by K. F. Baugh
“You ready?” she asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Nervous tension radiated from him.
“You’ve got to calm down, Tim. Right now, anyone looking for someone suspicious will see you coming from a mile away.”
Tim crossed him arms. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Lucky you, Sage thought. “Don’t stand up so straight. You look like a soldier. Or a cop.” Tim slouched. “Better. Now look angry. Scary. Like everyone is a threat to your manhood.”
Tim let out a muffled groan, and Sage tugged him forward.
“Make sure to be handsy,” Sage said leaning in towards him, “like I’m your babe, and you own me.”
“Anything else, your highness?” He slipped a tense arm around her shoulders.
Wrapping her arm around his waist, she slipped her hand into his back pocket and squeezed. “I’ll let you know.”
The smell of sugary sweet treats and gasoline generators enveloped them. The crowd jostled and surged with curious tourists, hyper kids, and a few easy going locals. Sage and Tim wandered through the crowd, as slowly as Sage could make herself go, when all she wanted to do was dash through the tent city toward the research cabins of Oriel. Tim helped steady her, dragging her to different tables and pointing out things for her to study.
“Hey, babe,” he barked in a deep voice. “Look at this. You like it?”
“Nah,” Sage drawled through her nose, pretending to examine whatever trinket he held before her. “It’s kinda tacky.”
As Sage had predicted, nobody paid much attention to either her or Tim’s faces. While most people shied away from Tim, Sage noticed quite a few of the male revelers eyeing her with the lecherous attention she’d predicted. Tim kept her close to his side, however, so even the brave ones didn’t approach her.
Just as the sound of the first band warming up vibrated through the valley, Tim and Sage approached the last of the tents. Before them lay the main cluster of cabins that comprised the Oriel Biological Research Station. Their eyes met, and Sage felt a current of anticipation travel between them. It was time to find some answers.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sage and Tim snuck into an outbuilding at the edge of the fairgrounds. It was filled with a small fleet of ATVs and motorcycles, ones that Sage had seen with the scientists on more remote mountain excursions. Of course she’d reached the same locations on foot, but then, tracking marmots was evidently hard work.
Tim followed her to the windowed back door and peered at the buildings that spread up the hillside behind them. An outsider would think they were looking at old miner’s shacks and merchant cabins, since Terrance Storm insisted that all the original buildings be repaired to keep their historical appearance. Newer buildings were carefully constructed to look at least 100 years older than they actually were. The effect of the dark, rugged cabins, after the raucous energy of the honey festival, was unsettling. The faux ghost town dotted its way up the side of the mountain like jagged, broken teeth.
Sage shuddered and tore her gaze away. A breeze rippled through the leaves and moved next to her.
“It is time,” came a whisper. Sage remained still. But where to go? There were at least two dozen buildings in her line of sight. The Presence nudged her head a few degrees to the right, and Sage honed in on a one story cabin near the top of the hillside.
“What are we supposed to do?” Tim asked in a strained voice.
“Did you not hear it?” Sage asked.
“Hear what?” Tim asked.
“Come on.” She tugged his hand and pulled him into a jog. A prickle of anxiety suddenly shot up her spine. Something was tailing them.
“But which one do we go to?” he hissed as they dodged in and out of the shadows of trees and cabins.
“That one, I think,” Sage pointed to building near the top of the hill.
The two sprinted up the hill, dangerously exposed as they left the cover of the more densely populated valley floor. Gasping, they finally arrived at the front of the building. Sage glanced at a bronze plaque that designated it as the Rand Building, but Tim grabbed her arm and jerked her around the corner.
“Did you see, Tim? The Rand Building,” Sage gasped out. “The word you got.”
“This place is dangerous, Sage.” He panted, ignoring her question. “Can you feel it?”
“Yes,” Sage answered. She didn’t tell him all she felt. The creature was close by, and a sense of overwhelming urgency hammered at her heart. “We’ve got to get in there. NOW.”
“Let me go first,” Tim said, but Sage ignored him and the two slipped onto the porch together. When Tim gave the doorknob a tentative twist, it opened with an eerie squeal. Sage looked up at Tim, and he gave her a tight smile before entering the cabin.
Once her eyes adjusted to the dim interior, she glanced around in confusion. It looked like a normal living room, with mismatched furniture positioned in front of a large fire place. Sage walked around the perimeter of the room. Aside from a few bookshelves and a closet there was nothing else.
“I don’t understand,” she stammered even as her perception of danger grew stronger. “There’s nothing here.”
“Did you notice a chimney when we were outside?” Tim walked to the large fireplace and felt along the bricks. “I didn’t. This should have been along the wall we were just standing next to.”
“No, there wasn’t one,” Sage said.
“It’s a false wall.” Tim ran his hands over the fireplace surround. “There’s got to be a panel or something here.”
Bookcases framed the fireplace, and the smell of musty, decaying paper stung Sage’s nose. Above the shelves on the right side hung a mounted coyote head. Its beady glass eyes bored into Sage’s, and she felt a rush of premonition. “That one.” The words burst from her. “That’s a door.”
Tim jerked at the bookcase frame. “It’s bolted to the wall.”
“There must be a switch or handle.” Sage ripped several books off the shelf and flung them behind her, the hair on her neck nearly dancing with fear.
Tim fiddled with a screw that stuck out along the edge of the shelf. There was a groaning noise, and suddenly, the bookshelf moved revealing a shadowed opening behind it.
As Tim wrenched the hidden door open, they heard a scrabbling of claws across the front porch. Sage snatched an old fireplace poker from the hearth and slammed it across the exposed screw, breaking it off where it met the wood. A shrill howl sounded and an explosion of shattering glass filled the room. Grabbing Tim by the shirt, Sage pulled the two of them behind the bookcase and slammed it shut, fireplace poker still in hand. Darkness engulfed them, and the hidden door shuddered from the impact of the creature on the other side.
Sage let out a shuddering breath.
“That was close,” Tim said. Sage felt his hand find hers. “Did you know that was coming?”
“Let’s go.” She tugged at his hand.
“I can’t see.”
“I can, just barely.” Sage pulled and this time he followed her down a set of stairs.
They both listened for whatever had followed them into the cabin. It was only a matter of time, Sage knew, until it found a way into the bookcase, despite the broken switch.
After a while Tim spoke, “I thought this was going to be a tunnel that lead us somewhere else in Oriel, but it’s not. We’re going really deep into the mountain.”
“I don’t know what it is,” she whispered. “But hopefully it leads somewhere.”
“Guess there’s no going back, even if we did choose the wrong door.” Tim let out a half-hearted chuckle.
“Well, I’m sure as hell not going back there,” Sage said. The minutes ticked by as they continued down stone stairs that grew rougher and more precarious. Finally, they turned a corner, and a strange humming sound invaded the silence. Sage sensed they’d entered a large chamber. When she stopped, Tim bumped into her back.
“Feel for a switch or someth
ing,” Sage said. “This room is huge. There has to be some sort of light.”
They ran their hands over the smooth cold walls for several minutes before Sage discovered a switch and flipped it. There was a rapid plink, plink as the overhead florescent lights struggled to life, and Sage gasped at the massive space that stretched before them.
“You could play a football game in here,” Tim said taking a few step forward and turning in an awed circle.
“What is this place?” Sage whispered, her voice barely discernible over the humming din.
Row upon row of desks stretched back into the still, dim recesses of the cavern. On them sat hundreds of computers and other machines filling the air with their electric noise. Aluminum siding lined the windowless walls on both sides. The wall on the left side was full of doors. Some of the doors had windows, and inside them, Sage could see lots of stainless steel equipment and other machines.
“All these desks …” Tim said. “What are we supposed to do? It would take years to go through all this.” He gestured wildly at the massive space before them.
“Not sure we have that long,” Sage said as a familiar tingle crept up her spine.
Tim turned and met her eyes. “You mean …”
She nodded.
Tim sat down in the nearest chair and covered his face with his hands. Sage could hear him mumbling incoherently. Whether he was asking for help or saying his final prayers, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to wait around and find out.
Sage turned to the nearest computer and jerked the mouse around until the monitor slowly glowed to life. A box popped up on the screen requesting a password. She rushed from one computer to the next in the cluster of desks, but they were all the same. As Sage’s gaze travelled over the hundreds of computers that stretched through the bunkers, she tried to ignore the fearful foreboding that raced through her.
They were screwed. There was no way the Wind would be able to speak to her in this concrete bunker. Electric fear shot through her limbs. The creature would find another way into this … whatever it was. It was only a matter of when.
“Tim, come on. We’ve got to get out of here!” Sage shook his shoulder. “Maybe there’s another way out.”
Tim looked up from his hands, his eyes vacant and unfocused. “I keep getting the same picture in my head. Over and over again.”
“I don’t care! Are you deaf? That thing is coming for us!” Sage grabbed his arm and tried to pull him from the seat.
“No!” Tim jerked away from her and stood. “There’s a desk, toward the back, that we need to find. A woman worked there.” Tim closed his eyes again as if trying to remember something. “She was upset by what was on the computer. But she was scared too.” His eyes snapped open, and he began to jog toward through the rows of desks, speeding up as he went. “She decided to disable all the security on her computer and hoped that someone would discover it.”
“How do you know this?” Sage bellowed as she sprinted behind him.
“I don’t know,” Tim hollered back. “But we have to find her computer.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tim slid to a halt near the back of the building. He paused, then drifted indecisively around several of the desks.
“What are you doing?” Sage snapped after watching him for a moment. “Come on, Tim. You gotta keep me in the loop.”
“There’s a bird,” he muttered, then sprang into frantic action, knocking files, keyboards and pens off the desk beside him. Then he turned to another desk and did the same.
“What the hell are you talking about? Have you gone crazy?”
“In the picture.” Tim swept a monitor onto the floor. “The one in my head. The woman’s desk had a red bird on it.”
“You mean like a birdcage?” Sage scanned the area with a desperate glance.
“No. There was no cage! Just a red bird. We’ve got to find it.”
Sage turned and jogged to another section of desks, her mind still trying to picture the red bird he described. She turned a corner and suddenly a power cord tangled itself around her legs. Sage tripped and slammed into the wall of a large cubicle. The rough fabric scraped her cheek then collapsed beneath her weight. Climbing to her knees, she tried to regain her bearings. Then, from the corner of her eye, Sage saw a flash of red. She crawled toward it and came to a wooden desk surrounded by several other large metal ones.
“Here, Tim! There’s a picture of a red bird. It’s taped to the edge of the computer.”
Tim sprinted toward her, leaping over the collapsed walls and office debris. He sat down and tapped frantically at the keys. They watched as the screen slowly glowed to life, just like the others. Except this time there was no password prompt. Only a screen image of an older woman hugging a small, pale boy close to her side.
“I’m in.” Tim whispered and began to click frantically with the mouse. “I can’t believe it. I’m in!”
“Hurry.” Sage cautioned. The feeling of urgency had abated but not entirely disappeared. Something must have delayed the creature, but she knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it had been stopped.
“Help me look through these files.” Tim grabbed her arm and pulled her up next to him. He scrolled down a page filled with hundreds of document and spreadsheet files, most of them with names that didn’t even make sense, just combinations of numbers and letters. Sage’s eyes blurred at the sheer number of them.
“It’s too much.” Sage said. “There’s no way we can find what we need in time.”
“Let me see what she was working on last.” Tim clicked a few keys. A brief email popped up:
Sue,
I understand your concerns about the Meta Project. However, the decision has already been made by the board. I need you to finish compiling the data on the spectral analysis and have it on my desk by Monday morning.
Benson
“The Meta Project,” Tim said then typed the word into the computer’s finder. A folder popped up and as soon as Tim clicked it, fields full of data began to pop up on the computer.
“No time to read this now,” Sage said. “Can you email it to your computer?”
“I doubt it,” Tim said, “Even if she disabled the security on her individual computer, there’s probably no way she hacked this place’s firewalls. But maybe I can download it onto something.” He ripped open a desk drawer and dug through it furiously. Finding nothing, he slammed it closed and tried the neighboring desk. “Here! A flash drive.”
“Hurry,” Sage said. “Time’s almost up.”
Tim nodded and turned back to the computer.
Nervously, Sage leafed through a stack of papers that had slid from the desk to the floor. While most of them were files with meaningless labels, Sage gasped as she neared the bottom of the pile and found one labelled Shaun Colter. She dug through the remaining folders and after a moment found one with Tabitha Smalley’s name on it too.
Sage opened the first file and quickly scanned through it. The first few pages gave information typically found in a doctor’s chart, from Shaun’s birth, up until the present. Confused, she stared at the diagnosis cystic fibrosis, indicated at the age of around two years. Sage reread the words several times and shook her head. Shaun was a star athlete. There’s no way he had a terrible lung disease.
Suddenly a tingling sensation shot up Sage’s spine. “You about done, Tim?” She ripped a few of the pages out of Tabitha’s and Shaun’s files, folded them in half and shoved them in the back pocket of her shorts.
“I don’t know!” Tim said. “I’m just copying and pasting files. I don’t even know if it’s the right stuff. And there’s thousands of them.”
“We’re out of time.” Sage clutched his shoulder. The tingling traveled past her spine and through her entire body in a giant burst of adrenaline. “We’ve got to go now!”
Tim’s finger flew over the keys, “Okay, okay just let me paste—”
A loud crash echoed from the tunnel, followed by
a bellow of rage.
“NOW!”
Tim yanked the flash drive from the computer, and the two sprinted toward the back of the massive warehouse. Tim tripped over the feet of an office chair and nearly went down, but Sage grabbed his arm and jerked him back up.
Another crash sounded from behind them, followed by a primal screech that sent shudders up and down Sage’s spine. Louder and louder the wails echoed through the air, and it took everything in Sage not to cover her ears and cower.
“There may not be an exit back here,” Tim shouted next to her.
“I know,” she gasped. “But you can bet your ass I’m going to look for one.”
As they neared the end of the warehouse, the walls transitioned to stone as if carved directly into the mountain’s rocky surface. Gone were the prefab walls of sheet metal.
They skidded to a stop before the stone face, and Sage glanced over her shoulder. The creature, halfway across the building’s expanse, ran toward them with alarming speed. Now in its coyote form, flecks of foam dripped from its gaping jaws.
“There,” Tim shouted pointing up. “There’s a hole in the wall, up there next to the roof. Do you see it?”
Sage squinted. The rugged dark wall slanted away from her, but up near the top, she saw several indents. Maybe one of them was deep enough to crawl into. “Yeah, but does it lead anywhere?”
“Who cares?” Tim bellowed and shoved her against the wall. “Start climbing.”
They inched up the jagged, granite slab with the howls of the creature echoing in their ears. Clattering desks and chairs sounded from below. Sage expected to feel the burning slice of claws in her legs at any second. Tim quickly outpaced Sage, and bits of rock and debris showered down on her face, loosened by his scrambling feet.
“Careful,” he hollered from a few yards above her. “It gets really slick up here.”
Sage lunged for a hand hold out of her reach and barely caught it. Her sweat-slickened fingers trembled in the small fingerholds she clung to, and her arm muscles burned with fatigue. She took a shuddering breath just as something slammed into the rock beneath her with concussive force.