Leviathan(9)

Another cavern, deemed the power plant, was dedicated to an electrical generator system that linked the underground laboratory with a powerful Norwegian power cable laid across the Atlantic floor. That was where Connor spent most of his time, breaking down the incredible voltage of the line so the power could be used in substations located in the rest of the facility.

The entire cavern was a maze of high-voltage wires. But the most troublesome section was the Containment Cavern, a place Connor had rarely seen since his early days on Grimwald. Although Connor didn't know exactly what the cathedral-sized chamber was designed to contain, he knew there was a sophisticated computer room adjoining it. And he knew that the cavern itself was heavily reinforced by niobium-titanium fire walls.

It also housed a strangely designed sphere—more like one sphere balanced concentrically inside another—wired to create an electromagnetic pulse above a 500,000-volt cooling platform.

Shrouded in secrecy, the sphere had been delivered during a secret midnight landing of a C-130, and Connor wasn't surprised that they would be having more problems with the mystery machine. When it arrived almost a year ago, he had installed it himself, quickly and efficiently completing circuit tests, wiring, and backup systems. Connor had never asked any questions about the purpose of the sphere. But in his bones, he remembered, it had always troubled him. And not because of its strange power demands or unexplainable electromagnetic design. But because its purpose had, from the very first, been cloaked in such nervous silence, and remained so even today.

A nagging concern began to tug at Connor as they descended deeper into the cavern, sloping at a sharper and sharper angle. And he wondered why, in the last six months, they had not needed him to repair the troublesome thing. Perhaps, the thought came to him with disturbing intensity, because it had been functioning perfectly.

Without revealing his mind, Connor wondered what they might have done with the sphere. But after a moment he knew that he'd manage only the wildest uneducated guess. He had no idea what it was truly designed to accomplish, had never possessed an idea, even when he installed it. He was an electrician, a welder. He knew metals and construction and had a general understanding of just about anything mechanical. But he wasn't a scientist. And whatever the thing was, it was definitely high science.

With a frown Connor gazed at the passing, prodigious formations of calcite, their huge rounded columns rising toward the surface. And little by little he realized the air was falling utterly still. It was something he had never gotten used to.

Always, it seemed to him, the cave was like some supernatural subterranean netherworld with air so motionless it felt like outer space might feel, if space had a constant temperature of 71 degrees and a humidity level of 100 percent.

No one could endure the thick, humid heat of the cavern without the strategically positioned large-capacity dehumidifiers that made the place livable, machines that Connor and his men also maintained. But because of the unbearable working conditions for welding and wiring, pain-soaking exercises that made the cavern an endless marathon of mental toughness, Connor's crew had hatefully dubbed it “the Inferno.”

Though originally created by acidic gas, the Inferno was void now of corrosive fumes. Whatever colossal power had created the underground cavern was claimed by another time. But ventilators had been installed to ensure that the atmosphere remained non-poisonous, though the ventilators couldn't begin to match the cave's natural force of expiration. For at the cavern entrance, over 1,000 feet above them, wind howled from the tunnel to the surface at over seventy miles per hour. It was nature's way of stabilizing the cavern's internal atmospheric pressure with the surface.

Connor recalled how a company called Stygian Enterprises had purchased the site several years ago for private research. And yet, though Stygian owned the facility and the cavern, the complex itself was designated as a United States Arctic Research Station and operated under the protection of the United States Army.

Once construction had been completed in the cavern, Connor arrived to begin a three-year stint as foreman of the civilian support crew. Although he didn't know the exact purpose of the laboratory, he didn't care. He only knew that Grimwald Ice Station was a semi-military installation and that the tax-free hourly salary was more than twenty times what he could have earned in the States. And for the money—money that would change the life of his family forever—Connor had chosen to briefly endure the arctic climate. Then one month after he arrived, a team of twenty-odd scientists and supervisory personnel landed to inhabit the cavern's living quarters.

Connor suspected that they had initiated classified research with the sphere, but he didn't ask questions. He didn't know, and he didn't want to know. He was determined to do his job and finish his three-year contract as easily as possible. Then he'd leave this godforsaken place and buy a nice house and a good-sized chunk of land where he could live in peace. Maybe Montana, he thought often enough. Or Wyoming. Or maybe he would return to Kentucky, where he was born. But it would be a place where his family could live safely. Yet the thought of safety only reminded Connor again of Grimwald, and how this dark and dismal place had never truly known any peace at all. And probably never would.