“How many places could he go?” Six said. “Come on.”
She hoped she sounded confident. In reality, she was anything but. If Sam had run out of the safe room on his own, it meant he obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. And if he was wandering around the halls of the bunker, it was only a matter of time before he ran into someone. Lava was right—it might already be too late.
“We can use the corridors,” Bats said. “They don’t run everywhere, but they run enough places that it’s worth staying hidden until we don’t have a choice.”
“It doesn’t make sense for us all to go the same direction,” Six said. “I need one of you with me, since you know where the corridors run and are familiar with this place. Lava, you come with me. Bats, you go on your own.”
“What if I find Sam?” Bats asked.
“Try to get him somewhere safe. Back to the library, if you can. If you can’t, then come find us and we’ll figure it out. But don’t put yourself in danger. If the risk is too much, get back to the safe room and stay there. We’ll meet back there in an hour. By then, we should have found him, or figured out if someone else has.”
“Okay,” Bats said. She looked at Lava. “I’ll take the lower floors. You and Six take the upper three.”
Lava nodded, but looked worried.
“You can do it,” Bats assured him, giving him a hug.
She entered one of the corridors that led off of the main hall, the one they had used to reach the laboratories. Lava showed Six the opening to one on the other side. “We go through here,” he said.
“How many floors are there in this place?” Six asked as they walked, with Lava leading the way ahead of her.
“At least five,” Lava said. “The top one is where they store supplies. The second floor is living quarters and kitchen. The third is where you were held and where Max and I found you. The labs are on the fourth floor. And this is the fifth floor, which is mostly systems and machinery for things like air and water. We think there may be a sixth level, because there’s something drawn on one of the maps in Digby’s diaries, but we’ve never found a way to get to it, so it might be something he was planning and never built.”
“It’s like an entire hotel underground,” Six remarked.
“If we’re lucky, Sam will still be on this floor,” said Lava. “People come down here, but it’s not as busy as the other floors.”
“Is the maintenance staff Mogs or humans?” Six asked.
“Both,” said Lava. “There aren’t a ton of Mogs here, but they don’t trust humans to be totally in charge, so there are always some Mogs on the crews. The other thing is that to get off the elevators on this floor, you need a crew key. Otherwise, you have to use the stairs. I messed up the doors when Max and I were running from Ghost and Seamus, so they’re probably not working right. Unless Sam managed to break through them or get into an elevator somehow, he should be here.”
They walked for a while longer; then Lava stopped. “This is the electrical room,” he said, pushing on a panel in the wall. It slid aside, opening onto a small area behind some kind of large machinery. “The entrances are all in out-of-the-way places,” Lava explained. “We’re behind one of the generators.”
They walked around the massive machine, which hummed loudly. Peering out from behind it, Six looked into a large room filled with several more generators and rows of other machines she didn’t know the purpose of. She saw two men looking at something and talking, but no Sam.
She and Lava retreated into the passageway and continued on. Six could feel a vibration coming through the walls and floor.
“The water room,” Lava told her. “The pumps make a lot of noise when they’re running. We won’t be able to hear much besides that, so be ready.”
When he opened the panel into that room, they were met by the thunderous sound of turbines and pumps. The air practically vibrated with the sounds, and Six could sense the rush of water being pulled through the pipes. Again, they entered in an inconspicuous area in a dark corner of the room, and she had to walk around a massive piece of equipment to get a better look.
She saw Sam immediately. He was lying on the floor, facedown and unmoving. Instinctively, she ran over to him. A small pool of blood had spread out from beneath his nose. She knelt down and turned him over.
“Sam!” she said, forgetting that he wouldn’t be able to hear her because of the noise.
She shook him, then slapped the side of his face lightly. Sam opened his eyes. They were glassy and unfocused, moving from side to side. Then, unexpectedly, he pushed Six roughly away, a look of horror on his face. He scrambled to his hands and knees, then stood, looking around wildly.
Six got up, reaching for him. Sam lifted his hands in a protective gesture, and she felt a weak wave of telekinesis hit her. It was enough to make her fall back a step, but not strong enough to do any real damage. Still, Sam was trying to fight her, and that was disturbing.
She felt someone behind her, and whirled to see Lava grabbing at her arm and pointing. She looked, and across the room she saw three teenagers standing, watching the scene between her and Sam. She recognized Seamus immediately. Another one—a blond girl who regarded her with a smirk—looked familiar, and Six realized she’d seen her before. She was one of the girls from Dennings’s compound in Texas. Freakshow, they’d called her. The girl who could make people see their biggest fears.
Standing with her and Seamus was a smaller boy with shaggy brown hair and glasses. Six eyed them warily while keeping a watch on Sam. She knew what Freakshow and Seamus could do, but she didn’t know what the other boy’s power was. She glanced at Lava, hoping he would give her a clue, but he was looking elsewhere. She followed his gaze and saw a fourth person—a girl—standing apart from the others and looking at Lava. It was immediately obvious from their resemblance that she was his sister.
They needed to get Sam and get out. Not only were they outnumbered, but Six feared her Legacies wouldn’t work. She also sensed that the group watching them knew this, and were waiting to see what she would do.
She decided she didn’t have time to be patient. Grabbing Sam by the wrist, she pulled him to her and wrapped her arms around him. He immediately began to struggle, fighting hard. Although his Legacies were compromised, he was still strong. But she was ready for him. She gripped him more tightly and began to drag him back towards the hidden passageway. The others would see them disappear, but she had no choice.
She’d walked a few feet when the bugs appeared. Spiders and roaches, swarming out from under the machines. This was Seamus’s trick, she knew, and she wasn’t frightened by it. She stomped on the hapless insects, even as they started to climb her legs. Sam, seeing them, reacted violently. He jerked away from Six, slipping out of her grip and stumbling away, running blindly in the direction of the group of teenagers watching the proceedings.
Six noticed that Lava was still standing as if in a daze, looking at his sister. As she ran by him, Six hit him hard in the back, jarring him to attention. He shook himself and joined her as she chased after Sam, who was now turning in circles and trying to wipe the bugs off his body.
As Six reached him, she felt the air around her change. The boy with the glasses was holding up his hands. All around Six, the air suddenly sparkled with cold as snowflakes formed. She found herself in the middle of a miniblizzard. Her breath froze, and she started to shake.
Legacies or not, she wasn’t about to be trapped by a temperature-shifter. She forced herself to break through the chilly air, even as her body started to shake uncontrollably. The boy attempted to move the area of cold to keep her contained within it, but Six ordered her stiffening muscles to respond and ran from him. She got about a dozen feet before she was hit with a blast of fiery heat that sucked all the air from her lungs, as if she had stepped into a blast furnace.
Waves of heat radiated around her, and through them she saw the boy in the glasses watching her, his hands held up. She grew faint as the temperature
soared. Then she saw the boy fly backwards, hit by a wave of telekinetic energy sent out from Lava, who had finally come to her aid. The wall of heat around her collapsed instantly.
Lava continued to use his telekinesis, sending the others scurrying as they fought back. This gave Six time to resume her search for Sam. Only she couldn’t see him. He had disappeared. She ran around the room, looking, finding nothing.
Something closed around her wrist. The blond girl had grabbed her. She was grinning at Six with a malevolent smile. Six went to shake her off, but as she did, she suddenly found herself somewhere unexpected. She was inside the Mog prison in West Virginia. Her Cêpan, Katarina, hung before her in chains. Her face was bruised and bloodied. Beside her stood a Mog. He held a dagger in his hand.
“How weak you are,” he said. “How unworthy to stand beside the others.”
Six felt herself tremble. She looked into Katarina’s eyes. She wanted to save her, but knew she couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she heard herself whisper as the Mog placed his dagger on Katarina’s chest and pressed it into her heart.
Six cried out as her beloved teacher and friend died in front of her. Her heart broke. She had failed. The Mog laughed at her torment, and his voice echoed in her ears.
The room began to shake. The Mog disappeared, as did the room itself. Six was once more standing in the underground bunker. The girl, Freakshow, had let go of her and was looking around in surprise. Six, still affected by the lingering feeling of reliving her greatest fear, had no idea what was happening.
The noise in the room had grown louder. Six turned, trying to figure out what had changed. Then she saw Sam. He was standing near a control panel of some kind, his hands on it and a strange look on his face. She had no idea what he was doing. All around the room, machinery was creaking and groaning.
Then Six understood. Sam had opened some pipes or told the pumps to do something. Whatever it was, he was overloading the system. A moaning sound began as water rushed through pipes that had not been used in years. Six saw Freakshow and the others gather together in the center of the room. Seamus grabbed Sam and pulled him away from the controls.
It was too late. At the far end of the room, a wall exploded inward. Water poured through in a torrent, shooting across the floor and hitting the teenagers standing there. They were sent sprawling. Six, standing farther away, avoided the blast, but she saw Lava get slammed into a wall by the force of the water and collapse. He didn’t move.
The water kept coming. Then there was another explosion and a second river joined the first. The room was flooding.
They needed to get to a higher floor. And fast.
She looked for Sam. She saw him across the room, splashing in the water like a little kid, kicking it up with his feet and laughing. Whatever was happening in his brain, it was getting worse.
She waded towards him, ignoring the others, who were now themselves trying to get out of the room. They were no longer her biggest worry. But as she neared Sam, Freakshow came for her, thrashing through the water. This time, Six was ready for her. As the girl reached out to grab her, Six punched her as hard as she could in the face. The girl’s head flew back, and she fell into the water, blood streaming from what Six hoped was a broken nose.
Six got to Sam and took his hand. This time, he didn’t fight her. She turned and made her way over to Lava, Sam in tow. The water was to her knees now, and it was cold.
The water grew colder. Then it began to freeze. Six looked down as it began to solidify around her legs. Even as she lifted one foot, she felt the water around it harden, imprisoning her. She turned her head and saw the boy with the glasses. He was transforming the room into ice. His friends had gotten out of the way, standing on machinery that was above the water level. Only Six, Sam and Lava were trapped in the grip of the ice.
Six saw Freakshow jump down onto the ice. She slid across the frozen surface, her hands reaching out. Six could only stand and wait.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEMO
SHILO, UTAH
NEMO FELT THE WATER BEFORE SHE SAW IT.
She was walking down a long corridor, looking for any way out, when the shaking started, a low rumbling that she first felt through the bottoms of her bare feet. It grew more intense as she started to hurry. There had to be stairs somewhere, or another way to the upper levels.
She heard a groaning sound, like long-unused pipes coming to life and filling with water. She thought immediately of the three huge pipes under the lake. Had someone activated the massive machinery to get them working again? There was still no sign of Nine. Was he in there, battling the thing that had attacked them? Nemo had no idea. All she knew was that she had to find a way out of where she was.
That was when the water came.
It surged around a corner ahead of her, a swirling brown wave several feet high. It rolled down the corridor, hitting Nemo in the legs and knocking her backwards. As water rushed over her face, she clamped her mouth shut so that she wouldn’t swallow any. For a moment she panicked, the natural fear of drowning kicking in, but then her Legacy took over and she relaxed a little bit. She could breathe. But she was still being propelled backwards.
She managed to flip herself over into a swimming position, but the water was moving too quickly for her to turn around. She put her arms out in front of her, waiting to crash into a wall. When the impact came, it jarred her shoulders, but at least she was not moving. The water pinned her to the concrete wall as it veered off to the left down the next corridor. She huddled there as the water continued to rise, filling the hallway. Eventually, the current slowed as the pressure equaled out.
Now she could swim. She wished she still had her mask and fins, but they were by the air lock where she’d left them. The water was murky, but she did the best she could, swimming back in the direction she’d been going before the flood. She had no idea where it had come from, but the water had gotten in somehow, and that meant that there was probably a way up.
She traversed the length of the corridor. The water was cold, and she guessed that it was from the lake. She thought momentarily of the thing with the tentacles, and shuddered. Hopefully, there would be no surprises like that awaiting her.
She kept going after reaching the spot where she first got hit with the wave. At the corner, she turned and found what she’d been searching for. A stairwell that went up. It was filled with water now, and she half swam and half walked up it. At the top she found a closed door with a wire screen set into the top. The water had forced the screen out, and it hung to one side. The door itself was still firmly shut.
Nemo placed her hands on the edge of the opening and pulled herself up. She was able to squeeze through and swim to the other side, where she found more stairs. These too were flooded, but only halfway up. When she reached the midway point, she found something even more peculiar. The water was frozen over her head. She put her hands against it and pushed, expecting nothing to happen. But she felt it crack into pieces, opening up a hole.
She pushed her head through and saw that the stairs were a frozen waterfall, as if the water had crystalized instantly in midflow. It was beautiful in an eerie way. She crawled out of the hole and onto the first step, holding on to a railing affixed to the wall for balance as she climbed the remaining steps. At the top she found another door. Thankfully, this one had been pushed open by the flood of water, and she slipped through into another hallway.
She was in a winter wonderland. Or something like it. Ice was everywhere. Her bare feet burned as she walked across it, but she was distracted from the pain by the weirdness of the sight. The water had been several feet deep when it froze, and so she walked through the hallway with the ceiling just overhead. And the ice wasn’t entirely solid. Nemo felt water move beneath the surface. The hall was filled with the sound of cracking, shifting ice. It was like walking on a river.
There were other sounds, too. Voices. Somewhere ahead of her. And they sounded upset.
She hurried. She rounded a corner and passed into another hallway. This one had open doorways lining it. And there were people in it. The lights lining the hall were flickering on and off. Then they went out completely. A moment later, pale green safety lights came on. They were mounted at floor level, and glowed beneath the ice, creating an aquarium effect. Nemo was thankful for the lack of light, as it helped her stay hidden in the shadows as she crept down the hall.
“Get up to the labs!” a female voice shouted. “Get them all out! Take them to the teleporters. They know what to do.”
Nemo came to the first open door and looked inside. A pink-haired girl was standing in a room full of machinery. She was directing a small group of people and Mogs, who were carrying various pieces of equipment through another door.
“We don’t have long!” the girl shouted. “The water system has been compromised, as well as the electrical grid. The backup generators will only work for a little while.”
“Calm down, Magdalena,” said another voice. Then the Mog Nemo had first seen back at the house in Alabama came into view, the tall blond one. “We’ll get your precious creatures out.”
“They don’t tolerate the cold, Eleni,” Magdalena snapped. “They won’t survive long.”
“Then get Spike to warm it up in here,” said the blond Mog.
“That will just make the flooding worse,” Magdalena said. “He should have been more careful.”
“He’s not the one who caused the intake pipes to burst,” said Eleni. “The Garde did that.”
Nemo’s heart lurched. She had to be talking about Six or Sam. Why they would do something to cause a flood, she didn’t know. But it meant one or both of them were around somewhere.
“And who let them escape, I wonder?” Eleni asked. Her tone sounded accusatory.
“Six got away on her own,” said Magdalena. “You were supposed to be in control of her, remember?”
“Her powers returned unexpectedly,” Eleni argued. “I thought your beasts were supposed to take care of that.”
The Legacy Chronicles: Raising Monsters Page 8