“He woke up, claimed he remembered nothing,” John said. “And then he tells us the entire plan. He was depressed, remorseful and he came up here and faced a reality he caused. Let him go. If he’s down there, let him burn. But please, for my sake, because I like you, step away from that elevator shaft… just in case.”
Malcolm said. “I think we should all go outside just in case.”
“They aren’t going to destroy a whole building in Marshal Flight center, or Redstone,” John stated. “We on a military base. No. It will snuff out.”
Softly, Grant spoke to Nora. “Come on. Nothing you can do.”
Hand still reaching to the elevator button, Nora backed up, rolled her fingers into a ball and turned around. “Maybe you’re right,” she said to Grant. “Maybe he’s in this building somewhere.”
“No,” Meredith said. “He took his life. I didn’t see him go down there, but it makes sense. Guilt will do that. None of this turned out as they planned. We see this.”
A squeaky chair caught Nora’s attention and she looked at Malcolm who plopped back down. He lifted a clipboard and began flipping pages.
“What are we doing?” Nora asked. “Dazed and confused, sitting around, staring out a window. Falling down emotionally?”
“I’m trying to find answers,” Malcolm said. “Something, anything that will tell us what went wrong.”
“The germ went out of control,” John added. “What more do you need to know?”
“How long we’ve been out? What exactly happened? I mean… really, think about it,” Malcolm said, “How do we know, maybe this base wasn’t just contaminated. You realize there is a nuclear power plant not far from here. What if the germ did more damage, what if power went down before they could secure that plant? There are also a million reasons why this portion of the base is abandoned. We haven’t left this room to find out.”
“I don’t see you jumping out the door,” John commented.
“No, because I wanted to see if anything was left behind.”
Grant spoke up. “Clues to whether or not it is just here or everywhere?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, this is turning up nothing. But I’ll look further.”
“Times up.” John said. He pursed his lips while staring at the watch. After a moment, he exhaled. “Didn’t feel a thing.”
Nora looked at him. “How can you be so cold and callous?”
“I’m not,” John said. “I’m in shock. I’m angry; I’m dumbfounded on what my next step is. I want answers and there are none. Not here. And unfortunately, the only person who has an inkling of what was going on or some sort of answer is two hundred feet below us living the lyrics to a Bon Jovi song and going out in a blaze of glory.”
Meredith spoke up. “That’s… that’s not necessarily true.”
“Which part?” John asked. “The Bon Jovi song or the fact that he is below us.”
“Oh, I believe he’s down there,” Meredith replied. “But I am talking about him being the person with all the answers. That isn’t necessarily true.” She paused. “Because I believe I have answers. I think.”
NINETEEN – Worst Case
He hadn’t moved. Jason was still in the same spot, thirty feet from the entrance of the building, knees to the ground, in the center of the overgrown parking lot.
Questions started to fly for Meredith and at her. Especially from Amy, who suddenly turned angry? She cried out she felt cheated, robbed and misled. “I listened and trusted both you and the president. And you both knew,” she said. “I believed all would be fine. I brought up nothing and now I have to barter my soul for a bottle of water from John.”
In a sense, Amy was right. Although Nora still hadn’t determined what Meredith knew. She had information, she admitted to it. That alone was a game changer. And in all honesty, it wasn’t Meredith’s fault that she was confidante in the project.
A part of Nora felt vindicated because she didn’t believe Meredith to be as oblivious as she portrayed convincingly to everyone else.
But before Meredith divulged her information or theories, Nora wanted to get Jason. He deserved to know.
Apprehensively she made her way to him. His head was down. Nora recalled her first encounter with Jason. He was a positive person despite his circumstances. He went through quick mood swings after hearing what the president originally said of the Genesis Project. Anger and sadness, but after they subsided, he was hopeful. He had something no one else had… a deep rooted faith.
“Jason,” she called to him softly. “I don’t want to interrupt you if you’re praying.”
He didn’t turn around. His voice cracked softly. “Praying.” He shook his head and laughed emotionally. “Nora, I don’t think I have a prayer to say.” He slowly swayed his head and looked over his shoulder at her. “From the time I was a child, I believed in God. I preached His word for as long as I remember. Give it to God was a stock phrase of mine. Give it to God.” He laughed again. “At first you know, I was mad because Man and Science took it from God’s hands. But now… I’m torn. I’m torn between being angry at the God I gave my life to and angry at myself for believing in a fairy tale.” He slowly stood to his knees. “The God I worshipped would not let this happen.”
“I have news for you,” Nora said. “Probably not a news flash considering what you did for a living, but the God you worship, if all those stories are true, He has a pretty good track record of doing this.”
His eyes widened as if to say, ‘I can’t believe that just came from your mouth’.
Nora shrugged. “I’m just saying. And I’m here to ask you to come in.”
“I don’t know what I want to do.”
“Just don’t pull a President Thomas.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means …he’s dead,” Nora said. “He went down to be part of the decontamination process. He couldn’t handle this. None of us can. I’m not. It seems surreal, like I’m so displaced from my life, my world, that to me this isn’t earth, that this isn’t reality.”
“Look around Nora, its reality.”
“Here. We don’t know what’s beyond here. And… Meredith knows some things.”
“We discussed this. She doesn’t.”
“No, actually,” Nora said. “She does. She said it and we’re waiting on you to hear what that is.” She held out her hand. “Let’s hear what she has to say and then we can figure out our next step. Staying out here, looking at this, is not the answer. We need to find our answers. But we need information to get there.”
“Do you really think Meredith has it?”
“She has something.”
After a moment of debate, Jason took her hand and they went back inside the building.
Despite the fact that John said he felt nothing, he did indeed feel a slight vibration under his feet. The explosion below had to be intense. The president, if he were caught in it, felt nothing, His pain was over.
John didn’t see him go down the elevator and couldn’t figure out how he did so without being noticed. But what were the options? He ran amuck around the building? For what purpose? He had no supplies. The logical deduction was that he committed suicide.
In John’s mind, President Thomas was useless. He had knowledge, but he was weak and broken. Marshal Flight Center was a starting point for John, not an end, and the last thing he needed was a weak person following him North. And North was exactly where John would head, back home, once he figured out how to get there.
“All of that,” Meredith pointed to the boxes and supplies John took from storage. “Is needed. You didn’t take it all but you took at least one from every box, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Three years ago, I was asked to come up with a worst case scenario theory,” Meredith explained. “Because of my work, NASA pulled me in, right here, to this compound for a meeting. I honestly believed it had something to do with space.”