Isaiah muttered, “These corridors are the air ducts. That’s why they interlock. Everything here goes around in circles—the air, the electricity, the bacteria. Everything is constantly moving in a circle in series of sixes or zeros laid on top of each other. All we can do is keep going until we find a way out.”
Amanda hesitated in place. “Well, pardon me, but walking around in a circle doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”
“I’m wide open to ideas.”
“Why don’t we go back to where we started and follow that big tunnel until we reach some kind of maintenance station?” Amanda stared up. “I mean, even subways have maintenance stations, don’t they? With ladders that lead to the street? Why don’t we find one of those ladders?”
“That’s a good idea,” Isaiah said evenly. “Except for one thing.”
“What?”
“Do you really want to go back into that collider tunnel where that thing almost ran us down?”
“Well,” Amanda hesitated, “no. But maybe it’s gone now. I mean, it didn’t look stupid to me. And if there’s a way out, I bet that thing found it. Anyway, we’re sure not going anywhere fast in here. I mean, I don’t know who built this place but they sure didn’t have much of an imagination. Any fool can build a place that looks like a donut.”
Isaiah stopped and was staring over the corridor, the ceiling, the walls, the floor, as if searching.
“Do you see something?” Amanda asked.
Isaiah continued to stare. “Maybe.”
Amanda gazed up. “Feel free to share.”
“Maybe a way out.”
Amanda didn’t remove her eyes from the ceiling.
“Through the ceiling? How we gonna get up there?”
“You go first.”
“Ha!” Amanda bent as she clasped a hand over her chest in laughter. “And then I’ll pull your two hundred and something pounds up behind me? Yeah! I’d like to see that!” She fanned her face. “Whew! I thought you actually had a doable escape plan for a second. I got sort of excited.”
Isaiah steadily stared over her.
Amanda stopped laughing.
“You can’t be serious,” she muttered.
“I can lift you up there. What’s wrong with the idea?”
“It’s not an idea! I can’t pull you up there! And you sure can’t jump up there! And what am I gonna do if that thing is up there when I get up there? What am I gonna do with you down here and me up there while I’m getting molested or raped by some demonic thing from another planet? Holler at you?”
Isaiah tilted back, face at the ceiling. “Honey, in the first place, there’s a good chance that there’s nothing up there. Now, my idea is this: I give you a boost and you take a look and tell me if there’s some kind of construction tunnel above this ceiling. There might be electrical access panels—anything that we can crawl into and get out of this corridor. Which is going no place. Fast.”
Amada looked from Isaiah to the ceiling.
“Just take a look?” she asked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She dusted off her clothes. “Well, okay. I mean, I don’t suppose anything can go wrong with a quick peek. But don’t go anywhere.”
“Go anywhere?” Isaiah gestured to the ceiling. “How am I going to go anywhere? I’ll be holding you up there.”
“All right, all right, let’s do this.”
Isaiah bent and cradled his hands and she stepped into them. She bounced once, twice, three times before shouting, “Go!”
Isaiah straightened and Amanda grabbed the grate above their heads. As Isaiah staggered to find balance, her fingers tightened on the mesh and then stabilized. Finally, Amanda pulled down; the grate didn’t give. She pushed, and it lifted easily.
“Okay!” she gasped. “A little higher!”
With a groan Isaiah pushed her until she could look over the edge of the duct and saw nothing but gray wiring and white rectangular tubes. She called down, “There’s nothing but a bunch of wires and breaker boxes and vents! I don’t know!” A pause. “There sure is a whole bunch of wires! I don’t think it’s safe up here!”
“Like it is here?” gasped Isaiah. “All right! Climb up! Look around!”
Amanda heard a herculean crash in the corridor below and she was literally thrown into the overhead crawl space. She scrambled quickly to look down through the access duct and saw Isaiah backing away. Already frantic, Amanda whispered, “What was that crash?”
“Something knocked down one of the vaults,” said Isaiah quietly. “Look around up there. Do it fast.”
Amanda was scanning. “What am I looking for?” she whispered. “A rope or something?”
“Yes!” Isaiah’s voice was nervous. “Looks for some unused wire! Anything like that! Then tie it off and throw me the rest!”
“Here’s a wire!”
Amanda picked a wire at random and pulled hard and more of it emerged from the wall. “Good grief! This is a lot of wire!” She continued pulling. “Isaiah?” she said more loudly.
“Are you still down there?”
“Where am I gonna go?” was the response. “Hurry!”
Somewhere in the depths of the corridor beneath her, Amanda heard a howl unlike anything she had ever heard before. It was not like a wolf or a dog or even a man. It was as if the darkness had taken shape and was announcing its presence. Finally Amanda flung the wire down the opening and shouted, “That’s it! Get up here!”
She didn’t need to say it twice because Isaiah was already climbing. He was through the duct within seconds, pulled up the wire, and then grabbed the mesh covering and slammed it back into place as a shadow appeared on the floor of the corridor.
A shape slowly approached.
Even from her limited view through the wire mesh, Amanda was horrified as the creature came into view. It was at least seven feet tall and black and was wearing some kind of bizarre armor. It was grotesquely over-muscular and atop its mountainous, sloped shoulders, its head was unnaturally elongated vaguely reminding Amanda of skulls she had once seen of Aztec artifacts.
Crystal skulls, they called them.
The beast had stopped directly beneath the duct and Amanda realized she had stopped breathing.
Very slowly, it turned. It gazed at the walls, at the door that led downward to the collider. It stood a long time in place, staring at everything, before it moved and was lost from view as it descended the stairs.
Isaiah had not moved, had not even attempted to catch a glimpse of it. He waited until Amanda raised her face. Even she couldn’t hear her muted whisper as she nodded, “It took the stairs.”
Isaiah leaned forward, staring down. And he stared a long time. Then he looked close into Amanda’s eyes as he said, “Whatever happens, don’t open this duct. Stay here until I tell you to come down.”
Amanda’s breath was faint. “Wait! What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to lock it out of this tunnel.”
“Are you crazy?” Amanda’s frantic whisper abruptly rose in volume. “It’ll kill you! You didn’t see it! It’s big! I mean, like, gorilla-big! If it sees you or hears you it will tear your balls off!”
“Don’t encouragement me. I can do this.”
“Don’t get killed!”
Isaiah was staring down at the magenta-lit stairway that descended into darkness. He inhaled once, twice, like a man preparing to dive into the ocean, then he wrapped a hand around the wire as he looked up at Amanda, “Don’t move at all. I’ll be—”
“How can this wire hold your weight?”
“It’s bolted to the wall.”
“Okay, okay, be careful.”
“Don’t touch anything until I—”
Isaiah stopped, staring down narrowly, moving only his eyes.
Beneath them,
the creature had reentered the corridor and was staring at where it had been. But now the mesh covering that had concealed the air duct was removed and Isaiah was clearly in view if the creature raised its face.
Then they would be dead—simple as that.
And, probably, just as fast.
Amanda couldn’t breathe. She barely realized her chest was moving, but no air was felt in or out. She was horrified beyond the capacity for feeling or moving or rational thought and only dimly realized that Isaiah was much the same because he hadn’t moved a muscle either. Only his gaze had shifted ever so slightly so that he could see the thing from the corner of his eye.
The creature swayed in place and seemed to sniff the air. Then its mouth opened and Amanda almost screamed as she beheld sharp jaws—fangs like a shark’s teeth all lined in rows—widening as if to taste their fear.
Amanda’s scream stopped in her throat.
Another long moment passed as it stood in place.
Then it raised its face.
Amanda stared into the coal-black eyes.
It roared.
***
Roy stopped in place, lifting his face.
“What is it?” asked Janet, also stopping.
Raising a hand, Roy lowered his head as if he were listening to something faint and far away. He stood like that for a long time before he said, “Get me back to the Observation Room and call up every monitor.”
“But we just talked about it,” Janet mildly objected. “The monitors can’t read either of them.”
“The monitors can tell us if all the security vaults are still standing.” Roy began moving at a normal pace. “I think that thing just did something massive.”
“You think it knocked down a vault?”
Janet hustled to keep up.
“Yeah. I do.”
“What does that mean? That it’s time to make a run for it?”
“Not yet.”
“So what do we do?”
They rushed into the Observation Room and Janet frantically typed codes into the computer to call up every security monitor inside the underground portion of the facility. Suddenly every monitor in the chamber was alive with utterly motionless images of empty corridors and seemingly impervious titanium vaults until …
“Oh, hell,” expressed Roy. “Look.” He pointed at a screen. “Can you tell me where that broken vault is?”
“Yeah. It’s … Oh, no! That’s only twenty-two vaults north of this room!” She raised her face to Roy. “Do you think the second one turned north instead of south and that’s why it didn’t get to us first?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” Roy said without expression.
Janet straightened, “And now it’s doubling back to this section of tunnel?”
“Or using the unsecured sub-hatches to follow the collider tunnel. Or a combination of both. It doesn’t matter.” Roy’s teeth were bared as he said, “Now that it knows how to break titanium, it’s gonna cover ground a lot faster.”
“How fast?”
“I don’t know,” Roy shook his head, blinking tiredly. “It depends on how smart it is or maybe … what we can throw at it.”
“Why don’t we just bury this place, Roy!” Janet grabbed his arm with both hands. “We can’t let that thing reach the surface!”
“If it comes to that, I’ll blow the bomb,” Roy stated coldly. “Not even that thing can survive a ground zero detonation of one hundred megatons. I don’t care what it’s made of. But we ain’t there yet. You said that you can’t control these vaults on an individual basis?”
Janet found herself searching the console. “I’m not saying it can’t be done. I just mean that I can’t do it because I don’t have the encryption codes and, with these resources, it’d take me forever to break them. Maybe General Francois could do it. He can do everything else down here.”
“Where is he?”
Janet searched the Observation Room before realizing she half-expected him to still be there. Then she glanced at the door, lifting a hand. “I guess he’s at the elevator with the others.” She raked ragged bangs from her eyes. “Or he might have used an unknown door to escape this place. Hell, I don’t know. And Blanchard is gone, too. I guess they made tracks at the same time.” She clicked a switch. “Let’s see.”
A screen came alive with a view of very still personnel crowded at the elevator. It appeared as if no one had moved an inch since Janet left. She saw Susan standing in the door and staring down the corridor.
“Neither of them are at the elevator,” she stated. “They must have escaped through an unsecured door. No surprise. And I can’t access topside cameras. I can only see what’s going on down here.” She taped in a code. “Security cameras for the offices are off-air. I guess Francois didn’t want a record of whatever he’s doing.”
Roy grunted, “He’s going down with his ship whether he wants to or not. He’s going down with it even if I have to go down with him.”
Janet turned a gaze to Roy.
“That’s what I like about you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re so old-fashioned. You say what you mean, mean what you say. You lead from the front and cover your own ground. You don’t leave anybody behind. You don’t quit. And if you die, you die. No fear. No regret.” Janet lowered her head. “It makes me doubt myself since I’m scared to death.”
“Ah, hell,” Roy muttered, “if you ain’t scared, I sure don’t want to share a house with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you ain’t scared—like me—you’re crazy.”
***
The beast had torn its way halfway into the ceiling, ripping shreds of steel and hurling them aside like wet paper, before Amanda realized she was scrambling back screaming.
Amanda recognized what was a monstrous abomination of black claws and black fangs and huge arms tearing and shredding and lashing out at her and coming closer and closer with each pass and then Isaiah was there, too.
With a roar Isaiah leaped forward holding something in his hand and suddenly the entire ceiling above the corridor was lit with an electric blue, soundless light both blinding and stunning and Amanda became aware that she was flying before she smashed painfully into a wall and fell across something hard.
Beneath her, the corridor reverberated with a wounded animal cry before the sound retreated into what seemed like the stairway. “Wait!” Amanda screamed and reached out with a single hand as Isaiah dropped through the hole torn through the ceiling.
She scrambled forward, staring down, as Isaiah repeated the procedure he had executed on the first door. He ripped a fire ax from a box and spun the wheel of the door until it stopped. Then he slammed in the fire ax and a steel crowbar and forced them against the iron jam of the door before he stepped back, hands on knees, gasping.
“Are you okay?” gasped Amanda. “Isaiah! Can you hear me?”
Isaiah managed to raise a hand and his voice rose to her, as well. “Don’t move one inch, Amanda.”
Her face twisted. “What? No! I’m coming down!”
“No!” Isaiah said angrily as he straightened and pointed at her face. “Stay exactly where you’re at! Do not move!”
Amanda wiped away a tear. “Why are you telling me this?”
Isaiah wagged his finger, still obviously trying to catch his breath, before he said brokenly, “Because … there’s a bare wire up there … that I used to knock the hell out of that thing … and it’s carrying enough voltage to kill you.” He bent, laboring for breath, then stepped forward, squinting up.
“Okay,” he gasped, and swallowed, “can you see what’s around you?”
Barely moving her eyes, Amanda gazed at the wires and ceiling.
“Yeah,” she said uncertainly.
“Okay. That’s good. No
w, can you drop through that hole without touching any wires?”
Amanda crept forward an inch, carefully searching for anything that seemed dangerous although she wasn’t sure what that would be. “I don’t think so,” she managed. “What wire did you use to shock it?”
“Look for a naked wire,” Isaiah replied. “It’s copper. It’s not white like the others. This wire doesn’t have any insulation. It’s just a bare wire and it’s copper or brown in color. Can you see it?”
Amanda peered closer in the half-light of the ceiling and thought she perceived a brown-colored strip of wire on the far side of the rent opening.
“I think I see it,” she whispered. “Is that it over there?”
“Yes,” Isaiah nodded. “That’s it. Now, move without touching it. Just drop through the hole. I’ll catch you.”
Amanda found herself staring down but she had been through too much horror to hesitate. She curled into a seated position on the edge of the ravaged ceiling and crossed her arms on her chest as she slid off the steel panel.
She screamed as Isaiah caught her in a steel grip.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, burying her face into Isaiah’s chest. “Oh, my God. How did you hurt that thing?”
“I told you,” Isaiah said quietly. “I hit it with enough voltage to knock down an elephant. I think it was a line of four-forty. It was big. And, when it hit, it went blue like a bolt of lightning. And that was too much for it.”
“Is it gone?” Amanda asked. “I mean, for good?”
“No,” Isaiah shook his head. “Once it realizes what happened, it’ll be back. And pissed. And I doubt the same trick will work twice. We’ve got to get out of this part of the tunnel.”
“How are we gonna do that?”
“If I’m right, it knocked down a vault somewhere along this corridor. We’ll have to go down that way, past the vault, and hope for good luck.” Isaiah gently lowered Amanda to her feet, her arms still wrapped around his neck. “Hell,” he added with a glance down the hall, “any kind of luck would be better than what we’ve had so far.”
Beside them, a fist struck the steel door.
And again.
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