Cold Storage (The Revival Series Book 2)

by Michael C. Grumley

Kincaid and his team just had to be patient. John Reiff and his cohorts would eventually be found.

Kincaid realized how little the men actually knew. Liam Duchik was only a piece of the puzzle.

Why exactly had Reiff been frozen again?

The Nine, as they now referred to themselves after losing Duchik, needed Reiff, and they needed him badly.

That son of a bitch. They were all going to pay. Every single one.

It had become clear that suspending the human body before the final moment of death was crucial.

The compound was located on a hundred square acres outside of Phoenix. Obscured and deep within the Tonto National Forest basin and an ideal location.

Mice DNA is a ninety-seven percent match to ours, but a lot of surprises can still come out of that last three percent.”

Short-term sleep deprivation is not particularly severe for, say, two to three days. Resulting in small problems like reflexes, immune response, and behavioral changes. But if it goes longer, into five or six days, things get worse, fast. As in real cognitive issues and problems with the brain being able to process information correctly. Not just externally but internally, too. As in the management of vital internal systems. If lack of sleep becomes extreme, it can lead to organ failure and even death.”

“I guess there’s no free lunch, is there?” “No. Especially in medicine.”

“Am I the only one beginning to feel like there’s something we’re missing?”

“What is this?” Kincaid turned to her with a dubious look as if disappointed she hadn’t already figured it out. “It’s a spacecraft,” he replied simply.

“I understand this is a lot to take in, but this was the reason for everything. For the project, the lab, Reiff, everything.” Her eyes managed to widen even further. “Wait, what?” “You’re surprised.” “Everything was for this?” “Yes.”

“The frozen figure inside—” He paused. “—is human.”

“We have big plans for the future, Ms. Souza,” he said, turning back to the frozen face on the screen. “And to be sure you are not ‘waking up in the middle of a fire’ it helps to have someone who already knows the future.”

He was going to drown. Again.

Kincaid, Lu, and Sandhu were all in their seventies and eighties.

“I guess he wasn’t dead,”

“Oh really. We’re disgusting. We are. Not the mindless sheep that inhabit the planet. Lemmings who do nothing but talk about the same things over and over and over. Who spend most of their lives angry and arguing about nothing that will ever make one ounce of difference.”

“The sheep don’t know the first thing about what really goes on on this planet. That the entire world is run by nothing but powerful, corrupt elites, and it always will be.

“Because you believe exactly what you’re told. All of you. That one side is good, and the other is bad. That your neighbor is evil and heartless while you are honest and moral. My God, it’s the oldest playbook in history. Just keep the peasants arguing with each other so they never bother to look behind the curtain to see what’s really happening. Who’s really pulling the strings.”

different experiments from the early 2000s. Long before the collapse, when scientists discovered that exposing animals to small amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas put them into a state of suspended animation. Also referred to as “biostasis.”

“It’s John Reiff.”

Once the system is closed and food is removed, bacterial growth is very predictable and happens in four phases: the lag phase, log phase, stationary, and decline.

“The mission,” he said. “To Proxima.”

“Why didn’t the Foundation recover us?” “The Foundation?”

“I think it might actually be better if you told us when your mission was.” The man cocked his head suspiciously. “We left in 2132.”

“What year is it?” he asked again. Kincaid took another deep breath. “2046.”

We are in Arizona, and in the United States, which consists of forty-two states, the last of which seceded six years ago in 2040. Today’s date is May 11, 2046.”

Something about how traveling through space at high speeds causes time dilation, or time travel, into the future. He tried to remember her wording. Something about relativity. That general relativity carved a path forward in time, but special relativity suggested a path in the opposite direction.

“I don’t know how, but that man has a copy of your cure in his DNA!”

“They survived the crash.”

They were not ready to hand over the ship to the Chinese.

Because she knew the Chinese would not wait. They would take it by force if they had to.

It was called the Fujian. The first Chinese-built supercarrier, weighing in at over 85,000 tons of displacement with ultraefficient and ultrapowerful steam turbines. The first with electromagnetic catapults, the ship not only carried an incredible array of Chinese-made aircraft but could launch dozens of them in exceptionally rapid succession. Classified as a Type 003, the three-hundred-meter-long Fujian was unequivocally the largest and most advanced aircraft carrier to be built outside the United States, only years before the Great Collapse.

Eighty-six years’ worth of advancement. Not just advancement but actual knowledge of future events.

The future belongs to no one. Douglas Kincaid strongly disagreed.

It was at that moment that everything in the cavern, everything in the entire compound except for the ship itself, suddenly went dark.

Until … Nothing. Another second passed, and then another. There was nothing. No sound, no movement, no opening of the door. Nothing.

The Changhe Z-18 was a powerhouse of the new Chinese Liberation Air Force. With three WZ-6C turboshaft engines and a carrying capacity of up to thirty troops, it was still one of the fastest flying rotor transports in the world.

And then it all happened, suddenly, in a blur. Murray pulled the trigger, quickly and repeatedly, shooting Kincaid, then Cannon, then Sandhu, Lagner, and finally Anna Lu, dropping them all where they stood. Leaving the gun hanging in the air, still gripped tightly in his hand, while a faint wisp of smoke emerged from the gun’s barrel.

“The future is not a happy place,” he said. “It’s a world of totalitarian control and widescale suffering. Ruled by a small group of people wielding unimaginable control over the masses.

“And the man who led it all, was Douglas Kincaid.”

“I’m not Murray. My name is Wallace. Lieutenant Murray was the mission’s commander. I’m the engineer.”

Kincaid said that carbon testing of the site where Wallace’s ship was found pegged the craft’s arrival around the year 1200. Approximately 932 years before the commencement of Wallace’s mission.

She stared at him, stunned, while her heart abruptly melted. She had no words for that. None at all. And instead, simply leaned forward and kissed him deeply.

“What do you think happened back there?” “I don’t know,” replied Reiff. “To be honest, I don’t really care.”