by B N Miles
40
The mountain turned into sheer cliffs the closer they got, and the top was obscured in starlight. Jared led the group toward the edge of the facility, just outside of the lights. They ran the last few hundred yards, darting out from behind a grouping of cacti, and managed to reach the shadows of the plateau.
Jared pressed himself against the rock, the mist from his spell rolling around them, pushing up against the stone, bouncing back down to the warm desert ground. He inched along, heading toward a group of doors built into the rock just inside the light’s reach.
He held up a hand to call a halt. The girls stayed quiet, pressed close to the walls. He turned back toward them and motioned for Nikki. She came over and they knelt together, heads close.
“Can you get over there?” he whispered. “We need to make sure those trailers are empty.”
“No problem,” she said.
“Quietly,” he said. “And don’t kill anyone.”
“No promises.” She stood up and seemed to blur into the darkness, her body breaking free from his mist as she darted toward the trailers, flitting from the rocky outcropping, to a rusty old truck, to the back of the first trailer itself.
Nikki was almost a goddess at night. She owned the darkness around her, the hunter all Humans instinctively feared. There was a small part of Jared that didn’t want to unleash her within this facility, that worried she’d kill too many, but so far, he’d never seen her lose control. As far as he could tell, despite her immense powers at night, Nikki kept herself restrained when necessary.
But when she unleashed, it was beautiful as much as it was horrifying.
Jared could just make out her shadow as she moved from truck to trailer. She slipped inside one of them then back out again, not making any noise, moving so fast she seemed like a blur. If there were cameras watching the outside, and there definitely were, the guards would have to be paying very close attention if they were going to spot her.
But still, it was a risk.
Nikki finished her scouting and returned to them, blurring out of the ring of light then around through the desert, taking the long way. She appeared moments later, her hair a little messy, but otherwise looking like she’d just gone for a leisurely stroll around the park.
“Empty,” she said. “Checked one of them out and it looks like an administrative hub. Couple desks, lots of paperwork. Didn’t stick around to read anything, though.”
“Good,” Jared said. “Where’s the closest door?”
“This way,” Nikki said. “Just over there. Not sure where it leads.”
“So long as it leads inside, that’s enough for me.” Jared nodded at the girls and began forward again, inching along the cliff wall.
Nikki stuck close to him, his magic wreathing her in mist again.
Jared saw the door just ahead. It was made of the same greenish steel material that the main enormous entrance was molded from, but this was the size of a normal Human. It was just at the edge of the light, though still partially in shadow from a piece of the mountain that jutted out by its side. As he got closer, he could make out a small, square electronic device next to it, almost like a keypad but without the keys.
They reached the door and stood around it, standing as close as they could without crowding each other. “Lumi,” Jared said.
She slipped up next to him. “What do you think?”
He nodded at the small box. It was a dark black plastic with a flat glass center. Gridlines were marked across the glass, and just above it, two buttons sat, one colored green, one colored red.
“Biometric,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” he said. “But it’s my guess, anyway.”
“It might work with my blood,” Lumi said. “Maybe that’s all it needs, like the barrier out front.”
“Worth a try.”
She stepped up to the door and hesitated. Nothing happened. She reached out and pressed her palm against the grid-lined glass box. Nothing happened.
“Try the green button,” Jared said.
She reached up and tapped it. The gridlines came to life, glowing a light white color. Lumi kept her hand pressed against it as the box beeped, then a green LED light lit up the top of the doorway.
It slid open with a suck of air.
Jared stood staring into the dark entrance. Nobody moved, not even Lumi. She kept her hand pressed against the box like if she moved it, the whole thing would close, and they’d lose their chance.
“That was easy,” Lumi said.
“Much too easy,” Jessalene said. “And there’s no way they don’t track these doors.”
“They have to know we’re here,” Izzy said.
“Yeah,” Jared said and stepped in through the doorway. “I hope they do.”
“Maybe we should find a different way in,” Jessalene said.
“There’s no time for that,” Jared said. “Nikki’s going to lose her strength soon, and we have to find Cassie. If they know we’re here, then they know, and there’s nothing we can do about it but move forward.”
Nikki came in next, and she slipped her hand through his arm, smiling up at him in the dark. Her eyes seemed to glow, and when she smiled, her fangs glinted like steel.
Jessalene came next, followed by Izzy. Lumi came in last, and as she stepped through, the door slid shut on silent, well-oiled hinges, plunging them into darkness.
41
Jared dropped his mist, letting it shift back into priori, then called up a minor light spell. A gently glowing orb appeared in front of them, hovering a few feet in the air, and casted just enough light for them to see.
They stood in a short hallway. The walls and ceiling were rough stone, the ground covered in some kind of dark gray tiling. Hanging along the walls on pegs were pieces of equipment, several flashlights, a few yellow hardhats, a sweatshirt, and a lab coat. A clipboard was tacked at the end of the pegs with a list of initials and times, probably logging whoever came in through this entrance.
The hall ended in a doorway, though this one had a handle. Jared tugged it, pushed it, then realized he had to slide it sideways. The door pushed into the rock and allowed them to step through into a much wider room.
The dark gray tiles continued, but the rough walls disappeared, and the ceiling had been smoothed out. There were several lights on throughout the cavernous room, illuminating glass-enclosed workspaces. Jared dropped his magic as the girls crowded in behind him, standing just at the edge of the room for a moment.
Jared walked forward. Glass lined the hall on either side of them. Some of the rooms were dark and some had a light or two, but there were no people. The first room on his left had several rows of lab benches, Bunsen burners, beakers and vials of liquids he didn’t recognize, racks and stands of more equipment. It looked like a processing lab of some sort.
The room on their right was dark, but Jared could make out one long desk next to an empty space littered with what looked like mechanical parts: motors, wiring, raw steel sheets, a helmet with a heavy dent on the side.
“What is this place?” Izzy asked.
“Looks like some kind of lab,” Jessalene said. “How far does it go?”
“I can’t tell,” Jared said. “But far.”
The walkway stretched out ahead of them, driving off into the distance, lit intermittently by lights from within the glass enclosed areas. The walkway branched off in either direction in a few places, and Jared guessed there were more labs, more work stations along those paths. He could see more glass-enclosed areas, but he had no clue what they contained, if there were people working, if they should turn back.
“What’s the plan here?” Izzy asked.
Jared hesitated and looked at Lumi. “What were you thinking?”
She ran a hang along her face. “I didn’t really think we’d get this far.”
“Neither did I,” Jessalene said.
“I never thought about what we’d actually do when we got insi
de,” Jared said.
“Wait a second,” Izzy said. “You guys broke into a Medlar research facility, had me do some stupid, insane blood magic, and you don’t actually have a plan.”
Jared held his hands out. “Improvising is a kind of plan.”
“We planned on improvising,” Nikki said.
“Oh my god,” Izzy whispered. “We’re all going to die.”
“We need to find people,” Jessalene said. “Find someone that works here, interrogate them, try and figure out what all this is and if they have Cassie.”
“Works for me,” Jared said.
“But how are we going to find someone in all this?” Izzy asked.
“We can start by looking around,” Jared said. “And go from there.”
“So you want to improvise,” Izzy said.
“Exactly.” Jared reached out, took her hand, and pulled her close to him. She looked up into his eyes, and for a second, she was that little girl from her memories, the one watching her family’s home burn to the ground. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You can turn back whenever you want.”
She pulled her hand away. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go improvise then.”
He smiled as she turned toward the walkway and began forward. Lumi shot Jared a look and followed after Izzy.
“Don’t worry,” Nikki said. “I like this plan. Leaves more room for fun.” She gave him a wicked little wink and followed the others.
Jared sighed, rubbed his face, and walked next to Jessalene, bringing up the rear.
The hallway stretched on for what seemed like forever, and Jared suspected this was one enormous stretch of the entire mountain. They passed more glass-enclosed workstations, some of them straight up labs, though some of them were stranger.
They saw one room with crash test dummies stacked in a corner, while one dummy stood in the center of the room with multiple needles stuck into its body and burn marks all over the ground around it.
They passed a room filled with small aquariums that contained gently glowing bioluminescent fish.
There were rooms with desks, rooms with single chairs sitting in the center, a room filled with rats in cages running on little wheels that seemed to power a machine that made different colored LED lights glow, depending on the speed at which the rats ran.
Jared stopped outside of a room with a Mini Cooper sitting inside, half deconstructed, the engine missing, replaced by what looked like some kind of battery array.
“Hard to imagine the Medlar working on an electric car,” Jared said as Lumi joined him.
“Hard to imagine them using a Mini Cooper to do it,” she said.
He smiled a little and put a hand on the glass. It was colder than he expected, and he pulled his palm away.
“From what I can tell, these are just a bunch of random experiments,” he said.
“Some of it looks creepy,” she said. “Did you see the room with all the dissected pigs?”
“And the room with what looks like a bunch of flash-frozen squirrels lying under medical lasers.”
“I don’t know what my family’s doing here, but it can’t be good,” she said. “And we haven’t even seen the room that those giant doors lead into yet.”
Jared grunted and looked down the hall at the others. Nikki, Izzy, and Jessalene were walking in a small group, staring into the various different labs with looks ranging from wonder to pure confusion.
“If Cassie’s in here, we need to get her out tonight,” Jared said. “I don’t want to think about the kind of experiments they are doing on her.”
“We’re not leaving without her,” Lumi said. “Come on, the others are getting too far.”
Jared followed Lumi and they rejoined the group. They walked on, getting deeper and deeper into the strange labyrinth of science experiments, until they came to a darkened room, glowing with only a single red light.
Izzy pressed herself against the glass, cupping around her eyes to try and see inside. “What is that?” she asked.
“I can’t see,” Nikki said. “Some kind of… cages?”
“There’s something inside them,” Izzy said.
“Maybe we should—” Jared started.
But then screaming pierced the otherwise still and silent air.
Jared thought the screaming was an alarm for one brief second. But once his initial shock of adrenaline passed, he realized the sound was coming from inside the red-lit room. Izzy and Nikki both stepped back from the glass, but the sound of screaming, shouting, and rattling cages continued, getting louder and more aggressive.
“Monkeys,” Izzy said. “Fuck, that scared me.”
“Lots of monkeys in there,” Nikki said.
“We have to move,” Jared said. “Come on. Someone’s going to hear that.”
He tugged at Izzy and she followed as he moved back down the hall to the glass-enclosed workspaces. The others followed, and as he reached the doorway that led inside the space, he heard something creak in the distance from the far end of the hall junction just ahead, and footsteps on the tile floor, multiple footsteps.
“In here,” Jared said, throwing open the workspace door. He pulled Izzy in behind him as Jessalene, Nikki, and Lumi followed.
The room looked like a simple lab, though several refrigerators lined the back wall, with poison skull-and-crossbones decals stuck to their front. Jared crouched down behind the lab tables and the girls followed his lead.
The footsteps were muted by the glass, but he could still hear them clacking along he hard tile floor in the otherwise silent cave. He watched as two people rounded a corner and hurried toward the monkey room.
They wore short white lab coats. The man on the right had wire rim glasses perched on the end of his nose, a shock of white hair shoved back over his thin skull, and wrinkles along his pale skin. The other was a young woman, light skin and wide eyes, dark hair cut in a sharp bob at her ears.
“God damn monkeys,” the older man said. “What the hell’s gotten into them?”
“Probably spooked by a janitor,” the woman said.
“I don’t see a god damn janitor around here.” The older man approached the glass door to the monkey room and pulled it open. “HEY, SHUT THE HELL UP.”
The monkeys only screamed louder.
The woman said something, her voice drowned by the monkeys and the glass that separated them from Jared and his girls. He moved closer, keeping low, praying he didn’t trigger some motion detecting light. The woman slipped past the older man and stepped into the room while the older man threw up his hands in frustration.
Jared watched as the woman went into a cooler nearby and took out a bunch of bananas. The monkeys began to calm down as she opened one up, broke it into pieces, and tossed them into the cages.
She did it quickly but methodically, while the older man stood propping open the door, his arms crossed over his chest, like he didn’t want anything to do with going inside the room. Jared moved back toward the girls and caught Nikki’s eye.
“Them,” he whispered.
Nikki’s expression gleamed. “You want them?” she asked.
He nodded as he looked at the others.
Lumi watched the two scientists carefully and didn’t seem to be paying much attention. Jessalene’s face was drawn and tight, like she was upset about something, but she didn’t speak out. And Izzy’s eyes seemed far away as she stared down at the floor.
“Any objections?” he asked.
“No,” Jessalene said. “I just hate this.”
“Just get it over with,” Izzy said.
“Say the word, darling,” Nikki said.
“I’ll come with you,” Jared said. “You take the old man. I’ll take the girl.”
“You always want the fun part.”
“Of course I do.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Now come on, I’ll make it up to you later.”
She beamed at him before turning to the door. She blurred toward it and stood with it propp
ed open at her back. Jared walked after her, leaving the others crouched down inside the poison refrigerator room.
He stepped into the hall and Nikki let the door close. She made sure it made no noise before following him, her steps impossibly light, like she was gliding over ice.
The older man at the door was still watching the woman feed the monkeys.
“They do this, like, twice a damn night,” he said. “And you just keep falling for their tricks.”
“It’s the only thing that works anymore,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter. They won’t last much longer.”
“True enough,” the man said. “Stupid fucking monkeys. You know that one down there threw shit at me the other day?”
“Can’t blame him,” she said. “He’s stuck in a cage all day, poked with needles half the time, and throwing shit is probably the only fun he gets.”
“You’re too nice to them.”
“They’re alive and—” She turned to scold the older man, and her eyes went wide as she spotted Jared and Nikki in the hallway.
Nikki moved first, faster than Jared thought she could. She blurred to the older man, grabbing his hair, yanking his head back. She hissed and her fangs pressed against his throat as he threw up his hands wildly, trying to shove her away.
Jared pulled in priori as the woman began to run toward a control panel at the far end of the room. He snapped a memgram into place, wrapping a thick layer of ice around her legs. It solidified and held, making her topple forward, but the ice made sure she didn’t fall. She let out a gasp as her own weight shoved the air from her lungs, and she opened her mouth to scream.
But Jared snapped another memgram into place. A bubble of hardened air formed around her head like a fishbowl, and when she screamed, the sound was muffled and came out as barely a whisper.
“Easy,” Nikki said in a soothing, silky voice.
The monkeys began to hoot again, though they didn’t scream. Most were busy eating bananas, though some watched with wide, intelligent eyes, their long arms crooked and scratching at their thin, hairy bodies.
“What the fuck?” the old man said. “Who the fuck are you? Are you a fucking—”