The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls (14 page)

It’s in moments of extreme stress that we find out who we
really
are.
In the comfort of an office or a classroom, we’re very happy to discuss
what we may - or may not - do in certain hypothetical situations.
But until you face that fear, that crisis, that emergency situation, you
never know
exactly
what you’ll do.
Heroes and cowards are defined in a split second.
The mission objective for Zero-97/4 and Zero-98/4 is to enter the
facility under the cover of darkness and to retrieve a set of files which
were securely stored there.

They are to be completely unaware of location, so they
believe
that
they are transported there via military aircraft, but completely
unaware of their final destination. At the beginning and the end of the mission they are placed into an
artificially induced sleep, to sustain the deception. Routine security, she understood, and probably why she had to sign
that E-Notice document.
If they were conscious of the journey duration, they may be able to
guess location, or at the very least, in which continent they were
based.

Her 22 year old self is extremely excited by this prospect. Two years spent working in shops, a sudden and compelling ambition
to join the Army to get some excitement, and barely out of basic
training, she had been selected for this mission. Less than a year ago she’d been adjusting wrinkled dresses on clothes
hangers and refunding customers who’d been kidding themselves by
buying a size too small. Now she was getting a bit of excitement at last, this is why she’d joined
the Army.
Once sleep has been artificially induced, the mission begins.
The man and woman don’t know where they are. As if woken suddenly from sleep, they are outside the base which
formed part of their mission briefing. They do not stop to question or hesitate, they recognise what this and
they know what to do.

They switch on their steath-shields, hi-tech body armour which will
enable them to avoid detection. They have five minutes to cut through the wire, stay out of sight, find
the office, retrieve the documents. Adrenalin rushes through their bodies like somebody just switched on
a gushing tap. He takes out some cutters, she holds the wire with something that
flashes when the two things make contact.
This is a deadly, electrified fence and the tool she is using renders it
powerless as he creates a hole large enough for them both to scramble
though.

There are no searchlights in this camp, although it is lit, surveillance is
via body heat. A rat scuttles across the courtyard and a blue laser appears from
nowhere and annihilates the creature before it even has time to
register what has happened. The man and the woman know this is what they must face, their
stealth-shields will keep them safe from this hazard. All is exactly as it was in training.
But this simulation is not being run to see how they react when faced
with a series of
predictable
events. It is being run to see how they cope in the face of enormous stress, in
exceptional circumstances and in situations which they couldn’t
possibly imagine. The simulation departs from the training. In an instant, the stealth-suits deactivate, as if there has been a
sudden, massive equipment failure.

The blue lasers start to flash immediately on sensing the body heat,
and he escapes by a millimetre as he ducks in behind her through the
door of the main office block. As they enter the door, the space disorientates, like somebody just
picked up the entire block of buildings and spun it round.
They can hear alert sirens sounding outside, and the approaching
footsteps of armed guards. This is not how it was in the briefing.
Security is supposed to be automated.
Predictable. Beatable.
In an instant they are in panic, confused and dazed by what is going
on.
Bullets start to fly down the corridor, their adrenalin levels are
soaring. They barely know each other, but they must suddenly become each
other’s most trusted companion to survive this. She longs momentarily for the safe life that she left behind.
They communicate in single words and hurried gestures. They are trapped and surrounded, with no chance of success in this
mission.

The layout is
nothing
like it was in the briefing, what happened here,
this is wrong, everything is in the wrong location here and their
protective gear isn’t working. It’s like everything that they knew about this mission suddenly
became scrambled. The 1% risk figure given by the ‘suits’ seems laughable now. There is only one place that they can go, they have been cornered in
the corridor and they are being forced into this room. This is where they will surely die.

They enter the room, push a filing cabinet across the door and turn
around to look for cover. They are confronted with a bank of screens on which are live feeds of
family members. Her mum, playing bingo.
His wife, talking to somebody in their corner shop. Her dad, sitting in the car outside the bingo hall, waiting to pick her
up. His mum and dad, viewed through their open curtains, watching TV in
their lounge. His brother, playing squash with a friend.
Instantly familiar scenes, the people they love most in their lives and a
very clear and sudden threat. Each of the people has a targeting graphic projected onto their head.

A quick assessment of the scene shows that these are live feeds, of
family members and they appear to have some form of weaponry
aimed at them. A sixth screen that had been blank suddenly lights up.
It is a live feed of themselves standing where they are right now. They are under immense pressure, bullets are being fired outside the
door, armed guards are beginning to hammer outside on the fortified
windows and their loved ones seem to be in imminent danger. They are completely disoriented, under very real threat and their
environment just turned on a knife edge in a matter of seconds.
It is in times of massive stress that character is defined.
A voice booms from the speaker. They recognise what is being said, but the voice sounds unearthly, like
nothing they have ever heard before.

‘You must chose,’ it demands, ‘If you are not dead in ten seconds, they
will die.’
As if to confirm the seriousness of this threat, a laser flashes from a
gun that had been concealed in the ceiling, hitting the ground that
separates them. Guns are sounding outside, a counter times down the seconds on the
screen, the violent sounds of hammering on the windows surrounds
them and there on the five screens are the people that they most love,
targeted by a force unknown but
very
real.

‘You
must
chose,’ demands the voice once again, ‘If you are not dead in
five seconds,
they
will die.’
The man and the woman look at each other and in an instant, without
speaking, they know what they must do. The lasers power up, they must choose now, the timer is at three
seconds. They raise their guns and simultaneously they shoot. Her bullet hits him in the head.
His bullet hits her in the stomach. As they fall to the ground, the laser shoots into the spaces that they
had occupied a fraction of a second earlier.
The targets are removed from the figures on the other five screens,
which then close down. The targets on the screens go about their lives totally unaware that
they were moments away from a sudden and violent death.
The first window is broken and the filing cabinet is finally pushed
aside as armed guards flood into the room.
The decision has been made. The two intruders lie in pools of their own blood. They just became Dr Pierce’s 0.01%.

I don’t hesitate when I hear Kate’s plea for me to head for the Control
Room. In spite of what I’m seeing play out before me in front of the blast
doors, I know that I must drop everything to respond to this
summons. I’m presently not on any surveillance cameras, so I’d better appear
pretty quickly or they’re going to wonder where I am.
I run along the corridor making sure that I don’t draw the attention of
the man at the entrance. Whatever he’s doing, it will have to remain a secret to me for now.
Like so many other things in this place. I check the surveillance cameras and fortunately the first one to be
active is just next to the bathroom area.

I sneak through the door quietly, open my trousers and flies, then rush
out again, like I’ve been in the loo all this time and I’m just rushing out. I make a big deal of fastening my trousers and zip in front of the first
active camera. A bit of over-acting never did anybody any harm.
I didn’t want that guy in the entrance to be rumbled, whatever it is
that he’s up to can only benefit Mum. Unless Kate
really
does have some bad news for me about her.
I’m about to find out, I’ve taken the lift to Level 2 and I’ve finally
arrived at the Control Room. At Kate’s request, I haven’t been in here yet, so I’m interested to get a
glimpse of this Red Zone area. I half expect the BioMetrics pad
not
to allow me access, but the doors
open and once again I am allowed access without challenge.

What an amazing place. The museum-like control room of the previous day had been quite
comical to me. Old shop mannequins dressed in dusty uniforms had been placed
around massive maps on walls, dodgy old equipment and wooden
desks which looked like they’d come out of a Victorian classroom. It was amazing to think in the Cold War bunker that such ridiculous
looking technology would have been used in the aftermath of
something that had pretty well destroyed the entire world. Like somebody had spent all the money on the amazing nuclear
missiles and had forgotten to put some cash by so that they could mop
up the fallout and recreate a new world out of the people who hadn’t
been burned to a crisp.

But this control room is quite remarkable. It’s as if somebody has gathered the coolest tech that you could
possibly imagine - and even some that it might be a stretch to imagine - and placed it all in this room.
Knowing the Government, they’d spend all that money on the
equipment and forget to install the wi-fi. All over the Control Room there are uniformed bunker staff, sitting at
brightly lit consoles, performing all manner of complex looking
operations.

Kate is there to meet me and can see the look of obvious awe on my
face. ‘This is amazing Kate,’ I exclaim, forgetting momentarily why I am
here. ‘What’s the news on Mum?’ I ask, recovering from the visual assault of
such a mass of wonderful technology.
‘Well Dan, we have managed to locate your mother in the area beyond
the bunker,’ she began.
‘Nothing I don’t know already,’ I think to myself.
‘She was located in the upper area of the cottage,’ continues Kate, with
a look of complete earnestness.
Okay, now you’ve got my attention. Last time I saw Mum, she was just outside the bunker doors.
‘We have this visual verification Dan,’ she carries on, moving towards
a screen to her right. Kate moves the screen in my direction so that I can see it clearly.
‘Using special cameras, we are able to see through the darkness into
the areas immediately around the bunker,’ she explains. ‘Your mother is currently in stasis in the cottage above us in the
bunker. She’s completely unharmed and her life signs are all normal.’
She has my complete and utter attention now.

‘Dan, I’m sorry but your mum will have to stay there until our mission
is completed. Once the bunker doors are closed, they must remain that
way until clearance is given.’

Now I
know
that Kate is deceiving me. Whatever that man is doing at the bunker entrance, Kate clearly
knows nothing about it. She either
believes
that the bunker doors can’t be opened or she’s
knowingly lying to me. How do I know that she’s lying?
Well, the figure pictured on Kate’s screen has Mum’s face, but is
wearing a skirt, fleece and t-shirt. The face is Mum’s. But the clothes
are not.

Kate has just tried to deceive me with a photo edit.
It’s very well done, of course. But whoever that is on the floor of the cottage, it’s
not
my mum.
But Kate obviously wants me think that it is.
Maybe she just wants to stop me worrying. Perhaps it’s just not a priority for her.
She doesn’t know what I know.

At this precise moment, the man who
should
be sitting at the empty
work station right in front of me is in the process of retrieving her
from beyond the bunker doors. How do I know? Because on the vacant workstation is a photo of him, his wife and his
kids.
They look nice, like they’re all having fun. These people have obviously been allowed to bring mementos with
them into this bunker. And next to the photo of his family is something else that must be very
important to him. It’s a photo of the man I just left in the corridor, much younger and
dressed in a military uniform. And standing next to him, much younger and as I’ve never seen her
before is my mum.

This has
never
happened before. Zero-97/4 and Zero-98/4 have shown themselves to be completely
exceptional.
But we’ve ended up with casualties.
This is going to cause problems for the program.
She
was the one who realised it first.

In an exchange that took an instant, she showed him what they would
have to do to beat this situation. It was an exceptional and extraordinary action.
Any of the test subjects who’ve made it this far behaved with complete
consistency. When faced with enormous, massive and sudden stress.
When confronted with imminent violence and the possibility of death. After complete disorientation and a total and immediate change of
situation. With terrible and impossible decisions having to be made in a
ridiculously short time.
99.9% of the test subjects who reached this stage did the same thing
every time. They made the only decision that you can in these circumstances.
‘Kill me’ they would say, sometimes both of the test subjects at exactly
the same time. The lasers would fire, but the test subjects would be stunned, not
killed.
But Zero-97/4 and Zero-98/4 have messed it up completely.
Nobody
has chosen as they have chosen in that 10 seconds of fear,
adrenalin and panic. All of the test subjects would be able to act logically, selflessly and
unilaterally. Ordinary people, under stress, but doing the right thing. Saving the people they love most, making the sacrifice that they know
they must. In the face of massively conflicting and confusing information.