Awakening: The First Tale of the Trine (Trine Series Book 1) Read online

  “If that’s true, then why wasn’t this followed up on?”

  “It was a combat zone, sir. The surgeon had other priorities, and the medics had already returned to the field. The surgeon chalked it up to an error on the part of the medics, and the medics were unaware of the surgeon’s findings later on. As for the Sergeant, Dr. Chamblee requested that he be allowed to examine him personally and interview him. Unfortunately, all of this came to light years later, and he had been discharged by this time. As Dr. Chamblee had no concrete findings, his funding was cut and he was reassigned to other projects. None of this would likely ever have come back into the light, except…”

  “Except that today, Sergeant Jeffries reappeared at ground zero of an explosion that levelled a hospital, with three unknown…God Scott, I hate to even say the word…aliens?”

  Scott watched President Clark as he reviewed the report further. Over his first term, he had witnessed the stress of the office add years to his friend’s face. As the weight of today’s events sank in, he imagined he could almost see it draining what was left of the Presidents vitality, as he finally sagged back into his chair wearily.

  “Get our team to Sergeant Jeffries, Scott, and get his statement. Find out how deep this rabbit hole goes, and how much shit we’re going to have to shovel to get out of it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thursday, August 2nd, 13:58 EST.

  Sergeant Delmont Jeffries, Greensboro, N.C.

  The nurse escorting the two federal agents pulled back the curtain in the patient’s room, causing him to stir. The hospital gown he wore was stretched tightly across his massive chest, and his thickly muscled arms were crossed over his stomach. His receding hairline and the gray hairs at his temples and chin, which stood out starkly against his dark skin, were the only traces of his forty-odd years. The nurse conducted a quick check of the gauze taped over the gash on his forehead, and after recording his vital statistics she left quietly, pulling the door shut behind her.

  The younger of the two agents moved to stand by the door, blocking any further access. The other, a lean older gentlemen in a dark suit, pulled a chair closer to the bedside. “Mr. Jeffries?” he asked quietly.

  The man in the bed reached for a styrofoam cup on the table. Finding it empty, the agent helped him pour some water, and waited for him to drink. “Sorry,” the man said, “They knocked me out while stitching up my head and back. Yeah, I’m Delmont Jeffries. I’m glad you’re here, I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about what happened on the way over.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through today, Mr. Jeffries. My name is Stephen Donaldson, and this is my associate James Stanley. We’re special agents with Homeland Security, and were both briefed a short time ago on the events leading up to the explosion earlier today at Moses Cone. As you can imagine, we have quite a few questions on what happened in that room.” As the older agent made introductions, the younger one moved to the foot of the bed to address Delmont directly.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt, Steve,” he began. “But I wanted Sergeant Jeffries to know…I’m a Marine, and was stationed in Afghanistan, too. I heard about you, hell, everyone in the country heard about you. I always told my boys that if I ever met you I…well, I would tell you that you’re an inspiration to all of us. You’re a goddamned hero to every man who ever took the oath and bled for this country. It’s an honor to get to know you, even under the circumstances.”

  “Oorah,” Delmont said, reaching out his hand to James.

  “Oorah,” James responded, shaking it firmly. “Sorry, Steve. I’ll let you have at it.” James moved back to his position by the door, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Delmont looked around the room for a moment, and asked, “What happened to the other patient who was here when they rolled me in?”

  “We moved him for his safety,” Agent Donaldson replied. “We have reason to believe that this morning’s events may have been targeted at you specifically, and so Agent Stanley and I have been assigned not only to ask you some questions, but to provide protection until this situation is resolved.”

  “I’ll answer any questions I can, but I’m not really keen on you boys following me around,” Delmont said.

  “I hope you’ll reconsider. Your doctor indicated that the accident and the blast left you with a concussion, and that you should be watched carefully for the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Wouldn’t you agree that it would be far preferable to have us accompany you rather than spend that time here?” Agent Donaldson leaned back in his chair, while Delmont scowled at him.

  “You’re saying that if I refuse, you’re going to have them keep me here? And you two will just lurk around anyway?”

  “For your health, of course,” Agent Donaldson replied.

  Delmont sighed. “Look, let’s talk about what happened over there today, and then if it will get me out of here, you guys are welcome to tag along. Hell, it’ll probably be nice to have some company for a bit,” Delmont grumbled.

  Pulling out a micro-video recorder from the inside of his jacket pocket, Agent Donaldson positioned it on the bedside table so that both he and Delmont would be in the shot. After pressing a button and making sure it was recording, he said, “Special Agents Donaldson and Stanley, Homeland Security, interviewing Mr. Delmont Jeffries regarding the events at Moses Cone Hospital the morning of Thursday, August 2nd. The time is now 1:09 p.m. of the same date. Mr. Jeffries, please confirm your identity for the record.”

  Delmont looked between the agent and the camera for a moment, then focused on speaking to Stephen directly. “My full name is Delmont Thomas Jeffries.”

  “And were you admitted to Moses Cone Hospital this morning for treatment following an automobile accident?” Agent Donaldson asked.

  “Yes, I was riding my Harley to work when a man ran a light out near the college and grazed my rear tire. I was wearing a half-helmet and gashed my head open, so the EMS boys told me I needed to let them to take me over to the hospital to get it cleaned up. If I had known what a shit-storm was coming, I would have taken my ass straight home, believe that,” Delmont replied.

  “Now, tell us in your own words, what happened when you arrived at the emergency room? Start at the beginning, please,” Agent Donaldson instructed.

  “Okay, so the ambulance got me over there, and they put me through triage, just getting information, you know, all normal stuff. They cleaned my head up a bit, and the doc that came in said he wanted to get a CT scan of my brain, and some x-rays of my leg where I dropped the bike on my knee. After they were sure there was no more debris in my head, they were going to stitch me up. They got the tests done pretty quick, then put me back in a treatment room in the ER, room thirteen I think. It was a two-seater, and they had a curtain pulled between me and the next bed. I was in there for a bit before they took the other guy off for some tests. The doctor and the nurse came in a few minutes after he was wheeled out, with a tray of stuff to patch up my head.”

  “Ok, so leading up to this, did you notice anything unusual about the room, or did anything about the experience stand out to you?” Agent Donaldson inquired.

  “Nothing at all. I’ve been in more hospitals than I care to remember, and if anything they were doing better than most. The room was perfectly normal, from what I could tell. They had pulled the curtain back when they rolled the other fellow out, and there was nothing going on back there. The nurse had pulled it closed after they got him out, so I didn’t see...” Delmont stopped, and the agents noticed he had intertwined his hands so tightly his knuckles cracked in the silence. “I didn’t see how those…things got in there, not clearly….but I saw…” he trailed off again.

  “Take your time,” Agent Donaldson said. “And let us know exactly, moment by moment, what happened.”

  “All right,” Delmont exhaled noisily. “But I want to say first that I’m not crazy. If you two got a file on me you know what the military said about me. When I went to re-up they gav
e me a no-thank-you, and told me I was suffering from delusions, thinking I was invincible or something. I tried to tell them it wasn’t like that, and that I just wouldn’t ask a man to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, but...that shit hurt me, like nothing I ever felt in a fight. I gotta admit though, that sitting here now, thinking about it…this is gonna sound insane.”

  “We believe you,” Agent Donaldson said, interrupting Delmont. “And we’ve seen the surveillance from the hospital, of what happened in the hall. We know that something extraordinary occurred in that room, and that is the piece we’re missing. Tell us how those…creatures appeared in there, and anything else you can recall.”

  “Okay,” Delmont sighed, after taking another sip of water. “So the doc sits down on his little stool, and takes the bandage off my head. I’m watching the nurse get the tools ready while he’s poking at me, when the curtain dividing us from the back of the room suddenly flaps, like a breeze came through. There was a sound too, not loud or anything, just a little noise like a computer might make. A real fast ‘bwoop’, when the curtain moved. The nurse and the doc both heard it too, ‘cause they kind of paused for a moment. Then, all hell broke loose.”

  Both agents watched Delmont expectantly as he paused, obviously trying to find the words for what happened next. “The curtain settled, then we could all see…something on the other side gather a fistful of the cloth, right in the middle. With one jerk, the entire curtain gets ripped down, and those little plastic rings holding it up come raining down all over. The entire back wall of the room, it was gone, and where it used to be is was some sort of…corridor, leading into a room filled with…I don’t know, machinery, but nothing like I’ve ever seen. The corridor, or passage, whatever it was…it was hard to look at it, it was twisting the entire room. Then there was this man, or creature, that had torn down the curtain just standing there, only a couple of feet from the side of my bed. I think it tried to say something, but where its mouth and nose should be, it had some sort of armor. I couldn’t hear anything anyhow, ‘cause the doc kicked his stool over jumping up, and the nurse was screaming like a banshee.”

  Agent Donaldson held up a finger to pause Delmont. “Now this…man that was standing there, describe him specifically for us.”

  “He was tall, had to be at least six and a half feet. I couldn’t see much skin on him, except for his bald head. The mask covering his nose and mouth came down below his ears, and seemed to join into the armor covering the rest of his body. What I could see of his skin looked real tan, maybe, and his eyes, man, they were wild. They were solid black, no white to them at all. His ears where showing, and they were pointy, like some sort of Star Trek alien. The armor was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It was yellowish-brown, beige I guess you’d call it, and looked like it was made of metallic plates. It covered everything on him, and the forearms had lights, or buttons maybe. Anyhow, like I said, he may have tried to speak, but I couldn’t hear anything over the nurse hollering. The doctor tried to get the door open, but it swung inward, and she was all up in the way. I was tangled up in the blankets, and got myself scooted up the head of the bed trying to get free. I was about to bolt too, but then…” Delmont stopped, looking between the agents. “I’m just gonna tell you what I saw next the best I can. This whole thing went down in like thirty seconds, tops, and I’m still not sure what the animal was, or even how to describe it.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Agent Donaldson reassured him. “Everything you’ve told us correlates to what was on the hall surveillance. Now, as to the animal, tell us what you can about how it got there.”

  “Well, like I said, I got myself shoved up to the head of the bed, and I saw something else down through that corridor in the wall. It was a dull green color, and furry all over, looking kind of like one of those little foo-foo dogs the celebrities carry around, but it had to be at least three hundred pounds. It wasn’t cute, either. It had a snarl that made every hair on my body stand up, and more teeth than shark week. It hunkered down in that other room, and did this huge leap. I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing, I thought for sure it was coming for my throat. It hit that passage between the rooms, and it hung there, like it was being stretched. The guy that tore down the curtain must have heard the thing coming ‘cause he turned around just as it passed through. The dog-thing looked like it was moving in slow motion between the rooms, but when it cleared, it slammed into that guy like a warhead. They both hit the doctor and nurse, and blew the door right off its hinges as they crashed out into the hall. There were ceiling panels and dust raining down, more people screaming, and the noises that thing was making out there as it laid into that guy,” Delmont paused, and visibly shivered. “I ripped my IV out and got my feet under me. I was getting ready to make some tracks out of there, when I took one more look down into that other room. This was the first clear view I had of it, without anything in the way.”

  “Once you had an unobstructed view, what do you recall seeing in that ‘other place’?” Agent Donaldson prompted.

  Delmont’s eyes were huge as he recalled what had transpired. “It was circular, I could tell that much, with machinery and equipment lining the walls. There was a console, a control area of some sort, with another man like the first, lying propped up against it. He had on that beige colored armor too, but there was something…I think blood, maybe, splattered all over it. It was coming out of his mask and running all over him. There was another fellow too, a smaller guy in blue armor kneeling beside him. The blue one had his head bent down, like he was saying something, or maybe crying. He looked up, right at me, and his eyes…I couldn’t see his face, he had one of those masks on too, but his eyes were solid blue and they were burning. He had short white hair that was sticking up all over, with a blue streak in the front, the same color as his eyes. I swear it looked like it was burning too, and I could feel something coming from him….”

  “Feel what, exactly?” Agent Donaldson asked.

  “Rage. Hate. I’ve seen a lot of it in combat, but this guy would have had a Taliban squad pissing themselves. The person on the ground kind of slumped over, and the white-haired one got up and marched straight towards me. He barely paused in the passage, he just stomped on through and stopped right in front of me. I had meant to run, but the look in those eyes, and the feeling of him staring at me…it pinned me where I was.

  “Did he say anything, or do anything to you?”

  “He spoke to me. His English was perfect. He said ‘Get as many people out as you can in the next sixty seconds. RUN!’ And no lie…he slapped me on the ass.” Delmont glanced down, embarrassed. “You better believe it got me going, too. I slid along the hallway just as that bald guy smashed the dog with the door, and I never looked back. I got out to the ER waiting room, hollering like a fool and waving people out. I was lucky, a lot of the nurses who had seen what was going on in the hallway already had security moving people out. Seeing me flailing around got them moving along even faster.”

  “We saw part of that on the surveillance, too,” Agent Donaldson informed him. “You did well, and likely helped save quite a few people hustling them along like that.”

  “We didn’t hustle enough,” Delmont scowled. “We were barely out into the parking lot when the building erupted behind us. I kept moving people though, carrying them about a block over until a police officer stopped me and made me get checked out. My head was still bleeding from earlier, and I had some glass in my backside, so once they had more people on site they transported me over here.”

  Agent Donaldson looked to his recorder briefly, and then said, “You did well. Your recollection of events was superb, considering what you went through and the…unusual nature of the situation. We were fortunate you’re a Marine, and not easily rattled. Is there anything else that you can think of you could add to this initial statement?”

  “Heh, I was as rattled as I’ve ever been in my life, I’ll tell the world. I wish I had more information for you. I truly don’t kn
ow what I saw today, or what it means exactly. I’m not sure that the old service doc wasn’t right, and I haven’t finally gone off the deep end. But if that was real, and this is all truly happening…well, I just want whoever sees this to know this changes everything. Everything I thought I knew about the world, about my life…everything. And I don’t think it’s going to be for the better.”

  “On that, I think we can all agree,” Agent Donaldson replied. He turned off his recorder, and waved Agent Stanley over. “Get this uploaded to the Director, please. I’m going to make the arrangements for us to get Mr. Jefferies out of here. Are you ready to go, Delmont?”

  “Absolutely,” Delmont replied, throwing back the sheets. As he got to his feet, he looked at Agent Donaldson suspiciously. “Just where are we going, anyhow?”

  Agent Donaldson smiled briefly. “Home, of course. If anyone is looking for you, we want to make sure they find you at a place we have prepared.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday, August 2nd, 14:14 EST.

  Moses Cone Hospital, Greensboro, N.C.

  “Director Spencer?” the young man asked, as he entered the temporary Incident Command Post that had been erected across the street from the wreckage. The office building directly behind them was still being set up as the permanent location, but for now, the first responders were being guided from the parking lot where the FBI’s Federal On Scene Commander could monitor their arrival.

  “Yes?” the Director asked, holding up a hand to silence the local police and fire marshals gathered by the maps he had prepared. The Director examined the young fireman who was already covered in soot and dust from his efforts to evacuate the initial wounded. The only part of the young man that was unstained was the areas of his face the respirator had covered.