Steal the Stars Page 4

  “How many background checks do they need to run?” you were asking. “Isn’t it always the same stuff?”

  “They try different methods. Different data-dives. Swap the variables in and out. Sometimes they find something new. It has happened.”

  Once, about four years ago, we had a contractor make it almost all the way through. By all accounts he was a nice guy, seemed steady enough (Lauren’s predecessor would later insist his polygraph showed signs of stress he should have picked up on). They ran one last background scan in the elevator and noticed his brother-in-law had written him a pretty sizeable check within the past month … despite the fact that previous scans had shown that same brother-in-law to have been deceased for about two and a half years. A quick investigation into the check revealed the source of the funds to be a bank in Macau commonly used for clandestine transactions. Once the dots were connected, it appeared our new friend was perhaps not so much on the up and/or up. That contractor was vomited back up by the Big Bug in a box.

  “And we’ve gotta do all this again on the way out?”

  I nodded.

  “Jeez. What’s it like if you ever need to get out of this place in a hurry?”

  “Eminently frustrating.”

  I turned and stole a glance at you. On the surface, at least, it seemed like you were keeping your cool handily, scared or not. In fact, in the red light, your face had taken on an older, stonier look. Handsome, in a mature kind of way.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Thirty.”

  “Jesus. I remember thirty.”

  You laughed. “You can’t be that much older than thirty.”

  “Older enough.”

  You laughed again, quieter, dismissing.

  I was getting to know the elevator door in front of me intimately. It was the only thing I was willing to look at now.

  One of us needs to say something.

  I actually got two words out of my mouth (“Have you—”) but then you started in with:

  “Okay. So. I’m former SEAL Team Six. You knew that, right?” I did. “And Laura was Force Recon—”

  “Lauren.”

  “Lauren, right.” You nodded. “So … what were you, Security Chief Dakota Prentiss?”

  At this point, I figured we were looking at one of two situations: either we were about to be co-workers, in which case it couldn’t hurt to know a little bit about each other (and I did already knew a fair amount about you), or … you wouldn’t be leaving this facility with any memories to spill or mouth with which to spill them. So, fuck it.

  “I’m Rangers,” I said. “Seventy-fifth.”

  Your eyes went wide. “Jesus! Those guys…”

  “Yeah, we got around.”

  “So, they’re not just pulling from one branch here. They’re looking at everybody.”

  “Five bucks says right now the Gnome’s writing, ‘Too inquisitive—problematic?’”

  But you were undeterred: “So, what do we all have in common?” You sounded genuine, really trying to puzzle things out.

  “You signed paperwork, right? For this gig?” I offered back.

  You chuckled. “More papers than I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  I wasn’t kidding. “Binding you. Locking you in for two decades to something they wouldn’t even let you see before you signed.”

  “Right…” Your wheels spinning.

  “What sorta person would do that kind of thing?”

  I could see you were answering the question in your head. In the red-soaked light. The sort of person who would do such a thing—someone with literally nothing to lose, with no nagging connections, with nowhere to go, perhaps due to circumstances beyond their control or perhaps, after combat, after family life, after whatever monster mask their own particular traumas were hiding behind, because they just didn’t feel a connection to anything the rest of society had to offer. The sort of person who wanders through this messy, headless quotidian life, after having dined at the table of order, of mission, of purpose, and now finds themselves like someone with a low-grade migraine, ever suffering but only themselves aware of it. Someone no longer of this world, as it were.

  Someone like you.

  Someone like me.

  Quill Marine Labs didn’t hire local. But they hired family.

  “I think I know the type,” you said.

  With cosmically on-the-nose timing, the lights restored and the elevator began its graceful descent again. I breathed an actual sigh of relief. I may have even said, “Fucking finally.” It’s been known to happen.

  “Well, okay!” you said. “So, I guess, if we’re still going down, that means I passed, right?”

  “You can’t pass or fail until you’ve been through the last part.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me what that last part is, are you?”

  “Nope. But I’ll tell you where it is.”

  “Where?”

  “The other end.”

  “The other end of what?”

  The elevator plied to our destination and the doors smoothly spread apart.

  “The other end of this,” I said as the opening doors revealed Hangar Eleven in all its dizzying immensity.

  * * *

  I WASN’T always Security Chief Dakota Prentiss. Once I was green Quill Marine Labs Trainee Ex-Ranger Dakota Prentiss. My first day on the job I was met in holding by an officious little military hausfrau named Magnus Russell. His was very much the antithesis of the patient, understanding, downright charming manner I was extending toward you. He had a tight, humorless mouth beneath a massive push-broom mustache that was never trimmed and always resembled a thatched hut, and he was forever waiting to pounce on even the slightest betrayal of anything beyond the most stoic military impassivity.

  That’s my fancy way of saying the dude was an uptight dick. I needed one question repeated during my polygraph and he actually took out a pen and pad of paper and wrote the transgression down. He fucking wrote it down. I half expected him to tear it off and hand it to me like a parking violation.

  Anyway. Right before the elevator doors opened, he turned to me and said, “I won’t hold it against you if you gasp.”

  Any other circumstance that would’ve been about the creepiest thing I’d ever heard in an elevator. When the elevator doors opened, I didn’t gasp—I don’t think there’s an exact word for the tight, surprised exhalation I let out, but at least I didn’t gasp.

  * * *

  THE GENERAL murmuring of the scientists and other personnel were a constant in Hangar Eleven, so when you murmured, “Holy shit” as we stepped out of the elevator, it was like you fit right in.

  It’s a lot. I commiserated (though I kept my mouth shut, because, old habits). After what seems like hours and hours, snaking our way down The Big Bug’s cramped and crimped upper digestive tract, through hallways and tiny rooms, to be suddenly deposited directly onto the floor of some wide open warehouse on steroids? It’s disorienting, to say the least. But, like all things, you get used to it. By the second or third shift, the juxtaposition becomes almost mundane. Claustrophobic, even.

  Don’t get me wrong. Hangar Eleven is huge. But it seems even more so the first time you see it. Like stepping out of a suitcase onto the surface of the moon.

  “How far does it…” you were asking, awed, hushed.

  “Equivalent to one city block. Welcome to Hangar Eleven.”

  Much like a city block, there were all sorts of little businesses and boutiques peppered throughout. In this case, rather than storefronts, there were booths and stations, regularly dotting the floor. Some of them were small, freestanding computer desks with one or two people huddled around them. Others were cordoned off, or shielded by freestanding sheds. It was kinda like a science fair in a high school gym, if the gym in question needed to be big enough to house a few jumbo jets and if half of the student body were automatic weapon–sporting ex-military.

  Unlike a high school gym—maybe more like a stu
dy hall, but only theoretically, not like any study hall I’ve ever actually seen—it was relatively quiet. Just that ever-present murmuring of problem solving, of serious investigation. Professionalism hard at work.

  “You’re slipping, Chief!”

  It was certainly quiet enough that we could hear Patty’s coarse voice and hard-soled boots while she was still what seemed like light years away. For security, she sure wasn’t concerned with remaining covert.

  “Morning, Patty.”

  “Forgot it was New Fish Day?”

  “Repressed, more like. What’s the clock?”

  “Four minutes. Gnome really put you through it, huh?”

  “We gotta get that guy laid.”

  “Ugh. Not it.”

  I turned to you. “This is Deputy Security Chief Patricia Garber. You call her Patty and you basically live or die by her opinion, got it?”

  To continue the high school metaphor, Patty looked about as unassuming as a suburban gym coach, coming in at around 5′5″ and always sporting a ponytail that bounced and bobbed with every move she made. But she was all muscle. More than that, she’d had more combat training than all but, like, a hundred people in this hemisphere. She was gonna make me proud one day.

  You held your hand out. “Hi, I’m M—”

  She stopped you with a sneer like a slap. “You’re nobody to me ’til you do the last thing, bucko.” Then she turned to me. “Wanna pass him off?”

  I shrugged, playing blasé. I might have dreaded the final test’s results, but at this point I felt like I had to know for myself. “Ehhh,” I said.

  Thankfully, that was enough for Patty. “Sure,” she agreed. “I mean, once you’ve done the elevator with somebody…” and she knit her fingers together to show the strength of my bond with my new trainee.

  “So, I’m just gonna assume,” you said, watching our little repartee with a clinical suspicion born of being sent on dangerous missions by inscrutable commanders, “the last thing, the last test is … inside that?”

  You were nodding toward the Tent.

  * * *

  WHAT IS it about the military—or the corporate privatized paramilitary in this case—that makes us love giving short, punchy names to things? I’m sure some of it is the precision, but mostly I think it’s just because we know everything sounds so much cooler in code.

  Let’s describe the room a little more.

  So, it’s big, we’ve covered that. And, while there are all sorts of stations scattered around the floor, the predominant feeling is still of empty space. It’s a cavernous, echo-y place. Sometimes, depending on what lights are on, a person can lose sight of the ceiling, and it feels as if you’re on the surface of some sterile desert forever shrouded in night (even though we’re actually some three hundred meters under the surface of the Earth, where worms would be flying higher than condors).

  The desert analogy isn’t accidental, either—we call the general area where all the stations live “The Bazaar,” for its resemblance to an open air market. Instead of hawking baubles, though, top scientific minds are conducting experiments on a dizzying array of subjects—biologists, physicists, quantum theorists. The sheer amount of concentrated genius gave the air a weirdly metallic smell (we also had strict hygiene policies in place, because that’s not always otherwise a priority for minds like those). There were even a few regular old marine biologists on staff, working on various low-level side projects as well as more specialized ones, and providing mooks like me with all sorts of useful information about, yup, the noble sea urchin, phytoplankton, et cetera.

  Even though it’s easy to forget once you’re in the middle of it, there are walls to Hangar Eleven. Coming out of the elevator, directly to your left, is a door and a whole lot of reinforced Plexi (in case something blows up, I guess) looking into Conference Hall, or the Hall, for short. This is where we hold our meetings and feel all important. It looks like a pretty conventional meeting room—table, chairs, a few monitors, a jug of water, an ever-increasing collection of dead pens put back in holders when they should have been thrown out—and inside this room is another door leading farther into a more private meeting area.

  Going past the Hall, down that wall is another elevator with a much shorter track than the tracheal one we came down. This elevator takes you up a few dozen yards to the area designated Bird’s Eye: the observation deck and control room overlooking the entire Hangar. Bird’s Eye looms above the proceedings, watching all while being far enough away to not really affect anything. I’ll let you make your own jokes about religion here.

  Beyond that elevator are the bathrooms (we’re only human), a small break room and kitchen (humans gotta snack), and then, all the way down, tucked into the corner, there’s one more door. This one leads into an area we call “The Slammer.” You don’t want to end up there.

  This is all just one part of Hangar Eleven.

  To the right of the main elevator, beyond the Bazaar and around a slight bend so it’s not directly in your line of sight when you first enter the Hangar, is an enormous wall of fairly opaque plastic sheeting.

  The Tent.

  * * *

  YOU WERE nodding toward the Tent.

  “No,” I said. “That’s the second to last test. The last is inside the thing inside the Tent.” I let that hang and turned back to Patty. “Four minutes?” She nodded, her ponytail flopping about like a half-dead inflatable eye-catcher outside a car dealership. I looked at you. “Start walking. I’m right behind you.”

  With a smart nod that might as well have been a salute, you headed off in that direction. Once you were out of earshot, I spoke low to Patty.

  “I didn’t get to stop by Lockup.”

  “You need a sidearm?”

  “Please.”

  She handed me a weapon. A lightweight FN Five-SeveN. I was able to slip it into my pocket and barely feel it.

  “Usual deal with Turndown Service?” Patty asked.

  I nodded. “Have ’em on hold but don’t give them the go unless I say.”

  “Go catch the Power-Up. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Amazing how the vibe can change so quickly, isn’t it? I was suddenly very tired. A low, ominous hum began to churn in my ears.

  I caught up with you easily, our shoes clicking resoundingly as we moved. The murmuring of the Bazaar suddenly felt very far away. I don’t know if you really understood it or not—my suspicion is you did—once we walked through that plastic sheeting, there was no going back.

  We entered the Tent.

  * * *

  I LET you walk in first, ahead of me. I didn’t care about seeing your face—they’d get that on the cameras and I could watch that later if I wanted to. I was more interested in your full-body response.

  After all, it’s not like you could miss it when you walked in.

  True story: the first time I saw it, this two-and-a-half-meter-tall dark, dull oval, cragged with dents and scrapes, my immediate thought was, “Holy shit, that’s the biggest walnut I’ve ever seen.”

  It was not, in fact, a walnut.

  * * *

  YOU DIDN’T stop walking right away. You slowed down … then eventually stood still.

  Your head seemed to rise independent of your neck, like a balloon given a little slack. But beyond that, there was no noticeable physical reaction. In fact, there was the conspicuous lack of reaction.

  Again I found myself awash with anxiety, hoping you passed your final test. I had been starting to feel confident, which brought with it all new worries. What if I’m misreading you? What if I’m wrong?

  This very well could be the last time you do this, Dakota.

  Would you shut the fuck up and concentrate, please?

  I’m just saying, he could be having a mental breakdown right now, he could be not moving because his mind has—

  “So I’m guessing,” you said, “… Object E.” Your voice was flat.

  “Keep walking,” I told you. I wanted to see if you
were still with me. “Straight at it.”

  You started walking again, musing quietly as you did so.

  “Now if that was a thing we were building…”

  “Head around to the side,” I instructed.

  Your flat, emotionless analysis continued, “… it wouldn’t look like it had been dragged across a canyon. It would look new.”

  We stopped, near a long, thin vertical scar in the broadside of the giant walnut.

  “Which means,” you went on, “we didn’t build it. We … found it.”

  I nodded. “Right here, in fact. Built this place around it. Eleven years ago, the night it crash-landed. Would’ve been Arthur Quill Naval base then. Didn’t privatize until two years later.”

  “And nobody … noticed it?”

  “A lot of people noticed it. Made a pretty loud noise when it hit ground.”

  “And everyone who noticed it…” You were reaching your hand out toward it. Toward the hull.

  “Works for us now. Or is living pretty good somewhere quiet.” In many cases, somewhere very, very quiet, I didn’t say. “You can touch it.”

  You did. It was rough to the touch, like the hide of an elephant. Similarly, if you pressed on it, you’d have found that it actually gave a little. It was lacking the structural rigidity of metal, yet it was unmistakably solid and formidable. Your brain would have conjured up all sorts of comparisons—(it’s like foam it’s like flesh it’s like wood it’s like lava)—but it’s like using an English letter to describe a character in Cyrillic or Mandarin, finding superficial similarities between two things uniquely foreign to each other. Uniquely alien.

  “Okay,” you muttered to yourself. “I’m passing the test, I’m passing the test, see how I’m passing the test—”

  “Hey.” I put my hand gently on your shoulder. “The crack down the side?”

  You looked. It was faint, a slim darkening of the already dark exterior.

  “It doesn’t look like it at first,” I went on, “but if you turn sideways you can fit in.”

  “And that’s what we’re going to do?”