Malcontent/Part 5

Part 5
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Mal hoisted herself up and drove another anchor into the cliff face. Securing her rope, she caught a glimpse of the drop below – 300 feet down into a mess of broken earth. The fall would kill her instantly if she was lucky. Just as likely, however, she’d break her back and be stuck waiting to die. Waiting for the vultures to come and eat her face. Or the mountain coyotes. Or the fire ants.

Or whatever ate the dead here at the top of the world.

She could have taken the dirt road that twisted up to the plateau but Mal reasoned it was monitored. Better to scale the mountain to reach the coordinates.

The locals didn’t call it Paramo anymore. To them, Paramo was an ancient city. No, the locals called this place La Extraccion. It was just a worksite up on the plateau. Those who’d been up there described a group of scientists, engineers, and security contractors. They said the staff would occasionally come down to to buy food and alcohol from the village. Flirt with the women. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that wasn’t happening everywhere where industry butted up against poverty.

The moon was fat and bright and for a few hours Mal made good progress without a lamp. That ended close to midnight when a thick fog rolled across the highlands and swallowed the night sky. She tried climbing in the dark but progress was slow; twice she got stuck and had to backtrack. Finally, she flicked on her helmet lamp. She felt like a target – anyone scanning the mountainside might see her – but at least she’d have a chance of reaching the top before dawn.

The light helped. She made good progress for another hour before she spotted a small outcropping suitable for a rest. Pulling herself inside, she took a sip from her camelbak and waited for her blistered hands to stop shaking.

Then she smelled it – like smoke. A kind of wet burn but with a floral scent.

She thought it was the fog but realized it came from a mess of flowering plants. They grew like vines between the rocks, covering most of the West side of the mountain. The flowers reminded her of orchids but ashen and wild. They seemed to move on their own, though that was certainly just her headlamp refracting in the fog.

She curled her hands into two fists and took a breath. Looking up – at least another hour of climbing. She’d have to move fast if she wanted to reach the top by dawn.

She was glad she had come alone. The others would never had made the climb...

After the mysterious call, Mal had gathered them into the kitchen and told them her intentions. They didn’t take it well.

There was debate. And yelling. Lunchmeat called Mal a stupid bitch and put his fist through the cheap drywall.

Duncan said she was walking into a trap. He might have been right. It didn’t matter. Mal had made up her mind. Yes, she trusted Yash. And yes, she believed his hacker-professor turned business partner had found something legit from the chips.

But in her gut she knew the answers weren’t going to be found on another abandoned island. Certainly not in Milwaukee.

And that call. That strange distorted voice. Genderless. Ageless.

If you’re looking for answers, that’s where you’ll find them.

In the end, they decided to split up. The others would travel to the United States and meet up with this Eddie Denim guy. Track the signal. Hunt the hunters.

Mal would head for Peru.

She paid Yash what she could. Bought passage with a group of drug runners, paying handsomely for a high caliber hunting rifle and a scope, and then – wisely – some climbing gear.

Eleven days and six bodies later, Mal made it to South America. 28 hours after that, she was climbing a plateau under the shadow of Mount Amancha.

She reached the top just before 5 a.m. The sun had not yet risen and the air felt electric. She took another drink and surveyed the plateau. Smaller than she had expected. Mostly broken flatlands and bushes. Unremarkable save for a series of unusual structures...

She had expected a work site, maybe a mine. What else could La Extraccion mean? But this was hardly either. A large geodesic dome made of reinforced steel and glass stood in the center. Illuminated from within, it gave the impression of a glowing honeycomb. Several larger hangars stretched away from it. Research trailers, construction equipment, and half a dozen satellite trucks dotted the rest of the plateau.

Emblazoned on the side of the dome was the word "Tythonic." It sounded familiar but Mal couldn’t quite place it. Was it Latin?

She stalked the periphery of the complex, doing two full tours before she was satisfied. Security was comprised of closed-circuit cameras, but they didn’t seem to be motion sensitive. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t on any maps – probably the biggest security threat was local kids siphoning gas from the jeeps.

She had found something, but what? What did this place have to do with Sanhok? With Not-a-Lawyer-Martin?

She had found something...but what?

She remained hidden, prone in a scrub. After an hour she heard a metallic swish and clang! Mal watched as an armed man, almost certainly security, exited a rear service door from one of the hangars. He looked around to ensure he was alone and lit a cigarette.

She moved on him fast, kicking out his knees before he took his second drag. She slammed his head with the butt of her rifle and dropped him in the dirt. He was unconscious for several seconds – then his fingers twitched and he reached for his bloody head and Mal didn’t think – she slammed the rifle down. Two blows. Quick. She heard the crunch of his skull and he went still.

She searched the body. Took his Beretta, a keycard, and a key ring. She started to drag the body away from the service door when, on a whim, she flipped through the key ring. She found a jeep remote and clicked it. Sure enough, a nearby chirp and flash of headlights.

She heaved the corpse into a fireman’s carry and tossed him in the trunk of his own vehicle. She started to close the trunk when she spotted something else inside. It looked almost like a backpack.

No, not exactly a backpack...

Mal hated hospitals. She hated the always-daytime whiteness. The circulated air, the claustrophobic feel. The way your feet squeaked on the tiles.

This place, whatever it was, felt like a hospital.

She moved through a cargo dock where her keycard opened a set of sliding doors into a long corridor that stretched toward the central dome. Glass windows lined the corridor revealing what appeared to be hydroponic grow houses. Rows and rows of those ashen grey orchids growing under industrial lights.

This couldn’t be it. She didn’t travel halfway across the world to find some strange Peruvian drug den. She came here for answers, not flowers.

The key card opened the door to one of the grow rooms. Too late, she found herself staring at a security camera in the rear corner of the room. Shit. She felt a cold panic and instinctively raised her weapon to shoot out the camera. Instead she waited, listening.

No alarm bells. No footsteps. They hadn’t noticed her yet. Shooting the cameras would only draw attention.

Pistol still in hand, she examined the plants. They looked ordinary enough, slightly different from those on the mountain; these flowers were larger and seemed to lack the tangle of vines and thorns.

She inhaled. The same scent of wet smoke.

A desktop computer glowed from the far end of the lab. She tapped the keyboard but found herself locked out. She quickly keyed ‘1234’ and ‘0000’ as passwords, but neither worked. She was growing agitated. Why hadn’t that voice with the distortion filter just told her what she was looking for?

She left the grow room and crept toward the central dome. It was almost 6 a.m. The sky outside had turned a pale blue. She didn’t know when Tythonic’s employees started work but she’d prefer not to be up to her asshole in gray flowers, when they did.

In the central dome, a large dirty-white tree grew in a glass habitat. Perfect, she thought. She had abandoned her allies and climbed a mountain to expose an international syndicate of botanists.

A tinny sound caught her attention. The unmistakeable sound of bass and synth. Dance music? It was coming from farther in the complex. She approached, not bothering to check for security cameras – by this point she’d probably been spotted by half a dozen of them.

Peering into another grow room she spotted what looked like a scientist wearing gloves and a respirator, lab coat hanging half open. He had a pair of pruning shears in hand, cutting flowers and placing them in a feed bucket.

The music came from an open laptop. The man seemed young. Short dreadlocks and thick glasses. If it weren’t for the lab coat, he could pass for a college burnout.

"Hey asshole," she said, pistol aimed at his head.

He turned, surprised but not afraid. Not until he noticed the gun.

"Can I help you?" he stammered out innocently, eyes on the gun.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Mal barked.

The scientist nervously looked around. "I’m- what do you mean? I work here."

Mal couldn’t tell if he ws playing dumb or actually dumb. She kept the weapon trained on his head.

"Put the shears down," she ordered. He did as instructed. "What’s your name?" she said.

"Lucas. Uh, Lucas Galcomb."

"What do you do here, Lucas? What are you doing with the flowers?"

Lucas looked at the bucket near his feet; then past Mal to the far side of the room.

"I’m feeding Ramirez," he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Keeping her gun trained on her target, Mal snuck a glance over her shoulder. She hadn’t noticed when she entered, but the back wall of the lab was made of glass. Behind it, another habitat. Like an exhibit in a zoo.

Mal approached cautiously. The reflection of the grow house lights made it hard to see through the glass. She pressed her face close, cupping her eyes…

The thing behind the glass seemed to stretch out across the floor of the habitat like a fleshy oil slick. All Mal saw at first was skin. Folds of fat and grey fur. Then she started making out the limbs. A massive arthritic hand. A bent knee. A veined and swollen bag of flesh the size of a watermelon.

Christ, what is that?