Jacobs watched the shock in the eyes of his captives, revelling in it. ‘My real name is Charles Whitworth, and I was born in Dallas, Texas, on October the third, eighteen ninety-eight. I am one hundred and fourteen years old.’
He smiled widely as he stood up from his stool, his previous bent-over posture, typical of a man in his seventies, straightening up into the rigid upright military posture of a much younger man. He removed dentures, showing a set of perfect teeth, and took the half-moon glasses from his face to display his crystal-clear blue eyes. He pulled a nap of wrinkled skin at his neck, and it stretched and broke in his hand, evidently some form of professional make-up.
‘I have had the body of a thirty-year-old since nineteen sixty-nine, when I finalized the deal to bring them here,’ he told them. ‘“Whitworth” died, and I created Stephen Jacobs as his successor, and I have lived as Jacobs ever since, having to use prosthetics and make-up when in public, in order to age according to my new birth year of nineteen forty. I wanted proof, and they gave it to me. Genetic manipulation you simply wouldn’t understand.
‘Look at me,’ Jacobs demanded, the spark of the zealot in his eyes. ‘I am the proof of their promise to us. I am already an immortal!’ He glared at them with his piercing blue eyes. ‘And the earth is doomed.’
Lynn recovered from the shock of Jacobs’ statement first, the scientist in her overcoming the emotional response.
‘You still haven’t answered the question I really want to know the answer to,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘How does the body we found in Antarctica tie into all of this? Was he part of the same group that want to come here now? And if so, what were they doing here forty thousand years ago?’
Even if she was about to die, Lynn needed to know the answer. Not only had the discovered body started her whole involvement in this, but her colleagues had all been killed because of it. She owed it to them, if nothing else.
‘The body?’ Jacobs said thoughtfully, before checking his watch. ‘I think I’ve been more than open with you already, Dr Edwards. It is now time we left. So I guess you’ll just have to go to your grave still not knowing.’
He turned to Eldridge and nodded towards the door, and the big man marched up and opened it, Jacobs following. As he reached the door, he turned back to Lynn and Adams.
‘You should be grateful really,’ he said to them. ‘Whatever is going to happen to you here is almost certainly better than what will happen to most of earth’s population in the weeks and months to come. The virus that will be introduced here is not very forgiving. Nasty, even. It eats away at your flesh from the inside. Truly, you should be glad you’re going to die well before then.’
‘Bastard,’ Adams muttered through clenched teeth.
‘Maybe,’ Jacobs admitted. ‘Farewell.’ And with that, he turned on his heel and marched with Eldridge out of the steel door, which swung shut electronically behind them.
Three other men entered the room moments later. They seemed to be scientists of one sort or another, all middle-aged, serious-looking men dressed in white lab coats.
One of them, a small, avuncular man with a balding head and thick-rimmed spectacles, approached the two captives, appraising them. ‘My name is Dr Steinberg,’ he said in a friendly tone. ‘I will be overseeing your treatment. My aim is to minimize your pain if at all possible. If you cooperate, I think you’ll find our procedures mildly uncomfortable, nothing more.’
‘And if we don’t?’ Lynn asked.
‘Let’s just say that it is better if you cooperate, and leave it at that for now,’ he said diplomatically. ‘But first, we’re going to run some basic tests, to assess your physical and psychological states, so we can calibrate our equipment correctly.’
‘You mean, so you can push us as far as you can without killing us?’ Adams asked.
Steinberg smiled at him. ‘Yes, Mr Adams, that is exactly the reason, I’m afraid.’ He gestured to the two other doctors, who began to wheel over large trolleys with a variety of medical instruments resting on top. ‘So let’s begin, shall we?’
17
The physical tests involved a thorough bodily examination, with the doctors’ gloved hands exploring every part of them, in addition to skin, blood, hair and urine samples, and even a muscle biopsy. The straps around their bodies had been removed but their wrists and ankles were secured to the chairs throughout.
They were put through basic psychological tests, standardized questions that both had seen before; as such, they gave answers they knew would skew the results. The doctors just smiled and nodded their heads, and then pulled out a portable MRI scanner and examined their brains directly.
After what seemed like hours, the doctors finally left the room to analyse the results, leaving Adams and Lynn on their own.
Lynn turned to Adams urgently. ‘We’ve got to find a way out of here,’ she whispered to him. ‘We can’t let them get that wormhole machine working.’
Adams blinked his eyes at her, gesturing with his head in the direction of a large mirror on the opposite wall. The message was clear; he was positive they were still being observed.
He had already decided that they would try and escape. They were going to be killed anyway — along with about six billion others if that damned machine at CERN became operational — so what did they have to lose? The only question in Adams’ mind was how the hell they were going to do it. They were strapped down on chairs in a metal room hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the world’s most secure military base. Was escape even a distant possibility?
He looked at Lynn with a reassuring nod of his head, steely determination in his eyes. The stakes were simply too great not to try. And if he believed anything in life, it was that where there was a will, there was a way.
In the observation room, the three scientists sat at their computer monitors, analysing the test results.
Steinberg looked through the two-way glass at the captives, who were looking into one another’s eyes, remarkably unafraid and seemingly filled with an unquenchable fire that threats of death and torture would not easily extinguish.
‘Tough sons of bitches,’ he murmured, mostly to himself. As Chief of Section 8, Area 51’s medical interrogation division, Steinberg had seen dozens of people pass through here over the years — and knew that hundreds more had preceded them, before his own time — but never had he witnessed the relaxed confidence of the two people sitting in the room now.
‘Interesting,’ one of his men said quietly, breaking Steinberg’s reverie.
He turned away from the window and looked at the man. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Very interesting,’ the man said again, as he looked closely at a very specific set of results displayed across the computer screen in front of him.
Four more hours passed before the scientists re-entered the room, flanked by two security guards, two hospital gurneys between them.
‘Hello again,’ Steinberg said, still friendly. ‘I’m sorry for keeping you, but we had to make sure we checked all of the results.’
‘I bet you did,’ Lynn muttered. ‘Can’t have us dying too soon, can you?’
Steinberg chuckled. ‘How forthright you are,’ he said almost admiringly. ‘And you are right, of course.’
He gestured to the security guards, and they went to the side of the captives, one guard with one gurney to each. The doctors removed hypodermic needles, and started to fill them from two separate vials.