Somewhat Henderson
Chapter 1: The Lazarus Incident
Published on October 31st, 2034, Tuesday, 12:00. Posted by: Simon Henderson
My name is Hewt. I am a soldier in the Search and Rescue squad of an undisclosed private military company. Our mission was to rescue a biological weapon codenamed Lazarus. Our enemy developed it in a lab up on a snowy mountain in the Himalayas. But what was supposed to be a simple extraction operation had quickly turned into a fever dream.
We waited for the right moment and sent in everything we had. All of my squadmates fell. They suffered heavy casualties too. But it would have been all worth it if it meant getting our hands on Lazarus. The alarms of the factory blared as I chased after the special unit hoisting Lazarus on his shoulder. Our intel called it a biological weapon, but seeing it in motion was sickening: a grown, naked man, completely devoid of hair or identifying features, bouncing limply against the agent's armor. A manufactured organism. I was not going to let it go, despite being shot in my right abdomen. It wasn't just the adrenaline that kept me going. If we didn't extract Lazarus, then I may as well be dead anyway.
These corridors were long and littered with corpses of soldiers from both sides. Through the shattered observation windows lining the walls, I could see row after row of massive incubation vats. Inside, a dozen more Lazarus specimens floated in stagnant fluid, or what was left of them. The biolab employees had systematically purged the system before fleeing, reducing the tanks to a graveyard of shattered glass and ruined tissue. They had tried to keep the secret from us, but our underfunded intel department pulled off a miracle. This one asset, bouncing on the agent's shoulder ahead of me, was the only viable lead left. Lazarus gave us a shot at winning this losing war. But the corridors were full of turns and doors. That special agent could navigate them better than I could.
And then there were the lenses. Sleek, matte-black camera gimbals were mounted to ceiling tracks every ten meters. They didn't just sit there like standard security rigs; they tracked my movement with a fluid, terrifying precision. Every time I ducked past a shattered window or stumbled over a corpse, I could hear the high-pitched whir-click of an aperture automatically adjusting to the dim, red emergency lighting, keeping me perfectly in dead center. I figured the base commanders were watching my demise in real-time from some secure bunker down below.
But despite actively bleeding, I clipped him during a melee scuffle. I closed the gap and severed his femoral artery with my bayonet. I knew he got it worse than I did. He wouldn't last long without immediate medical assistance. I just had to follow the blood trail.
Bang.
That last gunshot echoed through the hollowed out corridors and rattled my brain. It wasn't the volume that got to me. It was what it meant.
When I caught up to the soldier, he was already dead. Bled out from his leg. That last gunshot? It wasn't for him. He saved that bullet for Lazarus. It was a .45 caliber administered to the cranium. In other words, his brain was irreversibly destroyed. If they couldn't have Lazarus, they weren't gonna let us have it either.
I sat down, my back gliding against the wall as the adrenaline crashed. Lucky for me, I'm a medic. I had gauze and morphine, he didn't. But I only had enough left for one more injury.
May as well.
I injected my thigh and packed the bullet wound with hemostatic gauze. Then I sealed it with a generous amount of trauma dressing. It was agonizing, but by the time morphine was going to kick in, I would have likely passed out and died.
The ceiling gimbal directly above me whirred, its glass eye tilting downward to lock onto my face as I slumped against the concrete. It felt like being under a spotlight.
My radio buzzed. "Hewt, come in. What's your status? Did you secure Lazarus?"
"Hewt coming in. The threat has been eliminated. But they took Lazarus down with them. Mission failed."
There was a pause. The kind of pause you anticipate when you prepare for the very plausible worst-case scenario, but one that you still hoped wouldn't happen.
"Understood. We're sending the helicopter in. Prepare for extraction."
"Just leave me, commander. It's all over. Let me make my last stand here, on the mountain."
"Hewt, your orders are to prepare for extraction. Heli arriving in 2 minutes. Bring Lazarus with you. An autopsy is better than nothing."
And here I was. Waiting for extraction with my three inanimate companions. Lazarus, though he never woke up. The soldier who took him from it. And peculiarly, a camera.
And here I was. Waiting for extraction with my three inanimate companions. Lazarus, though he never woke up. The soldier who took him from it. And peculiarly, a camera.
There was a camera attached to that soldier's forehead. He was lying on his back, but his head was tilted in such a way that the camera was staring directly at me, perpendicularly to the wall I was leaning against. Between the lens on his skull and the mechanical eye on the ceiling track, I was caught in a perfect crossfire of perspectives. It looked like a circular disc covering up a void. I don't know who or what was behind that lens. An audience of one, thousands, or no one at all?
I don't know what compelled me at that moment. Maybe I needed an audience, or a friend. Maybe it was the nausea of the adrenaline crash and the pain I had just gone through. I couldn't take my eyes off the camera. It was hypnotizing. Its gaze commanded the words out of my mouth.
"You… whoever is watching." I wiped the sweat off my forehead. "It's quiet now. And peaceful. Almost like the still midnight air of an isolated village. Except not really. The fireflies and the crickets don't even let the dead rest. But you know what doesn't have crickets and fireflies? The Himalayas. The snowy high altitude of the Himalayas are uninhabitable by them. So ever since I grew up, it was constant noise. The military academy during the day, the crickets during the night. They just wouldn't let me rest. But tonight, this brief little moment of time. After we were deployed on the ridge, and before the first gun was fired. It was pristine. Even the wind decided to be still tonight. At that moment, I swore that I would savor that silence. And yet, here it is, happening again. If it wasn't for the whirring of the machines and the flickering of the fluorescent lights." I chuckled, coughing out a small drop of blood. "This place feels exactly like home. And YOU!"
That's when I pointed accusingly at the camera, staring menacingly into the void, "you're not welcome here." I grabbed Lazarus by the head—or what was left of it—and showed it to the void. "This is what you savages do. You demons. You extinguish hope. Like a wind that stops howling."
I think by that point, I had realized I wasn't making any sense. I threw the head to the side and took a deep breath. But I wasn't quite finished. "You cannot extinguish hope. Not fully. Not while the crickets still chirp."
I could already hear the helicopter approaching. It was about 45 seconds before it was ready to extract me. I mustered up the strength to get up, holstered my rifle on my back, hoisted Lazarus onto my right shoulder while applying pressure to my right abdomen with my left hand. I took us outside through the emergency door, indicated by the humming and the red-glowing EXIT sign. As I crossed the threshold, the ceiling camera slid smoothly along its track, trailing behind me until the heavy steel door slammed shut, cutting off its view. Just follow the noise, I mantra'd to myself. Just follow the noise.
The helicopter was descending in front of me. The man in the cabin threw down a rope with a clip on the end. I set down Lazarus gently into the snow and attached myself to the special holster on my combat suit. I put on the headphones to isolate myself from the propeller's noise and turned on the radio so I could communicate hands-free. Then I picked up Lazarus again, holding him in my arms.
"Commander, Hewt coming in. I am ready for extraction."
"Copy that. My guys will proceed with the extraction. We are bringing you home, soldier."
I felt immense relief, hearing those words. Or maybe the morphine had finally started to kick in. Regardless, despite his cold and utilitarian tone and the distance, the commander cared about me. Hell, I didn't even know what his name was. But one thing I knew for sure — we weren't in it for the money. Not when the fate of our nation was at stake.
"By the way, commander," I shouted into the headset microphone. It filtered out the noise from the propeller as best as it could, but you still had to yell quite loudly, " that agent had a camera strapped to his forehead. Do you know anything about that?"
"Yes. Our enemy uses a live feed system. It broadcasts directly to their own commanding officers so they can coordinate their soldiers better. Why, you want this toy too? It's a technical luxury we can't afford, unfortunately. Our budget's really tight this year."
"No, sir. Just curious, that's all." The commander was trying to find some humor in the situation, but behind that jest was pain. Ultimately, Lazarus' death meant that the linchpin of our entire operation was now gone. He was probably feeling it more than I was.
So that settled it right there and then — I was monologuing to some bureaucrat who probably thought I was delirious. And maybe I was. Forget it then.
The sun was finally beginning to rise, and I rose alongside it as the rope reeled me up the helicopter cabin. The men in the cabin were yelling something at me, but the propeller was too loud for me to hear anything.
I think they were trying to warn me. Because suddenly, the helicopter was hit by a stealth rocket. It still baffles me that I couldn't see it coming. Could they? Don't know. Who can even afford to just casually fire a precise stealth rocket like it's a tax write-off? But it sent the helicopter spinning and crashing down, spinning me violently as I dangled helplessly on the rope. I lost my grip on Lazarus pretty quickly, sending the corpse flying down the mountain. So forget the autopsy. Eventually, the rope gave in to the momentum and ripped, sending me flying far off the mountain entirely. I was descending rapidly down the ridge, with the biolab vanishing beyond the horizon of the mountain peak. The helicopter went the other way, crashing into the mountain and exploding. Soon after, I instinctively pulled the cord on my backpack to deploy the parachute — a motion I had instinctively performed after many years of air deployments, and my descent slowed down to a slow glide down the Himalayan mountain.
This all happened to quickly; much quicker than I can transcribe in text. I thought I was already dead. Can you imagine surviving all that? I never would have, in a million years. Yet here I am, typing all of this out.
The Himalayan were winds too strong for me to meaningfully affect the trajectory of my descent. So I surrendered to the current and let the Himalayan winds carry me gently down the mountain. I didn't interfere, didn't try to change the course of action. If God wanted me dead — he had a thousand chances already.
It was strange, being near the peak of the world, submerged in an eternal snowstorm. We didn't pack too many layers of winter fabric because we knew we were only going to be outdoors briefly, as the biolab had a tightly controlled environment that was vital to sustaining synthetic organic life. And the auto heat regulated suits were completely out of the equation — financially. But despite being underequipped for this weather, I felt warm. That warmness only increased as I slowly descended down the mountain.
The morphine I administered earlier was in full-swing at that point. This warmth was synthetic, too. Soon, the mind-breaking pain of my injury had turned into a warm itch. I kept falling and falling and falling, basking in the warmth all around me. The whole conundrum felt like a dream. Like I was sinking into a soft, comfortable bed of clouds. But I knew better than that: that was just the morphine talking. But the visuals didn't help either. It was serene. And consolingly warm. I wish that feeling could last forever.
What I saw as I descended through the cold peak down the foggy valley was quite peculiar. Unlike anything I'd ever seen. The entire way down was barricaded by metal barbs. They had colonized the mountain with barbed wire. That didn't make any sense to me. But what surprised me more was what I heard when I flew dangerously close to the barbed wire. They emanated a buzz.
The barbed wires on the mountain had an electric current running through them.
So they didn't just claim the mountain. They had enough juice to power the entire thing. And the wires stretched for hundreds of meters. There was no gap I could squeeze through.
That's when it hit me. The biolab was probably a distraction. The valley was hiding something. Potentially even more potent than Lazarus. Why else would there be so much wire everywhere? They didn't want to risk a squadron landing anywhere near it.
But there was nothing I could do about that now, except to finish my descent.
Minutes passed. How many exactly, I'm not sure. It's possible I napped through some of them, nodding in and out of consciousness. As I sank lower through this dream, the fog started to clear, and I finally began to see what the fence was trying to protect me from. It looked like some abandoned military factory. There were Cold War-era industrial buildings, rotting to the elements.
But it couldn't have been abandoned if there's electricity.
So if it wasn't abandoned, and it looked like a secret military base, then surely I would be shot on sight. But what other option did I have?
I spotted a small crack in the fence that I could slide through. I adjusted my parachute in such a way that I slipped through the crack. My parachute got tangled on the barbs so I slipped out of the backback, dropping gently onto the gravel.
Finally, I was back on the ground. A shame, really — having to carry my own weight again. In front of me was a tall metal fence gate, with the fence spanning a massive perimeter, fading into the fog. I thought about climbing it, but the electric current and the barbed wire on top would have made that problematic. And there was nothing behind me but more barbed wire.
Barbed wire. Barbed wire. Barbed wire everywhere. Bzzzzzzzz, whirring. Who needs this much fucking barbed wire?
Lucky for me, there was a lever on the right side of the fence gate. I pulled it down and the gate slowly opened, doors unraveling themselves away from me.
Before I went deeper, my right hand went to my back to unhoist my rifle — which I lost during the explosion. So I went for my left pectoral, where my sidearm is usually contained. And to my surprise, nothing was there. So the rope didn't rip when the helicopter went down — the holster it was attached to did. Shit, I didn't even feel it. So no sidearm for me either. But still, it was hard to not feel grateful. I survived all that, after all.
The only other weapon I had was a knife. Which I had attached to my rifle in an improvised manner. It was gone with the rifle.
So here I was. Completely unarmed, as the gate finished opening. Nowhere to go but forth.
I stepped into the encampment. There was no one around. Just abandoned ancient buildings. Squat grey concrete blocks. Some grey concrete domes, too. And grey concrete silos. All of them looked very Soviet in their utilitarianism. The grey block next to me had a metal gate. There was a level next to it; same as the one on the outer gate. I approached it and pulled it. If it meant getting captured on the spot — then so be it. At least they'd patch me up properly. At this point, I knew my risk assessment was going to be murky moving forward. Medical-grade opium tends to have that effect.
The gate slid upwards. And to my surprise, nobody was there to greet me. No personnel, no guards, not even a hint of a camera. They either left it unguarded because there's nothing worth protecting here, or they thought that the Lazarus lab on the peak would serve as a big enough distraction. I wasn't sure if I was walking into a big load of nothing, or into a conspiracy greater than Project Lazarus could ever hope to be. It was both hopeful and terrifying.
The gate led to a garage. It was empty, except for a couple of shelves, which were also empty. But there was a window above where one of the shelves sat. Light was emanating from it. A fluorescent light, switching on and off occasionally. I climbed on the shelf and slid the window by the handle — open. Seeing no other way in, I climbed through the tiny window.
I landed on my palms first, then my knees. The landing was rough. Blood spurted out of my gunshot wound from earlier. I was likely leaving a faint trail of blood this whole time. The gauze wasn't holding as it was completely saturated with blood.
The room I was in looked like a utility closet. It was tight, but tall, and the shelf was packed with lots of cleaning supplies. I scrounged through the shelf looking for anything, and I mean, anything, that could assist with keeping the blood in my body.
I found a sealed pack of cellulose sponges. Bingo! I tore it open with my teeth. It tasted like a dusty Chinese factory. I removed my saturated gauze and packed three of these sponges tightly onto the wound. Now, something to keep them in place. I found some industrial duct tape. It would have to do. I wrapped it tightly around my abdomen. There was also bleach and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, but I didn't bother. The infection was a tomorrow problem, not a "right now; I am actively bleeding out" problem.
However, there was nothing in there I could use as an improvised weapon. Just a pair of red scissors, a box of trash bags, and a broom. I suppose I could suffocate someone with a trash bag, but it works better in movies than it does in real life. That would require both of my hands to be occupied until they passed out, which could take minutes. And what could I possibly do with a broom? Stick it in their ass? So I grabbed the scissors. At least I knew where the vital arteries were so I'd be able to put them to good use.
I slowly approached the door. There was a steady white light on the other side, not flickering like the bulb in this closet. I put my ear to the door, and I heard what seemed like micro-machinery. Some sort of rapid high-pitched tapping and skittering. Shit, imagine if they were 3D printing more Lazaruses? I would have cried tears of joy.
I pushed the door open.