Wasteware 00

Prologue: Cloud Cover

The stillness of the dark night was shattered by the high-pitched whine of the alarm system ringing throughout the complex.

Amaya's eyes jolted open as the sound waves frantically bounced off the gray walls of her bedroom. They forced themselves into her ears like drummers heralding the coming war. The noise rattled her brain from its slumber. Her brown eyes scanned the darkened room and landed upon the crimson glow of the digital clock. Blinking to bring the numerals into focus: 23:11.

“There’s no drill scheduled for tonight,” she murmured in response to the racket screaming from the walls. She shook her head, and her brown braid echoed her motion as if they were both trying to shake the sleep away. Ever persistent, the noise from the walls spurred her into motion.

Her bare feet shuffled across the room, arm outstretched in search of the cool metal plate hanging on the walls. Once her fingers brushed the silver switch the room was awash in light, and her pace quickened. She pulled a black jumpsuit from her closet, standard issue with A. Reeves stenciled in white on the front. Her fingers deftly worked the buttons and hastily moved on to lacing up two perfectly shined black combat boots. Around her waist she snapped on a duty belt with two holsters, each carrying a SIG Mauser M2 pistol.

With not so much as a glance in the mirror, she walked through her living quarters, stopping only briefly to take a com device out of its charging station on the table next to the door. Before the door could latch behind her, the headset was on.

"Throne Room, this is Jackal 3. I am en route, please advise." Her stride was short, but her steps were brisk as she made her way down the gray-walled hallway.

"Jackal 3," came the response. She pressed the earpiece tighter against her ear, straining to hear through the alarm. "Full lockdown procedures are in effect. Proceed as directed."

Her lean body visibly tensed as she made her response. "Copy Throne Room, Jackal 3 out."

Without missing a step her hand unbuttoned a clip on her duty belt, and filled with the familiar weight of the pistol from her right hip. Her thumb brushed across the back of the gun sliding its safety. Barrel pointed at the ground, but ready to be raised at a moment’s notice, she forged ahead. As she approached the steel doors of the elevator at the end of the hall she could see two men waiting for the lift.

She recognized only one of the scientists as she got closer. He was a younger man, medium build with shaggy brown hair. A geneticist by the name of Jace Anderson.

"Hey Amaya," he called out.

"Mr. Anderson, I'm sure you can hear the alarm ringing, which means you should be in your quarters, or in the designated common area," she shouted towards him.

His friend shouted back from beside him, "We were just waiting for the elevator. You think you could open it for us?"

Jace glanced at the weapon she was holding in her outstretched arm. His voice raised an octave higher than before. "Do you really need your gun out for a drill?"

She ignored both of their questions. "Head to your quarters or the mess. It makes no difference to me, just get out of the hallway guys."

They both backed up towards the wall but made no motion to comply with her request. For the moment she ignored them, and slid her security badge in front of the scanner located above the elevator's call buttons. With no other elevator traffic to delay her request, the wait time was momentary. Precise steps took Amaya into the elevator with a motion that also impeded Jace and his companion from entering.

"Quarters or Mess, you're not getting into the elevator," she said as the silver doors joined into one metal barricade in front of them. Her finger grazed the scanner that would take her four quick floors down to her destination.

Not five minutes had passed since the alarms had sounded throughout the complex before Amaya entered the security command room, the "Throne Room," as it was nicknamed. Just stepping through the door she heard her father’s commanding voice roaring. “Where’s Barnes and Pritchard?”

“They aren't responding on their channels," Elliot Preston replied from his seat at the communications console.

"They aren't in the hall either Commander,” Amaya responded to her father's unspoken question. Of the 15-member security team, Barnes and Pritchard were the only ones who had yet to report to the Throne Room.

“Preston get them on the radio, now!” The tone in the commander's voice let everyone know that this was not a training exercise. The vehement alarm was this time a harbinger of danger.

The sleepy half-smile that was plastered on Preston's face a moment ago was gone, replaced by a scowl. “Barnes, Pritchard, this is the Throne Room. Where the fuck are you?”

Static.

Commander Reeves was a man not accustomed to soldiers under his command being sloppy. Nor was he one who easily hid his displeasure. Anger boiled through his voice as he took the microphone unit from Preston's station. “This isn’t a drill; if you don’t want your sec clearance pulled I’d answer right now.”

Just as the last syllable he uttered crackled over the radio Jacob T. Barnes and Dane Pritchard hurried in. Barnes was quick to respond. Having worked for the Commander for as many years as Amaya had been alive, Barnes had learned an important tactic when dealing with the man's ire; ask a question before the berating could begin. “The fucking sec doors coming in and out of the core are down. What the hell is going on here?”

“They never go down unless we are in a full lockdown,” Pritchard added.

“Which would lead you to believe we are in a full lockdown,” Amaya sarcastically replied.

Pritchard’s facial twitch gave everyone the impression that he was either going to smack her upside the head or tell her off, neither of which he had the chance to do.

Commander Reeves took the attention of his entire security squad just by speaking. “OK listen up here kids, Amaya’s right, we are in a full lockdown. At approximately 21:00 hours H block was infiltrated by an unknown combatant. Their security team was unable to apprehend him. By 22:30 he had made it down to Alpha Zone and at 23:11 he had somehow bypassed all security clearances and initiated Code Cloud Cover.”

Every face in the room went white. Never in the collected years of the team assembled had any of them imagined this event would actually occur.

Carbon Block; the facility which the assembled team was in charge of guarding, was one in a system of underground installations, each a part of a project code-named “Element.”

The event which had sparked the system-wide alarm occurred at Hydrogen Block; an installation that housed the control center for various missiles and nuclear warheads all over the county. Most of the “zones” or floors in H block were dedicated to monitoring those warheads. However, Alpha Zone was the highest of high-security areas. It held a secure control panel, which was jokingly called “the button.” When “pressed” a series of nuclear missiles were launched to strategic locations worldwide. A few warheads on their own country’s soil would have also detonated, cover for the missile attacks should anyone in the government survive and have the technology to investigate. Something that cloud cover was intentionally designed to prevent.

It was a ridiculous plan, a contingency for when all other contingencies failed. Designed so that when whoever made these decisions lost control over the masses, they would simply destroy them. After all, they would be in secure locations with enough supplies to last until Armageddon was over.

Cloud Cover. The tongue-in-cheek joke to describe the amount of mushroom clouds that would cover most of the world. All of the project Element bases should have received appropriate notice to lock down and prepare before it was initiated. That had clearly not happened.

Cloud Cover was one of the most protected aspects of project Element that any member of C Blocks security team was aware of. The physical location was said to be the most difficult room in the world to enter, protected by the most advanced security measures known on the planet. Even the existence of H block, Alpha Zone, and Cloud Cover was limited to a handful of people with the highest security clearances Not even the President himself possessed had been read in. The fact that it wasn’t initiated properly meant that the unknown combatant, whoever they were, was near the top of the food chain, and their motives could only have been nefarious ones.

Regards of how or why Cloud Cover was initiated, the response of the security team would be the same. Anytime a nuclear detonation took place on US soil, the block would go into lockdown. Protocol would dictate their next steps.

“Preston I want you to start working on getting secure communication with the other blocks initiated. All regular comm channels should already be down, but make sure no one is getting incoming or outgoing messages.” Commander Reeves turned his attention away from Elliot and towards the rest of his team.

“Everyone else split into groups of two. Scourer this place from top to bottom. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the combatant from H block wasn’t working alone, and may have had help from anyone here. Go make sure our people are clean. And don’t let those scientists out of the core.” That last sentence was delivered with a tinge of remorse, the tone that Arlis Reeves took when he was acting out of necessity and nothing more.

With that everyone had jobs to do.