gestured to Eldridge. ‘Go and get Dr Edwards, please,’ he said in resignation.
Philippe Messier had retired to the control room to oversee the operation of the wormhole, but his voice could still be heard on the speakers dotted throughout the viewing gallery.
‘The energy that will be generated in the chamber will be enormous,’ he explained over the PA system. ‘The viewing glass in front of you is ten inches thick. Without it, and without the protective bedrock surrounding the cavern, this whole level would be destroyed when the wormhole becomes active. But don’t worry.’ He chuckled. ‘You’ll be fine right where you are. It has all been modelled and tested a thousand times before.’
In her seat, Lynn laughed to herself. Tested before? Maybe by a computer, but for real? It was hard to make predictions about a technology that had never been used before.
‘We are now about to start our lead-up procedure,’ Messier explained. ‘You will now see some of the power that we are able to generate by harnessing the antimatter produced by the LHC above us.’
There was a short lull, when everyone went quiet and the lights flickered off and on; and then a sound like an electrical generator, only much louder started up. It was a loud, deep, throbbing hum that passed through her body like a physical blow to her gut. And then the viewing gallery lights dimmed again, but stayed dim this time, revealing the chamber beyond in even greater clarity.
Seconds later, the lights went out in the chamber itself, and Lynn could hear the groans of disappointment around her.
‘Just wait,’ she heard Messier say. ‘One moment.’
And then lights appeared far into the recesses of the chamber’s cavernous roof. They were just sparks at first, but then they blossomed larger, each one bright enough to illuminate the entire chamber. Before long, the whole cavern was sporadically lit up by these energy sources, like trapped lightning, flickering with vast energy.
Lynn was transfixed, and then felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘Come with me,’ she heard Eldridge whisper in her ear.
Adams’ heart fluttered in his chest when he saw Lynn enter the room. She was alive!
He saw the excitement in her face too, which turned to a wince when she was unceremoniously dumped into the chair next to him.
‘Now, Mr Adams,’ Jacobs said, ‘tell me what you know.’
‘Not until Lynn is safe,’ Adams said. ‘She leaves CERN now, escorted off the premises.’
Jacobs nodded to Eldridge, who grabbed Lynn back out of her chair, a blade appearing in his right hand, held close to her right eyeball.
‘Or you could just tell me now, and Eldridge here won’t cut out the bitch’s eyes,’ Jacobs shouted angrily, aware that the device was already starting to become operational in the next room.
Adams looked around the room. The door to the gallery ahead of him was guarded by two men of the Alpha Brigade, as was the door to the elevator behind them. Then there was Eldridge, holding Lynn in his strong grip just a few feet away, and Jacobs directly opposite him, across the table.
A light started to flash above the double doors to the gallery, and an electronic voice came over a PA system. ‘Three minutes to wormhole opening,’ it said without emotion. ‘Everyone to their stations.’
Jacobs turned to Eldridge. ‘Cut her!’ he ordered, tired of playing games.
Adams saw the glint in Eldridge’s eye and reacted an instant before he did.
The darts were in the roof of Adams’ mouth, and had thus been missed during the two body searches. Adams had picked up the wood at a hardware store in Geneva, along with a knife, and had worked them himself before setting off for CERN. They were small yet heavy, and very sharp. Dropping one from the roof of his mouth to his tongue, he curled his tongue up and round it, and blew it out of his mouth as hard as he could.
He had learnt the technique as a boy, and had spent hundreds of hours training to hit a one-inch target from twenty feet, until it had become second nature. It was possible to hold up to half a dozen poisoned darts in the mouth without risk, although he had been unable to source any poison in the short time he had had to prepare. But he had coated the tips of the darts with chilli powder, and when the first dart entered Eldridge’s right eye, it made the man recoil in agony, screaming at the top of his lungs.
He let Lynn go instantly, dropping his knife to the floor, his hands going to his ruined eye, legs going weak with the shock of the excruciating pain.
Adams turned to Jacobs, knowing he had only one shot at the man before he would have to deal with the guards. He fired out another dart, but Jacobs was quicker to react than Adams had expected, diving for cover behind the table, and the dart whistled away harmlessly over his head.
Adams swooped down to pick up Eldridge’s knife and hurled it across the room at the guards by the double doors. Then he swivelled to the two men by the elevator. Their weapons were already up and aimed, but Adams loosed two darts in quick succession, both of which struck the men in the face. They weren’t disabling but were sufficient to take the guards’ attention off shooting him for a few vital moments.
He heard a muffled cry behind him and turned to see the knife he had thrown sticking out of the chest of one of the other guards. The man fell to his knees, eyes wide with surprise, while his partner opened fire on full automatic.
As Adams and Lynn took cover behind the metal struts of the glass table, Jacobs scurried for the double doors.
Glass shattered and bullets ricocheted off the metal legs. Adams pulled the near-blind Eldridge towards him with his bad hand and punched him on the jaw with the other, knocking him out cold. Adams reached to get his gun, but Lynn was one step ahead of him, the pistol already in her hand, aimed at the men by the elevator.
The two guards were now recovering from the darts in their faces and were raising their guns again, but they were rocked backwards into the metal door of the elevator as Lynn loosed off four rounds, two bullets hitting each man directly in the chest. Plumes of blood exploded across the polished wooden floor.
Adams looked at Lynn with momentary surprise, then turned back to the double doors.
‘Damn!’ Lynn said as she saw Jacobs disappearing through the doorway into the safety of the gallery beyond. The remaining guard opened fire at them again, and then Lynn drew his fire by rolling one way, returning fire of her own, while Adams rolled to the opposite side, loosing off his two remaining darts.
The last guard was punched to the side as one of Lynn’s bullets struck his hip, and then he keeled over backwards as both of Adams’ darts entered his throat.
‘Two minutes to wormhole opening,’ the electronic voice announced.
‘Come on,’ Adams said, getting to his feet. ‘Let’s get in there, now!’
11
THE ATTENTION OF the Bilderbergers was concentrated entirely on the viewing windows, and they watched with fascination as the antimatter-powered machinery throughout the vast cavern started to activate fully. Beams of intense light were cast from seemingly every nook and cranny of the distant roof, and it looked like some sort of incredible thunder and lightning storm inside the chamber. The vast power being harnessed was clear for all to see, and nobody was in any doubt as to what they were witnessing.
But then the double doors to the conference room burst open and Jacobs came tumbling in, falling to his knees as he crashed through the doors.
‘Block the doors!’ he screamed, although his cries went unheard over the thunderous roar of the wormhole machinery.
And then the double doors burst open again, and Adams and Lynn came storming in, submachine guns aimed into the room, sweeping along the rows of leather benches. The Bilderbergers dropped to the floor as one, screams starting to ring out, and then the two intruders raised their guns and fired up at the ceiling, and everyone hugged the floor harder, heads down.
Four men – men of the Alpha Brigade, unarmed in this supposedly sacrosanct area – started to run towards Adams and Lynn but were cut down instantly, their bullet-riddled bodies hitting the ground hard.
‘Turn the machine off!’ Lynn screamed at the top of her voice. When nobody moved, she let off another burst from her rifle, the rounds passing just inches over the Bilderbergers’ heads. ‘Turn it off!’ she screamed again.
Still there was no response, and Adams leapt across the benches, having seen Jacobs cowering below. He reached down and hauled him up, placing the barrel of his gun underneath the man’s chin.
‘Turn it off,’ he whispered with truly menacing intent. ‘Turn it off or I’ll blow your brains out right here, and you’ll never get to see the Anunnaki anyway.’
‘One minute to wormhole opening,’ the electronic voice advised again.
‘Do it,’ Adams said again, even more forcefully.
‘You can’t stop it now,’ Jacobs said through gritted teeth. ‘It’s over.’
Adams was about to pull the trigger when the double doors opened once more and Eldridge burst through with a submachine gun in each hand.
Half-blind, face bloodied, and incensed with rage, the big man opened fire immediately, raking the viewing gallery with high-powered .40 calibre rounds.
Adams and Lynn dived for cover and the bullets smashed into the viewing glass, ricocheting off the armoured material.
‘No, you fool!’ Jacobs called from the ground. ‘You’ll kill us all!’
But Eldridge wasn’t listening and opened fire again, the bullets tracing a line across the room, shattering and destroying an entire panel in the nearby control centre.
‘No!’ Messier cried out, running to the panel to try and save it. But it had been destroyed beyond repair. He turned to Eldridge with all hope drained from his features. ‘What have you done?’ he asked. The scientists around him were scurrying about the laboratory in blind panic.
Suddenly, the armoured viewing panel hissed from its frame, lifting and tilting, opening like some sort of huge vent, and Adams realized that Eldridge must have hit the operating mechanism.
The lightning in the chamber beyond grew even brighter, and the one hundred Bilderbergers screamed in earnest now, remembering the words of Messier. Without the protective glass, they would be doomed.
‘Thirty seconds and counting,’ the voice continued to report, without emotion.
12
‘CLOSE THE WINDOW!’ came the same cry from dozens of mouths. The whole viewing gallery erupted into chaos.
But the window couldn’t be closed, it was too large, too heavy, and the control panel had been completely destroyed by Eldridge’s bullets.
And then Eldridge’s guns clicked empty. Adams surged forward and tackled him off his feet, smashing him back against the double doors and through into the conference room. Eldridge used his superior size to turn Adams and run him through the room until he slammed into the hard metal of the elevator doors.
Adams gagged from the pain shooting through his shoulder, and then Eldridge shoved a huge, meaty forearm across his throat, leaning in with all his weight, crushing his windpipe and choking him slowly unconscious.
Adams saw the maniacal look in Eldridge’s eye and knew the man would not stop until he was dead. He started to feel his eyes going dark, the air being cut off to his brain, and his fingers reflexively reached out, searching along the wall beside him.
‘Twenty seconds and counting,’ the voice announced, and then Adams’ fingers found the button he was looking for. He pressed it and the elevator doors opened. As the men fell through on to the metal floor, the pressure on Adams’ throat eased.
Adams used the momentum of the fall to place his foot in Eldridge’s stomach and flip him over his head. The man’s huge body crashed into the elevator’s far wall. Adams felt the elevator rock with the impact, and then the doors closed, and the elevator began to ascend. Eldridge’s body had hit the controls.
Adams heard the electronic voice one last time.
‘Ten seconds and counting.’
13
BACK IN THE viewing gallery, the excitement of the Anunnaki’s arrival had given way to abject fear and horror at what was about to happen.
In the chamber beyond, the lightning flashes became more concentrated, more permanent, as the beams began to centralize in the middle of the cavern and a ball of light formed on the rocky floor before their very eyes.
As Lynn watched, she knew what she had to do. She didn’t know why or how she knew, but know she did, with every fibre of her being.
While everyone else tried to flee from the giant window, she started to move towards it, until she was running towards the light-filled cavern.
Suddenly, a hand on her shoulder arrested her progress, and she turned to see Jacobs’ horrified face staring at her. ‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t go in there! You’ll ruin everything!’ He reached for her throat, his crazed hands trying to strangle her, face only inches from her own, and she could finally see the insanity in his eyes.
She didn’t even have time to feel satisfaction as she pulled the trigger of her submachine gun and a burst of .40 calibre rounds ripped through Jacobs’ guts. He dropped to the floor with a groan, fingers slipping from her throat and going to his belly, intestines spilling out over his hands as he looked at them in disbelief. His eyes went up to meet Lynn’s, but she had already turned away, towards the open window.
And then she threw the rifle to one side and mounted the wide window frame, legs bent, breathing deeply.
‘Five,’ the voice announced, ‘four . . . three . . . two . . . one. Wormhole opening.’
And then, saying a prayer for the first time in many years, she jumped.
14
THE ELEVATOR WAS rising rapidly, unbalancing both men, but Adams realized Eldridge was still stunned from his impact with the elevator wall.
He took advantage of this, pushing him backwards and then thrusting the web of skin between his forefinger and thumb into the man’s unprotected throat.
Eldridge gurgled, his larynx shattered, but he surged forward, clasping Adams in a bear hug, squeezing the air out of him with his powerful arms. Blood started to seep through the makeshift bandage on his upper arm, and he felt his vision going hazy.
But he wasn’t beaten yet, and he was damned if he was going to give in. His knee came up sharply into Eldridge’s groin, his forehead slamming into the man’s face, breaking the nose, but still Eldridge held on to him, crushing even tighter.
And then the elevator started to wobble, to shake, to seemingly rip itself apart at the seams, and Eldridge finally gave up his grip. Adams hit the floor, which was searingly hot, seemingly superheated from underneath.
