The bay? They must be sending a helicopter. I glanced overhead, listening for rotary blades. Would MJ-12 shoot it down? Did my intended rescuers know I had a tracking device circulating through my bloodstream?
I hesitated, then turned and walked out onto the frozen bay. The ice seemed plenty thick, the spring thaw having gained little traction. Counting my strides, and trembling from the cold, I continued to scan the star-filled sky for my ride.
Two hundred paces brought me some distance from shore. The surface remained solid beneath my boots, but there was still no sign of a chopper.
The wind howled in my wool-covered ears, sweeping snow particles across the barren ice. Tugging my jacket over my buttocks, I sat down and closed my eyes to attempt a CE-5 communication.
When it comes to meditation, I’m strictly an amateur. Hunkering down in the bone-chilling cold, I ducked my hooded head and closed my eyes, attempting to imagine the Milky Way galaxy and the spiral arm that harbored our blue speck of a planet. When that seemed silly — the E.T.s knew where I was, having just followed me halfway across the world — I shifted my internal eye to the patch of ice beneath me.
I don’t know how long I remained in this position. I may have fallen asleep, but at some point I felt another presence.
Opening my eyes, I found myself surrounded by mist. Directly overhead, a triangle of light seemed to be materializing out of another dimension, along with the flat metallic bottom of an extraterrestrial vehicle. It had to be hovering incredibly close, for it blotted out the stars.
I registered a brief fleeting moment of elation, then sudden panic as the ice beneath me evaporated and I went under, my lung-collapsing yelp stymied by a mouthful of salt water. Rational thought left me as unseen tentacles dragged me deeper into water so frigid it curdled my blood into jelly and strangled my circulation. It was Loch Ness all over again; the darkness, the paralysis of cold, the mind-snapping terror. I caught a glimpse of an immense, dark object moving beneath me as a pink fluorescent light sparked to life before me, revealing a scuba diver.
He shoved a regulator into my mouth, the device attached to a small container of air.
Pinching my nose, I inhaled a dozen quick breaths, struggling to get them into my failing lungs. The diver motioned below to a bullet-shaped canister the size of a double-wide coffin. Grabbing my left wrist, he dragged me to it, the dark container yawning open like a clam as we approached. He laid me inside as another wave of anxiety hit.
He squeezed in next to me and sealed the canister by pressing a device attached to his buoyancy control vest. The moment the pod sealed, a blue light activated.
The diver held up a plastic card.
STAY CALM, ZACHARY.
The top of my head struck the inside of the container as the pod jettisoned through the sea and a second laminated card appeared before me.
POD WILL DRAIN IN 2 MINUTES. CORE TEMPERATURE DROP NECESSARY TO SHUT DOWN BIOCHIP.
I closed my eyes, comforted by my rescuer’s knowledge of the biochip, my body convulsing in the twenty-nine-degree water.
Two minutes.
120 seconds.
119… 118… 117…
Coherent thought goes hand in hand with core temperature. Stray too high or too low and you start to lose it. You start to die. In a battle of neurological functions, my mind fought to maintain a foothold of sanity as my hypothalamus struggled to control my body’s internal thermostat.
It takes a lot to overcome this almond-sized super-organ, but subfreezing water is its kryptonite, the effects rapid and catastrophic. Within seconds of submerging, my brain had ordered the capillaries in my skin to squeeze out the blood, pushing it inward to help maintain my core temperature, and thereby inflicting horrendous pain upon my pinched extremities in the process. My muscles tightened and contracted as hypothermia swept through my body. For the first minute my muscles fought back using high-speed involuntary contractions, but the heat generated through shivering required more blood, which accelerated the drop in core temperature.
100… 99… 98…
The muscles in my face were fluttering. The diver noticed and clamped his hand over my mouth to keep the regulator in place.
95… 94… 93…
My hypothalamus continued hoarding resources, the organ willing to sacrifice a few pawns and knights to save the king. My thoughts dulled, my mind slipping into a stupor.
90… 85…
23…
My oxygen-starved brain struggled to keep me awake. Urine seeped into the canister, my flooded kidneys overwhelmed by an influx of fluids.
Just a quick nap…
The diver shook me awake.
What was a scuba diver doing in my bathroom stall?
Timpani drums throttled my chest as my heart became arrhythmic and limited the oxygen to my brain. I turned to my right and saw True.
“Relax, lad. Him that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned.”
“You big lummox. I’m not drowning, I’m freezing to death!”
“Aye. But yer not swinging from a rope, are ye?”
Suddenly my skin was on fire.
“True, help me! I’m burning up!”
“Nothing I can do, lad. Yer hypothalamus has blown a fuse. Paradoxical undressing, it’s called. Yer brain’s last-ditch attempt at saving yer arse. Look at ye, yer blue as a fish. Ye haven’t even got a pulse. Yer not alive, but yer not quite dead either. Better pray yer rescuers ken enough tae warm ye slowly, or yer constricted capillaries will reopen all at once and cause a sudden drop in blood pressure that will send yer heart into ventricular fibrillation.”
“True, are you here to take me to heaven?”
“If need be. For now, jist close yer eyes.”
32
“How do you know I’m mad?” asked Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
I rode a wave of pain to consciousness but refused to open my eyes, afraid to see what monster was chewing on my extremities.
And then the monster spoke.
“Christ in Heaven, enough with the bloody whimpering. There’s old women in the Inverness Polar Bear Society tha’ jump in Loch Ness every winter’s morn, and ye don’t hear those daft bitches yelping. Open yer eyes.”
I opened them as my father commanded. He was seated beside me, dressed in a wool sweater that matched his hair and beard, and his Gael eyes had fire in them.
“There now, tha’s better. There’s work tae be done if ye want tae see yer family again.”
I sat up, looking around the small infirmary. “Where are we?”
“Aboard Jonas Taylor’s boat, the McFarland. She’s a hopper dredge. Been in these waters since before ye went missing in D.C.”
“I don’t understand. How did Jonas know I’d be in East Antarctica?”
“He didn’t. I contacted yer friend after Doc Stewart let me ken where ye was bein’ held and whit fer.”
“Doc Stewart? You mean the English physician who worked on me back at Groom Lake? Angus, the guy’s MJ-12. He’s one of the bad guys.”
“First, they don’t call themselves MJ-12 anymore, it’s SECOR, short for Security Organization. Second, Stewie’s only part English; his father wore the plaid. And he’s an old friend. We grew up together before he left the Highlands to join the RAF. Caught the UFO fever back in 1980 when he was stationed at a NATO air base in Suffolk — Bentwaters, if memory serves. It was right after Christmas when one of yer alien vessels appeared over Rendlesham Forest, jist east of Ipswich. According to Stewie, a triangular metal object lit up the entire forest with this brilliant white light. Lots of folk saw it, but the RAF made no claims. From tha’ day forward Stewie worked tae get himself involved with the MAJESTIC crowd. I hadnae a clue he was stationed in Dreamland Base ’til he contacted me.