Ground Zero Read online

  Ground Zero

  Kevin J. Anderson

  Based on the characters created by Chris Carter

  To Katie Tyree

  whose constant insistence and enthusiasm convinced me to watch The X-Files in the first place—at which point, of course, I was hooked. Without her encouragement, I never would have been able to do this book.

  Contents

  One

  Even through the thick windows of his laboratory building, the…

  Two

  The security guard stepped out of a small prefab shack…

  Three

  The thick outfit made Mulder look like an astronaut. He…

  Four

  The safety technicians and radiation specialists at the Teller Nuclear…

  Five

  A boring routine in a buried trash can that somebody…

  Six

  With his visitor’s badge firmly clipped to his collar, Mulder…

  Seven

  The key fit the lock, but Mulder knocked loudly anyway,…

  Eight

  Two days of maniacal asbestos-removal construction—destruction, actually—had left a disconcerting…

  Nine

  Scully took the rental car and drove alone into Berkeley,…

  Ten

  Miriel Bremen led the way to a small microbrewery and…

  Eleven

  From the Coronado shipyards the ocean sprawled westward, stretching toward…

  Twelve

  As if playing a scene from an old John Wayne…

  Thirteen

  Scully took her shift driving south from Albuquerque across the…

  Fourteen

  Before reaching the interstate on their trip back to Albuquerque,…

  Fifteen

  Sitting at his impeccably neat and carefully arranged desk in…

  Sixteen

  After an uneventful weekend—for once—Mulder drove back to the Teller…

  Seventeen

  Scully returned to the headquarters of the Berkeley antinuclear protest…

  Eighteen

  Late afternoon in the Washington, D.C., area, hot and humid.

  Nineteen

  The body looked the same as the others, Mulder thought—severely…

  Twenty

  After so much time on the road, Scully found it…

  Twenty-One

  When Miriel Bremen went into the upper floors of the…

  Twenty-Two

  A blind man has no need for lights. Alone in…

  Twenty-Three

  Following a hunch, Mulder went to see Nancy Scheck’s “friend,”…

  Twenty-Four

  With a suitcase lying open on his bed, Mulder dashed…

  Twenty-Five

  The atoll had recovered remarkably well in forty years. The…

  Twenty-Six

  Mulder and Scully arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area,…

  Twenty-Seven

  Leaving Pearl Harbor behind on a perfect picture-postcard morning, Scully,…

  Twenty-Eight

  The weather grew even rougher, tossing and batting the small…

  Twenty-Nine

  The pressure of the approaching storm felt like a psychological…

  Thirty

  Mulder looked up at the angry skies. Wistfully, he thought…

  Thirty-One

  In the full darkness of early night, the roiling ocean…

  Thirty-Two

  As Scully looked on, the security officer used a jingling…

  Thirty-Three

  Scully had just returned to her own cabin for a…

  Thirty-Four

  As howling darkness engulfed the island, Scully and the others…

  Thirty-Five

  Mulder watched Bear Dooley stride over to the countdown clock…

  Thirty-Six

  Captain Robert Ives didn’t know how he could possibly remain…

  Thirty-Seven

  In the sudden black chaos following the power outage in…

  Thirty-Eight

  “Don’t just stand there,” Bear Dooley squawked. “Get that damn…

  Thirty-Nine

  The storm spoke to him in its power—dreadful voices against…

  Forty

  Facing into the storm, it was Mulder’s turn to keep…

  Forty-One

  Mulder’s watch had stopped, but he suspected it had more…

  Forty-Two

  The FBI Headquarters building in Washington, D.C., was a concrete-and-glass…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books in the X-Files Series

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Teller Nuclear Research Facility,

  Pleasanton, California

  Monday, 4:03 P.M.

  Even through the thick windows of his laboratory building, the old man could hear the antinuke protesters outside. Chanting, singing, shouting—always fighting against the future, trying to stall progress. It baffled him more than it angered him. The slogans hadn’t changed from decade to decade. He didn’t think the radicals would ever learn.

  He fingered the laminated badge dangling from his lab coat. The five-year-old picture, showing him with an awkward expression, was worse than a driver’s license photo. The Badge Office didn’t like to retake snapshots—but then, ID photos never really looked like the subject in question, anyway. At least not in the past five decades. Not since his days as a minor technician for the Manhattan Project. In half a century his face had grown more gaunt, more seamed, especially over the past few years. His steel-gray hair had turned an unhealthy yellowish-white, where it hadn’t fallen out in patches. But his eyes remained bright and inquisitive, fascinated by the mysteries hidden in dim corners of the universe.

  The badge identified him as Emil Gregory. He wasn’t like many of his younger colleagues who insisted on proper titles: Dr. Emil Gregory, or Emil Gregory, Ph.D., or even Emil Gregory, Project Director. He had spent too much time in laid-back New Mexico and California to worry about such formalities. Only scientists whose jobs were in question concerned themselves with trivialities like that. Dr. Gregory was at the end of a long and highly successful career. His colleagues knew his name.

  Since much of his work had been classified, he was not assured of a place in the history books. But he had certainly made his place in history, whether or not anybody had heard about it.

  His former assistant and prize student, Miriel Bremen, knew about his research—but she had turned her back on him. In fact, she was probably standing outside right now, waving her signs and chanting slogans with the other protesters. She had organized them all. Miriel had always been good at organizing unruly groups of people.

  Outside, three more Protective Services cars drove up for an uneasy showdown with the protesters who paced back and forth in front of the gate, blocking traffic. Uniformed security guards emerged from the squad cars, slamming doors. They stood with shoulders squared and tried to look intimidating. But they couldn’t really take action, since the protesters had carefully remained within the law. In the back of one of the white official cars, a trained German shepherd barked through the screen mesh of the window; it was a drug- and explosive-sniffing dog, not an attack animal, but its loud growls no doubt made the protesters nervous.

  Dr. Gregory finally decided to ignore the distractions outside the lab building. Moving slowly and painfully in his seventy-two-year-old body—whose warranty had recently run out, he liked to say—he went back to his computer simulations. The protesters and guards could keep up their antics for the rest of the afternoon and into the night, for all he cared. He turned up hi
s radio to cover the noise from outside so he could concentrate, though he didn’t have to worry about his calculations. The supercomputers actually did most of the work.

  The portable boom box tucked among books and technical papers on his shelf had never succeeded in picking up more than one station through the thick concrete walls, despite the jury-rigged antenna of chained paper clips he had hooked to the metal window frame. The lone AM station, thank goodness, played primarily Oldies, songs he associated with happier days. Right now, Simon and Garfunkel were singing about Mrs. Robinson, and Dr. Gregory sang along with them.

  The color monitors on his four supercomputer work-stations displayed the progress of his simultaneous hydro-code simulations. The computers chugged through numerous virtual experiments in their integrated-circuit imaginations, sorting through billions of iterations without requiring him to throw a single switch or hook up a single generator.

  But Dr. Gregory still insisted on wearing his lab coat; he didn’t feel like a real scientist without it. If he wore comfortable street clothes and simply pounded on computer keyboards all day long, he might as well be an accountant instead of a well-respected weapons researcher at one of the largest nuclear-design laboratories in the country.

  Off in a separate building on the fenced-in lab site, powerful Cray-III supercomputers crunched data for complex simulations of a major upcoming nuclear test. They were studying intricate nuclear hydrodynamic models—imaginary atomic explosions—of the radical new warhead concept to which he had devoted the last four years of his career.

  Bright Anvil.

  Because of cost limitations and the on-again/off-again political treaties regarding nuclear testing, these hydrodynamic simulations were now the only way to study certain secondary effects, to analyze shock-front formations and fallout patterns. Aboveground atomic detonations had been banned by international treaty since 1963…but Dr. Gregory and his superiors believed they could succeed with the Bright Anvil Project—if all conditions turned out right.

  The Department of Energy was eager to see that all conditions turned out right.

  He moved to the next simulation screen, watching the dance of contours, pressure waves, temperature graphs on a nanosecond-by-nanosecond scale. Already he could see that it would be a lovely explosion.

  Classified reports and memos littered his desk, buried under sheafs of printouts spewed from the laser printer he shared with the rest of his Bright Anvil team members down the hall. His deputy project head, “Bear” Dooley, posted regular weather reports and satellite photos, circling the interesting areas with a red felt-tip marker. The most recent picture showed a large circular depression gathered over the central Pacific, like spoiled milk swirling down a drain—eliciting a great deal of excitement from Dooley.

  “Storm brewing!” the deputy had scrawled on a Post-it note stuck to the satellite photo. “Our best candidate so far!”

  Dr. Gregory had to agree with the assessment. But they couldn’t proceed to the next step until he finished the final round of simulations. Though the Bright Anvil device had already been assembled except for its fissile core, Gregory eschewed lazy shortcuts. With such incredible power at one’s fingertips, caution was the watchword.

  He whistled along to “Georgie Girl” as his computers simulated waves of mass destruction.

  Somebody honked a car horn outside, either in support of the protesters, or just annoyed and trying to get past them. Since he planned to stay late, those demonstrators—weary and self-satisfied—would be long gone by the time Gregory headed for his own car.

  It didn’t matter to him how many extra hours he remained in the lab, since research was the only thing left of his real life. Even if he went home, he would probably work anyway, in his too-quiet and too-empty house, surrounded by photos of the old 1950s hydrogen bomb shots out in the islands or atomic blasts at the Nevada Test Site. He had access to better computers in his lab, though, so he might as well work through dinner. He had a sandwich in the refrigerator down the hall, but his appetite had been unpredictable for the past few months.

  At one time, Miriel Bremen would have stayed working with him. She was a sharp and imaginative young physicist who looked up to the older scientist with something like awe. Miriel had a great deal of talent, a genuine feel for the calculations and secondary effects. Her dedication and ambition made her the perfect research partner. Unfortunately, she also had too much conscience, and doubts had festered inside her.

  Miriel Bremen herself was the spearhead behind the formation of the vehement new activist group, Stop Nuclear Madness!, headquartered in Berkeley. She had abandoned her work at the research facility, spooked by certain incomprehensible aspects of the Bright Anvil warhead. Miriel had become a turncoat with a zeal that reminded him of the way some former cigarette smokers turned into the most outspoken antitobacco lobbyists.

  He thought of Miriel out there on the other side of the fence. She would be waving a sign, taunting the security guards to arrest her, making her point loud and clear, regardless of whether anyone wanted to hear it.

  Dr. Gregory forced himself to remain seated behind the computer workstation. He refused to go back to the window to look for her. He didn’t feel spite toward Miriel, just…disappointment. He wondered how he had failed her, how he could have misjudged his deputy so thoroughly.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about her replacement, Bear Dooley. Dooley was a bulldozer of a man, with a dearth of tact and patience, but a singular dedication to purpose. He, at least, had his head on straight.

  A knock came at the half-closed door to his lab office. Patty, his secretary—he still hadn’t gotten used to thinking of her as an “administrative assistant,” the current politically correct term—poked her head in.

  “Afternoon mail, Dr. Gregory. There’s a package I thought you might like to see. Special delivery.” She waggled a small padded envelope. He started to push his aching body up from his computer chair, but she waved him back down. “Here. Don’t get up.”

  “Thanks, Patty.” He took the envelope, pulling his reading glasses from his pocket and settling them on his nose so he could see the postmark. Honolulu, Hawaii. No return address.

  Patty remained in the doorway, shuffling her feet. She cleared her throat. “It’s after four o’clock, Dr. Gregory. Would you mind if I left a little early today?” Her voice picked up speed, as if she were making excuses. “I know I’ve got those memos to type up tomorrow morning, but I’ll keep one step ahead of you.”

  “You always do, Patty. Doctor’s appointment?” he said, still looking down at the mysterious envelope and turning it over in his hands.

  “No, but I don’t really want to hassle with the protesters. They’ll probably try to block the gate at quitting time just to cause trouble. I’d rather be long gone.” She looked down at her pink-polished fingernails. Her face had a fallen-in, anxious expression.

  Dr. Gregory laughed at her nervousness. “Go ahead. I’ll be staying late for the same reason.”

  She thanked him and popped back out the door, pulling it shut behind her so he could work in peace.

  The computer calculations continued. The core of the simulated explosion had expanded, sending shockwaves all the way to the edge of the monitor screen, with secondary and tertiary effects propagating in less-defined directions through the plasma left behind from the initial detonation.

  Dr. Gregory peeled open the padded envelope, working one finger under the heavily glued flap. He dumped the contents onto his desk and blinked, perplexed. He blew out a curious breath.

  The single scrap of paper wasn’t exactly a letter—no stationery, no signature—just carefully inked words in fine black lettering.

  “FOR YOUR PART IN THE PAST—AND THE FUTURE.”

  A small glassine packet fell out beside the note. It was a translucent envelope only a few inches long, filled with some sort of black powder. He shook the padded envelope, but it contained nothing else.

  He picked up t
he glassine packet, squinting as he squeezed the contents with his fingers. The substance was lightweight, faintly greasy, like ash. He sniffed it, caught a faint, sour charcoal smell mostly faded by time.

  For your part in the past—and the future.

  Dr. Gregory frowned. He scornfully wondered if this could be some stunt by the protesters outside. In earlier actions, protesters had poured jars of animal blood on the ground in front of the facility’s security gates and planted flowers alongside the entry roads.

  Black ash must be somebody’s newest idea—maybe even Miriel’s. He rolled his eyes and let out an “Oh brother!” sigh.

  “You can’t change the world by poking your heads in the sand,” Dr. Gregory muttered, turning his gaze toward the window.

  On the workstations, the redundant simulations neared completion after eating up hours of supercomputer time, projecting a step-by-step analysis of one second in time, the transient moment where a man-made device unleashed energies equivalent to the core of a sun.

  So far, the computers agreed with his wildest expectations.

  Though he himself was the project head, Dr. Gregory found parts of Bright Anvil inexplicable, based on baffling theoretical assumptions and producing aftereffects that went against all his training and experience in physics. But the simulations worked, and he knew enough not to ask questions of the sponsors who had presented him with the foundations of this new concept to implement.

  After a fifty-one-year-long career, Dr. Gregory found it refreshing to find an entire portion of his chosen discipline that he could not explain. It opened up the wonder of science for him all over again.