“Ellis!” she cried out. “Move!”
He didn’t. Instead, he stood up to face the oncoming water and reached out in front of him both hands. Just as it was about to hit, Maggie turned her head and braced for impact.
It never came.
Maggie looked back up to see Ellis standing there, his arms still outstretched, before a massive wall at least twenty feet long and ten feet high, made of stone, and yet still curved and looking like it would flow forward at any moment. There were tendrils and eddies in the wall, frozen in rock as if carved by the best goddamn sculptor in the world, arched as if poised to fall down on Ellis at any moment and crush him.
But it didn’t. The rest of the water diverted around the new wall, well away from the Variants.
Ellis turned and smiled. “Well… how about that?” he said quietly.
Then he collapsed to the floor in a faint. Around where he lay, the stone turned to glass as his Enhancement’s side effect took hold. The stone wall held, however — Ellis’s Enhancement was permanent.
All Maggie could do was stare and come to grips with the fact they were still alive.
Then she noticed something at the top of the wall.
A leg.
Reaching for the nearby lantern, she held it aloft and saw a body at the top of the stone sculpture, hanging over one of the waves, with everything below his belt encased in stone. He must have been flushed through the tunnel with the water, then trapped inside it as it turned to stone.
He was wearing a Soviet military uniform.
20
POSEIDON lay on a gurney in his cell, his arms and legs restrained, the IV next to him dripping a sedative into his veins. The drugs were designed to last five hours; the sixth hour was spent coming out of the stupor long enough to be fed mushed-up food, like a mother would give to her baby. Then a new IV went in, and the Russian went back to an amorphous, dreamless slumber with just the barest hint of awareness.
Probably enough to drive him crazy, Danny thought as he looked down at the man.
“I wonder, Commander Wallace, how it is that the Russians, they do not miss this man. Would they not have filed a complaint or an inquiry by now?”
Danny turned to regard Dr. Schreiber with barely hidden disdain. “The Russians probably know we have him, just like they know we have Variants of our own,” Danny said tightly and quietly, as if he were afraid to wake the Variant before him. “But they want to keep their program as secret as we do ours. So, they’re not exactly going to walk on over to the State Department to ask about him.”
The two men stood in silence for several long moments before Danny turned and left, the German scientist on his heels. Danny could sense the barest hint of the Russian’s Enhancement while in the room, and it faded once he left the man’s presence. Sedating an actual Variant confirmed to Danny that he was most effective sensing Variants when they were conscious, and probably more so when they were actively using their Enhancements.
“Have you developed a plan for testing and containment yet?” he asked Schreiber. “I asked for one last week. You finally get to run experiments on a real-life Variant for yourself after all. I thought you’d be excited.”
The German shrugged. “These things take time. We do not even know what his power could be, or the extent of it. We have not finished our analysis on his blood and tissue samples. We are looking for everything possible that may tell us what the difference is between Variants and the rest of humanity.”
“But you at least have some preliminary research ideas.”
“Yes, we do. I believe we must place POSEIDON in a locked chamber with nothing else inside it, and one that can be easily flooded with knockout gas should things get, how do you say, out of hand,” Schreiber said. “Camera for observation. Let him wake up and lash out, then put him down. Repeat with test subjects nearby in case his Enhancement works on people rather than objects or his own person.”
Danny frowned. It pissed him off that this was how Forrestal and, worse, his own boss Hillenkoetter wanted to treat the man. Danny wanted to go in and talk, try to see if the guy would listen to reason, maybe switch sides. Join the good guys. That kind of persuasion was a lot harder to do when the good guys were acting like jerks.
The two walked out of the main scientific hangar toward Danny’s office. The heat was really kicking up a notch or two at Area 51, and Danny found himself coated with sweat by the time he made it to the relatively cooler shade of the administrative building. The trek was worth it, though, as no one at Area 51 was allowed to talk about classified materials outside, which meant he didn’t have to listen to Schreiber.
When they arrived inside Danny’s office, Schreiber dove in before Danny could even take a seat. “Now that we have a confirmed Variant as prisoner, I hope you will reconsider my testing proposal for the anomaly.”
“Tossing a Variant, even if he’s a Russki, into the vortex isn’t gonna happen,” Danny said with what he hoped was authoritative finality. “Period. POSEIDON goes nowhere near that vortex. Are we clear?”
“We are,” Schreiber said, looking down at his hands. “But you and I both know that these anomalies — this one and the one in Berlin — they created the Variants. This relationship must be explored somehow.”
“You’re the one who anticipated the vortex event in Berlin. You knew it would do these things. You’re supposed to have the answers, Doctor,” Danny shot back. “You tell me how that relationship works.”
The scientist leaned back in his chair. “What occurred in that bunker below the Reich Chancellery was as much a surprise to me as it was to your men.”
“Yeah, those who survived,” Danny said, rubbing his eyes. “Look. Nobody goes near it except to study it. Our guest and the other Variants don’t get involved.”
“What about the criminal? Can we not use him?”
Use him. What a way to talk about a human being, even if he was some Vegas mobster. “Use him for what?”
Schreiber shrugged and smiled. “We have, as you know, sent a dog into the vortex. The animal came out the other side as if the phenomenon weren’t even there. Since the energies from the vortex make alterations to human consciousness and physicality, it is reasonable to hypothesize that introducing a conscious, physical person to the vortex may produce a more measurable reaction.”
That prompted Danny to sit upright in his chair. “So, you want to shove that sorry son of a bitch through the vortex and see what it does to him? What happens if it fries him? Or if he undergoes Permutation?”
“If he begins showing signs of Permutation, we shall have your security people there with their knockout darts. And if he fries, as you say, well, is that any great loss?”
God damn this Nazi bastard. We’re better than that. Aren’t we? “We haven’t determined the final disposition of Mr. Timofeyev quite yet, Doctor. He’s an American citizen. At some point, we’re going to have to treat him like one.”
That prompted a dismissive smirk and a wave of the hand from Schreiber. “Commander, we both know that this man will never be released from custody. Perhaps you will charge him with something, or perhaps you won’t pretend that criminal charges will make a difference. Either way, his life is over. But he may yet be useful if we allow him to. He may even render a great service to our cause!”