Mackenzie pressed herself back against the side of the lift as it shuddered to a halt and the doors parted. The hallway beyond was empty, but then I’d expected it to be. We were going in the opposite direction to where Afridi thought we should be going, or at least, that was the hope.
I leaned out of the lift doors just far enough to spot the camera mounted above it. It was an older model and a quick yank ripped it and the cables free of the wall. I shot Mackenzie a smirk as I stepped back into the cargo-lift and stabbed another button, this one a couple of floors above us.
“What are you doing?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“I want to just throw them off the scent a little,” I explained. “They’d have to be idiots not to be trying to track us with the cameras by now.”
Three floors later and after a spate of minor vandalism, we were back on the bottom level. I had only the roughest of guesses that this was where we would find the cells, and we weren’t disappointed.
Our footsteps thumped along the hallway as we ran, the sound of our boots echoing in the silence. There was no time for stealth. Moving silently in boots requires you to move incredibly slowly, and Afridi already knew we were loose. We had a horde to unleash.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We found the stairs first. What I had planned was balanced right on the line between dangerous, and just plain stupid. Working our way through the maze of hallways to the emergency stairway, and propping the door open, worked to bring the plan back from the brink of complete insanity, but only by half an inch or so. All in all, there were close to twenty occupied cells on this level and the floor below. There seemed no order to the placement, some spread out, others clustered together in groups of four or five. It probably came down to nothing more scientific than dumb luck, and how long Afridi’s little experiments survived.
Mackenzie stood in the doorway and waved me closer. I didn’t need to cover the distance to see the horror on her face.
“There’s one in here,” she nodded at the doorway. “Are you sure about this? I’m still not sure this is a good idea, Carver.”
I looked past her into the observation room. “Well we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
She shook her head. “I can’t go in there, Carver. I just can’t do it.”
I’ve seen the look that was on her face before, on the faces of more people than I can count over the years. It was a broken expression, the look someone gets when they are forced into situations the mind was never meant to cope with.
I saw it last on a demolitions expert in Helmand Province. We’d located an IED near a major checkpoint just outside Camp Bastion. God only knows how it got placed without us spotting the bastards when they set it up. It was a fluke that we saw it at all really. We were on the way back from a recce and just happened to be looking the right way at the right time.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal had shown up pretty quick, but the first guy out of the Mastiff looked like he’d been pulled from a sick-bed. He didn’t just look ill; his skin was like ashes. I watched his hands shake as his team talked to him, trying to bring him down. Eventually they got him to sit inside the truck whilst they dealt with the IED without him. I only found out later on what the problem was. He’d lost half his team because of a bad call. They’d been working on a massive IED on the Helmand-Kandahar highway, the kind that will rip even a Mastiff in half. Against all the odds, they’d made the damned thing safe for collection—no small task considering how these things are thrown together. IEDs might be built from a junk and chemical cocktail, but they’re solid gold as far as the intel guys are concerned. He’d gone to water the desert when the blast hit. Three men killed in an instant, gone before they even knew what had gone wrong. And the only reason he’d survived was because he was taking a piss.
That EOD guy hadn’t been scared for himself. In a way I don’t think he’d even been scared of actually making another mistake. He’d been scared of the situation, of standing face to face with possibility itself, and looking into its dark eyes.
That fear was dripping from Mackenzie. Whatever was in this cell it was something she was truly terrified of. Probably not the poor bastard locked up in there, but maybe the level to which he’d been taken. Afridi was in the business of breaking minds and, by the look on her face, I knew it was that she couldn’t bear to face. Maybe it reminded her how close she’d come, how far she might have fallen. Or maybe she was scared she hadn’t finished falling yet.
I gave her arm a quick squeeze, and slipped through the door to find an observation room identical to the others I’d already seen, right down to the camera filming through the glass. I paused next to the tripod and shifted the lens down until it was filming the desk.
I leaned in towards the glass, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The man was strapped into the same kind of frame I had been, though without the torso restraint I’d had for some reason. He looked to be about thirty or so; sallow skin sporting a tattoo that ran the length of an arm too wasted to show it properly.
The guy had been in here for a while, the facial hair alone showed that. Blood ran down over his lip and dripped down his beard until it met the congealed mess on his chest. It took me a moment to realise he’d gnawed through his own lip.
His hair was cropped short but was growing untidy, and I wondered if he’d had a shaven head when they took him. I watched him in silence for a good two minutes before I made a move for the door.
He let out a soul-searing howl that sounded loud to me even through the glass and I pulled my hand back from the card reader set next to the door. He thrashed in the restraints, throwing himself left and right and then… he phased.
I can’t think of a better way to describe it. It was like he shuddered and split, until there were three of him occupying the same space, but somehow almost transparent as he threw himself against the straps. I shook my head at the sight him, rubbing my eyes as I watched.
“Well, shit. That’s a new one on me!”
I glanced over at Johnson as he peered through the glass. He ignored me, watching the captive with interest. Pearson looked up at me from where he was curled into a ball by Johnson’s feet, staring at me with the same terrified, accusing, expression he always wore. I hated Pearson. He creeped me the fuck out.
The door thunked as the locks released, a sound I’d never heard when I was on the other side of the glass. It hissed as it swung open and I slipped through the gap.
The howling cut off as I entered and the man froze, watching me in silence through narrowed eyes.
“Easy,” I said, holding out my hands the same way you would with a spooked horse.
He licked at his bloody lips, cocking his head like a curious bird. “What do you want?”
I stepped further into the room as he watched me.
“You’re not one of them, are you?” he asked after a moment.
I glanced down at the uniform. “No, mate. I’m like you, just trying to get out of here.”
“Nobody gets out. Nobody.” He laughed, but his voice cracked as the pain leaked through. His laughter was suddenly too high, too broken, and it drifted off into something I couldn’t put a name to. Something jagged and splintered that held the ruins of his sanity.
“Let me go, please?” he asked then, his voice low and plaintive.
“What would you do if I did?”
“Die.”
I blinked. His admission was so raw and heartfelt that, for a moment, I had no words.
“What about Afridi, or Elias? The people that kept you here?”
He pulled his torn and bloody lips away from his teeth. The smile was close to a snarl and grew more feral the longer I looked. “They can come with me. I’ll take them with me.”
I nodded, watching his eyes track me as I made my way around the frame. The truth of it was he was barely human, the animal in him so close to the surface that he was almost lost under it completely. His mind was broken, and I knew for damned sure I didn’t want
him loose with us anywhere nearby. His restraints were simple Velcro cuffs, but wrapped around each wrist and ankle three times or more, so he had no chance of working himself free. With even one loose, it wouldn’t take him long to escape.
He held still while I pulled the cuff apart; at least until I stopped. His wrist was still bound but I doubted it would take him more than a couple of minutes to pull it open. He gave me a look as I stepped back, then he frowned at his wrist.
“You said you’d let me out!” He gave a tug on the cuff and his cry of frustration became a howl of rage as he wrenched at it.
The Velcro gave slightly, making that tearing paper sound, and then he was thrashing about again, breaking into that split, shuddering image that made my eyes hurt just to look at. Not that I was looking. I ran. Bullet wound be damned, I was out of there.
I couldn’t tell you how long it took to let them out. We went down to the lower level first—I didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into the crazy bastard I’d just set free, and chances were he’d be heading upwards. I left the cuffs a little tighter on the rest of them, they could work themselves free, but each of their minds were as broken as the last. They wore their abilities as openly as their madness, things that would have made me question my own sanity if I’d been anywhere else. It’s a strange day when the guy who talks to dead people begins to think he’s the normal one, but after what I’d seen I just wanted to run. We didn’t need much time to get to a safe distance, but I wasn’t about to risk it.
We huddled down in the darkness just inside the door of an observation room. The door wasn’t as secure as the one into the cell itself, but neither of us made the move to seek shelter in there. Having the key to get out didn’t make a difference, it was still a cell and neither of us wanted to be locked in again.
The noises started within minutes. Cackling, moans, and a high-pitched laughter that turned to screams far too quickly. I couldn’t tell if they were killing each other, or just howling at the walls. If all went well, they’d find the stairs and head upwards soon enough. Afridi had spent millions on this place, Christ, maybe it was billions. He’d invested the wealth of nations into finding a way to break these people and set their power free. Now all of those broken shards were coming to find him, seeking retribution in his flesh.
I almost pitied him.
Almost.
Mackenzie was a mess. The sounds from the hall pushed her over the edge and she curled up against the wall behind balled fists. I sat there like a useless idiot, watching her silently sob until the awkwardness, and Johnson’s whispered urging, forced me to move.
My touch on her shoulder might as well have burned her from the way she flinched, but I didn’t let go.
“We’re going to get out, Mackenzie,” I whispered. “We will. We’ll get out.”
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t move at all, other than to stiffen. I kept repeating the promise like a mantra, until the words lost their meaning and just became as soothing a sound as I could manage in the murky observation room. Eventually the tension bled from her and she leaned into me, taking comfort where it could be found. I held her, staring into the blackness of the room until it shifted and Johnson leaned in close to my face.
“Don’t fuck this up, Carver.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
We found the first body before we heard any gunshots. The stairway looked like an abattoir; the blood and gore almost enough to make me gag. Mackenzie didn’t seem overly bothered as she picked her way through the mess, but maybe she’d already gone numb to it. More than likely, I reasoned, she’d seen worse. If she’d been nursing for any period in Afghanistan, she’d definitely seen worse.
While she was stitching people back together, I’d been killing them. I’ve killed a fair number of people. When you get right down to it, it’s part of the job, but there’s a level of unreality to it when you’re at a distance with a rifle. Even when you kill up close there’s a way to hide what you’re doing from yourself. A way to justify it all. It’s for the mission, or it’s protecting civilians, or more often—it’s protecting the boys. We’ll do almost anything to look after the idiot stood beside us, sweating their balls off in the desert for some stupid reason, usually involving suits in London.
There’s a damned good reason for all the rules, regulations, and ritual in the forces. A lot of it is so we hide what we’re actually doing from ourselves. It’s the same reason for basic training. You break a man down to their base parts and refashion them into a soldier, into a person who can go where they’re sent, jump when they’re told, and kill on command. It’s like a muscle-memory that bypasses thought and speaks directly to the finger on the trigger. The uniforms, the ranks, rituals, regulations and all the rest of the bullshit are just that—bullshit, but it’s a necessary bullshit needed to convince us that we’re doing a job, that we’re protecting, that we’re not just butchers.
Whoever had done this to the poor bastard of a technician wasn’t even a butcher, they were an animal. I could see how the tech had tried to run. How he’d been chased down and torn apart. He’d been shredded, like wet paper.
The mess stuck to our boots, there was no way to avoid it. Our footprints joined those left by the others who’d already gone through, forming a lurid red streak that wound up the stairwell. The tracks of madness, a parade of insanity that we’d sent charging through the gore to paddle in the blood.
The gunshots were distant, muffled, echoes that carried down the stairwell. I glanced at Mackenzie, but she seemed oblivious to it, blocking it out, I hoped. It probably didn’t make me the nicest of people I suppose, but I needed her. I didn’t know what she’d been through in here, but I could guess based on the little she had told me, and what they’d thrown at me. I knew they’d broken her to some extent, but I needed her help. If she cracked on me now, I was probably fucked.
“What are you playing at, Roasties?” asked Johnson as he appeared in front of me. I’ve never seen him appear before, usually he would speak and I’d to turn my head to find him standing beside me, or something similar. This time he emerged from a swirling black mist and crouched down into a defensive position with his weapon. I stepped past him. Now really wasn’t the time for conversations with dead people.
“Roasties, this is a bad idea.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, looking back at him.
Shit, I swore silently to myself, glancing back at Mackenzie. I’d answered him and there was no way she hadn’t heard it.
“You’re wasting a tactical advantage, mate. You should be in the lifts already.”
I paused on a landing, biting on the inside of my cheek for a moment as I thought about it. He was right, the stairs gave us time to hear anyone coming, but really nowhere to hide. If a real response came at us, we’d had it. The lifts all had cameras around them, probably in them too, but this game came down to speed, surprise, and control.
Combat becomes a hot mess faster than most people might think. For all the training and planning, all it takes is someone to do something unexpected, for someone else not to react in time, and you’re up to your neck in trouble. It can happen in moments.
Letting the captives out to cause chaos had taken a lot of the control out of Afridi’s hands. I doubted anyone was still sitting back, calmly watching the CCTV monitors, and tracking our movements. By now they were dealing with twenty howling maniacs with abilities that made stopping bullets look like a party trick. They would be stretched to their limits, and maybe even close to panic, but it wouldn’t last long. While we were creeping up the stairs, Afridi was probably restoring order. A howling maniac is intimidating, but they usually lose in a fight against a bullet.
“We’re going to have to make a move for the lifts,” I told Mackenzie. She gave me a startled look and frowned.
“We need to take advantage of the time we’ve got,” I explained.
She nodded, and then glanced around the stairwell, her eyes narrowing. “Who were you talking to?”<
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Shit, this was not what we needed. She had to trust me, and there aren’t many who will trust someone who takes advice from their imaginary friends. “No one, just thinking out loud, I guess.”
“You’re lying.” It wasn’t a question. She folded her arms.
I sighed, pinching at the bridge of my nose. “Look, Mackenzie. Now really isn’t the time for this.”
“I saw you, Carver,” she began, her voice too loud on the concrete stairway. She fell silent, glancing around us with guilty expression.
“I saw you,” she hissed in a hoarse whisper. “You looked at something, or someone. You listened, and then you spoke. Don’t treat me like a child, and don’t lie to me. I’ve been lied to enough in my life to spot it.”
“You said it yourself, Mackenzie,” I said with another sigh. “This place breaks people. I was broken when I got here, they just smashed the pieces up a bit more. I was in the army. I lost some good friends. Sometimes I still see the boys from the squad, is all.”
I had no idea what the expression on her face meant. She looked at me for a few moments, in a silence that dragged on as her gaze held me. Finally, she nodded with a shrug. “The lifts?”
I nodded stiffly and followed her, completely certain that was not the response I’d expected.
The next floor led out onto a level that looked to hold laboratories and offices. A red light spun on the ceiling in a silent alarm as we made our way across the tiled floor. I saw movement once, a woman in a lab coat ducking out of sight from behind the windows that lined the hallway. Her face had told me enough to know she was no threat. The look of terror had been etched deep. If this was Jurassic Park, then we were the velociraptors.
“Some kind of PTSD?” Mackenzie asked suddenly. Her voice sounded too loud in the silence, and I grimaced as much at the noise as I did the question.
“Something like that,” I grunted. “They died, I didn’t. They blame me.”
The Lore of Prometheus Page 25