Two Steps From Hell

Chapter 5: CERN

Sometime later, Essen was lying unconscious on a padded table with IV tubes and neural wires connecting him to a life-support machine. His encounter with the two Dai Lee assassins left him devastated. He had sustained two life-threatening injuries: a gunshot wound to the right shoulder and another gunshot wound in his upper abdomen region, as well as multiple bruises and cuts all over his body. The deep wounds were sutured and protected under bandages. He suddenly opened his eyes and at first everything appeared blurry and distorted to him. But after blinking several times, his vision soon cleared up and everything became focused again. He sat upright on the table and saw that the IV tube was connected to his wrist. Using both his hands thereafter, he rubbed them against his wounds, realizing that they were dressed under clean bandages. "Ouch!" He flinched when he pressed down too hard on one of the bandages. 

Right on time, Ezra walked into the room, saying, "Good. You're finally awake," before checking his eyes with a tiny flashlight; moving it from one eye to the next. 

"I can't remember anything after I got into your car. What happened?" He held his forehead with a look of absence in his eyes.

"You passed out," Ezra replied, turning off and subsequently putting away the tiny flashlight in his shirt pocket. "You had lost a lot of blood. You're lucky to be alive. I patched you up myself. All my years of patching up injured farm animals did come in handy after all."

"You did good, kid," Essen complemented with a straight face. Then in that same breath, he began to detach the wires from his head and forcibly pulled out the IV tube from his wrist. The life-support machine soon after flatlined, making that beeping sound as if someone was dying.

"What are you doing? You need to rest," Ezra's face dropped in alarm. 

"There is no time for that. I have to let my superiors know about what happened last night." 

"Detective, I would advise you not to move around. You may rupture the sutures," Ezra cautioned when he now saw him getting down onto his feet. 

"At ease, kid. This is but a scratch compared to real injuries I've sustained in the war during my time serving," Essen boasted while at the same time revealing horrid battle scars on his back, which Ezra noticed for the first time when he walked by him. He limped slightly as he walked towards his belongings that were laid out on a countertop. He grabbed his shirt and carefully placed it on while grimacing in aching pain.

Ezra looking passed his mysterious backstory engraved on his back, objectively asked, "Antonio, is---is he really dead?" 

"I believe he is, kid. But, I didn't see it for myself," Essen replied after turning around to see Ezra's face clouded with sadness. He then felt his pockets and noticed that one was ripped open from its base; losing the contents that were once in it. "Where is my wallet?" He asked worrisomely, patting down his other pockets while looking around on the floor for it.

"I don't know," Ezra replied, helping him to look around on the floor for it. 

"s**t! I had everything in that wallet." 

"I'm sorry about your wallet, Detective, but I'm more than positive that you didn't have one when I brought you in," Ezra stooped to look underneath the table. 

"That reminds me, where the heck are we!?" Essen responded, quickly forgetting about his wretched wallet. 

"Oh, yeah," Ezra arose back onto his feet and fixed his eyeglasses. "Look, if you truly want to know. Follow me," Ezra later led him from out of this hospital-like room, which was fairly normal-sized, to a much larger room with a supercomputer being the centre jewel. 

"Are we even in the city anymore?"

"Yes, we're in the city. Just four-storey below it," he continued. "This place is a militarized bunker. Its walls are made from a titanium alloy which makes it practically impenetrable. It has its private power grid and water supply, eight living quarters, bathrooms, a med bay, a garage and an endless supply of astronaut food. It is one hundred percent self-sufficient and self-sustaining."

"So you're telling me that this place exists in the city and no one realized it when it was being built?" He marvelled as his head made a three hundred and sixty-degree turn, looking at all the flashing lights and holographic projections. He noticed that the ceiling was rather intimate with the floor, but its width made up for it lacked in height. 

"I'm guessing it was built discretely, but in any case, it belonged to Antonio and I trust him. He told me that originally it was supposed to be an off-the-books relay facility for CERN. But it never quite materialized. So Antonio kept it a secret. We should be safe down here."

"Secret bunkers...assassins...and conspiracies? What have I really gotten myself into and what the hell is CERN?! It's the second time now I'm hearing that name." 

Chewing on his bottom lip in conviction, Ezra took a seat around the huge monitor of the supercomputer and plugged in the USB flash drive that Antonio had given him, into a CPU port. Essen stood over him and watched frustratingly as he opened the storage device on the monitor. It contained many folders in it, but Ezra opened only one containing a video recording and several dummy files.

"What I'm about to show you is strictly private. It was stolen from CERN's mainframe. Unfortunately, almost everything on this thumb drive is under lock and key. All this time and Antonio was only able to decrypt one folder. You would have thought that everything would have been open by now. "

"Kid, I don't have time for your ramblings. Just get to the point."

"I cannot rush this. I need to break it down for you."

"Whatever just make it brief."

"Okay. I'll try my best," Ezra said with his voice breaking. He then pushed up his eyeglasses that was falling down his nose again and asked rhetorically, "What is the universe made of? How did it start? These were some of the goals CERN had set out to achieve. Appropriately translated from French, the European Organization of Nuclear Research or CERN for short was founded in 1954. They currently possess the world's largest scientific instrument, the Large Hadron Collider...a particle accelerator, which spans 20 miles between the French and Swiss border in Europe---" 

"You know you're only boring me right?" 

"I promise I'm going somewhere with this. Just be patient and listen please."

"Okay, go ahead, kid." 

"I'm not a kid," Ezra quietly sang under his breath while typing.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," He cowardly replied. He then went on: "Despite what they would have you to believe, my uncle was no regular man. He wasn't crazy. He was extremely intelligent. One of the smartest minds on earth. For some time he was the head physicist at CERN. This video recording that I'm about to show you is of him revealing an incident that happened at CERN nearly sixteen years ago," Ezra disclaimed before double-tapping on the video recording file. "Watch without interrupting. Please."

The shaky video with periodic static interferences opened to a room with only a single bed and a chair. The room itself was very plain having only two noticeably colours present: grey and white. There were no windows. Judas was then seen stepping from behind the camera. He sat in the chair that was placed in front of the camera and started to pour out whisky from a bottle into a glass cup. He appeared a little younger here with a fuller head of hair and healthier skin. His lab coat this time was even white as snow.

"My name is Judas Strange and I'm recording this on the 15th of January 2014. Most of you who have heard of CERN will have heard of the Large Hadron Collider. The public has been told that it was constructed at a cost of tens of billions of Euros for the purpose of studying the birth of the universe. But that was a lie. This is not what the machine was designed for, nor is it what the machine has been used for since its inception. CERN's main purpose for building the Collider was to...well it was to open a doorway to other worlds," Judas then paused to drink a full shot of the alcohol from the cup. He began to refill the cup and continued to speak simultaneously: "Corporations threw endless funding at CERN in the hopes of understanding what kind of power lay in other galaxies. I don't blame them. Think of the possible endless source of energy, faster than light travel and weaponry that we could harness from such powers. I'm talking dark matter, antimatter and other unseen energies that are just waiting to be tapped into. The outcome for such discoveries would truly be revolutionary," he took another shot but trembled as he refilled the cup the second time. "So, the public was fed one narrative while the heads of CERN and the corporations involved knew the truth. Most of the scientists at CERN were kept completely in the dark after all the collider would perform its function as normal and collide particles for the sake of colliding particles; nothing more. The far more nefarious purpose would only be tested in the presence of The Family...a secret society of entrepreneurs and world-renowned scientists like myself, that controlled CERN. We had been attempting these tests once every six months for the past ten years without much success. That was until last week," he took a third shot. The bottle was half empty at this point. "By exponentially increasing the voltage in the particle accelerator to 40 Tera electron volts, we generated a singularity and made contact with an extra-dimensional being. Something of the likes we've never seen or quite frankly didn't expect to see. It was truly awe-inspiring as right before us stood this creature, originating worlds away from us or so we thought. Little did we know, we had made a grave mistake. It wasn't a friendly ET. Not the friendly type we're so used to in the movies. It became terrifying quickly and turned out to be very malevolent, speaking profanity and hate towards us. Somehow the creature could understand our individual languages and it knew how to speak back in them for us to understand. This frightened us beyond recognition. We tried to collapse the portal on the creature, but an ethereal blinding light consumed the room and it vanished. We later analysed footage of its vanishing and concluded that the being used teleportation as its means of escape. Oddly enough, Father, who is the leader of The Family, became very ill. But today I saw him and it would seem he's in his best shape yet. Quite peculiar I would say after seeing the man coughing up l****s of blood a week ago," Judas afterwards took a moment to rub his dreary eyes before he continued: "But I digress. The takeaway that I got from this experience is that wherever the being came from, we brought it here bound in chains and then we set it free into our world. We are playing gods here. What we did was wrong and I must separate myself from them, these monsters. I had never experienced anything like this before and now I fear for my own life as some of my colleagues who were unwilling to keep the discovery secret amongst themselves are turning up missing under suspicious circumstances. But I know the blatant truth. They are all dead as will I soon enough. Just this morning the Father called a meeting regarding this. He literally threatened us to keep our mouths shut. This is not what I signed up for. We were to help humanity evolve with science and technology, not to help send everyone to oblivion. My dear friend Antonio has warned me not to challenge their authority. But with all things that remain good within me, I don't see how I can let this go unchallenged," Judas then stared into the camera for some time before eventually getting up with the drinking glass in his hand and turning off the camera. The video recording ended.

"So, what do you think?" Ezra then spun around in his chair to face Essen.

"For starters, he seemed nothing like the guy I had arrested." 

"No. Don't you get it? The video is not about him. It's about CERN and what they stand for. They are secretly bringing aliens into our world from other galaxies."

"Yeah, you lost me at aliens."

Ezra then pulled out the USB flash drive from the CPU and dramatically showed Essen, saying, "This device contains vital information about CERN. We need to decrypt it and stop them." 

"Look, kid, that's good for you that you've found your calling in life. But you see me. I'm a simple man. I'm also a police detective and I have policing to do. So if you don't mind to show me the door where I can get back to reality; that would be really helpful," Essen replied, looking around the place for a literal exit sign.

"You can't leave," Ezra declared, suddenly getting up out of his chair.

"I beg your pardon," Essen replied defensively, tensing his eyebrows at him. 

Ezra quickly pressed a button on the holographic keyboard that was on his desk and a breaking news video broadcast popped up with a woman reporter. "...A manhunt is currently underway for the killer or killers of business tycoon Antonio Versalez. Mr Versalez was found dead at his Pembroke home address with a gunshot wound to his head. Captain Briggs of the Beacon City Police Department confirmed with us at Kapitol News later this evening that the primary suspect of the killing is indeed a prominent detective of his department...Detective Joel Essen. His wallet and registered police firearm were found at the scene of the crime. Further ballistic investigation also revealed that the bullet which was used to kill Mr Versalez does match the bullets used in the Detective's firearm. At this point, we have no clues as to why the Detective would kill Mr Versalez, but the police Captain has released a statement saying that he is to be considered armed and dangerous. In addition, a two million dollar reward will be given to whoever can provide information that will lead to the apprehension and arrest of Detective Essen. You should contact the police immediately if you see or know his whereabouts," the reporter passionately urged while showing Essen's picture on the screen along with the police contact information.

"I was testing you earlier when I asked you if Antonio was dead," Ezra revealed, muting the news. "I did this to make sure that my intuition was right. You are innocent. The Family...they are behind this." 

"This can't be real," Essen blood boiled in anger at the obvious frame attempt. "How could this have happened? It has just been one night...or was it. Wait, how long was I asleep for?"

Ezra's palms instantly began to sweat at this question and his lips sealed tight. 

"How long was I asleep?!" Essen ground his teeth together. 

"Two days," Ezra slowly then replied, shutting his eyes as he spoke.

"Two days?!"

"When I brought you here, you had...were losing too much blood than I could quickly replace," Ezra carefully approached him. "Long story short is that you slipped into a coma for two days. I've been nursing you back to health from ever since." 

But Essen was walking circles around him, saying, "Okay. Okay. It's no problem. All I need to do is to talk to Captain Briggs and this big misunderstanding will be all sorted out. I can fix this," Essen stated to himself, coming to a stop. Yet when he looked back at the muted news, to his unbelief, he saw a group of police task force officers under the leadership of Captain Briggs, bashing down his front door and breaking into his home. His jaw dropped at the sight of their unnecessary aggression towards him; a person who had laughed and bled alongside them for years 

"I'm afraid, Detective, that there is no 'fixing' this. You are now as involved in this as I am," Ezra reflected with him as they both stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the inaudible news together.