The tunnel continued underground for at least two hundred ters, going deeper and deeper. It was spacious enough for two trucks to pass through and at least five ters high. The structure was ticulously constructed to support the weight of the rock above.
Jackson and his n moved cautiously down the tunnel, guns already pointed and safety-leaping, ready to kill anything in front of them.
Once again, no traps were triggered. The alarm did not even go off. The troops reached the parking lot at the end of the tunnel unscathed, through which the real entrance to the underground structure opened. The lights were on and the caras were active, but for so reason there was no one waiting for them.
For Jackson this was clearly a trap. And he didn't like him. "Dan, Dorian, have you morized the map of the facility?"
"Yes, sir" the two of them replied in unison.
"Well, then we split into three teams. Mine will go to the security departnt, Dan's to the testing departnt, Dorian's to the research departnt. Capture any human you find; if anyone resists, shoot them unless it's Henry Wu. We need him alive and unhard"
Dan and Dorian nodded and took ten n each. The troop broke down the door and quickly split up, each going to the designated area.
Jackson continued on to the security departnt. He was no more than a hundred ters from the entrance, but he couldn't move too carelessly. Again there was no resistance. As soon as he was in front of the door to the security departnt, he kicked it in and he and his team walked in with their guns up, ready to fire.
The scene they faced was unexpected.
The light was off, but the interior was easily visible. It was a small circular room with several monitors on which the images taken by the surveillance caras could be seen, but on the central monitor the words: 'SECURITY SYSTEM - DISABLED' flashed in large letters. The rest of the room was empty except for three things: an overturned chair, a human figure sitting opposite the door, and a corpse.
Jackson knew for certain that the person killed was dead: the hole in his chest was clearly visible even in the semi-darkness of the room. He was a man of about forty wearing a blue shirt and a pair of horrible glasses; his curly brown hair was slightly disheveled and sared with blood, and so was his shaved beard. His dark eyes were turned in unnatural positions.
Judging from the corpse, the man must not have been dead for more than an hour.
Jackson and the other soldiers pointed their guns on the other person. "We know that you are alive. Stand up or we shoot!"
"Keep calm. I surrender" was the simple comnt. The man got up and dropped a gun to the ground, then raised his hands showing that he was unard.
Jackson, however, was not so naive. "Co when we can see you. Imdiately!"
The man did not have it repeated twice and went under the light emanating from the monitors. Jackson recognized him imdiately. His hair had grown out, but that face was unmistakable. "It's you" he whispered.
The man nodded. "Dr. Henry Wu, geneticist and experintal scientist, and the main culprit in the current dinosaur revolt. At your service, sir"
The soldiers jumped on him imdiately. They sat him down on his knees and tied his hands behind his back, after which they searched him from top to bottom. Wu offered no resistance. After realizing that he had no hidden weapons, they finally stopped harassing him.
"Who is the corpse?" Jackson asked. "Did you kill him?"
"It's Kash D. Langford, the security officer. A real piece of shit, a troublemaker and a coward. I never appreciate him, no one here could stand him, but he could do his job with secrecy and he was dirty enough to keep silent with what we do here, so for the Reiden he was the ideal man" Wu replied. "And yes, I killed him. I didn't want to do it. When I saw you arrive..."
"Did you know we were coming?"
"Yes. Over the years I have taken steps to create my own information network. I placed so bugs in the cliff overlooking the bay. I knew imdiately you were on your way. As soon as I found out, I ran to Kash. He too had noticed you with the caras and was about to trigger the security systems. I threatened him and forced him to shut down all security systems, and prevented him from alerting the guards" Wu gritted his teeth. "I didn't want to kill him. Knowing him, he should have been cowardly enough to obey my orders, and we would have waited for your arrival together. But in a mont of my distraction, he attacked . I reacted instinctively... and this was the result"
Jackson peered closely at Wu. He wasn't lying. The trauma he felt after killing a man for the first ti couldn't be simulated. "Where are the guards?"
"In the canteen. They have not been alerted and are still unard. The armory is four doors to the right. You can take control of the entire laboratory without a single bloodshed"
"Charlie, take three n and watch the armory" Jackson ordered. "If soone tries to take a weapon, shoot him"
"Yes, sir" replied the soldier, imdiately running to carry out the order.
As for the guards, Jackson was not worried: the cafeteria, according to the plan they owned, was a few ters from the research laboratory, where Dorian was heading. And in fact after a few minutes from his radio the voice of the tough soldier erged: "Sir, we have captured a large number of prisoners. They claim to be guards"
"Freeze them and then explore this place from top to bottom. I want you to find everyone who works here" Jackson ordered. Dorian did not even answer: he turned off the radio directly. Jackson knew that was his way of saying 'I execute it now'.
Jackson looked back at Wu. "Why open the way for us?"
"I had anticipated that you would be coming ever since I released the Subject Zero into nature. I wanted to get arrested, but I didn't want a bloodshed" Wu replied. "The world needs a culprit, after all, and I don't intend to hide. I have many things to confess..."
"This place had been out of communication for weeks. Why?"
"The Reiden has imposed that no one in here could have contact with the outside, but I have always been one who bypasses the rules. I have a smartphone with with which I keep myself inford about what is happening in the rest of the world. As soon as I learned that the animal revolt had started, I took imdiate action to ensure that no one in here understood what had happened and then tried to destroy the evidence. So I inserted a computer virus to make Kash believe that Reiden kept sending the usual paperwork, and at the sa ti blocked communications to prevent Reiden from ordering Kash to delete all evidence. I was not afraid that they would co here in person, not with the dangerous situation that the continent is in: any ship would have been inexorably shot down by the dinosaurs"
Jackson inspired deeply. The doctor had thought of everything, it seed. He really wanted to get caught. "Why do you want to turn yourself in?"
"People will need a culprit. Also, I wanted the Reiden secrets to go public. And finally, I wanted to have the opportunity to speak to the world and be heard this ti"
Jackson didn't understand. He couldn't keep up with the doctor's thought. Eventually he chose to point to the main problem: "What's the cure, Wu?"
The scientist shook his head. "There isn't one"
It was a mont: Jackson pulled out his gun and pointed it at the man's head. "Bullshit! Do you want to believe that you have created an ecological disaster without the possibility of putting things right?"
"Ecological disaster?" Henry Wu seed to shiver. "Mine is a masterwork! A great masterwork of justice! I gave the animals the opportunity to finally oppose to that tyrant that is humanity! And you call it a disaster? Your ignorance is pure. But basically it doesn't surprise ... I expected that this would be the common thought... humanity is made up of ignorant people, who cannot see the complete picture but only the small part that interests them"
"Son of a bitch, this is not about ideology! There are people in danger... my brother is still in Cartago! How do you think I sleep at night knowing him there, even if there is a peace treaty?" Jackson snarled, then pressed the barrel of the gun to Wu's forehead. "I ask you again: what is the cure?"
But the doctor shook his head: "You can threaten all you want, I didn't lie to you. There is no cure and it is not possible to create one. You cannot create an antidote to sothing that modifies the whole body and changes constantly. It's like trying to stop a highly contagious retrovirus: the instant you create a cure, the virus has already mutated and that cure is inefficient". Wu pointed to the door: "You can also check if you want. All my research is preserved within this place. Pick them up and bring them to all scientists around the world. They will tell you the sa thing. There is no cure. This is the new world, and now we have to live in it; hoping to go back is just a ridiculous fantasy"
Jackson looked the doctor straight in the eye. His hand trembled. His father had told him that it was not possible to create a cure for the Mother Cell, but until the last he had hoped to be able to put things right. Instead, even the last hope was gone. If even the creator of the Mother Cell said it was impossible, then the world could not really be fixed.
"Why?" he finally asked. That question ca out of his mouth spontaneously. Why? Why do that? He couldn't understand.
Wu's eyes seed to flare up. "To save the world. It was what I always wanted. Do you have any idea how many people die from pollution every year? How many suffer from hunger due to global warming? The countdown to trigger a mass extinction is getting faster and faster, yet nobody cares. I have spoken several tis in front of the dia, governnts, the NMWA itself, and many others have done so before and after . No one has ever listened to . The rich and powerful n don't care about protecting the environnt and ordinary people are too weak to actually do anything. So I decided to create sothing that everyone would be forced to listen to. My best creation, the Subject Zero. The perfect being"
Jackson's hands were shaking. "Subject Zero?"
"That spinosaurus, Sobek. He's the Subject Zero" Wu explained. "After creating the Mother Cell, I also had to find a suitable host for it. It wasn't enough to infect a random animal, no... it was needed a host that could completely rge with the Mother Cell and could control it. After many attempts, I succeeded. I found the perfect match in the spinosaurus species. So I injected the Mother Cell into an egg and then put the egg in a state of stasis. It took four years for the Mother Cell to fully fuse with the unborn child, but it was worth the wait... as soon as the process was completed, I secretly took the egg away and stealthily inserted it into a brood of spinosaurs that they had nested not far from here, knowing they would raise it as their child. Then I returned and pretended that the experint had failed. Nobody noticed what I did. The people who work here are just a support for ; apart from following the instructions they can't do anything else. They wouldn't recognize a success from a total failure"
Jackson, like the other soldiers, was speechless. So was that how it started? Had the entire natural order been upset because a mad scientist wanted to stop global warming?
"The Subject Zero was an absolute success" Wu continued. "Everything went exactly as Dr. Robert Oz predicted. The spinosaurus was born, grew up, and then began to adapt and evolve to beco the supre superpredator. He got stronger, bigger, smarter… and eventually he realized who his real enemy was. So he put together an army, he brought together all the species on the planet to curb the madness of the human species. Everything went according to plan. You can even kill if you want, but it won't change anything. The new era has begun. The world is already changing… and whether you like it or not, it will change again and again. Because now humanity will no longer be alone in making decisions"
Kill him? It might have been a good idea. Jackson seriously wanted to shoot the doctor. It wasn't going to be that hard. Just put a little more pressure on the trigger, and the shot would go straight to Wu's brain.
But he had to restrain himself. Wu was too important. He needed his confession to ruin Reiden once and for all. Also, Jocelyne herself had asked him to bring him back alive. He couldn't disappoint her. With extre reluctance, she lowered the gun.
"Carefully examine the entire building. I want every paperwork, every data, every single piece of information. Go through archives, research and computers. Whatever secret is contained in this place, we must take it away" he ordered the troop. The rest of the soldiers nodded and through the radio both Dan and Dorian agreed.
Jackson grabbed Wu by the shoulder and dragged him out of the room. The doctor didn't object, but this almost made Jackson more angry: he would have liked so much for the scientist to wriggle a little to be able to have the excuse of throwing a few punches at him. Only his sense of duty was keeping him from slaughtering him on the spot.
When he arrived at the entrance, the other soldiers had already taken care of dragging the other people who worked in the structure there. There were several guards and several n dressed in white shirts, probably technicians. None of them seed to have any idea what was going on and Jackson gave them no explanation. He dropped the doctor there and then went to inspect the various rooms.
Wu hadn't lied: the searches were all intact. The entire building was filled with hard evidence that charged Raiding with all its shady deals and sinister future plans. There were also so live experints, which the soldiers promptly took down. It took four hours to uncover every secret of the place.
When they were done they took all the prisoners and all the evidence collected on the ship. Then they set sail to return to the human world.
Jackson expected so pterosaurs to co and make sure they were indeed leaving, or at least say goodbye, but no one showed up.
Unbeknownst to them, a group of dimorphodons protected by [Ambush] had kept an eye on them from above. They didn't know what they had done inside the underground structure, but it didn't matter: Sobek, after all, already knew their intentions thanks to Rambo, so he had no problem trusting them. Now he just had to wait to see how the situation would evolve.
***********
Jocelyne was reading a book in her hotel room when Chloe knocked on her door. "What happens?" she asked.
"Miss Jersey... they got him. They're coming back now" Chloe told her.
"And... the cure?"
Chloe looked so dark that she looked like a family mber had died. "There is no cure. Dr. Wu says we can't create one"
Jocelyne sighed. Like Jackson, she too had hoped to the last to be able to return to normal, but she had been disillusioned. "I understand. Then I'd say it's ti to let the world know what we know"
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