Chapter 80 - The Black Sun Protocol
The capsule skipped across the rolling black waves of Lake Michigan before settling into the chop with a violent bobbing motion.
Marco kicked open the upper hatch, and the bitter, sub-zero wind of an early November dawn slammed into our faces. The air smelled of cold water, snow, and salt—human air, clean and free of ozone and the rot of secret laboratories.
I climbed out onto the curved exterior of the floating steel sphere, shivering violently in my soaked clothes, Marco right beside me, holding me steady against the pitch of the waves.
We looked toward the Chicago shoreline.
It was just before dawn. The skyline should have been a glittering wall of gold and amber lights—the Willis Tower, the Hancock, the long sweep of Lake Shore Drive.
Instead, the entire city was pitch black.
A total, absolute blackout had swallowed the metropolis.
Not a single streetlight, not a single window, not a single car headlamp pierced the morning gloom. The silence drifting across the water was suffocating, terrifying.
Then, far to the north, at the edge of the breakwater where the decommissioned offshore light station stood, a single point of light flared to life.
It was not the warm, sweeping yellow beacon of a traditional maritime lighthouse.
It was a piercing, razor-sharp beam of electric sapphire blue.
The beam didn't rotate across the water to guide ships. It pointed straight up into the low-hanging winter storm clouds, acting as a massive tropospheric antenna.
A second later, our emergency radio inside the open escape capsule hissed through the static, bypassing every civilian and military frequency, broadcasting a pre-recorded, synthesized voice that sent a chill deeper into my bones than the lake water ever could:
*"PATIENT 0-A SEVERED. PROTOCOL BLACK SUN INITIATED. CARRIER WAVE BROADCASTING TO POPULATION SECTORS 01 THROUGH 06. AWAKEN THE SLEEPERS."*
As the voice spoke, across the completely blackened expanse of Chicago, thousands of tiny, faint blue pinpricks of light began to flicker inside the darkened skyscrapers, inside the submerged subway tunnels, and along the shoreline.
Marco gripped my arm, his face drained of all color, staring at the lights twinkling like cold stars in the dead city.
"Laura..." he whispered, his voice trembling for the first time since I had met him. "Those aren't streetlights."
May you like
Before I could answer, the surface of Lake Michigan around our tiny escape capsule began to churn.
From the dark water, mere yards from where we floated, three dark, sleek hydrofoil gunboats silently breached the waves, their searchlights locking onto us—glowing not with white halogens, but with the identical, blinding sapphire beam of the lighthouse.
