The Cerberus Protocol (Hellstalkers Science Fiction Horror Series) Read online

  Rather than answer the question, Trent said, “I heard what happened at CERN. Tough break.”

  Memphis shrugged and didn’t say anything, because, really, what was there to say? The assignment had been a bitch, made more so by the fact that no one had the slightest idea what they would end up facing in there. As a result, his team had been wholly unprepared and had suffered for it as a result. As commanding officer, he was responsible for the end result. It didn’t matter if the intelligence was faulty or the weapons at their disposal had been practically useless against their foes. The Army expected him to adapt, survive, and make sure his men did the same.

  As everyone now knew, things hadn’t turned out that way and more than a few individuals had wanted to know how it had all happened. Frankly, Memphis was tired of explaining himself to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who thought they had a stake in the game.

  “You can only play the cards you’re dealt, right?” he said, glancing back down the hall toward the double doors.

  Any day now…

  If Memphis had forgotten how piercing Trent’s stare could be, he was swiftly reminded of the fact as the other man spent a long minute watching him while mulling over his response. After a moment, Trent said, “True, but that doesn’t do you much good if the deck is stacked against you from the very start.”

  Memphis frowned at that, wondering if the other man knew something about the encounter at CERN that he did not. His uncertainty made him uncomfortable, even a bit irritable.

  “Come on, Trent. Fess up. You didn’t come here to shoot the bull with a former subordinate, no matter how charming my personality may be.”

  Trent chuckled. “I came to make you an offer, actually.”

  “An offer? For what?”

  “Let’s just say I wanted to give you some options in case that,” he inclined his head toward the double doors at the other end of the hallway, “doesn’t go so well.”

  Memphis laughed uneasily. “Come on. There’s no way it’s not going to go in my favor. I know what I saw and I’m confident that both the onsite investigation and the results of the medical exams themselves will show that not only am I fit for duty, but that I did everything a team leader could have been expected to do, given the circumstances.”

  Trent shrugged, a wan smile on his face. “I hope you’re right, Stone. I really do. But since you’ve got five minutes with nothing better to do, how about hearing me out, even if just for old time’s sake?”

  Memphis could live with that. “All right,” he said, “tell me about my options.”

  Trent paused, and to Memphis it seemed like he was trying to figure out how much to say, which was strange given his own admission that he’d come here to try and convince Memphis to join him.

  Finally, he said, “The trouble with what’s going on here today is that the men behind those doors,” — he jerked his thumb in the direction of the hearing room — “haven’t seen what you have seen. They will be making decisions without the right information on which to base those decisions and will therefore ultimately come to the wrong conclusion. Where I come from, that’s known as stupidity. Trust me, those men do not have your best interests at heart. They have one purpose and one purpose only, protecting the image of the U.S. military.”

  Trent went on. “But you and I know the truth of the matter. And I’m here to tell you that there are others, people like you and me, who recognize the threat we are facing. Who are unwilling to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that none of this is happening.”

  He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to Memphis. On the front was a stylized image of three dogs’ heads chasing each other in an endless circle. Beneath the image were three words: Recusate — Repellite — Ruite.

  It had been a long time since he’d been forced to call upon his high school Latin, but Memphis was able to puzzle out the motto without too much difficulty.

  Defend — Destroy — Deny.

  Huh. Destroy what? he wondered. Deny what to whom?

  Frowning, Memphis flipped the card over, thinking he might find some answers there, but there was only a single word, “Cerberus” and a phone number.

  The name suddenly brought the logo on the front into focus for him. Cerberus had been the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of the Underworld in Greek mythology. It had been Cerberus’ job make certain that any soul that had crossed the River Styx did not try to return to the world of the living and subduing him had been the final, and most difficult, of Hercules’ twelve tasks.

  He looked up at Trent, a hundred questions flowing through his mind, but before he had a chance to ask any of them, an MP opened the door to the hearing room at the far end of the hall and called out to him.

  “They’re ready for you now, Captain.”

  “Coming,” Memphis replied. He turned back to Trent, his curiosity now superseded by his desire to hear what the panel had to say, and said, “Look, thanks for coming by, Major, uh, I mean, Darius. It was good seeing you and I appreciate the offer, seriously, but I think I’m going to be all right.”

  Trent smiled, but Memphis noted that the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Sure, Stone. Good talking to you, too.”

  When Memphis tried to hand back the card, Trent refused to take it, saying, “Hold on to that. Who knows, maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  With that Trent got up and walked quickly away. It was only after he’d left that Memphis wondered how he’d managed to gain access to the secure area in the first place.

  Chapter Seven

  With Trent’s comments still echoing in his head, Memphis entered the hearing room, glancing around as he did so. The tribunal, five senior officers in dress uniform sat behind a raised dais on the other side of the room, like judges in a courthouse. The hearing facilitator and reporter, a major in this case, stood to their right. He would be the one to call the meeting into order and to carry out the wishes of any of the tribunal members. In addition to the MP by the door, there were also two others standing on either side of the dais. The small viewing gallery was empty but for Memphis’s commanding officer, Colonel Warren.

  The man had been ignoring Memphis’s calls and requests for a time to speak with him for the last week and Memphis was not happy to see him at this point.

  Let’s get this thing over with, Memphis thought, then marched across the room, stopped the regulation two feet in front of the panel, and snapped to attention.

  “Captain Memphis Stone reporting as ordered,” he said in a crisp, clear voice. He held his parade-perfect salute until the colonel presiding over the panel, a man by the unflattering name of Dullweather, waved a hand at him in response and said, “At ease, Captain.”

  Memphis settled into parade rest, his legs shoulder-length apart and his hands crossed over each other behind his back.

  Outwardly he looked as cool and steady as a rock, but inwardly he was shaking.

  Relax, he told himself, trying to calm the trembling that threatened to take over his extremities. The evidence is on your side. You’ve got nothing to worry about.

  Except, of course, he did.

  A major, whose nametag read Barnhart, stepped forward and spoke out in a loud voice, clearly meant for the record.

  “This hearing is now in session, Colonel Jason Archer presiding.”

  Archer didn’t waste any time. As soon the major finished speaking, Archer turned to Memphis and said, “Captain, for the record, could you walk us through the sequence of events that occurred on December 5, 2011, please?”

  Memphis frowned. They’d been over and over this a thousand times, it seemed to him. Not only had the senior investigators questioned him thoroughly over the last week, but they had his statement both in writing and on digital video.

  Don’t piss ’em off, Memphis, he told himself. Just do as they ask, get this over with, and get back to your normal life again.

  He took them through the events of that day; what he had experienced in the pub after the first shockwa
ve hit, his recall and reassignment immediately thereafter, the descent with his team into the LHC facility at CERN. He described how strange, unearthly creatures ambushed them shortly after entering the building and how the attack had decimated his small unit. With emotion in his voice he talked of the death of his men and how he’d been forced to fight a running gun battle through the lower levels until he was able to corner and ultimately eliminate the creature that he felt was behind the assault.

  Archer waited for him to finish and said, “Please note for the record that Captain Stone’s rendition of events has changed little since the accident and that he still maintains that his unit was forced to face off against a species of “otherworldly creatures,” as he puts it, creatures that ultimately accounted for the deaths of his entire unit.”

  Memphis winced to hear it put in such terms and he could see one of the judges glaring at him with ill-disguised anger, most likely over the stance he’d taken on the issue.

  Yeah, well fuck you too, Memphis thought. They hadn’t been there, they hadn’t seen what he’d seen, and he’d be damned if he let some armchair warrior tell him what he had or had not encountered out in the field or in the depths of the CERN facility.

  Archer asked if there was anything he’d like to say to the panel before their findings were announced and became binding.

  Hell, yes, there were a thousand things he wanted to say, but Memphis held his tongue and said only that he was “looking forward to being given a clean bill of health and getting back to active duty.”

  That’s when he noticed that Archer wasn’t looking at him but rather was staring at the top of the dais behind which he sat. The same held true of the judges; each and every one of them were looking somewhere else, anywhere else, but at him.

  “Please read the panel’s findings, Major,” Colonel Archer said.

  Major Barnhart held the written report in front of him and read directly from it in a steady voice.

  “Following the incident at CERN on December 5, 2011, this panel was convened under the direction of Colonel Jason Archer, U.S. Army, to determine the readiness of Captain Memphis Stone, U.S. Army Rangers, for continued service in front-line combat situations.”

  “The subject underwent extensive physical, emotional, and psychological evaluations over the period of December 7th through December 13th. In addition, the physical record of the event in question as recorded through the personal tactical cameras worn by the men of the response unit, as well as the follow-up investigation that occurred onsite between December 7th and December 18th, were considered in developing these findings.”

  Get on with it, Memphis thought.

  Barnhart’s voice was a steady monotone as he continued. “The subject’s exemplary service to date, as well as his past efficiency ratings were also taken into account. The findings of this panel should in no way be taken as indicative to his service prior to this date.”

  Wait a minute…

  “Given the results of the examinations to date, particularly the psychological evaluations, supported as they were by the results of the onsite investigation, this panel has no choice but to finding Memphis Stone, Captain, U.S. Army, as unfit for combat-related duty for medical reasons.”

  Memphis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He stood there, a stunned expression on his face, as Barnhart went on.

  “Furthermore, it is the considered opinion of this panel that Captain Stone is suffering from several psychological conditions, including combat-related stress, paranoia, and possible optical and auditory hallucinations that make him a threat not only to himself but to his fellow soldiers as well.

  You have got to be shitting, me…

  “It is for this reason that this panel, under the authority invested in it under the United States Military code, has no choice but to recommend that Captain Stone be honorably discharged from service effective immediately.”

  Honorably discharged?

  Memphis lost it.

  “Have you all gone nuts?” he shouted, suddenly furious at the entire process. The days of being poked and prodded and interviewed over and over again about something that should have been blindingly obvious to the whole lot of them set his blood to boiling and he could no longer keep his opinions to himself.

  “Discharged? For what? Surviving? Is that how it is? I have the bad luck to survive an encounter with those…,” he stumbled for words, “those things, those demons or aliens or whatever the fuck they were, and now you’re going to discharge me for it?”

  The MPs stepped forward as Memphis’s anger rose, but a signal from Colonel Archer kept them from arresting Memphis. They took up positions in front of the platform between the judges and Memphis, just in case things turned violent.

  Memphis didn’t care; all he wanted was to be heard. Discharged? Were they out of their fucking minds?

  Colonel Archer waited for Memphis’s tirade to stop and then said, quite calmly, “Have you seen the tactical footage from the CERN incident, Captain?”

  Fighting to get a grip on his temper, Memphis shook his head. He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet without shouting in outrage.

  Archer frowned, then turned to Barhart. “If you would, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Barnhart moved over to a control panel set in the wall and flipped a few switches. A transparent screen descended from the ceiling to the left of the platform, in a position where everyone in the room could see it.

  When the screen settled into place, Archer instructed Barnhart to run the recording from location 847.

  Memphis’s eyes narrowed at the command. They had this planned from the start, he thought. Why?

  A moment later he found out.

  The screen came to life suddenly, showing an image made up of several viewpoints. He recognized it as the master command feed, the one that aggregated the various helmet cameras into a single feed allowing communications and command back at headquarters to provide real-time input into a combat situation. Right now it showed his men descending down the long staircase into the heart of the CERN complex.

  The viewpoint suddenly switched to a single, forward-looking image. Memphis’s name appeared in the lower left hand corner of the screen, indicating that what they were seeing was now a personal feed rather than the master tactical one. Memphis knew why, too; at that point, the doors above them had closed and they had been cut off from central command. The video they were about to see must have come directly from his helmet camera.

  Good! Now they’ll see for themselves just what he’d been forced to confront down there…

  Those in the room watched Memphis’s team enter the command center and take a short breather. Everything looked perfectly normal and Memphis found himself wondering how it all could have gone so wrong so quickly.

  When the lights went out in the command center, Memphis tensed. He found he was just as unnerved as he’d been the first time, despite knowing what was coming next. He was also glad that the audio component of the feed had failed, for he didn’t need to hear the wounded cries of his men or the screams of those vile creatures again. He was hearing them every night in his dreams and that was more than enough.

  There were brief flashes of images on the video as the men around him opened fire and the camera caught the light from the muzzle flashes, but there was no way to really tell what they were seeing. Memphis had no problem with that; he knew they’d get more than an eyeful in just a few more seconds.

  The camera image flared to life again and Memphis waited for those in the room to react with horror at what he had seen in that moment.

  Except no one did, because there was nothing there.

  The feed from his helmet cam showed the wounded soldier lying on the ground before him, just as he’d been during the actual event, but the creature that had been crouched over him was missing from the frame.

  “What the fuck?” Memphis said under his breath.

  He watched on the screen as he spun around, seeing
the blood on the walls and the bodies on the ground, but nowhere was there any sign of what they had faced that day.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked in disgust.

  Archer watched him carefully.

  “It’s the video feed from your helmet camera.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “That’s not your name in the lower corner of the screen?”

  Memphis waved his hand at the image in irritation. “Yes, it’s my name, but that,” he said, pointing at the screen, “isn’t showing what we saw!”

  “And what did you see, Captain?”

  “The creatures, damn it! The things that killed my men and almost killed me!”

  The colonel took a sheet of paper from the file in front of him and read aloud from it. “Roughly the size of a full grown tiger but with eight legs instead of four and a whip-like tail covered with razor-sharp spurs of bone which it uses to strike its prey. Is that the creature you’re talking about?”

  Memphis stared at him.

  He saw where this was going now. They were looking for a scapegoat. Someone to blame the deaths of eleven men on and every word he said put him further into their crosshairs. They would discharge him and then, when he was no longer in a position to defend himself, they would make up some story about how the leaking helium and other gases had caused his entire unit to hallucinate. The end result? A tragic accident with a single survivor who had been medically discharged as a result of the official inquiry. Everything all wrapped up nice and neat and tied together with a little bow.

  “I asked you a question, Captain. Is that the description of the creature you were referring to?”

  Fuck it. Fuck it all.

  “Yes, sir,” he said clearly. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And while we’re at it we might as well talk about the seven-foot sonofabitch I locked in the vault on level four…”

  If he was going to go down, at least he’d go down telling the truth.