Angels & Demons - Hassaan Bin Khalil

24
The security technician held his breath as his commander leaned over his shoulder, studying the bank
of security monitors before them. A minute passed.
The commander’s silence was to be expected, the technician told himself. The commander was a man
of rigid protocol. He had not risen to command one of the world’s most elite security forces by talking
first and thinking second.
But what is he thinking?
The object they were pondering on the monitor was a canister of some sort—a canister with
transparent sides. That much was easy. It was the rest that was difficult.
Inside the container, as if by some special effect, a small droplet of metallic liquid seemed to be
floating in midair. The droplet appeared and disappeared in the robotic red blinking of a digital LED
descending resolutely, making the technician’s skin crawl.
“Can you lighten the contrast?” the commander asked, startling the technician.
The technician heeded the instruction, and the image lightened somewhat. The commander leaned
forward, squinting closer at something that had just come visible on the base of the container.
The technician followed his commander’s gaze. Ever so faintly, printed next to the LED was an
acronym. Four capital letters gleaming in the intermittent spurts of light.
“Stay here,” the commander said. “Say nothing. I’ll handle this.”
25
Haz-Mat. Fifty meters below ground.
Vittoria Vetra stumbled forward, almost falling into the retina scan. She sensed the American rushing
to help her, holding her, supporting her weight. On the floor at her feet, her father’s eyeball stared up.
She felt the air crushed from her lungs. They cut out his eye! Her world twisted. Kohler pressed close
behind, speaking. Langdon guided her. As if in a dream, she found herself gazing into the retina scan.
The mechanism beeped.
The door slid open.
Even with the terror of her father’s eye boring into her soul, Vittoria sensed an additional horror
awaited inside. When she leveled her blurry gaze into the room, she confirmed the next chapter of the
nightmare. Before her, the solitary recharging podium was empty.
The canister was gone. They had cut out her father’s eye to steal it. The implications came too fast for
her to fully comprehend. Everything had backfired. The specimen that was supposed to prove
antimatter was a safe and viable energy source had been stolen. But nobody knew this specimen even
existed! The truth, however, was undeniable. Someone had found out. Vittoria could not imagine who.
Even Kohler, whom they said knew everything at CERN, clearly had no idea about the project.
Her father was dead. Murdered for his genius.
As the grief strafed her heart, a new emotion surged into Vittoria’s conscious. This one was far
worse. Crushing. Stabbing at her. The emotion was guilt. Uncontrollable, relentless guilt. Vittoria knew
it had been she who convinced her father to create the specimen. Against his better judgment. And he
had been killed for it.
A quarter of a gram…
Like any technology—fire, gunpowder, the combustion engine—in the wrong hands, antimatter
could be deadly. Very deadly. Antimatter was a lethal weapon. Potent, and unstoppable. Once removed
from its recharging platform at CERN, the canister would count down inexorably. A runaway train.
And when time ran out…
A blinding light. The roar of thunder. Spontaneous incineration. Just the flash… and an empty crater.