Overrun: Project Hideaway Read online

  “I’ve been studying and offering insights on the classified schematics of the technological design since I was eighteen. I’ve drawn up and examined scenarios for its implementation since I was twenty-one. I’ve thoroughly researched this technology and examined every conceivable facet of how it could affect the world.”

  Rone coughed twice and gave up the urge to stop it in her mouth.

  “And it will affect it….,” Korcheck said trailing off but not looking away. He waited pensively for her to finish.

  Rone wiped at what remained on her lips and slowly stood up.

  "It will work,” he said as they moved again down the corridor. “Some have always known this.”

  At the edge of the next intersection of hallways, Korcheck slowed. His eyes darted quickly about looking behind Rone to her left side. "Construction is completely feasible in all of our lifetimes."

  Another explosion rocked the dome. More lights became dark, and red emergency beams turned the smoke that filled the air a dark red.

  "Well, somebody's lifetime," he said turning and running again down the hall. Rone ignored the pain in her side and trotted as best she could after him. She watched him curiously while he searched frantically for something along the walls.

  “I’ve seen the true picture. This is it. What’s floating up there right now….it will save the world. By leaving it up there, we’re giving up the human race and just allowing it to die,” he said slowing his pace. “Most of those that originally started on the project are dead, so they can’t tell you like I am.”

  His eyes tore up and down the surface of the walls not quite finding what he was looking for.

  "They were so close,” Korcheck continued. “But it wouldn't have quite worked. Those that came after the original group, the ones I came to be a part of…with fresh perspectives, we were able to run where they left off and correct what needed to be fixed. Power problems were solved. Beam intensity was increased. The number of cannon units needed to create an entire area of atmosphere was cut by seven eighths.

  Do you know what that means?” he said turning to her.

  “No,” Rone answered him both surprised and confused at the same time.

  “It means that the local citizen displacement figure was reduced by more than seventy-five percent.”

  “What?” Rone looked at him sickly. "What are you saying? Are you saying….?"

  "I'm saying many, if not most of the people on the outside would not need to be removed. There would be plenty of room.”

  Rone felt her stomach beginning again to turn on itself.

  “There would be no need for what is going on now,” Korcheck did not stop this time while she vomited. He moved more slowly down the hall and shouted at her over his shoulder. “Destroying the cities on the outside. Eliminating those that live within. This has never been necessary. We’re euthanizing these people when there is no need. There has never been a need. And those that lead us have always known that.”

  They turned a corner, and she could barely hear him again.

  “When implemented, with the technological designs that are up there in the Hideaway right now, the people on the outside will not have to be moved hardly at all. Millions can be saved. People can be protected right away. Many may even be totally healed.

  “All of our research. All their creations. Everything has been sent up there. Almost everything needed to save this dying planet is floating around unused in space on a sleeping ship. Waiting for someone to bring it down.”

  Sirens screamed, and people again poured at them through the corridors. The flash of explosions danced about the monitors along the corridor walls. The muffled booming sounds of the blasts reverberated through the passages.

  “And if we leave it up there as it’s been decided, and the ship does come back…?” Korcheck still screamed at her over his shoulder despite the crowd moving around them. “It comes back and it’s not us that retrieved it? Then so be it. Yes. This is the point of this war. If we lose it, life in our country, for our people, will be changed forever. Many of our own will die. Yet, somewhere on Earth people will continue to exist because of it. Someday, somewhere, a new world will grow. It will be only us, that created and then hoarded these secrets, that will not live to see it through.

  “I’m willing to risk bringing that ship down. The ship, and only under our control, is really this planet’s last hope.”

  Rone tried to process everything this man had just said. She reflected on her own debates with people such as her colleague, Kobus. She had tried everything in her power to convince them of the same thing she was hearing from the individual she still ran behind.

  She also marveled at the fact that they’d both dedicated their careers, in Korcheck’s case his very life, to something as intense as the Hideaway Project, and up until now never had the opportunity to speak.

  Her research theories focused on the physical health and behavioral tendencies of the pilots. His was on the technology itself. Rone’s work, however, only involved the actions and outcomes of two people. Korcheck’s involved these same two also, and then the entire world.

  Rone thought it would have been fascinating to develop her opinions and mold her research alongside this man. How much more she might have accomplished if only she had been able to share her hope for the world with someone like Korcheck, a man whose stoic passion for this project closely rivaled if not surpassed her own.

  "This way," Korcheck grabbed her hard by the arm and jerked her along after him through the crowd. Rone winced at the slight pain of her joint being strained abruptly from its socket.

  It was too loud for Korcheck to talk anymore. Continuing to hold her by the arm, he pulled her through the maze of intersecting hallways.

  Descending another two levels of stairways, they were very close to the ground floor of Science Dome 15. How close, however, she could not tell.

  Not fighting the pain in her arm, Rone trailed after him, allowing what he had just said sink into her system. The force of his words in an instant had suddenly grabbed her and shook her awake. She was now fully aware why she followed him and hurried to match his pace.

  They turned another corner. Before Rone was entirely around it, Korcheck’s grip on her arm loosened. But, he did not quite let go.

  A man, taller and more than half the size of Korcheck’s average frame, slammed into him from the other side of the hall. His large arms smacked hard against the front of Korcheck’s neck and knocked him violently backwards. With a gasp of surprise and pain, Korcheck’s legs kicked up into the air, and his head bounced against the metal floor.

  Two women running directly behind Korcheck crashed down on top of him when he fell.

  Not realizing her own grip on the man she followed, Rone found herself crashing down across the heap of fallen bodies.

  The only person to escape the pile was the large man who initially caused the collision. Without looking back, he raced further down the passage while the rest struggled to untangle themselves and stand up.

  "Son of a bitch," Korcheck swore quietly and spit a bubble of blood from a gash his teeth caused across his lip onto the floor. He then rolled over on his side and pulled himself up. "C'mon."

  He lowered his arm and helped haul her from the pile.

  Blood also trickled from a small cut above Korcheck’s eye, and Rone could feel a bruise already forming around her own.

  Paper and pieces of electronic equipment and gear littered the floor. Korcheck moved hurriedly through the two women still trying to get up. In a daze, they slowly stood while Rone and Korcheck hurried away.

  Another two hundred meters down, the passage snaked towards the left. Korcheck pulled her roughly against a wall to the side next to two smoking elevator doors.

  Larger throngs of people now sprinted in a panic through the halls. Sparks falling from exploding lights dropped across and ignited paper and other discarded items from the fleeing crowd. Small fires were scattered about the metal floor.
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  "Security Alert! Repeat! Security Alert!" an electronic voice bellowed across the sea of the riotous throng. "Enemy personnel now entering the dome! Emergency evacuate! Execute! Repeat! Emergency evacuate! Execute! All Personnel!"

  "Oh my God," Rone said into her hands which were cupped across her mouth.

  Brilliant glowing filaments from the shattering lights lit the air as they fell in a flurry around her. A series of four explosions rocked the floor beneath their feet. A support beam crashed through the ceiling to their left and slammed into the ground. Its point pierced the solid metal of the floor. The sound of the metal tearing into more metal resembled a drawn out tortured scream.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been down here,” Korcheck said while pulling a security card from his pocket and jabbing it into a slot in the center of the wall. When he did, a panel opened slowly revealing a hidden elevator deep within the wall.

  Its cabin doors opened ominously.

  “For obvious reasons, the entrance is not always the easiest to find,” Korcheck said darting quickly inside the compartment and motioning her to follow.

  Rone hesitated for a second. She stood alone in the hallway in front of Korcheck waiting for her inside the elevator cabin. She turned her head and looked down the hallway. The heat from the small fires began to increase causing beads of sweat to slide from her forehead down her cheek.

  The flames danced higher in the corridors, and the crowds struggling to escape had finally thinned.

  Korcheck held his hand out to her.

  "Go!" he screamed over the roar of the chaos befalling the dome. "Go, if you have to! I have to go down! I can still wake up the ship from the lab!"

  "Can you really do it?!" she screamed at him. “What about the safeguards?!”

  "Alert! Alert! Soldiers within the compound!" the mechanized voice bellowed throughout the passages. "All personnel must evacuate. Repeat. All personnel must evacuate. Soldiers within the compound!"

  Rone saw him scream back to her but couldn’t hear what he said. She fought the urge to just lie down across the ground and throw her arms across her head.

  And then the sights and sounds of the turmoil around them suddenly softened as if someone had adjusted a volume switch. The smoke clogging the air cleared slightly, and the heat from the flames seemed to cool.

  Everything became calm around her. For an instant, Rone forgot why she was even there.

  She just stared at Korcheck’s outstretched hand and looked deeply into his pleading face.

  "Can you even do it alone?!" she screamed at him. She turned her head and watched some of the last remaining personnel run away down the hallway still trying to escape.

  In that moment, all the tension and stress driving both of them seemed to leave Korcheck's body. A gentle sedateness washed over him as he leaned against the back wall of the elevator.

  Rone felt her heart flood with an emotion she couldn’t describe at the sight of the man before her. A sad determination and look of acceptance had settled across his face, the vision of a fellow human being knowingly about to embrace his fate.

  The sight froze her there. Even with the flames reaching closer and dome troops now running through the corridors, she found it impossible to move.

  Several large fires ate up the corridor and scorched the metal on the ceilings. Rone still stood there. A streaking light whooshed behind her back. An explosion soon followed knocking Korcheck hard to the elevator floor.

  Dr. Katie Rone, head research scientist of the Hideaway Project crew, however continued to stand. Debris showered her catatonic figure while dome troops rushed behind her with their weapons drawn. They ran around and next to her, some losing their balance and toppling to the ground as the facility shook from additional outside weapons blasts.

  A couple of them knocked hard into her, but she still did not move.

  Korcheck's eyes pleaded for her to act. Their quiet petition and his outstretched hand finally convinced her body to comply. She took a step closer and allowed him to reach out and gently pull her in.

  Another explosion blasted outside the door shaking the compartment. The door whisked shut for the moment blocking everything out. And then the elevator dropped swiftly beneath their feet.

  "We have to get to the lab testing area," Korcheck said letting go of her arm. She retreated away from him and pressed her back against the far side of the descending cabin. Her eyes focused above the door on the digital readout tracking their rapid descent deep into the earth. "We can hook up to the ship down there. We made it possible a long time ago, probably only a few years after I got here, in the unlikely event the dome command centers were ever discovered or destroyed."

  Only the hum of the moving elevator filled the room.

  "In the unlikely event of today?" she asked slowly turning to face him.

  "I never considered a day like today to be unlikely," he said grimly. “It’s always been in the back of my head, and I’ve always planned for it.”

  A large blast rocked the speeding elevator knocking it against the side of the metal shaft. Korcheck flew through the air and crashed into Rone. Both scientists sprawled dazedly in a heap across the floor. The lights in the cabin blinked out.

  They remained there on the ground, together on top of each other, until the elevator finally came to a halt. For the moment, the explosions above seemed far off in the distance.

  The doors opened allowing light again into the confined space of the cabin. The staleness of the filtered underground air quickly followed.

  Rone found herself lying on Korcheck's chest and staring into his bloody face. His eyes were relaxed and serene while hers were wide open with apprehension and fright. A dimple on his left cheek twitched slightly. She could feel the heat of his breath fall gently across her face.

  "Let's go," he said solemnly while standing and pulling her to her feet. "If I'm right, we don't have much time."

  They left the elevator, and she followed him into the vast open area of the dome science research facility many miles beneath the surface of the sun-scarred earth.

  The shock of everything happening around her had started to take leave of her senses. Feeling was returning to her body, and her mind began to again produce rational, as far as she could tell, productive thought. She tried to put her fear away, or at least hold it off until when it could be justified.

  Korcheck ran ahead of her towards a series of gigantic clear cylindrical towers that stretched to the far reaches of the facility’s rock-lined ceiling. The mammoth bases of these structures surrounded a computer command area. The towers rose more than two stories into the mass emptiness of the underground cavern in which they now stepped. The structures lined the underground cavern by the thousands and stood enveloped in silence by the stale still air.

  The battle being waged on the dome above had not yet reached this far deep into the ground.

  "Water," Korcheck yelled over his shoulder noticing her gaping up at their size. His voice rang out in the loneliness of the mammoth open room.

  Korcheck ran toward the command center. Rone followed after him doing her best not to fall too far behind.

  “Lots and lots of water,” he said stepping onto the command center platform. “To insulate the lab against the surrounding rock. The sun pounds hard on the ground above, and the ground heats up pretty far deep.”

  “All this for….?” Rone started to question.

  "It’s also enough for a small army’s lifetime,” Korcheck interrupted her. “In case the scientific team, my scientific team, ever needed to hole up down here. A contingency in case of attack. Before the Hideaway project. When the beam cannon prototypes were kept down here. All underground. Before the dome was built and anyone really knew we were here."

  A deep rumble disturbed the quiet tranquility of the room.

  Rocks and other debris began to drop into the elevator shaft from overhead and slam down across the metallic cabin at its bottom. Rubble spilled into the undergro
und cavern. Whole sides of the cavern shook around them, and a fog of dust spewed into the room.

  Korcheck moved quickly along the platform punching hard at keyboards and switches along its control panels. The command center consoles breathed to life and came online after he ran past. He leapt three steps to another platform level in front of the tallest computer tower and slammed the main activation switch with the base of his arm. Lights along the entire command center main platform flared instantly on.

  Another explosion rocked the air above. The sound this time was much closer making the underground hideaway no longer seem as faraway and safe.

  Heavier pieces of metal and some larger beams slammed down across the top of the elevator causing its side walls to crumple and cave in. Rock and sand spit forward into the cavern followed quickly by another deafening crash.

  The elevator rocked to its side and toppled from the shaft into the facility. Fire, metal, and dirt rained into the lab from the elevator shaft and the dome being destroyed above.

  "We have got to move!" Korcheck scrambled along the terminal. Holovid and computer screens began to light up all along the vast command center.

  "That last terminal…," Korcheck yelled pointing. "Fire it up. Oh my God, you have got to hurry!"

  The room shook from the explosions overhead, and the lights dimmed throughout the cavern. Sparks rained down from some of the lights. Entire sections of the overhead lighting structures shook loose and crashed down in between and on top of the water towers.

  Pieces of metal dropped from the steel girders holding back the rock ceiling above. Support braces began to groan, bend and then buckle in.

  Falling rock and metal rained down. Several large sections of the ceiling smashed into the water towers shattering their hulls and releasing their contents into the cavern.

  "Son of a bitch!" Korcheck screamed.

  In less than a heartbeat, the room filled with water and became a sea. Its surface lapped up to their ankles. More metal crashed down around them crushing and smashing additional towers. The massive amounts of water they contained gushed out like severed arteries and mixed force with the other emptying towers already pummeling the room.