by Jon McGoran
Devon told them about the truck and the rest of the plan. Together, they decided the best thing would be for them to wait in the main tunnel, as close to the open entrance as they could and still breathe easily, and far enough away from the processing units that if there was a fire, none of them would get hurt. They’d keep an eye out for any other chimeras who came that way, and tell them the plan. Claudia and I gave them the dart guns Dara had given us, which we had tucked in our coveralls, in case they ran into trouble.
As they filed past the exoguard we’d left standing out in the main tunnel, each one of them gave him a murderous glare. Then they hustled off toward the entrance.
I grabbed the exoguard’s oversized dart gun to replace the one his partner had destroyed. Then we hustled off, too, farther down the tunnel.
Devon coughed a few times as we ran, a tired, wheezy rattle. Claudia and I slowed so he could keep up.
We passed a series of three huge metal doors, set into the rock wall to our left, labeled W1, W2, and SW1. They looked ancient, sealed with corrosion and dirt. “I forgot to put those shafts on the map,” said Devon, falling into the rhythm Claudia and I set. “I think they’re the tunnels that extend under Centre Hollow. Anyway, should be about a mile to the dorm, then the main chamber and the active branch.”
The codes Claudia had been making fun of when we accessed the mines through the hospital suddenly made sense. The other branches were NE1 and NE2 and these were W2 and SW1. I realized they were directions: Northeast 1 and Northeast 2, West 2, and Southwest 1.
We’d been running another minute when I heard a clattering noise.
“What’s that?” I whispered, cringing as my voice was amplified by the suit.
We all stopped to listen. It seemed to be coming from up ahead, but with the curve of the tunnel, we couldn’t see very far.
“Sounds like a cart train,” Devon said, slowing to talk. “There’ll be one or two exoguards and a handful of miners pushing a line of slag carts to the processing unit.”
“One or two?” Claudia said. “I thought they always traveled in pairs.”
“Usually,” he said with a shrug. “Never in threes.”
“There’s three of us,” Claudia replied.
“And you don’t have a breather,” I said. “You should get behind us. We’ll see if we can dart them before they notice you.”
Devon nodded and lagged behind. We ran until the carts actually came into view. Then we slowed to a walk, holding our dart guns behind our hips.
The train was a line of ten carts, unattached, each pulled by a chimera. A lone exoguard was walking three-quarters of the way back. As we approached, he poked one of the chimeras with his shock baton. It must have been set at the lowest setting, to prod instead of stun, but in the dim light of the tunnel, the blue-white flash was vivid.
The chimera pulling the first cart was tall and wide, with tiny horns on his head and muscles bulging everywhere else. He glanced up at us with eyes that were hollow and defeated. He quickly looked away, as if he knew staring could get him shocked or worse. But then his eyes came back to us, staring anyway, turning his head as we walked past. Each of the others reacted almost the same way, one by one, looking up at us as we passed. I scanned them in turn, hoping and dreading that I would see Rex, relieved and dismayed that I didn’t. I realized that even in a worst-case scenario, he wouldn’t be down here yet.
“Is that Carl?” said the guard as he approached us. “Those guys get the doors straightened out yet?”
We fired, all three of us. He reached for his gun, but froze before he got it unclipped.
“Holy crap,” said the big guy at the front of the line, now turned to watch us. “That’s Devon.”
“Hi, Gus,” Devon said with an emotional smile.
The smile spread among the other chimeras, and several of them said, “Devon!” in awe as they recognized him, as they realized he had escaped and survived.
One of them said, “You came back for us.”
“I did,” he said. “And we need your help.” Then he turned to me, choking back another cough. “And my nonk friend here…will tell you how.”
Gus swiveled his head in my direction. “Okay, nonk. What’s the plan?”
“Does this guy have a partner?” I asked, pointing at the unconscious exoguard.
“Yeah, he’s back at the dorm.”
“Okay, good.” I thought about trying to get one of the miners into the exosuit we now had at our disposal. No such thing as too many in a situation like this. But time was the more pressing concern. “Um…we’re meeting our ride outside the mine entrance in twenty-five minutes.” Crap, I thought. Twenty-five minutes.
“We can’t go out there,” Gus said, shaking his head. “We can’t breathe.”
“I know,” I said. “But there’s a place just a few minutes away where you can. A truck is coming to take you there.”
He looked at Devon. “You found Centre Hollow? It’s for real?”
Devon nodded. “It’s a bit of a dump but better than this.”
“We need to go and get the others,” I said. “Are there any that won’t be able to get to the entrance on their own?”
“There’s some in the dorm. A few working who shouldn’t be. Not many, though. Anyone down for more than a day or two gets sent to…reclamation.”
His voice faltered as he said it and Claudia lost some of the color she had regained. I tried not to think of the horror behind that word. “Are there more carts down there?” I asked.
Gus laughed. “There’s carts everywhere.”
“Okay good. The mine entrance is open. There’s others already waiting. Get as close to the entrance as you can but stay where you can still breathe easily. We’ll meet you there.”
Gus looked at Devon, who nodded, then he turned to the others and waved his arm in the air. “Okay, let’s go.”
As they hustled for the entrance, we headed farther down the tunnel.
“That’s five exoguards down,” I said as we ran. “That means there’s three left.”
“And three of us,” Claudia said. “Our odds are getting better.”
“I don’t know how you took out the first few guards,” Devon said, “but we’ve been pretty lucky with the last two.” He gave us a grim look. “You shouldn’t expect much in the way of luck down here.”
Half a minute later, we saw another doorway up ahead.
“That’s the dorm,” Devon said.
As we approached the doorway, Devon’s warning about our luck running out was at the front of my mind. From ten feet away, I could see through the entrance to the dorm. An exoguard was standing just inside it, with his back against the wall.
But I realized our success so far wasn’t all luck. Part of it was definitely because the guards were focused almost entirely on keeping people in, not out. And the people they were keeping in knew they would die if they went outside.
The yellow fabric of the exoguard’s coveralls was clearly visible in the gap under his arm and along his ribs. I looked back at the others and shrugged, then aimed carefully and landed two darts.
We waited a few seconds, then approached him.
As with the others, the guard was unconscious, but standing up. He was alone, looking out over a cavernous room with six long rows of sleeping mats, each with a thin, grimy sheet on it. I counted eight chimeras sleeping on them. As we walked into the room, the closest of them got up on one elbow to look at us. She was sleek and thin, reminding me of a mink or a ferret, but her eyes were dull and lifeless—until they fixed on Devon.
“Everyone else is in the mine?” he asked.
She nodded and said, “You’re Devon.”
He smiled and went over to her. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know you.”
“I’m Elena. You left just after I got here,” she said. “You’re still alive.”
He smiled, stifling a cough. “Yeah, I am.”
“And you came back.”
He nodded
. “We’re here to get you out. Can you walk?”
Her eyes had widened and brightened, but then they fell. She pulled back the sheet to reveal a filthy bandage around her ankle. “A little.”
I tapped a metal finger on Devon’s metal shoulder, and when he turned, I pointed at an empty mine cart out in the tunnel. He nodded and turned back to the girl.
“Well, don’t worry, we’ll get you out. Can you get the others ready to go, quietly?” he asked. When she nodded, he said, “We’ll be back to get you in a few minutes.”
As we turned and headed back down the tunnel again, I hoped he was right.
CHAPTER 52
The main chamber was just ahead of us, along with the active branch of the mine, where we’d seen the chimeras laboring. There, almost surely, we would encounter the remaining two exoguards and close to a hundred imprisoned chimeras. My thoughts and emotions were entirely focused on what would happen when we got there. But as we followed the curve of the main branch, the first thing to come into view was the elevator doors in the main chamber. At the sight of them, I felt a jolt to my heart. This was one of the last places I’d seen Rex, minutes before he was taken. And now, as far as I knew, he was on one of the levels above us, maybe already splintered, or about to be. An elevator ride away. Right on the other side of those elevator doors, in a way.
As we moved forward, the tunnel widened out into the main chamber, and the doors to the mine branches came into view one at a time, along the wall to our left. I pushed Rex from my thoughts, trying to regain my focus on the task at hand.
The first three of the doors, marked SE1, E2, and E1, looked as ancient and undisturbed as the other inactive branches we’d passed. The door to the last one, NE1, was open.
Devon stayed back as Claudia and I inched forward and peeked around the edge of the doorway, then ducked back.
The place looked much as it had when we saw it the first time: long and dark, sloping downward into the distance. Dozens of chimeras, clustered in groups of six or eight, every twenty or thirty feet along the left-hand wall, were working with picks and shovels, breaking up the glassy black slag that coated the walls, and loading it into carts.
As we expected, the remaining pair of exoguards were keeping an eye on them. One stood by the door. The other was way at the back, past the chimeras, a hundred yards away or more.
There was plenty of noise from all the picking and shoveling, but even so, when Devon coughed behind me, the guard by the door turned and looked over at me. He stepped through the door, out into the main chamber.
“What’s the latest on these doors?” he asked.
I gave him a thumbs-up with one hand and squeezed the trigger half a dozen times with the other. He went for his weapons, but stopped halfway.
A few chimeras in the cluster nearest the door stopped working and looked over at us.
I glanced back at Claudia and Devon, and said, “The other guard is all the way at the other end of the shaft.”
When I peeked around the doorway, he looked right at me. If someone looking like an exoguard didn’t get back in there soon, any chance of a surprise would be gone.
“Crap,” I said. “He saw me.” I stepped through the door and tried to mimic the guard’s posture.
“Shoot him!” Claudia said in a loud whisper.
“He’s too far for the dart gun,” I hissed back, not looking at her, keeping my head facing straight ahead.
“Then use your other gun,” she said, louder this time.
The chimeras closest to the door stared at me intently, and so did the remaining guard. He began slowly walking in my direction, like he knew something was up. I had to get into dart-gun range before he realized what. I started walking toward him, feeling the slope of the floor impelling me forward, even through the exosuit.
As I passed the chimeras, they slowed down or stopped working entirely to watch me.
“What’s going on?” the guard called out as we drew closer.
I didn’t answer. My voice would give me away immediately.
He slowed to a stop, but I kept moving. Then he tilted his head, as if he was looking over my shoulder. I glanced back and saw that Claudia had entered the shaft. She was fast approaching behind me.
All of the chimeras seemed to notice, now, that something was up. Devon had told us the exoguards traveled in pairs, never in threes. Maybe that’s why the guard I was headed for suddenly stepped back and raised his gun.
“Shoot him!” Claudia yelled, and I saw she had her gun in her hand. She pulled the trigger and there was a deafening boom. It sounded like it was right next to my head. The chimeras around us all crouched down low, recoiling from the sound. In the distance, past the guard, several glassy black stalactites shattered and fell away from the ceiling.
The guard fired back, another explosive blast.
I fired my dart gun, but even in the dim light I could see the dart arc and fall ten yards in front of him.
“Use your gun, dammit,” Claudia said as she fired and missed again.
Instead I ran forward and fired two darts, aiming higher, hoping the arc would take them farther, but they landed even shorter instead.
The exoguard aimed and fired again, at Claudia. The muzzle flashed and the shoulder of Claudia’s exosuit jerked violently back, her entire torso twisting as she fell backward onto the ground.
“Shoot him, Jimi!” she cried out again, grimacing as she tried to get back onto her feet.
But I hesitated.
I knew that what we were doing was right. And what we were fighting against was evil. The guard in front of me was a part of a scheme that had already taken many lives. He personally had probably done some of that killing. But still, shooting a human being, taking a life…I didn’t know if I could live with myself afterward. I didn’t know if I could do it at all.
The guard fired at me, but I ducked, and thanks to the exaggerated movements of the exosuit, he missed. As he aimed again, one of the miners closest to him jumped onto his arm, jarring it just enough that he missed again.
I kept charging forward, closer and closer to dart-gun range, even though I knew the seconds it would take for a dart to knock him out were seconds in which he could kill us all.
As I slipped the dart gun into my left hand and reached for my gun, the guard whipped his arm and flung the woman against the wall. She crumpled and dropped to the ground, motionless and bleeding.
Another miner sprang, swinging a pickaxe into the guard’s right arm, piercing his flesh and locking the elbow mechanism in place.
“Shoot him!” the miner yelled, his large, lemur-like eyes wide and frantic. “Use your gun! Shoot him!” The guard was reaching around with his left arm, trying to grab him.
I was still out of dart-gun range, and I knew it was way too late for that. As the guard’s metal fingers closed on the pickaxe and ripped it out of his arm, I raised my gun. Even in my exosuit’s grip, it felt heavy.
The miner looked into my eyes, pleading, as the exoguard’s metal fingers closed on his leg. A scream tore through the mine as his leg snapped.
Claudia was still on the ground, screaming “Shoot! Shoot!” and trying to twist around to aim her gun.
I pointed my gun and told my finger to squeeze that trigger. But it wouldn’t.
The guard pointed his gun at me with one hand while his other raised the injured, screaming chimera high over his head.
And still I couldn’t move.
Then a blast erupted behind me and I felt a breeze go past my head. The guard stumbled and looked down. His midsection was shredded, a mass of red where the belly of his yellow coveralls had been. He looked back up, his eyes white hot with rage and pain. His metal fingers shifted on the grip of his gun, but before he could fire, another explosion erupted behind me, the breeze this time brushing my neck. The guard’s head jerked back in its metal frame as his breathing mask and his face disappeared in a cloud of plastic shards and red.
I turned and saw Devon behind
me, his gun raised, still smoking. His eyes had a deadness I hadn’t seen in them before, and I felt a wrenching guilt. He had insisted on leaving the breathing mask with the other guard, Sebastian, because he hadn’t wanted to take a life, not even then. But he had shot this guard because I’d been unable to. Once again, I’d forced him into a position where he felt he had to do something he dreaded.
“I’m sorry,” I said, quietly.
He nodded but didn’t look at me. Claudia didn’t either, as Devon reached down and helped her to her feet. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “We need to get going.”
The guard was still standing in his exosuit where Devon had shot him, his face and his midsection bleeding out through it, onto the rock floor. The miner who had attacked him with the pickaxe, one of two who had saved my life, was still clutched in his metal hand, high overhead, moaning in pain.
Claudia ran over and reached under the exosuit’s bloody chest plate. She stepped aside and raised her arm. “Hold onto my hand,” she told the miner. The suit assumed its ready position, spilling the dead guard onto the bloody floor as the metal hand released the injured chimera. He clung to Claudia’s arm, wincing as she gently lowered him to the ground.
The miner who’d been flung against the wall was sitting up, groaning and holding her head.
The rest of them were staring at us, wondering what was going on. I turned to Claudia and Devon, but neither of them seemed ready to speak.
“We’re here to get you out of here,” I announced. Even amplified, my voice sounded feeble and inadequate. “We need to get to the main entrance of the mine. Then we’ll get you all to safety.”
None of them moved. They stared at me for a moment, then they turned to Devon.
He was oblivious at first, staring at the ground, then he seemed to feel their eyes on him, and he looked up at them. “It’s okay,” he said. “She’s right.”
“We can’t breathe out there, Devon,” one of the chimeras said. “You know that.”
He nodded, then cleared his throat and started coughing. When he resumed talking a few moments later, his voice was loud and strong. “We’re getting you out of here. There’s a place nearby, an abandoned town called Centre Hollow, where the air is like it is in the mine, so you can breathe there. It’s not far. We’re going to take you all there. Then we’re going to shut this place down, and we’re going to find the people that put us here and make them pay.”