Together they shoved open the rusted door and entered a huge workspace like the ones they’d seen before. Work tables laden with tools, empty coffee cups, and blueprints lay scatted around the room.
In the center stood the glassed-in room, where more white suits hung on hooks.
H124’s heart sank into her stomach. The glass room was empty.
Chapter 19
“Where is it?” Raven asked, his voice cracking. He rushed to the glass room and forced the door open. The spacecraft section, if it had ever been built, was not here. He turned, incredulous. “This can’t be.”
H124 hurried to a nearby table littered with papers. She shuffled through them—blueprints, calculations, statistics. She found a binder on a desk with “Current Project Status” written on the side. She thumbed through it. At the back, she read the last two entries: Completed at 2040 hours. Awaiting status on other sections. Celebration tonight!
The final entry read: Funding cut off. Awaiting word from the other facilities to see what we can do.
H124 turned to the others. “It was done. The last entry says they were just waiting on the other sections.”
“And we have those,” Raven added.
“So who took this piece?” Byron asked.
“Maybe it was the first one to be moved? To join with the others and be assembled?” Rowan asked.
H124’s heart sank even more. If this piece had been transported, and wasn’t at the other facilities, that meant it had been waylaid somewhere en route in antiquity. They’d never find it.
“I don’t think it was moved by them,” Raven said, examining the lock on the glass room. “This was forced open. The metal’s bent, the lock destroyed. Same with the outer door.”
H124 examined the lock with him. “But who would have done this? Who would be down here?”
“This city was falling apart,” Raven speculated. “This is one of the few stable areas. It’s possible the PPC was down here, assessing damage from the coal fire.”
“And they took it?”
“The tech might have intrigued them,” Raven said.
H124 had an idea. She moved away, bringing up her PRD comm window. Willoughby answered right away.
“H! Are you okay?”
She nodded. Willoughby sat in his extravagantly decorated office, his hair neatly styled, his usual tailored suit impeccable.
“How are you? Safe?”
“So far, so good,” he said in a voice that didn’t entirely convince her.
“You think they’re on to you?”
“An exec paid me a visit, asking some strange and rather specific questions. I’m not sure if Olivia tipped them off with some lie, or if they really have something.”
“I think you should get out of there. Transfer to another city.”
“I might have to.”
“Listen,” she said. “We’re at the aerospace facility beneath Basin City. But someone has taken the spacecraft section. Would the PPC keep any records of finding something like that?”
Willoughby leaned back in his chair. “It’s possible. When Basin City failed, a lot of the PPC execs transferred to other cities, taking their records with them. If any of them came here, I might be able to dig something up.”
“Can you see what you find and get back to me?”
He nodded. “Will do.”
The comm window closed.
“And now?” Byron asked.
“We wait,” she told him.
They milled around the room, absently picking up different tools. Byron drew patterns in the dust on one of the desks. Raven flipped through books and manuals. Rowan paced.
Finally her PRD beeped. She brought up the comm window. Willoughby looked nervous. “I think I found something.” He glanced toward his office door.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. When I was digging around in the database, I got a strange ‘Access Denied’ message. I think they might be starting to shut me down.”
“You need to get out of there,” she told him again.
“I will. But first let me tell you what I learned before I got shut out.”
The others gathered around her floating display.
“Before the city was abandoned, they were searching for pockets of natural gas that they could tap into with fracking. One of the energy techs found what they described as an ‘ancient lab’ and removed a device from it. It could be your craft.”
“What happened to it?” Raven asked.
“The PPC took it to the main tower.”
H124 remembered seeing it, its antenna toppled, the top of the building lying in ruins in the street below.
“Where in the tower?” she asked.
“There was an exec who collected antiquities on the 120th floor. I’m sending you a schematic of the old tower.”
When she opened it, she saw that the floor lay below the broken section. A tiny gleam of hope sparked inside her.
“Were you able to learn anything about that thing inside Dirk?” Byron asked.
“I got locked out before I could finish the search. But I haven’t given up.” He got up and started stuffing things into a small satchel—his PRD, a multitool. “I have to get out of here. Call me if you need anything, and I’ll let you know where I end up.”
“Willoughby,” H124 said. He stopped packing and faced her. “Be careful.”
He smiled. “You, too, H.” He signed off.
“The tower . . .” Rowan said. “I saw that thing on the way in. Isn’t exactly in tiptop shape.”
“But at least the floor is under the ruined part.” H124 stuffed the project notes into her toolbag, and they filed out of the room. She checked her PRD. Dark would soon fall. They didn’t have much time to reach the tower before this place would be crawling with night stalkers.
Chapter 20
Back on the city streets above, they headed toward the old PPC tower. They could see it looming above all the other buildings, even with its broken crown. They found a street with a clear line of sight leading directly to it. Raven led the way again, pointing his pyrometer at the ground and leading them around the unstable spots.
The western sky turned gold as the sun kissed the horizon. H124 and the others picked their way along the street, moving to alleys and neighboring blocks when they had to skirt around smoking cracks and unsound ground. As the sun dipped below the horizon, her heart started to beat faster. Every shadow seemed to come alive.
A sudden jarring sensation at her back sent her reeling. She didn’t know what had hit her. Then she realized another earthquake had struck, sending a handful of bricks cascading down onto her back. She breathed out in relief.
They all bent low, waiting out the tremblor, moving on only when it passed. The clouds in the west went orange and pink, with a low-lying ripple of red beneath. It was beautiful, she thought, in spite of their circumstances. As the clouds went from red to violet to grey, shadows crept across the city. She moved in the gloaming, that short span when day and night existed at once, a time when she always felt that magic was close at hand and anything could happen. She tensed, staring into the deeper dark of alleys and the spots beneath collapsed structures.
Rowan’s words came back to her. Even Death Riders don’t go there.
As the dark lengthened, they all switched on their headlamps, and she kept checking their blinking emitters every few minutes. Something moved in the mouth of an alley as they passed, and a metal clattering followed. She pivoted toward it, her headlamp piercing the void. A shape melted away into the shadows. She had the distinct feeling she was being watched.
“What was that?” Byron asked, stopping at her side.
“Don’t know. Something big.”
“So . . . not a roach then.”
“Definitely not a roach.”
He took her
by the arm and urged her to join the others. Unslinging the energy rifle from her back, she kept an eye out for any areas they’d be vulnerable from as they progressed, aiming it in those directions.
Byron loaded his more lethal choice, the Henry repeating rifle.
They moved as a close-knit group, Byron taking up the rear, watching their six. She felt good with him at her back. She scouted the left side, and Rowan the right, while Raven concentrated on getting them through the dangerous terrain. Twice they had to navigate down cluttered alleyways, their progress slowed as they stumbled over piles of fallen bricks and metal beams. As they made their way down a third alley, movement above caught H124’s eye. She pointed her lamp up, illuminating the corner of a decrepit building. Something darted just out of sight, moving along the roof.
“There’s something up there,” she whispered to Byron, who followed her beam. They saw the hint of a black shadow jerk out of sight.
At the end of the alley, Raven chose a route to get them back to the main thoroughfare that led to the tower.
Another clatter erupted from a side alley, and she lifted her rifle. Some way back, she heard the distinct sound of a manhole cover sliding open.
Byron moved to Raven. “Can we pick up our pace?”
“Only if you want to be burned alive,” he retorted.
Furtive shapes loped at the edge of their beams, so she jerked left and right, ready to fire at the first sign of a night stalker. The tower was still a mile away. If they could just run along the main road, headed straight toward it, it wouldn’t be so bad, but having to constantly divert their course was taking too long.
“I wonder how Onyx is faring back in Sanctuary City,” she said, making conversation as her eyes darted wildly about.
“She’s a great hacker,” Raven said, eyes glued to his pyrometer readout. “I know she’ll be able to do it.”
Rowan checked his emitter, bringing up a small ultrasonic microphone to be sure they were still sending out signals. They were.
“You sure these things are going to work, Firehawk?” Byron asked him.
“I don’t have any reason to think they won’t. Except that they’ve never been tested.”
“Great. Just the answer I was hoping for.”
They had to stop completely when they came across a huge section of the city that had fallen into a chasm below. Sulfurous gasses spewed out, and in the dark, the fire burned brilliant red and gold in its depths. Raven led them to the left of it, and to her chagrin, they had to backtrack several blocks before he found a clear way onward. Moving along parallel streets, she watched as the tower grew no closer.
As she passed by an open window whose glass had shattered long ago, a wet hiss erupted, spraying her with warm spittle. The rank, moist breath washed over her, and she stifled a gag as the stench of rotten meat assailed her. She jerked away, aiming the rifle at the open window, beyond which a dark shape moved.
“They’re everywhere,” Byron whispered, moving alongside her. “More every minute. I don’t think we’re going to make it to the tower if we stay out in the open like this.”
Raven maneuvered them along a wide, steaming crack, and once more they resumed their progress. Now true night had set in, and she could see the streets of the city glowing crimson around them.
Something leaped over them, jumping from one roof to the next. H124 grabbed Byron’s arm. “Do you think they can see us?” She pointed her beam up, but the thing darted away. “I mean, see our lights, our movement, just like we see them?” Raven’s idea that their eyesight had been compromised was just speculation.
Byron studied the rooftops, aiming his rifle as he did. “I don’t know.”
“The ones in the arena . . .” She thought of how they moved in on her and Dirk. Had they been looking at them, or echolocating?
She moved toward Raven. “Should we switch off our lights?”
“I wondered that,” Rowan put in.
Raven glanced down at her. “I think if they could see us, like how we see, they would have attacked by now. They can sense our movement, but I think the emitters are working. They can’t quite pinpoint us.”
“I don’t like this,” Rowan said.
“I, on the other hand,” Byron put in, “am having a swell time.”
They moved back into formation. The tower was closer now, only a quarter mile away, and H124 allowed the smallest iota of hope to grip her. She’d appreciated the light quality of the new heat suit earlier, but now that she jumped at every hint of movement, and often had to lift her rifle, she felt encumbered by it. Her range of motion and vision weren’t good enough, and it made her heart beat even faster.
She spun as she heard a shuffling noise to their rear, then the unmistakable sound of another manhole sliding open. Her light fell on the dark circle in the ground, and a smooth, black head ducked out of sight as her light gleamed across it.
The team moved closer together, rifles at the ready. She heard another furtive shuffle and spun again, heart crawling into her throat.
She’d expected to see something climbing from the storm drain, but instead what she saw made her hair stand. The street behind them was alive with crawling things, a horde of swarming, writhing black bodies, creeping forward on all fours, eyes green and reflective in her headlamp.
“Oh, shit . . .” she breathed.
The tower now lay only a few hundred feet away. She pointed her pyrometer at the ground between them and the main door, coming up with nominal readings. “I think we need to run,” she told them.
Moving as one, covering all directions, they began to sprint. Behind them the swarming mass of night stalkers lunged forward, snouts lifted, smelling the air, wet mouths glistening with eager fangs.
She ran faster. A hundred feet. Fifty. Raven reached the door, and he and Rowan forced it open while Byron and H124 pointed their rifles at the seething mass of predators.
As the creatures crept closer, gaining proximity to the emitters, a few of them shook their heads and jerked backward. A few more did the same. Raven shouted, “Come on!” and she turned to see the door open, Rowan waving them through.
They darted into the PPC lobby, and Byron and Rowan slammed the door shut behind them.
H124 spun, searching the vast foyer for any hint of the creatures. She switched off her light as it flared on the front doors, their thick glass still intact. Beyond, green eyes glistened in the darkness, drawing closer.
“Are they in here?” Byron asked.
“Not in this room, anyway,” she gasped.
As they caught their breath, H124 opened her faceplate to take a long drink of water. She wanted out of the heat suit. It was starting to close in on her. She needed to be able to fight, to see all angles of approach. She felt trapped in the thing.
The others followed her lead, taking long drinks. She checked her PRD, hoping Willoughby had left her a message telling her he was okay. But her inbox was empty.
After they’d all rehydrated and rested for a few minutes, H124 turned toward the stairwell. “It’s going to be a long climb,” she told them.
Chapter 21
The stairwell door came open with a little forcing, and they started up.
“Why are there so many night stalkers here?” H124 asked Raven.
“No one’s sure, but this place seems to be ground zero for them. We’ve studied their population dispersal, and this place seems to be where they all radiate from. It’s the night stalker epicenter.”
By the twentieth floor, H124’s legs were already starting to tire, and they still had one hundred flights to go.
When they got to the twenty-fourth floor, the ceiling above the stairwell there had collapsed, sealing off any farther advance on those stairs. They backtracked to a floor below and opened the door to the twenty-third floor.
They passed exec offices, production room
s, transmitter offices, and something called “Efficiency Monitors.” Though covered in dust, most of the offices looked like the execs had simply stepped away. The cavernous silence of the place lent a chill to the air, and H124 could feel the hairs pricking on her neck. She started to feel like her oxygen wasn’t working properly, so she opened her face plate again.
“Oh, god, me, too,” Byron said, lifting his.
The others did the same. “Keep an eye on your gas sensors. We don’t want to accidently walk into a cloud of sulfur dioxide.”
They tried a stairwell at the other end of the hall, and started up that one, but it was blocked farther up, so they had to use the hallways of floor forty-four. This floor looked different. Instead of separate offices, the entire floor contained a single lab. It had once held several glass doors, but these lay shattered. Strange medical pods stood against each wall, tanks with viscous-looking fluid that had grown dark and stagnant.
She stepped through one of the shattered doors. Metal tables stood around the room, fitted with restraints. H124 felt a cold sweat erupt on her back. “What was this place?”
Something that looked like crusted blood was smeared all over one of the tables, and a thick, dried pool of it had drenched the floor beneath.
Rowan moved to some of the equipment, examining it more closely. In a cabinet at the far end of the room, he discovered an ancient PRD. The casing was cracked, but when he paired it to his own, the floating display flickered and came on. He waved through pages of notes, then paused on a video. He engaged it.
H124 drew up beside him to watch. A man in a grey medical suit and surgical mask faced the camera. “Experiment 254. We’ve successfully paired the DNA. These workers should be able to go deeper, access areas of complete black. We used a recombinant Q35 sample with the previous Experiment 54’s DNA splice to achieve what has been our best result yet.” H124 could see writhing bodies strapped to the tables behind the man. A shriek rang out as one of them struggled against its bonds. It shouted, but no comprehensible words came out. The voice sounded strange and garbled, as if talking through a malformed mouth. “We have every reason to believe that the next generation of workers should be ready within the week.”
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