CAIN chapter one

CHAPTER ONE

If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...
I am become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds.
-The Bhagavad Gita


July 17, 1945 0230 hours
Trinity Project Base Camp, New Mexico



Dr. Eve Salanger stood outside the door of her superior's office trying to calm herself with deep breaths. It wasn't working. She had just gone to bed two hours ago when someone, urgently knocking on her door, woke her up and told her to report to his office for debriefing.
Her day had begun at 0530 that morning with a brilliant flash of light, and a mushroom cloud rising 35,000 feet into the sky, as the world was ushered into the atomic age. It hadn't improved since then.
Eve knocked on the door. Her knock was answered by a muffled "Enter." The baritone voice that uttered the word sounded haggard and tired, with a touch of fear hiding behind it. She opened the door, and entered the darkened room.
Sitting behind his desk with a single lamp the only illumination in the room, Dr. Samuel Archer resembled a tortured soul returning from the dead. His face almost matched his white smock. He smoothed his white disheveled hair with his hands and quickly worked at regaining his composure as Eve approached his desk.
"Eve," Archer said, as he stood and waved her to the metal frame chair in front of his desk, "sorry to call you in so late."
Eve sat in the offered chair. The look on her boss's face had drained any annoyance she had felt at being awoken at this hour from her, and replaced it with concern. Sam Archer was more than her superior. He was her mentor and a dear friend.
"You look like hell warmed over, Sam," she replied, "want to tell me what's troubling you?"
Archer smiled weakly. "Always the shrink, aren't you, Eve?"
"It's your own fault, Sam." Eve returned the smile. "You trained me."
"So I did." Archer replied, as he slowly sat in his chair. He knitted his fingers together and placed his elbows on the desk, giving Eve the impression that he meant to pray. His face took on a serious professional mask.
"What I'm about to tell you, Dr. Salanger, doesn't leave this office, Your participation in this matter is strictly off the record, and highly classified."
"Yes sir." Eve replied. "Did something happen at the test site this morning?"
Archer leaned back in his chair, and gripped the edge with both hands.
"At 0710 this morning a naked man walked out of ground zero and surrendered himself to military police."
"What?" Eve said. It felt like Archer had just punched her in the stomach, driving all the air from her body. She stared at the man, hoping that she had misunderstood him. "You mean someone was out near the test site when the bomb went off? Out near one of the bunkers?"
"No, Doctor," Archer leaned forward. "He walked directly away from ground zero. He was first spotted by an observation team at 0610. He was less than four hundred meters from ground zero."
"He was at ground zero when the bomb went off?" Eve asked incredulously.
"That's what he claims." Archer replied.
"Claims?" Eve exclaimed. "You mean he's still alive?"
Eve rubbed her hands over her eyes, trying to wake up. It had been a long day. She was tired, and had to be dreaming. Nothing Archer said seemed real or even possible. No one could walk away from a 19 kiloton explosion.
"Not only is he alive," Archer said, "there isn't so much as a scratch on him. No signs of radiation poisoning. Nothing. He is, however, totally hairless."
"Hairless." Eve repeated. She wanted to laugh, but didn't. The idea of a hairless, naked man, walking across the desert surrendering to the MPs stuck her as amusing.
In silence the two doctors stared at each other, like poker players waiting for one of them to betray what was in their hands.
"Has he been tested? Questioned?" Eve asked, breaking the silence.
"Oh yes, he's been very cooperative." Archer replied as he stood. He walked from behind his desk over to a table at the side of the office.
"Coffee?" He asked, lifting the pot from the table in one hand and a khaki green mug in the other.
"Yes, please." Eve replied.
Archer filled the mug, and then another, and brought them back to the desk. He sat one down in front of her and took a sip from the other before he sat back down. "Black, right?"
"What?" Eve asked, snapping out of her deep thoughts. "Oh, yes. You remembered."
"It hasn't been that long since we shared a cup of coffee, Doctor." Archer replied, smiling.
Eve took a tentative sip of her coffee, testing its heat, then a larger gulp, draining a third of the cup.
"Sam," she began, sinking back into the familiarity of their relationship. "Have the tests come back? What have you learned?"
"Besides that he's human, not much, I'm afraid. X-rays and a physical exam show no abnormalities in his body structure."
"What about the blood work?" Eve asked.
"We haven't done any." Archer replied, sipping his coffee.
"Why not? They're SOP in any exam, even one as," Eve paused looking for the right word, "Weird as this one is."
"They gave up after the fourth needle broke on his skin."
Eve felt the coffee mug slipping from her grip and steadied it with her other hand. She took a sip, and sat the mug down on the desk. She didn't trust herself to hold it any longer. If Archer dropped any more bombshells on her, she was eventually going to drop the mug. She decided it was time to ask what had been eating at her since the MPs had knocked on her door.
"What's all this have to do with me?" She asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
Archer sat his mug down and rubbed the tip of his nose with his index finger. "After the medical exam he was turned over to interrogation for questioning. He answered most of their questions, the ones he wanted to, at least. Here's the transcript." Archer handed her a thin manila folder from his desk. "Then, he asked for you."
"He what?" Eve asked, surprised. "Why me?"
"That's what the MPs wanted to know." Archer replied. He leaned back in his chair, putting his elbows on the arms, knitted his fingers together, and started rubbing his smooth chin with his thumbs. Eve opened the folder and started reading. She held up the first page of the report closer to the light.
"His name is Cain? What's his first name?" She asked.
"That's all he would say. We don't even know if it's his first name or his last." Archer replied.
Eve read the rest of the first page, then placed it face down on the desk in front of her. She looked up at Archer.
"'I was trying to kill myself.'" She quoted. "Seems a rather extreme way of going about it, don't you think?"
"Keep reading, it gets better." Archer replied, leaning forward he kept his fingers knitted and lowered them to the desk.
Eve returned to reading the report. She finished the second page, and placed it with the first on the desk. She lifted the last page from the folder in her lap. Her eyes widened as she read her name.
"Sam, I don't know this man." She said, returning the papers to the folder and placing it on the desk.
"Apparently he knows you." Archer replied, taking the folder and placing it back on the stack he had taken it from. "He says he won't say another word unless it's to you. He's waiting in the interrogation room in the south wing."
He glanced at Eve's face. The look of shocked disbelief haunting her eyes was enough to break his heart. He had known Eve Salanger ten years. From the moment she entered his class at the academy he had her pegged as a bright, inquisitive, honest woman, with a willpower to make it in a field primarily dominated by men. She had shown him often that she was up to any task he put her to, not only in the psychiatric world, but as an officer in the military.
He could tell that the implications of having her name mentioned by a man who had walked into a top secret military project, survived an atomic explosion, and refused to talk to anyone else but she weighed heavily on her mind.
"Eve," he said gently, "are you up for this? I don't want you to do anything..."
"You mean I have a choice, Sam?" She asked. "This is the military. We don't get options, we get orders."
"Well, I could pull some strings. Call in some favors." Archer replied.
"No, Sam. I'll do it. I want answers as much, maybe more than everyone else does."
"Why don't you get some sleep. That couch over there is really quite comfortable." Archer gestured over to the left of the room.
"No, thank you, Sam. I couldn't sleep now if I wanted to. Let's go get this thing started." Eve replied, standing.
"Come on," Archer said walking around the desk, he put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll escort you to where he's being kept."